Yes, but these decisions aren't under me plus setting up a github kind of thing is way too time consuming with all the features that we're used to now.
Understandable, but surely the potential disruption if github was to go down for a long time or indefinitely would be more than setting up a local git server that you control?
They're not GitHub. i.e. The chance of GitHub and your GitLab instance on DO going down simultaneously is very slim. Spend an extra $10/month and you can set up another DO server in another data-center, and reduce the odds of simultaneous failure even further.
Setting up a GitHub alternative is quite expensive but if you're just making your deployment system more robust it doesn't need to be more time consuming as having a server which you can SSH to.