Gitlab is great for continuous integration and deployment. I have pipelines for backend application in Php/Laravel and frontend apps with deployment on Android, iOS and PWA.
It can take some time and effort to build a reliable CI system, but once it's done it frees up time. A merge on master and a few minutes later you have a new Alpha version of the app deployed on HockeyApp. The same is true for production. The only manual step is publishing the app from the PlayStore or AppStore.