Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Gitlab removes its 'starter' tier Users must either pay 5x more or lose features

theregister.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 112 posts

Re: Gitlab removes its 'starter' tier Users must either pay 5x more or lose features

#91

Post by oehpr »

loceng wrote: post #31
cwhiz wrote: post #9

Wow. Almost feels like a bait and switch. GitLab is now completely uncompetitive with GitHub in terms of price structure. 4-5x on monthly cost.

Hasn't Gitlab just been a copying Github machine too from the start? I don't mean to start a fight but I've only ever seen praise from its launch as a wanted competitor, but no one seems to have mentioned the obvious? I know git wasn't invented by Github but from what I remember Github was a pretty clear roadmap for Gitlab.

Absolutely any feature present in a mainline product that isn't present in a prospective competitor will become a gigantic and unresolvable issue for any detractors.

"gitlab can't X"

"You can just do Y in gitlab to accomplish that, it's fine"

"but it's not X, it can't do X"

If a competing product is anything short of a reskin of whatever the current service, it is unacceptable and unworkable.

Having personally watched this dynamic play out in my co-workers, I don't feel inclined to criticize gitlab for re-implementing lots of github features.

Re: Gitlab removes its 'starter' tier Users must either pay 5x more or lose features

#92

Post by roblabla »

laughingpine wrote: post #20
jennyyang wrote: post #12

Having never used Gitlab, is there any advantage over Github?

Been using it since 2016, and I would say the advantages are mostly related to their DevOps features - there are integrations with k8s, SentryIO, and Prometheus to help you with operations. Their CI/CD pipelines also seem a bit more refined than GitHub actions - maybe it is just a maturity thing though? That could also just be my inexperience with GitHub Actions. I think there are also some project management differe…

> Their CI/CD pipelines also seem a bit more refined than GitHub actions - maybe it is just a maturity thing though? That could also just be my inexperience with GitHub Actions.

My experience with CI/CD is that github action's is stellar, while gitlab-ci is a huge mess of features that don't compose well. For instance, in gitlab-ci, you can specify that the job should only run when a specific file changes with `only:rules`, very useful for monorepo setups. Separately, you can specify explicit dependencies in your steps to construct a sort of DAG of your steps with `needs`. Those two features independently work great, but when used together, things become very weird, down to causing YAML parsing errors...

Another similar experience: Child pipelines are a mess. Child pipelines can't depend on the parent steps, can't download artifacts from the parent steps. Similarly, the parent can't access the child pipeline' artifact.

CI has some fun interaction with bot accounts. By fun, I've had MRs started by bot accounts running in weird CI contexts where some environment variables were not set for whatever reason.

Overall, gitlab-ci feels... poor. Github-actions, on the other hand, has been a joy to use, and is a lot less surprising. Most features tend to be thoughtfully designed and work well together. I can't give many examples here as it's hard to point out things that just work, but I've done extensive work with both gitlab-ci and a github actions and I certainly prefer working with github actions any time of day.

Re: Gitlab removes its 'starter' tier Users must either pay 5x more or lose features

#93

Post by alrs »

Grollicus wrote: post #22

We're currently using the starter edition for exactly one reason, ldap integration. Now we're supposed to pay $240 / employee for an ldap integration?! Not sure what we'll do but I suspect scripting some ldap integration into our gitlab will be one of the best spent times in terms of ROI for me this year.

https://docs.gitea.io/en-us/authentication/#ldap-lightweight...

Re: Gitlab removes its 'starter' tier Users must either pay 5x more or lose features

#94

Post by gpm »

thisgoodlife wrote: post #89
gpm wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems somewhat unethical IMO (admittedly I'm not sure I can fully justify this feeling), and most good software engineers are paid enough to be able to be fairly ethical, but yes.

Quite the contrary, I consider it a good thing that someone is helping out those companies that gitlab is giving up.

I guess something about competing with a group of people by using code that they almost exclusively developed feels wrong... but I'm not certain enough on this position to really argue it on the internet.

Re: Gitlab removes its 'starter' tier Users must either pay 5x more or lose features

#96

Post by stunt »

loceng wrote: post #31
cwhiz wrote: post #9

Wow. Almost feels like a bait and switch. GitLab is now completely uncompetitive with GitHub in terms of price structure. 4-5x on monthly cost.

Hasn't Gitlab just been a copying Github machine too from the start? I don't mean to start a fight but I've only ever seen praise from its launch as a wanted competitor, but no one seems to have mentioned the obvious? I know git wasn't invented by Github but from what I remember Github was a pretty clear roadmap for Gitlab.

Not really. It was at the beginning when they both only had core features for version control. But, if you compare them today and the last few years, Github is adding features that Gitlab had for a while. Mostly on CI/CD, Security, and Project Management.

Re: Gitlab removes its 'starter' tier Users must either pay 5x more or lose features

#97

Post by cwhiz »

DylanDmitri wrote: post #23
cwhiz wrote: post #9

Wow. Almost feels like a bait and switch. GitLab is now completely uncompetitive with GitHub in terms of price structure. 4-5x on monthly cost.

Github is deeply subsidized by Azure's marketing budget and benefits from larger scale. Gitlab can't compete head-to-head; they'll have to pivot or partner soon.

GitHub was acquired by Microsoft in 2018. Microsoft implemented a more generous free tier in 2020, but even before the acquisition the pricing structure was $7 - $21 per user, per month.

GitLab is now $19 - $99. If I wanted to move my organization to GitLab it would now cost me an additional $78 per user, per month. A total nonstarter, even if I desperately hated GitHub.

I don't understand the suddenness to this maneuver by GitLab. My guess is it is driven by the CI/CD minutes, but they have really thrown out the baby with the bathwater with their pricing structure.

Re: Gitlab removes its 'starter' tier Users must either pay 5x more or lose features

#99

Post by donmcronald »

TheChaplain wrote: post #39
forty wrote: post #36

> One complication is that GitLab requires that all users in a group are on the same plan Honestly that really sucks. We are not impacted by the change (we pay for a higher tier), but we have non coders that would benefit from having gitlab access who don't because the price (which would be the same as for devs) makes it not worth it :/

In the last thread I saw a reported issue about this, so at least they know there is a need. https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/213185

There have been a few different issues asking for that for years [1].

1. https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/2105

Re: Gitlab removes its 'starter' tier Users must either pay 5x more or lose features

#100

Post by donmcronald »

rijoja wrote: post #34
ivanhoe wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about Bitbucket?

I don't know. But I am desperate to find a good github alternative, so thanks for the suggestion. But at the same time isn't it quite easy to set up a github server?

You could look at Gitea. I switched from GitLab and find it’s a better fit for me. GitLab is probably better for large teams, but it’s bloated and overpriced for small developers IMO.
Post reply on HN