7 ms·

Their existing policy has never made sense to me. You can only give away so much stuff on a free plan. I don't think CI/CD is cheap. Buying extra minutes for $1

Their existing policy has never made sense to me. You can only give away so much stuff on a free plan. I don't think CI/CD is cheap. Buying extra minutes for $10 (not per month) is completely reasonable. At some point I feel uncomfortable using a free plan that is obviously unsustainable.

vorpalhex 6y ago
You can also run your own CI/CD runner for free and use their platform for coordination. I do this and it works well, as easy as running a docker image. Runs on my homelab.
- toomuchtodo 6y ago
  Will also run on a Synology NAS using Docker (I do this).
- time0ut 6y ago
  This is the way to go. I've got a whole fleet of executors running on spot instances orchestrated by a runner on a t3.nano. Works great.
- acoard 6y ago
  Can you share a bit more about this? I'm interested in setting this up myself. A link the docker image or name I can google? To be clear, you store all your code on Gitlab's servers (i.e. not self-hosting git instance) but just "outsource" the CI/CD work to your homelab? That's my ideal.
  - time0ut 6y ago
    You run an agent called the GitLab runner. You configure it with a token from your Gitlab.com group or repo (depending on where you want the runner to be available). You tag the runner and reference it by tagging CI jobs you want to run on it. The runner polls for outstanding jobs and then executes them. It is extremely flexible in how it does this. In our case, the runner manages a fleet of executors using docker+machine. I believe this is similar to how Gitlab does it internally. See https://docs.gitlab.com/runner/ https://docs.gitlab.com/runner/
    - lloeki 6y ago
      I did macOS runners this way, combining the runner with the VirtualBox executor. Best part is once you set up the base VMs (one per macOS version), the runner is smart enough to take a snapshot right after boot and restore that on subsequent runs, which not just makes job running stateless, but also makes job worker boot about 2s.
    - e12e 6y ago
      The ci/gitlab runner bit, might be the best part of gitlab - it's pretty straightforward to set up (we self-host gitlab and ci). The omnibus-installer (for gitlab itself) works - but knowing a bit about rails (gitlab is a ror monolith) - it's a bit terrifying. But the runner is very nice.
    - ddoice 6y ago
      Yep, I have a raspberry Pi with gitlab runner and works great.
  - usr1106 6y ago
    The link has already been provided. The runner is only an administrative process. It can be indeed put into a Docker container. The instructions are easy to follow, the image is built by gitlab and updated regularly. If you choose the alpine variant instead of latest it's much smaller. We have done that for 2+ years and not noted any limitations. The runner will start jobs that do the real building (or whatever you have coded in your CI). Again you can choose to have jobs executed in docker containers. Also documented by gitlab, easy to set up. Of course you need to provide a suitable Docker image where your build can work. Nobody can do that for you. In simple cases you can pull something existing from Docker hub without further additions.
woofie11 6y ago
Business models which leverage network effects often subsidize things to build out a network. I wouldn't feel bad about it. That said, this move seems 100% reasonable. I care about having a free tier. If they were killing the free tier, I'd be sad. But if I'm not paying anything, I'm okay being required to make my CI/CD pipeline efficient for my benefactor. I'd even take less than 400, gladly.
- mlyle 6y ago
  > I wouldn't feel bad about it. I don't think he feels guilty. I think he feels the risk of becoming dependent upon a service when the service is clearly unprofitable.
- tootie 6y ago
  GitLab earned their market position by offering free private repos. They leveraged that position to get the funding to massively ramp up their enterprise features while GitHub was burdened with thousands of open source users. Now GitLab is cashing in and I don't blame them. Their product is excellent. It's basically an all-in-one package for small to mid tech orgs.
  - toastal 6y ago
    Given the rise of Sourcehut as some people's new goto and Github finally offering container registry, it seems like a good time to pull that trigger too. I as a whole like GitLab as an all-in-one solution.
    - zucker42 6y ago
      I love Sourcehut, but Sourcehut's only competitive right now in the indie/free software enthusiast market. I doubt Gitlab views them as a major threat.
      - skinnymuch 6y ago
        Much like Sourceforge isn’t and Bitbucket is not the same sort of competitor or threat as a couple of years ago. The private version that is sold (Stash?) could be though.
