I also have a small dev team of 25 that wants to move to gitlab paid model but the upfront cost is too much. We need a monthly payment plan even if it costs more than annual one because I can't justify a high upfront cost to my ceo. We're rapidly expanding and expect to be 100 within 2021.

Thanks. I will share this, too.

Edit - we share why we prioritize annual pricing over monthly in our handbook: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/ceo/pricing/#annual-pricin...

Many of these points come back to "it's easier or cheaper for gitlab this way" which isn't a great way to convince a customer. Some of which seem to actually be "due to our inability to onboard, manage and retain customers in an automated hands off way it's cheaper or easier this way" which is a terrible way to convince customers.

Do you pay google yearly upfront for hosting?

None of these is convincing, mostly because "its better for Gitlab".

I don't care. I want what's better for our company.

And right now, that is not paying for GitLab.

It sucks because I am an evangelist for GitLab, but I'm fighting a losing battle and we will be switching paid Github over free GitLab because of things like this.

Monthly is huge for our SaaS subscriptions. We usually go yearly later.

This is not a new issue. There is an issue somewhere on the Gitlab repo that I’ve been subscribed to for more than two years. At this point it seems unlikely to change.

You can solve a lot of the pricing issues by offering add-ons.

Buy the Premium tier and add Kubernetes or Security for an additional $4 / month.

Does GitLab have an option to pick the major cloud data center it hosts in? Cross data center network transfer is a no-go.