The following page may contain information related to upcoming products, features and functionality. It is important to note that the information presented is for informational purposes only, so please do not rely on the information for purchasing or planning purposes. Just like with all projects, the items mentioned on the page are subject to change or delay, and the development, release, and timing of any products, features or functionality remain at the sole discretion of GitLab Inc.
Today GitLab lacks visibility into who our free self-managed users are. Users can simply follow the self managed install steps and be up and running with GitLab in minutes. This open-core model is a huge strategic advantage as it lowers the barrier to entry for our product. The downside is that users are not required to register or "sync" their instance with GitLab preventing us from knowing who they are, providing better support and GTM motions, and offering services that may enable them to get even more value out of GitLab.
This problem has compounding effects as you think through the implications:
GitLab:
End Users & Customers:
We're looking into various ways to address this problem across GitLab. This section aims to collect and link off to those major inititaves as a SSoT. If you see anything missing from this list please open an MR.
As a piece of underlying infrastructure, we need to enable a way for a customer to "sync" a self managed instance with us. This new system's primary purpose will be to activate and sync paid self-managed licenses for new customers, but can be used to sync unpaid licenses.
The value to GitLab includes increased visibility into seat utilization along with improved efficiency for sales and support. To the customer, we can provide real-time visibility into an account's utilization and improved tools for user management.
Allow free self-managed EE instances that register with GitLab and activate Service Ping to access otherwise paid features. These features would add value to the customer's installation and give them a "preview" of what features they could access at a paid tier. Our initial user target for registration features will be GitLab Administrators, as they will be the ones likely making the decision to activate registration features. We will initially look for paid features that are unrelated to a pricing theme for registration features candidates. We recently launched our first registration feature (Email from GitLab) in 14.1, and we intend to launch at least two additional registration features in Q3FY22.
Similar to Registration Features but provide access to some cloud-based services that add additional value to a users installation of GitLab. Some examples include:
