As a daily GitLab user, I'd say that would be the main criticism I could levy at it as well. It does feel like there are a number of "and the kitchen sink" type features that are just there to check a box in a RFP or something.

That said, are the majority of people actually even _using_ those features? For us we're essentially just using GitLab for git, merge requests, and CI pipelines. A couple places we use the static page hosting. (First thing I do whenever I create a new repository is go into the settings and just uncheck _all_ the boxes.)

All of that core functionality works really well and is more than polished enough from my point of view.