vkgfx 6y ago
> At some point I feel uncomfortable using a free plan that is obviously unsustainable. This describes how I've felt about Discord for years.
- jchw 6y ago
  You can pay for Discord. Admittedly, I do. It's not that Discord is perfect, I have a lot of personal gripes with it. But it's still significantly better than where I came from (Skype) and I use it a lot so it seems fair enough. Discord Nitro also thankfully pivoted from being a games service and the features it does provide are nice to have. (Larger file uploads, better stream quality, cross-server emoji.)
  - time0ut 6y ago
    The pricing for this seems totally crazy to me. If I recall correctly, maxing out a server is like $160 a month, right?
    - chucky 6y ago
      Compared to Slack, which sells you basically the same thing but with a "business" tag for $8 per person and month it doesn't seem like that much. On the other hand Slack's pricing is pretty crazy.
      - stu2b50 6y ago
        Is it? $15-30/head sounds like a lot, but these are employees you're paying 30k+ to in salary alone, if the addition of slack makes them 1% more efficient per month, that blows past the $15/head. Forget the tech companies with employees that easily crest 200-300k in costs after insurance and other benefits. There's a lot of audits and regulation, in addition to tighter security, that Slack needs to prove to its enterprise customers that they can trust their employees blasting confidential information on it every day of every year.
        6y ago
codegladiator 6y ago
The free mins definitely got me started. and later I just had to attach my k8s cluster with gitlab and allow worker pods for my project builds.
jchw 6y ago
I think a good free tier still makes sense as long as it seems sustainable overall. For example, if a lot of people are willing to pay for at least a basic plan, I feel a little better. I think for CI/CD having a generous free tier is great because it makes it easier for people to get started and really dig into a project, not to mention the obvious benefit to open source that works as a continuous PR machine. Practically everyone knows what Travis CI and CircleCI are. I still agree that it can be unnerving at times. I worry about services that seemingly offer no paid tiers. Like, draw.io. Thankfully draw.io actually seems to be sustainable, but you wouldn't guess it based on their very unobtrusive app!
- itsrajju 6y ago
  draw.io _does_ have a paid tier for its JIRA/Confluence integration[0]. [0]: https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1210933/draw-io-diagrams-for-confluence?hosting=cloud&tab=pricing https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1210933/draw-io-diagr...
rolleiflex 6y ago
Relying on an obviously unsustainable free plan to build something always felt icky to me, because it will inevitably break, and then you will have to deal with the fallout of a perhaps now-unsustainable project of yours, your investment upon which then could end up possibly sunk, leaving you worse off than not having started the project in the first place. Paradoxically, a lower free tier makes me a lot more likely to use Gitlab CI now, since I now know they know their costs and limits, and from now on, not eating the cost for a future drop of the hammer in an undetermined timeframe.
- brodock 6y ago
  In general in any SaaS business, the free plan usually is written off as part of marketing budget. The idea is that instead of paying Google/Facebook to display adds in the hopes that it will convert people as leads and hopefully down the line as a paying customer, it's usually much much cheaper to provide a free plan instead, which helps out as a "trial" of the final product. Despite the sales factor, it also helps you get real users early on which can provide invaluable feedback to you, and help you prioritize the parts of the software that has real need versus what you imagine that people would want instead.
usr1106 6y ago
I am not sure whether their CI/CD has been a main driver, but their investment rounds haven proven that they have built up a very positive image. So in a way attracting users for free can bring money to the company. But you are right: Such model is not sustainable for very long.
- reificator 6y ago
  I've personally moved two separate teams to switch to gitlab exclusively for its CI features.
jldugger 6y ago
>Buying extra minutes for $10 (not per month) is completely reasonable. I agree that free tier is moderately reckless, as it invites people like me who bookmark https://free-for.dev https://free-for.dev to devour your service with no gain. The pricing question though is tough. How much would an instance in AWS cost you for 4000 minutes? Two dollars? Pretty sweet markup if you can find a buyer.

