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I've struggled to understand how the ultimate plan can be priced as high as $99/user/month. What kind of company can afford this service price? It's the only w

I've struggled to understand how the ultimate plan can be priced as high as $99/user/month. What kind of company can afford this service price? It's the only way to have access to epics, a feature quite standard for Ajile project management. As a result, we're sticking to the Community Edition, so it's a loss of business for GitLab.

Ididntdothis 7y ago
I agree. 99 is a lot of money and basic things like epics should not be exclusive to a super expensive edition.
merb 7y ago
yeah atlassian pricing is way more affordable for small teams. (i.e. 10€/y for everything for a team of ten or below, but they have way higher server costs)
- solatic 7y ago
  Atlassian starter pricing basically gives the product away to teams with a demonstrated ability to pay, so that they'll keep paying when they grow beyond the starter pricing. It's a false economy unless you could somehow guarantee that you'll never grow beyond 10 users.
  - huherto 7y ago
    But if you grow beyond 10 you are being successful. In other words. It is a nice problem to have if you are barely starting.
inyorgroove 7y ago
We were able to justify it because the automation would have taken a FTE to impliment. The cost was more than half that for us.
- sytse 7y ago
  That is the idea. We are allowing more automation in for example security testing https://about.gitlab.com/solutions/dev-sec-ops/ https://about.gitlab.com/solutions/dev-sec-ops/ and portfolio planning https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/group/epics/ https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/group/epics/ We used to discount our top tier heavily when we just introduced it while we were adding the features to create more value. In our fiscal quarter that ended last month the average price per user for the top tier was above $1000 per year for the first time. And the top tier was 22% of our IACV https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/sales/#incremental-annual-contract-value-iacv https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/sales/#incremental-annual-... last quarter. I hope this makes it plausible that some of our users are starting to see the value.
tikkabhuna 7y ago
I was at Gitlab Commit London and myself and colleagues raised this with a few Gitlab employees. They seem to be aware their jump from Premium to Ultimate is too big. At their feedback booth I passed on that it would be ideal to pay for what you use. We use a separate issue tracker so any of that isn't relevant for us, but some of the security would be ideal. Likewise, we have user accounts for non-development departments (Legal/Compliance/etc) that wouldn't be interested in SAST, for example. If we jumped to Ultimate we would have to pay monthly for those users to access features that never would use. As I said, they do seem to be aware of this. I wouldn't be surprised if they came up with a different arrangement for Ultimate in the near future.
- nicolasd 7y ago
  I’ve raised similar concerns as well, especially with the same argument about non-development departments. However, with the Ultimate plan you also get free guest users, which could serve well for most users who are not developers.
  - daricknance 7y ago
    Should look at Clubhouse for org wide project management . Integrates tightly with GitLab. Soon to release full Confluence replacement too
- apple4ever 7y ago
  That's also part of the problem. They don't have a good strategy around these lite users.
abtinf 7y ago
What kind of established company can’t afford that? For engineers, it represents less then 1% (often less then even .5%) of the fully loaded cost of an FTE.
- cfstras 7y ago
  Depends on your market.
  - whafro 7y ago
    And your margins.
- oefrha 7y ago
  Plenty of (in fact most) companies don’t pay SF/SV/NYC salaries, especially outside the U.S.
mobilemidget 7y ago
Yes quite steep if you have enough devs you can pay for in-house gitlab server + admin
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
base698 7y ago
GitHub enterprise is much higher and doesn't even include CI/CD. In addition other CI tools I've seen quoted in the $300/seat range. Gitlab is a steal at a $99 price point compared to other tools.
- skinnymuch 7y ago
  I thought GitHub enterprise is $250/yr/user. Which is only around $21/month. My info is prob really old though. Guessing they changed.
- stateofnounion 7y ago
  what? github enterprise is 1/5 that cost. and what about github actions? they provide 50k minutes/month for enterprise https://github.com/features/actions https://github.com/features/actions
  - rumanator 7y ago
    To be fair, GitHub Actions is a relatively new thing and I'm not even sure it was already opened to the general public (that is, to anyone who didn't signed up for the beta). It's understandable if GitHub Actions isn't yet a part of the general public's mental landscape.
- kevinherron 7y ago
  It's $250/user/YEAR, not per month.
fraktl 7y ago
This. Here's the story - I'm a dev, I discovered GitLab ~4 years ago, been using it since, we paid for Enterprise plan immediately and are self-hosting it (for internal use). I work with code. I can't context switch between an app for code, app for CI, app for CD, app for orchestration, app for issues, JIRA, mail, Slack (you get the idea) AND be productive. There's just too much white noise. I want to use a few tools, minimize context switching and do my work. I'd like to use GitLab alone, focus on business logic I've to code and keep an agile board that my team and I can use. And here comes GitLab - with a price of $99 per user. It'd cost us $25 000 a month. Just to get an agile board. So what we did was - we said "screw that, they completely missed the point", I started playing with Gogs: https://gogs.io/ https://gogs.io/ and I decided we can develop a tiny agile board within a few days to suit our needs, integrate it with gogs and ditch GitLab. I understand there's business around GitLab, I know there are bills to pay and appetites to satisfy but seriously guys - when a dev's bullshit meter goes off (and mine did), you can tell someone made a bad call. As much as I got used to GitLab's quirks and everything, I'm really now looking forward to replace it - simply due to the fact I felt like they want to rip me off for a meager feature. It would have been AMAZING if I could get an agile board and have GitLab help me with 60% of the extra-tooling besides my IDE, but nope - someone was too greedy. I saw many people complaining about this RIDICULOUS pricing, and even more people defend it - that made me give up arguing. From my POV, pricing is ridiculous, GitLab's been marked as yet another company that started off good and started turning evil (hi Google), I'm looking into alternatives - just like I found GitLab when I looked for GitHub alternative.
- mattl 7y ago
  Share your work so others can use it, please.
- sytse 7y ago
  The features you mention (code editing, CI, CD, orchestration, issues, Web IDE, agile board) are available in all tiers of GitLab, including the free open source version and the one for $4 per user per month (paid annually). What are the top features what you get with other software that are not in the free version of GitLab?
allan_s 7y ago
exactly, the gap is too high, and while being a an absolute gitlab fanboy (been converting all the companies I've been since 2012 and gitlab 5), but here I've no traction to say "let's ditch Jira and switch to ultimate, (we're currently premium), because for 10,20 more dollar, we have both, and yes as other said, suddenly with these features you want to onboard much more people , so you both pay more , and you pay more :)
apple4ever 7y ago
I agree. Their pricing needs fixed for sure. The lowest paid price isn't bad, and even the middle one, but the top one is way overpriced. It would also be nice if they introduced some sort of pricing for small orgs, especially for one people shops.

