4 ms·

Out of interest, how would you say you compare to BitBucket? Your given plan structures seem to suggest that their pricing structure per user is superior. "A s

by mcintyre1994 14y ago

Out of interest, how would you say you compare to BitBucket? Your given plan structures seem to suggest that their pricing structure per user is superior. "A startup with 30 repos and a team of two is completely free." Same with them. "A professional plan with 60 repos and 5 collaborators is $9 per month." 5 collaborators is free with them. "A business plan 150 repos and 10 collaborators is $72 per month." BitBucket supports teams on all plans. That plan would be $10, although I will admit I haven't used their teams feature so you may have superior functionality there. Self-hosted sounds great though, that's a really cool move.

sytse 14y ago
Thank you for the question. We want to make sure that the pricing only increases in small steps. If you add one more user you should never go from $25 to $50. We also have a free issue tracker, you don't have to pay for it. Jira prices are 4 times more expensive than BitBucket prices. And of course there is the option to go self hosted easily in the future. What do you think we can improve in the pricing of GitLab.com?
- petercooper 14y ago
  Not to put you off, but more to provide an interesting case study.. patio11 wrote about the difference between configurable/scalable pricing and fixed plans recently: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/08/13/doubling-saas-revenue/ http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/08/13/doubling-saas-revenue/
  - sytse 14y ago
    Cool, thank you for the tip, great to see some data on the advantages of using plans.
- mcintyre1994 14y ago
  Thanks for replying. Your idea of only increasing in small steps is interesting, and I can see why you'd do it like that. I imagine $1/user fully scaling is probably impossible - it's probably unfair to compete when Atlassian might even be running Bitbucket at a loss and you presumably have no other major products under the same company. I can see how you'd be better value in some way at certain boundaries in price points - but I'm not convinced you'd ever become cheaper. I haven't drawn the graph, but if you used the full 25-50 jump, going from 25-50 users eventually, thats a $75 increase on your service. I see where you're coming from, but the scalar of 3x per user is probably too high for them jumps to become significant. Fair enough, Bitbucket does have a free one, but I haven't used Jira which is obviously more powerful. You may well be better there. And again, allowing self hosting is a really cool move. I'd definitely consider it because I think the cost, even with Bitbucket, would soon become significant compared to the one time cost of a server. In all honesty, I might be being completely unfair. I'm comparing Bitbucket alone and it's main options. You have teams, Bitbucket does, but yours could well be better - maybe Atlassian's Confluence is a fairer comparison. Same with issue tracking, Bitbucket does have it, but maybe you compare better with Jira. If you would say your service compares fairly to Bitbucket, though, I don't really know how you can improve it short of cutting the $3/user/month, which I imagine isn't a reasonable request. If that's not going to happen, which I'd expect is the case, the way you scale is probably fairest. I would say to look at the business package and what you're offering though - if it competes with Confluence you're priced fairly, but if it competes with Bitbucket's standard team features, I think that's significantly overpriced.
  - sytse 14y ago
    Great write-up, thanks. I guess that "might even be running Bitbucket at a loss" makes it hard to compete with Bitbucket on price. And Bitbucket is a good product and Atlassian is a great company. I don't think GitLab should be compared with Confluence. Maybe I'll switch GitLab to a simple plan based pricing model and compete on its strengths: 1) Advanced permissions 2) Can run your own server for free if you ever need to 3) CI server integration with GitLab CI (coming soon) What do you think?
    - mcintyre1994 14y ago
      Yep, it's fair enough that you probably can't compete on that, so strengths are probably a better way to go. The second one especially, that's really cool - and advanced permissions are probably where you want to be to top Bitbucket's team features. I haven't really used CI, but I've seen a few repos on Github using it and it looks like a neat thing to integrate.
- patio11 14y ago
  We want to make sure that the pricing only increases in small steps. Many of your users are not price sensitive, at all, and they have a very different definition of what a "small increment" is as compared to you. For example, for a company which has 10 full-time devs, anything under $1,000 rounds to zero. If you tell them "Good news! Instead of asking for an extra $25 we ask only for an extra $5" you're telling them something which is not valuable to them at all, and it might actually be negatively valuable for them. (For example, if it causes you to make the app most responsive to the needs of people who think $25 is a lot of money instead of companies with 10+ employees.)