vorpalhex 6y ago

You can also run your own CI/CD runner for free and use their platform for coordination. I do this and it works well, as easy as running a docker image. Runs on my homelab.

toomuchtodo 6y ago
Will also run on a Synology NAS using Docker (I do this).
time0ut 6y ago
This is the way to go. I've got a whole fleet of executors running on spot instances orchestrated by a runner on a t3.nano. Works great.
acoard 6y ago
Can you share a bit more about this? I'm interested in setting this up myself. A link the docker image or name I can google? To be clear, you store all your code on Gitlab's servers (i.e. not self-hosting git instance) but just "outsource" the CI/CD work to your homelab? That's my ideal.
- time0ut 6y ago
  You run an agent called the GitLab runner. You configure it with a token from your Gitlab.com group or repo (depending on where you want the runner to be available). You tag the runner and reference it by tagging CI jobs you want to run on it. The runner polls for outstanding jobs and then executes them. It is extremely flexible in how it does this. In our case, the runner manages a fleet of executors using docker+machine. I believe this is similar to how Gitlab does it internally. See https://docs.gitlab.com/runner/ https://docs.gitlab.com/runner/
  - lloeki 6y ago
    I did macOS runners this way, combining the runner with the VirtualBox executor. Best part is once you set up the base VMs (one per macOS version), the runner is smart enough to take a snapshot right after boot and restore that on subsequent runs, which not just makes job running stateless, but also makes job worker boot about 2s.
  - e12e 6y ago
    The ci/gitlab runner bit, might be the best part of gitlab - it's pretty straightforward to set up (we self-host gitlab and ci). The omnibus-installer (for gitlab itself) works - but knowing a bit about rails (gitlab is a ror monolith) - it's a bit terrifying. But the runner is very nice.
  - ddoice 6y ago
    Yep, I have a raspberry Pi with gitlab runner and works great.
- usr1106 6y ago
  The link has already been provided. The runner is only an administrative process. It can be indeed put into a Docker container. The instructions are easy to follow, the image is built by gitlab and updated regularly. If you choose the alpine variant instead of latest it's much smaller. We have done that for 2+ years and not noted any limitations. The runner will start jobs that do the real building (or whatever you have coded in your CI). Again you can choose to have jobs executed in docker containers. Also documented by gitlab, easy to set up. Of course you need to provide a suitable Docker image where your build can work. Nobody can do that for you. In simple cases you can pull something existing from Docker hub without further additions.

woofie11 6y ago

Business models which leverage network effects often subsidize things to build out a network. I wouldn't feel bad about it. That said, this move seems 100% reasonable. I care about having a free tier. If they were killing the free tier, I'd be sad. But if I'm not paying anything, I'm okay being required to make my CI/CD pipeline efficient for my benefactor. I'd even take less than 400, gladly.

mlyle 6y ago
> I wouldn't feel bad about it. I don't think he feels guilty. I think he feels the risk of becoming dependent upon a service when the service is clearly unprofitable.
tootie 6y ago
GitLab earned their market position by offering free private repos. They leveraged that position to get the funding to massively ramp up their enterprise features while GitHub was burdened with thousands of open source users. Now GitLab is cashing in and I don't blame them. Their product is excellent. It's basically an all-in-one package for small to mid tech orgs.
- toastal 6y ago
  Given the rise of Sourcehut as some people's new goto and Github finally offering container registry, it seems like a good time to pull that trigger too. I as a whole like GitLab as an all-in-one solution.
  - zucker42 6y ago
    I love Sourcehut, but Sourcehut's only competitive right now in the indie/free software enthusiast market. I doubt Gitlab views them as a major threat.
    - skinnymuch 6y ago
      Much like Sourceforge isn’t and Bitbucket is not the same sort of competitor or threat as a couple of years ago. The private version that is sold (Stash?) could be though.

