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1. They only have four tiers (four equivalent tiers for hosted and on-premise technically). This is quite reasonable, as they need to provide flexibility for th

1. They only have four tiers (four equivalent tiers for hosted and on-premise technically). This is quite reasonable, as they need to provide flexibility for their customers. They are quite clear about which tiers provide which features. 2. This is purely subjective. I quite like the design, both more than GitHub and Bitbucket. They do have a UX team, and they conduct regular user tests. They've also made a lot of improvements and continue to make improvements, but design will always be subjective. You CANNOT please everyone 3. I suggest putting a thumbs up for https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/18596 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/18596, but ultimately it does create additional work for the UX team so I don't know if they'll end up doing it or not. You could try a user style, e.g. https://userstyles.org/styles/125366/gitlab-simple-dark https://userstyles.org/styles/125366/gitlab-simple-dark 4. GitLab is a company and needs to make money to continue employing developers to continue developing their product. Open source devs volunteer their time on GitLab CE, not any of the closed source features, and GitLab has open sourced enterprise features in the past if the demand is high. Also, there is nothing wrong with comparing them to Microsoft, as Microsoft has thousands of open source projects and is quite the open source contributor. I'd flip #4 on it's head. They aren't greedily restricting features, they are generously open sourcing features and giving them away for free. As a business, they have no obligation to do so.

tyldum 8y ago
When my company subscribed there was only a community and enterprise tier. Now this has become the starter edition and I feel we are losing a lot of value. We are 200 employees, but only 10 developers using the advanced features. We really want to make GitLab our hub (GitOps and all), however the the cost of going beyond starter edition is mind blowing (x5). So if we are to embrace GitLab further we must abandon the idea of letting the whole company use GitLab freely and limit it to devs only. Being small doesn't mean that we are not in need if advanced features, we just have a smaller scale. Also as our initial tier was the top tier, and now is the bottom one, I fear GitLab will fence off future functionality with even more tiers at random. Further, the tiers creates some artificial barriers where we several times feel the some of the new features we receive are just barely functioning and are just there to entice you to upgrade to the next tier. We are all in all very happy with GitLab, however we are no longer pushing it as a central hub for the company.
- manigandham 8y ago
  You pay 200 employees but don't want to spend $19/user/month on software for a company hub? That's not really a small company, and this seems like a budgeting problem if money is that tight. You can also try running multiple installations with a separate dev-only instance with more features. Also have you tried contacting Gitlab to negotiate? A few emails can go a long way.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - bigtunacan 8y ago
    I would say 200 employees is fairly small company; and depending on the line of business it is certainly small enough that profit margins and thus spending may need to be closely watched. If you consider that the OP has only 10 out of 200 users that need the advanced features, but has to purchase the advanced features for all 200 users for anyone to use those features that is $45,600 a year. Now if it were possible for example to have a mixed licensing model; buy 10 Premium licenses for the users who need it and 190 Starter licenses for everyone else then that is $11,400 a year. That is a difference of $34,200 a year so it may be the difference between being able to hire another employee or not.
    - manigandham 8y ago
      As stated, they can run separate instances, or spend 5 minutes contacting GitLab to negotiate. 200 employees is not small, that is considered a medium sized business. Millions of companies around the world never get past single-digits. With payroll extending into 10s of millions, $35k sounds rather trivial if it really is powering the company hub and the value that brings.
      - bigtunacan 8y ago
        "200 employees is not small, that is considered a medium sized business" I'm just curious what your basis for that is? To go with some kind of standardization on the term "small business" I would say the safest definition (within the US) would be to follow the SBA guidelines that define a small business. Depending on the industry a small business is defined by the SBA as a maximum of anywhere from 100 to 1500 employees. So it is not cut and dry that this is or is not a small business; industry and also potentially revenues in millions of dollars would need to be known to determine absolutely if it by definition a small business.

tyldum 8y ago

When my company subscribed there was only a community and enterprise tier. Now this has become the starter edition and I feel we are losing a lot of value. We are 200 employees, but only 10 developers using the advanced features. We really want to make GitLab our hub (GitOps and all), however the the cost of going beyond starter edition is mind blowing (x5). So if we are to embrace GitLab further we must abandon the idea of letting the whole company use GitLab freely and limit it to devs only. Being small doesn't mean that we are not in need if advanced features, we just have a smaller scale. Also as our initial tier was the top tier, and now is the bottom one, I fear GitLab will fence off future functionality with even more tiers at random. Further, the tiers creates some artificial barriers where we several times feel the some of the new features we receive are just barely functioning and are just there to entice you to upgrade to the next tier. We are all in all very happy with GitLab, however we are no longer pushing it as a central hub for the company.

manigandham 8y ago
You pay 200 employees but don't want to spend $19/user/month on software for a company hub? That's not really a small company, and this seems like a budgeting problem if money is that tight. You can also try running multiple installations with a separate dev-only instance with more features. Also have you tried contacting Gitlab to negotiate? A few emails can go a long way.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- bigtunacan 8y ago
  I would say 200 employees is fairly small company; and depending on the line of business it is certainly small enough that profit margins and thus spending may need to be closely watched. If you consider that the OP has only 10 out of 200 users that need the advanced features, but has to purchase the advanced features for all 200 users for anyone to use those features that is $45,600 a year. Now if it were possible for example to have a mixed licensing model; buy 10 Premium licenses for the users who need it and 190 Starter licenses for everyone else then that is $11,400 a year. That is a difference of $34,200 a year so it may be the difference between being able to hire another employee or not.
  - manigandham 8y ago
    As stated, they can run separate instances, or spend 5 minutes contacting GitLab to negotiate. 200 employees is not small, that is considered a medium sized business. Millions of companies around the world never get past single-digits. With payroll extending into 10s of millions, $35k sounds rather trivial if it really is powering the company hub and the value that brings.
    - bigtunacan 8y ago
      "200 employees is not small, that is considered a medium sized business" I'm just curious what your basis for that is? To go with some kind of standardization on the term "small business" I would say the safest definition (within the US) would be to follow the SBA guidelines that define a small business. Depending on the industry a small business is defined by the SBA as a maximum of anywhere from 100 to 1500 employees. So it is not cut and dry that this is or is not a small business; industry and also potentially revenues in millions of dollars would need to be known to determine absolutely if it by definition a small business.