Ididntdothis 7y ago

I agree. 99 is a lot of money and basic things like epics should not be exclusive to a super expensive edition.

merb 7y ago

yeah atlassian pricing is way more affordable for small teams. (i.e. 10€/y for everything for a team of ten or below, but they have way higher server costs)

solatic 7y ago
Atlassian starter pricing basically gives the product away to teams with a demonstrated ability to pay, so that they'll keep paying when they grow beyond the starter pricing. It's a false economy unless you could somehow guarantee that you'll never grow beyond 10 users.
- huherto 7y ago
  But if you grow beyond 10 you are being successful. In other words. It is a nice problem to have if you are barely starting.

inyorgroove 7y ago

We were able to justify it because the automation would have taken a FTE to impliment. The cost was more than half that for us.

sytse 7y ago
That is the idea. We are allowing more automation in for example security testing https://about.gitlab.com/solutions/dev-sec-ops/ https://about.gitlab.com/solutions/dev-sec-ops/ and portfolio planning https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/group/epics/ https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/group/epics/ We used to discount our top tier heavily when we just introduced it while we were adding the features to create more value. In our fiscal quarter that ended last month the average price per user for the top tier was above $1000 per year for the first time. And the top tier was 22% of our IACV https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/sales/#incremental-annual-contract-value-iacv https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/sales/#incremental-annual-... last quarter. I hope this makes it plausible that some of our users are starting to see the value.

tikkabhuna 7y ago

I was at Gitlab Commit London and myself and colleagues raised this with a few Gitlab employees. They seem to be aware their jump from Premium to Ultimate is too big. At their feedback booth I passed on that it would be ideal to pay for what you use. We use a separate issue tracker so any of that isn't relevant for us, but some of the security would be ideal. Likewise, we have user accounts for non-development departments (Legal/Compliance/etc) that wouldn't be interested in SAST, for example. If we jumped to Ultimate we would have to pay monthly for those users to access features that never would use. As I said, they do seem to be aware of this. I wouldn't be surprised if they came up with a different arrangement for Ultimate in the near future.

