GitLab/Gitea services market research

Running Gna! Business development
#1

Bonjour,

It is assumed that there is a market for GitLab services. Some clues were collected during User Research a few months ago: all Free Software service companies I discussed with provide GitLab services to their customers for a fee (Octopuce, IndieHosters, Webarchitect, Easter-eggs, Autonomic) as well as a number of CHATONS in the non-profit space (shared hosting for a fee).

Hostea could provide services such as:

  • Installation
  • Training
  • Maintenance
  • Upgrades
  • Migrations

For that to be worth the effort, the customer base should be large companies, government agencies and universities. Organizations that publish public tenders that Hostea could answer to using GitLab / Gitea as product and Hostea as the tooling around it. It takes a long time for such contracts to be concluded but I assume they are worth at least 5k€ each because there is a limit under which it is not mandatory / sensible to publish a public tender.

There are relatively new Europe wide legislation that may open business opportunities.

These are assumptions and some market research is required to corroborate this before moving forward.

What do you think?

#2

Relevant chat conversation.

#3

News & blog & reports

GitLab inc

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Independent service providers

Service providers other than GitLab offering GitLab based services (shared hosting is excluded since this is not the focus). Only service company known to provide such services are listed here (interviews conducted with members of those companies).

Easter-eggs

  • Hosting ~120€ / month
  • Upgrades included in hosting
  • All other services 100€ / h

IndieHosters

  • Included in a global service package ~10€ per user

Autonomic

  • No pricing information

Webarchitects

Octopuce

  • Hosting ~120€ / month
  • Upgrades included in hosting

Octobus

  • They run https://heptapod.net/ and would be in a good position to provide services but I’m not sure if they do.
#4

I am triggered by this. The combination of services you offer with a forge, be it Gitlab or Gitea, becomes a mission-critical one for your customers. Your services down? Their work processes halted. How do you handle that (in other words, who stands up at 3pm to fix a crashed SSD drive)?

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#5

I’ve ran and worked for hosting companies for a long time. It’s not rocket science. Realistically that won’t happen at the beginning though. The more likely service contract to be concluded would involve maintaining a GitLab instance (with Hostea on top of it) on premise. That involves writing down precise procedures (manual procedures most of the time) to be followed by the people on duty when a hardware fails or a reboot is requested for whatever reason.

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#6

For the record, there was a chat on that topic today.