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Introducing paid subscriptions on GitLab.com

about.gitlab.com

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Re: Introducing paid subscriptions on GitLab.com

#22
post #21
post #2

Paid subscriptions are a really good reason to start using gitlab because it promises that they'll be around in the long run.

With the self hosted CE offering so good, I see no reason to use the SaaS version.

See, that's exactly the reason why I'm happy about this. I figure many people reason exactly like you do and that makes their base possibly thinner than it looks from the outside. So if they can extract more value from the customers they have that's a really good thing.

When I compare gitlab and github I think gitlab is the better open source ecosystem citizen because they give back at least as much as they take but github has the momentum and is better at extracting value (so more solid) at the expense of not being such a good open source ecosystem citizen.

Tough choice just got a little easier.

Re: Introducing paid subscriptions on GitLab.com

#23
post #4

Is there an online document, with the current working backup/recovery/verification procedures? I need some type of guarantee that my data is actually safe, and being backed up properly, before I put money into GitLab.

You should ask those questions for any SaaS offering, as well as how easy it is to export all your data.

Re: Introducing paid subscriptions on GitLab.com

#24
post #4

Is there an online document, with the current working backup/recovery/verification procedures? I need some type of guarantee that my data is actually safe, and being backed up properly, before I put money into GitLab.

You should ask those questions for any SaaS offering, as well as how easy it is to export all your data.

Particularly ones who only recently learned about proper backup procedures.

Re: Introducing paid subscriptions on GitLab.com

#25
post #7
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, I get what you're trying to say but in no way does a paid subscription "promise" they'll be around any longer than if they were free. Sometimes transitioning from free to paid can backfire and actually shorten the lifespan of a product.

I don't think that's true. Companies that persist in giving away their product have only one route to safety: an exit. A company that charges for its product has an immediate extension of its runway, corporate credibility and both of those add up to being around longer than if they're free. Transitioning from free to paid can backfire if you depend on the free users for some critical way and gitlab is leaving all tha…

GitLab as a company has had paying customers for a long time. If you take a look at our web site (https://about.gitlab.com/) you can see some amazing companies who license GitLab EE including IBM, NASA, Nasdaq, Sony and Uber to name just a few.

GitLab.com has become increasingly popular over time and we want to continue to not only provide a great self-hosted product, but also an amazing hosted (SaaS) solution.

Re: Introducing paid subscriptions on GitLab.com

#26
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's true. Companies that persist in giving away their product have only one route to safety: an exit. A company that charges for its product has an immediate extension of its runway, corporate credibility and both of those add up to being around longer than if they're free. Transitioning from free to paid can backfire if you depend on the free users for some critical way and gitlab is leaving all tha…

GitLab as a company has had paying customers for a long time. If you take a look at our web site ( https://about.gitlab.com/ ) you can see some amazing companies who license GitLab EE including IBM, NASA, Nasdaq, Sony and Uber to name just a few. GitLab.com has become increasingly popular over time and we want to continue to not only provide a great self-hosted product, but also an amazing hosted (SaaS) solution.

There is a difference between having paying customers and being a profitable business. Now, you have access to the gitlab books and I don't but from where I'm sitting the more revenue streams you have the better I feel (because I really like gitlab...), on the off chance that you weren't profitable yet.

Re: Introducing paid subscriptions on GitLab.com

#29

Interesting. I would be curious to see how this works out. My understanding was that people went to GitLab for the same reason they went to bitbucket - unlimited private repos.

But that's not changing. The free plan retains unlimited private repositories. The only thing that's changing for free is the amount of time they can run CI for free.

As noted in both the article you're commenting on and their (linked in that same article) product[1] site that lists the different plans:

  FREE
  2,000 CI pipeline minutes per month
  Unlimited private projects and collaborators
[1]: https://about.gitlab.com/gitlab-com/

Re: Introducing paid subscriptions on GitLab.com

#30
I have been a huge supporter of gitlab the last few years and have brought it into a few companies. The latest company we opted for their githost.io offering where you get your own instance to avoid the performance issues that they have had with gitlab.com Unfortunately this has really painful with random unannounced outages and the inability to get insight to what is going on when all of a sudden your disk is filling up. Today I woke up to a bunch of messages from developers on my team wondering why it was offline. Only option was to submit a support ticket and hope that I would get a response some time today. It was acknowledged about 2 hours later, but we are still seeing instability. Looking at my ticket history I see that I have filed various tickets every 2-3months for the instance not being available. Not having access to your company git repositories or the CI flow for a day is really unacceptable, and they need to do a lot to show me that throwing money at them will solve it.
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