--- layout: handbook-page-toc title: Tier Pricing Use-Cases --- ## On this page {:.no_toc .hidden-md .hidden-lg} - TOC {:toc .hidden-md .hidden-lg} ## Overview This page provides per-tier use cases that illustrate our [buyer-based pricing model](/handbook/ceo/pricing/#buyer-based-tiering-clarification). ### Tier: Core #### Git Repository The purpose of Git is to manage a project or a set of files as they change over time, and the Git repository will contain (among other things) a set of commit objects and a set of references to commit objects called heads. Utilizing these objects, you will be able to track the project state at any given point in time across developers, and will allow for easy traversal and commitment for changes. Ultimately the repository will operate as the primary stores for your code version control allowing for reverting to older states in time, seeing the not yet committed change history, or committing new versions. #### Basic CI Pipeline Everybody has to build software somehow, and some folks want to deploy it too. Organizations have used various methods over the years to do this including scripts, makefiles and Jenkins. People start using the GitLab pipelines because they allow them to treat their build just like their code by putting the .gitlab-ci.yml file in the same git repo with their code and versioning it the same way. Pipelines go farther than just build steps and include not just what has previously been done by makefiles, ant scripts or POM files but the whole pipeline all the way through to deployment if desired. GitLab makes it easy! #### Basic Issue Tracker Company ABC is developing a new product. They will utilize multiple development teams for the various stages of the project. The team will need to track issues, prioritize issues, move issues to other teams and create new issues as the project progresses. By utilizing GitLab issue boards and tracker the Company ABC's project team can communicate and visualize the entire workflow from idea to production. ### Tier: Starter Usually, some of the major drivers for a user considering GitLab Starter over Core are: * Increased governance via features such as: LDAP sync, Merge request approvals, log forwarding * GitLab technical support via Unlimited next business day support tickets #### SCM, CI/CD, IT security compliance, log audit trails A financial institution is undergoing a digital transformation across the organization and looking to consolidate tools across the development teams. Given they are just starting to build out their technology practice, it’s important that they have support to ensure speedy resolution of blocking issues. Additionally, as a regulated industry they need to ensure they are meeting internal compliance. With GitLab Starter they can configure the branching and workflow strategy to add Merge Request approvers, protect branches, and manage permissions at the group level. #### SCM, CI/CD, Restricted push access A technology services company builds and manages many customer web applications. As part of this, they hire 3rd party developers to assist in the development - taking advantage of SCM and CI/CD. GitLab Starter will provide them with key capabilities to safely manage the code in production by restricting Merge Requests to protected branches with internal approvals. Additionally, with LDAP group sync, they can safely manage the onboarding/offboarding process of developers. ### Tier: Premium #### Enhanced Deployment Capabilities Premium offers features that unlock easy and reliable ways to manage your deployment environments. Access to Deploy Boards allows for 1 view where you can see all of your CI/CD environments running on Kubernetes, including the status of each pod from the latest deployment per environment. In Premium, you can use incremental rollout to replace a few of your Kubernetes pods with the latest code. This lets you observe the behavior of the application, and then manually increase the deployment in increments if requirements and behavior in production are met. This can also be automated with the use of timed incremental rollout to production. Similar to incremental rollouts, Premium offers canary deployments, which allows you to spin up canary instances in kubernetes before committing it to production. If you do find that a rollback is needed, time is of the essence. Premium offers the ability to roll back to any previous environment by clicking into an environment and selecting which commit to roll back to. This action immediately kicks off a pipeline that deploys that prior commit to the environment. This allows for a very fast way to get a stable and older deployment out to the live environment if there are any issues with what is currently deployed. These features allow you to have a consolidated view of your deployed environments, and allow you to follow best practices when deploying changes to an environment, while also giving the ability to swiftly revert a change if necessary. #### Jira Integration Issue tracking is a key component in a successful DevOps process, and if an organization is not ready to move off of Jira, or plans to do so incrementally with a few projects at a time, then our Jira Development Panel is a critical tool to utilize. Within GitLab, you can have a Jira tab, seamlessly connecting the two tools. By referencing the Jira ticket # in any comment, title, or text in GitLab, you will create a hyperlink and log communication regarding your work. The Jira issue will show comments, commits, branches, and can even be closed automatically with a GitLab Merge Request. This allows teams to seamlessly use both tools and have an accurate and automated workflow when addressing actionable work and items that are specified in Jira, yet being coded and implemented with GitLab. A seamless workflow with issue tracking and SCM whether you are using GitLab Issues or Jira. This also allows teams to transition at a planned pace from Jira to GitLab issues, which results in a smoother experience and a more positive adoption. #### GitLab Geo Another driver for companies to move to Premium is GitLab Geo. As software teams continue to become more distributed, time is wasted when secondary locations are waiting to pull repositories from the primary node. GitLab Geo mirrors the whole instance so not just source code is replicated and quickly accessible, but everything else in GitLab that brings value to teams. Issues, comments, pipelines, code review and all of the pertinent data points in a workflow are updated so that secondary locations have the most up to date information. It also acts as a Disaster Recovery solution. If your primary instance goes down, it is much faster to point to your secondary location that you have from GitLab Geo, than it is to restore a backup or snapshot. It is an important factor when planning for your recovery efforts and plans as an organization. Provide remote teams with the most up to date repositories and their relevant information. Cut down the time that it takes for other development teams to pull the most recent repository, which results in large savings of time and money. At the same time, this meets the requirements for an effective Disaster Recovery implemented if the primary instance were to ever become unavailable. ### Tier: Ultimate Ultimate is for organizations that have a need to build secure, compliant software and that want to gain visibility of - and be able to influence - their entire organisation from a high level. This edition enables businesses to transform IT by optimizing and accelerating delivery while managing priorities, security, risk, and compliance. #### Enterprise Visibility - Big picture Planning & Tracking with Project/Portfolio Management * Organize new business initiatives and efforts into epics, where you can plan specific requirements, tasks and work in GitLab Issues and Merge Requests * Prioritize and visualize the sequence of delivery * Share, collaborate and iterate on the details of portfolio plans. * Visualize roadmaps to communicate timing and sequencing of delivering business value. #### Enterprise Security - Scan code & applications for known vulnerabilities with Static, Dynamic, and Container scanning * Analyze your running web application(s) for known vulnerabilities using Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) * Analyze your Docker images for known vulnerabilities using Clair, a Vulnerability Static Analysis tool for containers * Analyze any open source dependencies you’re using via Dependency Scanning * Search your project dependencies for their licenses using License Management #### Security Organizations looking to add security to their development process “Shift Left” - instant feedback on vulnerabilities during development. Without GitLab, security scans often run infrequent or much later in the development workflow, as. (note: feedback usually arrives to the original team well after they’ve moved on to another project) Or consolidate/replace existing & expensive security tools with a better integrated, more cost effective tool. #### Portfolio Management Business leaders need short/mid/long term roadmap visibility into the delivery of Initiatives & Features across any number of teams. Lean organizations are keen on making work visible & reducing work in progress (via roadmaps) and repeatedly shipping minimal viable features on schedule. While still young, our goal with our Portfolio Management is meant to replace tools like Jira, VersionOne and Rally. Note: Epics & Roadmaps are getting there.