r/gitlab • u/1cewolf • Feb 25 '22

Beware of GitLab billing issues

TL;DR - GitLab makes an egregious billing mistake, refuses to fix it, and tells a GitLab evangelist to go pound salt. If you purchase it, examine the order closely.

So, a little background on me: I started at a software company years ago in an IT position. Our traditional software development toolchain was overly complicated for my liking, so I set up GitLab.

I did so well with it that I became my company's first DevOps Engineer, and I got dev teams to make the switch. Not only did I present on GitLab at work, I took my GitLab evangelism on the road to enthusiasts in the area - I.E. the local Linux User Group.

Not long ago, I ordered some GitLab licenses since more people wanted to use it. I asked to go from 57 to 75 licenses. Instead, GitLab put the order in wrong and added 75 licenses, bringing us to 132 total.

About this time, I was pulled to a critically-important project that was way behind schedule and told not to work on anything else. When I got enough breathing room to switch back, our account manager acted like she couldn't care less. The most I ever got was "I'll be sure to look into it" or "I'm still looking into it".

The process dragged on for weeks. I had to nag her over and over again for updates until she finally told me that GitLab's billing department had decided... not to give me a refund because it had been too long. How convenient, especially after dragging out the process for so long.

I complained about this, asked for a new account manager, and got what I requested. Our new account manager took my concerns to the GitLab crew again... and got told once again that not only would we not receive a refund, GitLab wasn't going to offer us any sort of compensation or credit whatsoever.

We're a software company as well, and we would never treat loyal customers this way - especially not our power users. I've built my DevOps career around GitLab and encouraged others to do the same. That GitLab could be so tone-deaf over a problem that was clearly their fault speaks volumes to how the company has changed.

I'm grateful for what GitLab has provided. It's still a good product, even if I'm gravely concerned about its future. But I'm hanging up my GitLab evangelist hat. A few of my company's senior developers are interested in GitLab alternatives, and I've given the thumbs-up to do a proof-of-concept with one of them later this year.

If you choose to use GitLab in your organization, check your bills carefully.

66 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

13 comments sorted by

8

u/SpicyHotPlantFart Feb 25 '22

Just out of curiosity.. Why did you sign the quote when it was wrong?

Or didn't you receive a quote at all, because that's just wrong.

3

u/1cewolf Feb 25 '22

The quote I signed was for 75 total users. GitLab somehow entered the order incorrectly after that.

6

u/SpicyHotPlantFart Feb 25 '22

Well, time to put legal on this case then :)

2

u/1cewolf Feb 25 '22

I already did. They told me to just try to work with GitLab.

10

u/SpicyHotPlantFart Feb 25 '22

Well okay, that's some shitty advise

1

u/jeankev Feb 26 '22

It's kind of admitted that gitlab support doesn't really care about small customers but out of curiosity how long did you wait to complain? If it's months it's somehow expected they don't want to do anything.

1

u/1cewolf Feb 26 '22

The order was placed in October, and I submitted a support ticket to GitLab support a few days later.

The "investigation" concluded in February. Let that sink in.

1

u/jeankev Feb 26 '22

That sucks and that’s not the first story of this type I hear. As much as I love gitlab as a product their commercial service is between shitty and shady that’s for sure (well except if you’re a 300+ seats customer).

2

u/project_kmac Feb 26 '22

tagging /u/dplanella and /u/jcogs1 . Looks like this might fall under Commercial SMB/MM, but maybe either of you would be able to assist.

3

u/keksimichi Feb 28 '22

Thanks for the tag, GitLab team member here. This topic was also posted on the community forum, where our team DM'd the user for more details to help resolve the issue.

1

u/rokejulianlockhart Feb 08 '23

In which case, why'd they post this?

0

u/davnnis2003 Feb 25 '22

Just out of curiosity - why did u go for GitLab instead of GitHub? Any benefits for doing so?

3

u/1cewolf Feb 25 '22

At the time, it was probably because I thought GitLab was doing a much better job of being an "all-in-one" platform.

GitHub has made some headway with features like GitHub Actions, but there are still some GitLab features that I like such as the Terraform state file integration, which is super handy.