Supporting GitLab Community Programs

Instructions for redirecting community programs subscription inquiries

GitLab offers several programs to help introduce GitLab’s most powerful features to communities who may not otherwise have the means to access them. These include:

The Strategy Programs team is the DRI for these programs.

For registered non-profit organizations, GitLab also offers discounts. Contact GitLab’s Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) team for more information regarding this program.

Use the relevant workflows below when you receive a ticket about GitLab for Education, GitLab for Open Source or GitLab for Startups.

Workflows

Applications and renewals

When the requester seeks to apply for membership in a community program or to renew an existing membership, they will need to submit the program’s application form. Use the appropriate Zendesk macro:

If the requester is seeking to renew, also advise them:

  1. Use the same form as for new applications
  2. The person claiming the renewal for the subscription must be the one who created the subscription in the GitLab Customer Portal for this institution
  3. If they need to have a different person claim the renewal, the existing owner needs to transfer ownership of the Customers Portal account.

Product Transfer

While redeeming a community program coupon customers may select the wrong product type by accident (SaaS instead of Self-Managed, or vice-versa). Link and use this KB article. Also use the Program-specific contact inboxes workflow.

Organisation not appearing in SheerID list

Use the Program-specific contact inboxes workflow.

“This code has already been used.” error when attempting to redeem coupon

Please raise the ticket in #community-programs as the coupon may have been erroneously issued.

Customer is concerned by their seat usage or true-ups

While applying, customers are asked to provide their desired seat count - during their subscription term they can exceed this and then upon renewal the true-up cost will be zero (and the overage seats will be added to the renewal term). If the customer wants to make a change to the number of seats associated, link and use this KB article.

Program-specific contact inboxes

For any enquiry relating to a specific program, whether described above or not, please follow this workflow:

  1. Advise the requester to contact the program using its direct email inbox:
    1. EDU: education@gitlab.com
    2. OSS: opensource@gitlab.com
    3. Startups: startups@gitlab.com
    4. Non-Profits: nonprofits@gitlab.com
  2. Ask the customer to update us as soon as they get a meaningful response, or to let us know they have not received a meaningful response after waiting for 2 business days, whichever comes first
  3. Put the ticket on hold
  4. If the customer reports back that they are being helped, close the ticket
  5. Otherwise, if the customer reports back that they are not being helped, let them know that you will contact the program team yourself to ensure they get the help they need, and then reach out in the #community-programs Slack channel. For non-profits, reach out in #gitlab-for-nonprofits channel.
  6. Otherwise, if the customer does not report back and the ticket returns from being on hold, close the ticket with an appropriate message

Troubleshooting

GitLab’s Community Programs team processess program applications according to an automated workflow. Review the handbook pages related to that workflow for additional details on how it works.

To troubleshoot errors during the registration process, follow the Troubleshoot Errors While Making Purchases on CustomersDot document.

You can retrieve CustomerIP by:

  1. On Zendesk ticket, click on Conversations
  2. Choose Events from the drop down
  3. The IP is shown under every customer reply.

Example of previous cases

See Also

Last modified October 28, 2025: Change the workflow for community program-related requests to be more supportive (fef71f5c)
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