
Introducing Exclusive Features to GitLab.com Bronze, Silver and Gold Plans - demurgos
https://about.gitlab.com/2017/09/01/gitlab-com-paid-features/
======
ComputerGuru
Mandatory heads-up for those that haven't come across them: gogs [0] and its
fork gitea [1] are zero config, download-and-run, self-hosted alternatives to
GitHub/BitBucket/GitLab that won't suck the life out of your server, are
efficiently written, and very fast even on underpowered (read: RPi) hardware
or shared VPS nodes.

0: [https://gogs.io/](https://gogs.io/)

1: [https://gitea.io/en-US/](https://gitea.io/en-US/)

~~~
xfer
Ironically, gitea is not even hosted by gitea. They are using github..

~~~
alxmdev
Maybe that's just because of GitHub's overwhelming popularity, hosting their
code there is probably the best way to get attention and lots of contributors
as they build up the product.

~~~
xfer
I can get behind that, but they should at least keep a mirror with gitea to
demonstrate the product.

~~~
jonathonf
[https://try.gitea.io/teepot/teekanne](https://try.gitea.io/teepot/teekanne)

------
brianwawok
Fun plot twist about at least self hosted Gitlab..

You are charged per user. When you install on your own server, it
automatically makes an "admin" user. And then you get billed for this user.
Despite never using him or doing anything with him, apparently a shell of a
user costs a $4 licensing cost per month.

They really need to clean up the setup workflow, I have literally never used a
piece of software that charged for a default account no one uses.

Fun plot twist: They let you go over your license count, and if I am reading
billing correctly will bill you when you do a yearly renew for a full YEAR
penalty for any user that went over, even if you added that user on the last
possible day of the year. So day 364 of license.. add 1 user over license...
your next license will have a penalty of 1 full year for that user. You need
to go and add a user manually on the website which does some kind of weird
proration to not pay this penalty.

Send feedback but not too hopeful it was heard, so always the post to hacker
news plan...

~~~
mattl
I typically make the default user my account, but you can also delete that
account if you like I believe.

~~~
brianwawok
But opps you went over your license count by 1 when creating your user, so
your next renewal you will pay a penalty for that admin user.

~~~
Sir_Substance
I understand that this is a flaw, and indeed a billing-related flaw at that,
and I agree it merits fixing and maybe even some refunds/discounts to make up
the difference.

But at the same time, you seem to be super-concerned about what is essentially
a one-time overcharge of (apparently) between $4 and $48, and I feel like I
would struggle to muster the emotion you seem to feel over that. If you're
posting this at work you may have just wasted more than $4 worth of your
salaried time making these posts and reading the responses.

I get what you're saying, but I raise my eyebrow over the vitrol with which
you say it, and wonder if perhaps there's something else you're not telling
us?

~~~
BinaryIdiot
Not only that but I'd be willing to bet the $48 that if an email is sent
regarding what happened that they would adjust the bill and all would be well.

It's a silly flaw but I don't think I'd rake them over the coals for it.

~~~
brianwawok
I sent an email. I was told I could use or delete that account. No offer was
made to adjust a bill, which is rage inducing.

~~~
jschulenklopper
Did you ask for an adjustment? I guess they can't read your mind, and thus
they don't know that you're hoping to get that reduction. If you gently ask
them, they can consider your direct request.

------
kcorbitt
It looks like unlimited private repositories, Gitlab Pages and even some CI
minutes (2000/month) will continue to be available in the free plan. Gitlab
continues to provide such phenomenal value to free users that I struggle to
find a reason to upgrade for my own projects. :)

That said, if I were running a business the extra workflow management tools in
the bronze plan ($4/user/mo) and CI minutes in the silver plan ($19/user/mo)
make total sense as useful upgrades.

~~~
maxyme
Except for the fact that you cannot use gitlab.com for anything business
related because it has abysmal performance and okay reliability. Basically
they use gitlab.com to stress test gitlab.

~~~
mydigitalself
We've been spending a lot of effort making GitLab.com more performant over the
course of this year. We still have some ways to go, but every release includes
performance enhancements based on performance data from GitLab.com.

