> *Note: Promotion code available for new DigitalOcean customers only. This type of promotion really aggravates me. I'm not just saying this only about the announced GitLab/DigitialOcean partnership, but rather as a general comment as I see this customer acquisition ruse quite a lot elsewhere too. I spend money with DigitalOcean. I don't feel particularly rewarded for my loyalty when I can't enjoy the same promotion…
Yeah, I know what you mean. Existing customers are left in the dark, which is definitely not a great feeling as a paying user of DO. My company paid for their instance of gitlab, I'm not a paying user though ( yet - too small), so this hasn't got anything to do with gitlab ( referencing the answer of gitlab themselves :) )
You get the (new) additional services being provided in part by DO. You're literally NOT in the dark. As an analogy my parents have a house alarm system. It was installed 5+ years ago and they pay a monthly fee. You can bet that the newer television ads for this nationwide company (cough ADT *cough) show WiFi enabled controls and whizbang stuff on the master panel -- their alarm master panel is the same panel for the last 5+ years and has never been touched by a technician.
I can give the same example for my Comcast cable box. It's the box I got when i got the initial subscription. Typically promo codes are for new customers, OR new promotional offers wherein you'll migrate your whole account to a new tier of service.
They aren't going to hand you $10 to simply continue to use their (updated) service for them. While you benefit from the new services anyways.