vkgfx 6y ago

> At some point I feel uncomfortable using a free plan that is obviously unsustainable. This describes how I've felt about Discord for years.

jchw 6y ago
You can pay for Discord. Admittedly, I do. It's not that Discord is perfect, I have a lot of personal gripes with it. But it's still significantly better than where I came from (Skype) and I use it a lot so it seems fair enough. Discord Nitro also thankfully pivoted from being a games service and the features it does provide are nice to have. (Larger file uploads, better stream quality, cross-server emoji.)
- time0ut 6y ago
  The pricing for this seems totally crazy to me. If I recall correctly, maxing out a server is like $160 a month, right?
  - chucky 6y ago
    Compared to Slack, which sells you basically the same thing but with a "business" tag for $8 per person and month it doesn't seem like that much. On the other hand Slack's pricing is pretty crazy.
    - stu2b50 6y ago
      Is it? $15-30/head sounds like a lot, but these are employees you're paying 30k+ to in salary alone, if the addition of slack makes them 1% more efficient per month, that blows past the $15/head. Forget the tech companies with employees that easily crest 200-300k in costs after insurance and other benefits. There's a lot of audits and regulation, in addition to tighter security, that Slack needs to prove to its enterprise customers that they can trust their employees blasting confidential information on it every day of every year.
      - 6y ago

codegladiator 6y ago

The free mins definitely got me started. and later I just had to attach my k8s cluster with gitlab and allow worker pods for my project builds.

jchw 6y ago

I think a good free tier still makes sense as long as it seems sustainable overall. For example, if a lot of people are willing to pay for at least a basic plan, I feel a little better. I think for CI/CD having a generous free tier is great because it makes it easier for people to get started and really dig into a project, not to mention the obvious benefit to open source that works as a continuous PR machine. Practically everyone knows what Travis CI and CircleCI are. I still agree that it can be unnerving at times. I worry about services that seemingly offer no paid tiers. Like, draw.io. Thankfully draw.io actually seems to be sustainable, but you wouldn't guess it based on their very unobtrusive app!

itsrajju 6y ago
draw.io _does_ have a paid tier for its JIRA/Confluence integration[0]. [0]: https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1210933/draw-io-diagrams-for-confluence?hosting=cloud&tab=pricing https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1210933/draw-io-diagr...

rolleiflex 6y ago

Relying on an obviously unsustainable free plan to build something always felt icky to me, because it will inevitably break, and then you will have to deal with the fallout of a perhaps now-unsustainable project of yours, your investment upon which then could end up possibly sunk, leaving you worse off than not having started the project in the first place. Paradoxically, a lower free tier makes me a lot more likely to use Gitlab CI now, since I now know they know their costs and limits, and from now on, not eating the cost for a future drop of the hammer in an undetermined timeframe.

brodock 6y ago
In general in any SaaS business, the free plan usually is written off as part of marketing budget. The idea is that instead of paying Google/Facebook to display adds in the hopes that it will convert people as leads and hopefully down the line as a paying customer, it's usually much much cheaper to provide a free plan instead, which helps out as a "trial" of the final product. Despite the sales factor, it also helps you get real users early on which can provide invaluable feedback to you, and help you prioritize the parts of the software that has real need versus what you imagine that people would want instead.

usr1106 6y ago

I am not sure whether their CI/CD has been a main driver, but their investment rounds haven proven that they have built up a very positive image. So in a way attracting users for free can bring money to the company. But you are right: Such model is not sustainable for very long.

reificator 6y ago
I've personally moved two separate teams to switch to gitlab exclusively for its CI features.

jldugger 6y ago

>Buying extra minutes for $10 (not per month) is completely reasonable. I agree that free tier is moderately reckless, as it invites people like me who bookmark https://free-for.dev https://free-for.dev to devour your service with no gain. The pricing question though is tough. How much would an instance in AWS cost you for 4000 minutes? Two dollars? Pretty sweet markup if you can find a buyer.