We no longer see GitLab.com as a mechanism to stress test GitLab and we're
certainly pushing hard to improve performance and availability.

------
mattl
> Public projects will still have free access to all features and unlimited
> CI/CD, as part of our continued commitment to open-source software.

------
fny
God bless you all. I was on the verge of setting up a Gitlab CI instance on a
local box for our projects since we're about to outstrip the free tier.
Upgrading will be _way_ less expensive for my client and me.

~~~
dimitrieh
Happy to hear so! GitLab.com should be able to offer all the features you need
if you wish not to self-host!

Happy GitLabbing!

~~~
sicklysweet
Super! That's really super, and awesome! Happy internetting!

------
psankar
I've been using gitlab for a one person company for the last six months or so.
The free plan is good for me. There are private repos, CI/CD Integration
(pipelines). I am not using Issues or wikis etc. I use pull requests though. I
just need git hosting and a decent CI/CD pipeline system.

I don't mind paying gitlab though to avoid the hassle of hosting things
myself. But the Bronze plan does not add any value for me, as there is no
increase in the CI/CD minutes compared to the free plan. The silver plan is
not affordable to me.

Are there any other FOSS tools that HN readers know that provides out of the
box support for git hosting as well as CI/CD ? This is just a backup planning
in case gitlab decide to reduce or stop the CI/CD minutes.

~~~
0x0
You can install gitlab-ci-multi-runner on a machine you control, and you will
have unlimited CI minutes.

I actually prefer this method because this lets me also write pipelines that
depend on internal infrastructure and weird software (or not so weird - need a
mac to build iOS projects with xcode, for example), and my code never touches
random cloud VMs where the host is shared with other people (think guest-to-
hypervisor escape exploit)

It's also super duper easy to set up, with the runner client being a self-
contained binary available for most operating systems thanks to being written
in Go.

------
zschuessler
This makes me slightly worried.

I'm fine with paying for a service like Gitlab's hosted instance (and will
start paying for it), it's a pretty good service. The UI isn't amazing but the
tools are better IMO than GitHub's.. last time I checked, anyway.

What worries me is that as a heavy user of self-hosted CE, I see frequently
that many features that I would like are enterprise (EE) only. Something like
doing an IP whitelist/banlist on your server in the nginx config is
surprisingly difficult unless you are an EE customer. It's a common use case
that shouldn't be EE-only.

This change on their values (the very generous free private hosting) makes me
wonder what the future holds.

~~~
brainfire
There's a configuration option in the omnibus CE config file to add additional
lines to the built-in nginx configuration, it seems pretty straightforward to
me - although we use a different web server so that we can integrate with our
SSO, so I haven't tried it.

~~~
zschuessler
You are correct! The implementation is strange, however. I'm not able to
directly override any of the nginx settings already set. As there is no route
overriding in nginx, this makes things real tough in trying to allow/deny
access by route.

The hacky workaround is to create a more specific regex to override any
existing routes. So "Location /" becomes "Location /(.*)"

Other alternatives like running your own nginx configuration or apache2 is
possible, but no current documentation exists (some is available, but it is
outdated and following steps results in a landslide of errors). Plus I don't
like the idea of using a different configuration as far as new updates
breaking my instance goes.

This is just one example as well - and one I chose because simple IP
allow/deny IMO is not an enterprise feature, but a very common use case for
anyone running CE.

------
MikeKusold
I use GitLab for private personal projects, and in general I'm supportive of
most of these changes.

Some paid features that I think are still useful to teams under 3 people:

* Block secret file push

* Various merge options (squash, rebase, etc...)

* Export issues as CSV

~~~
smarx007
I think squash and merge is absolutely essential!

------
jasonrhaas
I have been using the free hosted plan for about a month now, which includes
the "Silver" tier features. I'm really happy about their Early Adopter
program! They are keeping my current Silver capability for free for another 12
months.

I have to say, I really like gitlab.com. The UI is slick, and you get a ton of
features right out of the box (for free). Bravo gitlab.com, keep up the good
work!

~~~
mydigitalself
Thank you for the kind words, we've been working hard on improving the UI
(have you tried the latest update in
[https://gitlab.com/profile/preferences#new-
navigation](https://gitlab.com/profile/preferences#new-navigation)) and have
tried to make our free offering as valuable as possible as well as treating
our existing free customers respectfully.