nicolasd 7y ago
I’ve raised similar concerns as well, especially with the same argument about non-development departments. However, with the Ultimate plan you also get free guest users, which could serve well for most users who are not developers.
- daricknance 7y ago
  Should look at Clubhouse for org wide project management . Integrates tightly with GitLab. Soon to release full Confluence replacement too
apple4ever 7y ago
That's also part of the problem. They don't have a good strategy around these lite users.

abtinf 7y ago

What kind of established company can’t afford that? For engineers, it represents less then 1% (often less then even .5%) of the fully loaded cost of an FTE.

cfstras 7y ago
Depends on your market.
- whafro 7y ago
  And your margins.
oefrha 7y ago
Plenty of (in fact most) companies don’t pay SF/SV/NYC salaries, especially outside the U.S.

mobilemidget 7y ago

Yes quite steep if you have enough devs you can pay for in-house gitlab server + admin

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

base698 7y ago

GitHub enterprise is much higher and doesn't even include CI/CD. In addition other CI tools I've seen quoted in the $300/seat range. Gitlab is a steal at a $99 price point compared to other tools.

skinnymuch 7y ago
I thought GitHub enterprise is $250/yr/user. Which is only around $21/month. My info is prob really old though. Guessing they changed.
stateofnounion 7y ago
what? github enterprise is 1/5 that cost. and what about github actions? they provide 50k minutes/month for enterprise https://github.com/features/actions https://github.com/features/actions
- rumanator 7y ago
  To be fair, GitHub Actions is a relatively new thing and I'm not even sure it was already opened to the general public (that is, to anyone who didn't signed up for the beta). It's understandable if GitHub Actions isn't yet a part of the general public's mental landscape.
kevinherron 7y ago
It's $250/user/YEAR, not per month.

fraktl 7y ago

This. Here's the story - I'm a dev, I discovered GitLab ~4 years ago, been using it since, we paid for Enterprise plan immediately and are self-hosting it (for internal use). I work with code. I can't context switch between an app for code, app for CI, app for CD, app for orchestration, app for issues, JIRA, mail, Slack (you get the idea) AND be productive. There's just too much white noise. I want to use a few tools, minimize context switching and do my work. I'd like to use GitLab alone, focus on business logic I've to code and keep an agile board that my team and I can use. And here comes GitLab - with a price of $99 per user. It'd cost us $25 000 a month. Just to get an agile board. So what we did was - we said "screw that, they completely missed the point", I started playing with Gogs: https://gogs.io/ https://gogs.io/ and I decided we can develop a tiny agile board within a few days to suit our needs, integrate it with gogs and ditch GitLab. I understand there's business around GitLab, I know there are bills to pay and appetites to satisfy but seriously guys - when a dev's bullshit meter goes off (and mine did), you can tell someone made a bad call. As much as I got used to GitLab's quirks and everything, I'm really now looking forward to replace it - simply due to the fact I felt like they want to rip me off for a meager feature. It would have been AMAZING if I could get an agile board and have GitLab help me with 60% of the extra-tooling besides my IDE, but nope - someone was too greedy. I saw many people complaining about this RIDICULOUS pricing, and even more people defend it - that made me give up arguing. From my POV, pricing is ridiculous, GitLab's been marked as yet another company that started off good and started turning evil (hi Google), I'm looking into alternatives - just like I found GitLab when I looked for GitHub alternative.

mattl 7y ago
Share your work so others can use it, please.
sytse 7y ago
The features you mention (code editing, CI, CD, orchestration, issues, Web IDE, agile board) are available in all tiers of GitLab, including the free open source version and the one for $4 per user per month (paid annually). What are the top features what you get with other software that are not in the free version of GitLab?

allan_s 7y ago

exactly, the gap is too high, and while being a an absolute gitlab fanboy (been converting all the companies I've been since 2012 and gitlab 5), but here I've no traction to say "let's ditch Jira and switch to ultimate, (we're currently premium), because for 10,20 more dollar, we have both, and yes as other said, suddenly with these features you want to onboard much more people , so you both pay more , and you pay more :)

apple4ever 7y ago

I agree. Their pricing needs fixed for sure. The lowest paid price isn't bad, and even the middle one, but the top one is way overpriced. It would also be nice if they introduced some sort of pricing for small orgs, especially for one people shops.