GitLab for Education Program

Overview

The GitLab for Education program provides complimentary GitLab Ultimate licenses with unlimited seats to qualifying educational institutions around the globe. This program enables institutions to equip their educators, researchers, and students with GitLab’s best offering to teach, learn, and research using modern industry-standard DevSecOps practices.

Program goals

1. Market penetration and competitive blocking - Build long-term institutional relationships early
2. Drive upsells and influence ARR - Support institutional growth with discounted add-ons
3. Increase adoption and advocacy - Build institutional GitLab advocacy that persists beyond individual educator or student lifecycles

OKRs

This program contributes to the “Win the hearts & minds of developers through education program growth and developer engagement” Contributor Success Objective by:

1. Increasing monthly active education institutions by x% each quarter
2. Growing monthly active education users by x% each quarter

Program health metrics (KPIs)

The Strategy Programs team tracks the health of the GitLab for Education program through these metrics:

1. Monthly active education institutions (active = 1 active user)
2. Monthly active education users (active = ping received)
3. Website visits
4. YoY trends

Target audience and criteria

The GitLab for Education program is open to all academic institutions that meet our eligibility guidelines. Our current priority is institutions most likely to adopt and scale GitLab usage. This may include targeted outreach to events and groups focused on technology, security, DevOps and AI, as well as to decision makers within established technology programs, computer science departments, and software developer circles.

GitLab for Education program licenses are not authorized to run, administer, or operate an institution. Users on GitLab.com (SaaS) must be over the age of thirteen (13) years of age.

Eligibility requirements

Qualifying institutions must be:

• Accredited by an authorized agency
• Not-for-profit
• Grant degrees, diplomas, or certificates
• Primary purpose of teaching

Note: We approve exceptions for notable educational programs on a case-by-case basis. Contact us at education@gitlab.com.

Applicant criteria

• Faculty or Staff: only employed faculty or staff members of an Educational Institution can apply. Students can use their institution’s license or request a free trial.
• Email domain: applicants must apply with the email domain of their representative institution. Personal email domains will not be accepted.
• Program agreement: all members must accept the GitLab for Education Program Agreement.

Authorized use

GitLab for Education program licenses support:

• Instructional activities, teaching, and learning
• Non-commercial academic research

GitLab for Education program licenses do not support:

• IT operations or campus administration
• Commercial research or revenue generation

Geographic restrictions

GitLab does not issue licenses to institutions in China. Contact JiHu for education licenses in China.

Structure and components

Program benefits

Program members receive:

• Unlimited seats of GitLab Ultimate (GitLab.com SaaS or self-managed)
  • 1 year duration with annual renewal
  • 50,000 compute minutes per month
  • AI Chat and AI Code Suggestions in the IDE
• Discounts on add-ons for GitLab Duo Pro/Enterprise and Support functionality
• Community support on the GitLab Community Discord

How to join

• Apply at about.gitlab.com/solutions/education/join
• Most applicants receive instant approval. Applicants are verified through Proxi.id.

Roles and responsibilities

Team

Strategy Programs team led by @ihuerga

GitLab for Education program DRI: @daniel-murphy

Program manager responsibilities

• Promote awareness and expand reach with outreach campaigns
• Nurture program members through onboarding, engagement, and feedback collection
• Direct sales-assisted inquiries
• Pipeline members into other Strategy Programs
• Create compelling case studies with universities and GitLab advocates
• Collaborate cross-functionally with GitLab teams and dependencies to ensure program operations and growth efforts
• Program operations
  • Review unverified applications
  • Process support requests through Service Desk
  • Maintain program documentation and resources
  • Track program metrics and report on performance

Cross-functional relationships

• Sales

  • PubSec: Public sector sales opportunities
  • High Velocity Sales and First Orders Team: Additional first-order sales support
  • Renewals Managers: Renewal support

• Customer Success

  • Customer Success: Customer adoption, engagement support, and GitLab University platform
  • Digital Success: Digital customer programs and onboarding
  • Educational Services: GitLab University course content

• Support & Compliance

  • GitLab Support: License subscription support and Zendesk responses
  • Legal: Compliance and program agreement terms

• Engineering & Technical Support

  • Contributor Success: Engineering support
  • Fulfillment: Customer application, renewal and claims process through customers.gitlab.com
  • Enterprise Data Team: Data and analytics support

Resources and support

Getting help

For program-related questions (eligibility, application status, program policies):

• Email: education@gitlab.com
  • Automatically opens a new confidential issue via GitLab Service Desk
  • Issues are triaged by the Strategy Programs team
  • Response time SLO: 3 business days

For technical support (license activation, setup, platform issues):

• Open a GitLab Support ticket

For GitLab internal inquiries (supporting GitLab for Education program customers and program work):

• Slack: #community-programs
• GitLab: GitLab for Education Program project on gitlab-org

Links

• Education Program Agreement
• Application page
• Support issue triage

Dashboard metrics:

• Monthly active usage
• Influenced First Order dashboard
• New accounts dashboard

Playbook

General workflows

[Link to general workflows of Strategy Programs for things like outreach, emails, social media, etc. - page TBD]

Support

The Strategy Programs team uses GitLab issues and labels to manage all education programs support:

• Issues are triaged on GitLab using GLQL views
• All GitLab for Education Program issues are labeled and tracked with new inquiries and updated replies
• Comment templates are available for common responses
• Closed issues automatically reopen if the member responds
• Escalations are handled by the program DRI

Note: When GitLab team members email education@gitlab.com to open issue tickets on behalf of members, replies to the issue will go to the team member and not to the program member.

Add-ons and upsells

• Inquiries on add-ons (including GitLab Duo and Support) are handled by the program DRI
• Program DRI searches SFDC for an existing Sales team member on the customer account or connects with the PubSec team
• All discounts and add-ons are sales-assisted and are at the discretion of the Sales team
• Once a purchased add-on is attached to the customer account their next renewal must be a manual quote. The customer cannot self-service their renewal with a GitLab for Education program coupon code.

FAQ

See application page for frequently asked questions on the GitLab for Education program.