Thank you Sytse for your words, I do really appreciate them :) GitLab is a great product and we do think we can help to make it even better with Gitcolony!
No it's not :) In fact, we know that devs don't like emails, so we manage everything from our tool (plus integrations with Slack & Hipchat).
In addition, we know that emails don't work, so we want to create actionable items directly from Gitcolony, no more emails with a list of things to improve. Just create your TODOs and tickets while you review your code and notify those users that need to be involved!
Our fault, we need to update that name to "Virtual Pull Requests" (we renamed them on our last release).
The main idea is that you can have a "virtual" pull request since the moment you create the branch (you can set up to get it done automatically by Gitcolony). Basically, you have a PR before you even create a pull request, but it's just virtual because it doesn't exist on Github, it only exists within the boundaries of Gitcolony.
This makes visible your work so your team can review it from the get go, without the risk of merging it by mistake.
And whenever you want, you can convert it to a traditional PR just with one click :)
Thank you for the nice words! Yeah, that's intentionally, but we can definitely improve that! (Meanwhile you can enter using this url http://gitcolony.com/pricing)
Interesting debate! We want to improve the code review process for collaborators. If we improve that process for collaborators, in the long term it will be better also for managers :)