~~~
jazoom
Question: why does it take about 5 seconds to load the list of projects when
clicking on the dropdown arrow on the top left of the screen? It's even slower
than loading the whole GitLab.com website, which includes a list of those
projects.

I find this a frequent annoyance and often choose to go back and load the full
projects page just to change project.

------
christilut
I've been using Gitlab free for all my personal projects and mostly I'm
totally okay with this change. I was afraid of being forced to pay for some
basic functionality in a year but honestly most bronze/silver features are for
slightly bigger projects than personal.

Just one small thing: pretty much the only 2 features I use from the Bronze
plan are Issue Weight (I can live without them) and Milestones. I would like
to see Milestones in the Free plan because for me it is just a convenience to
create more structure in my issues. I wouldn't pay for just that feature and
the alternative is more labels which would have the same result but more
messy.

~~~
sytse
Just to clarify, milestones for issues are available in the free please, issue
boards filtered on a milestone are a paid feature
[https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/issue_board.html#boa...](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/issue_board.html#board-
with-a-milestone)

------
scrollaway
Pricing feedback: Like kcorbitt said you're providing a lot of value to free
users but here's some super weird stuff in the silver plan that I don't think
should be there:

\- Block secret file push

\- Fast-forward merge with option to rebase

\- Squash and merge

\- Multiple assignees for issues

\- Issue Boards with Milestones

Aside from the first one those are all features provided by free from Github
which also don't make a lot of sense to paywall.

~~~
mydigitalself
Hi there, those features are all available for free for public projects, it's
only for private projects where we limit some functionality.

~~~
ValentineC
From the pricing page:

> Public projects get all paid features and unlimited CI/CD for free.

I think this needs to be more obvious. ;) Perhaps the price tiers should be
separated out into a Private Repo-only section?

------
1123581321
We're evaluating source control right now (have repos all over the place) and
I'm wondering if anyone can comment on the Github $25/mo plan vs. Gitlab's and
Bitbucket's comparable offerings. It seems like the built-in CI is an
advantage for Bitbucket and Gitlab, but I wonder what gotchas we're not seeing
right now.

~~~
problems
If you're looking for the hosted version, there's lots of complaints about
GitLab.com's performance. Bitbucket is quite excellent and integrates well
with hosted JIRA too - I'd say it's arguably a better option than GitHub in
many cases.

I've had good luck with self-hosted GitLab's performance in my small group,
but I've heard tales of others who haven't, so try before you buy if you're
doing that. The CI integration is really nice though and GitLab has put good
work into that flow. It can also be the cheapest option and keeps you self-
reliant if that's something that appeals to you.

~~~
dimitrieh
Hi, GitLab UX Designer here. I would like to add that GitLab has put
tremendous efforts in optimizing for performance lately. These performance
optimisations optimise GitLab instances big and small. These improvements were
triggered by having literally millions of users and projects on GitLab.com
which is our hosted solution.

For self-hosted GitLab instances run on a smaller scale, there should not even
be a chance of performance hits :).

Just to give a good overview of what GitLab is offering for both self-hosted
as well as our hosted solution of GitLab.com please look at
[https://about.gitlab.com/features/](https://about.gitlab.com/features/)

I am happy to hear that the CI/CD integration, which is our native solution
for CI/CD and beyond is being well received! We want to persuade not force
users to use our native solutions.

~~~
clemmakesapps
GitLab frontend engineer here. Also wanted to add that performance improvement
is a big part of our OKRs for our Q3 and are viewable at
[https://about.gitlab.com/okrs/](https://about.gitlab.com/okrs/)

~~~
KallDrexx
I'm glad that it's such a priority that it's an OKR now, but there are public
Gitlab issues talking about performance for the past 2 years. We did a full
migration to Gitlab 3-6 months ago and had to migrate out into Bitbucket only
a couple days later, as basic browsing operations proved to be way too
consistently slow and was extremely aggravating.

It will take a lot to prove to us that hosted Gitlab is actually good
performance "for reals this time".

