The decisions to include features based on price tier has seemed to grow increasingly petty IMO. We are on the Bronze tier, and won't upgrade because of a feature like this specifically. But each time I see that we don't get new features like this, I lose a little bit of that love I've had in GitLab as a user for over 4 years now.
While using the free tier, I honestly can't validate a a $19/user/mo ($228/user/annum) expense based solely on a single feature, let alone why I should move to the paid version at all if more and more features start to be gated beyond multiple levels (a la Windows 7).
I love using Gitlab as a part of development cycle, managing issues and handling pull/merge requests but per seat licensing is a bit steep for a single user, even more so for a team.
The norm for pricing products and services is more and more "just for a pint/coffee/sandwich a month" but when everyone wants their share of the cash, the end result is a mismash of services and products that don't work together well (if at all) and you get stuck without a pint/coffee/sandwich for the whole month now.
You don't think you get enough value out of Gitlab to justify the seat price?
Based on the fact it seems to power all (or majority) of your development process it seems like it would be worth it?
I'm sorry you feel that way. There is a lot of thought that goes into our pricing and what tier a feature should go in. At the end of the day though, we still need to make money as a company. If you're interested in how we determine which tier something goes in, you can read about it here: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/ceo/pricing/#the-likely-ty...