sytse 14y ago

Thank you for the question. We want to make sure that the pricing only increases in small steps. If you add one more user you should never go from $25 to $50. We also have a free issue tracker, you don't have to pay for it. Jira prices are 4 times more expensive than BitBucket prices. And of course there is the option to go self hosted easily in the future. What do you think we can improve in the pricing of GitLab.com?

petercooper 14y ago
Not to put you off, but more to provide an interesting case study.. patio11 wrote about the difference between configurable/scalable pricing and fixed plans recently: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/08/13/doubling-saas-revenue/ http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/08/13/doubling-saas-revenue/
- sytse 14y ago
  Cool, thank you for the tip, great to see some data on the advantages of using plans.
mcintyre1994 14y ago
Thanks for replying. Your idea of only increasing in small steps is interesting, and I can see why you'd do it like that. I imagine $1/user fully scaling is probably impossible - it's probably unfair to compete when Atlassian might even be running Bitbucket at a loss and you presumably have no other major products under the same company. I can see how you'd be better value in some way at certain boundaries in price points - but I'm not convinced you'd ever become cheaper. I haven't drawn the graph, but if you used the full 25-50 jump, going from 25-50 users eventually, thats a $75 increase on your service. I see where you're coming from, but the scalar of 3x per user is probably too high for them jumps to become significant. Fair enough, Bitbucket does have a free one, but I haven't used Jira which is obviously more powerful. You may well be better there. And again, allowing self hosting is a really cool move. I'd definitely consider it because I think the cost, even with Bitbucket, would soon become significant compared to the one time cost of a server. In all honesty, I might be being completely unfair. I'm comparing Bitbucket alone and it's main options. You have teams, Bitbucket does, but yours could well be better - maybe Atlassian's Confluence is a fairer comparison. Same with issue tracking, Bitbucket does have it, but maybe you compare better with Jira. If you would say your service compares fairly to Bitbucket, though, I don't really know how you can improve it short of cutting the $3/user/month, which I imagine isn't a reasonable request. If that's not going to happen, which I'd expect is the case, the way you scale is probably fairest. I would say to look at the business package and what you're offering though - if it competes with Confluence you're priced fairly, but if it competes with Bitbucket's standard team features, I think that's significantly overpriced.
- sytse 14y ago
  Great write-up, thanks. I guess that "might even be running Bitbucket at a loss" makes it hard to compete with Bitbucket on price. And Bitbucket is a good product and Atlassian is a great company. I don't think GitLab should be compared with Confluence. Maybe I'll switch GitLab to a simple plan based pricing model and compete on its strengths: 1) Advanced permissions 2) Can run your own server for free if you ever need to 3) CI server integration with GitLab CI (coming soon) What do you think?
  - mcintyre1994 14y ago
    Yep, it's fair enough that you probably can't compete on that, so strengths are probably a better way to go. The second one especially, that's really cool - and advanced permissions are probably where you want to be to top Bitbucket's team features. I haven't really used CI, but I've seen a few repos on Github using it and it looks like a neat thing to integrate.
patio11 14y ago
We want to make sure that the pricing only increases in small steps. Many of your users are not price sensitive, at all, and they have a very different definition of what a "small increment" is as compared to you. For example, for a company which has 10 full-time devs, anything under $1,000 rounds to zero. If you tell them "Good news! Instead of asking for an extra $25 we ask only for an extra $5" you're telling them something which is not valuable to them at all, and it might actually be negatively valuable for them. (For example, if it causes you to make the app most responsive to the needs of people who think $25 is a lot of money instead of companies with 10+ employees.)