Can we use plane freely ?

[AlwaysNoobCoder]

We are a bank, we want to use plane internally.

Can we use it for free ?

[theparthacus]

Plane is both self-hosted and on the Cloud, so yes, for some features, you can use it for free. when you need more features or if you already anticipate needing those features, we recommend you buy a Plane One license, our first self-hosted-only plan. more features will come to Pro and Ultimate for both self-hosted instances and the Cloud.

[Dhruv-Garg79]

@theparthacus is there a feature list comparison somewhere?

[theparthacus]

we haven't been able to get around to that, but we soon will. meanwhile, One should show you a decent comparison for what it unlocks over Free or Community.

[adamhub]

It's very ambiguous which features/limitations come with self hosted vs One. Is self-hosted limited to 50 users? Is everyone on the One page just available on One? And so on. This issue is raised here also: https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/1fewz6v/feature_list_of_plane_selfhosted_vs_cloud/

[pseudokool]

Feels ambiguous to me as well. The link above seems to say that self hosted comm. version has 12 seats.
However, when creating a workspace I have an option to provision for 500+ ...

Side note: Would love for the self hosted comm. version to be completely limitless - self hosting is generally painful, so most satisfied users would eventually move to paid. But, as a satisfied and so far successful self hoster, do I have an option to donate a variable amount as well, as there is a lot of effort and wouldn't mind paying back where possible.

[almereyda]

When searching the code for "12" or "500", only the latter results meaningful responses to this.

The number appears to be a meta datum, which is carried around. But I'm unable to find places where it is evaluated against a set of constraints.

plane/packages/constants/src/workspace.ts

Lines 4 to 11 in feb88e6

	export const ORGANIZATION_SIZE = [
	"Just myself", // TODO: translate
	"2-10",
	"11-50",
	"51-200",
	"201-500",
	"500+",
	];

Searching for "organization size", we learn that there are multiple places in which it is used.

Previously it was called "company size":

plane/apiserver/plane/db/migrations/0035_auto_20230704_2225.py

Line 10 in feb88e6

obj.organization_size = str(obj.company_size)

It is also a manually set variable, which does not carry any value about how many users are registered to an instance.

Searching in other places, I wouldn't find any codified policy which restricts sign ups on self-hosted instances. Maybe the limitation only exists in the licence, in order to be prepared in case one needed to be? I'd be interested if someone was able to find some kind of telemetry or other metadata about an instance, which leaves it without explicit consent.

For now it seems we can use it. Did someone already try to register more than 12 accounts on their self-hosted instance?

[pseudokool]

This is helpful. Thanks. Was contemplating testing if the limits kick in.

However, after this post, came across another discussion here (can't find the link - will keep looking). Which talks about the limits: "... the apparent 12 limit on the community ver. .." is supposedly when performance starts getting affected "because of initial architecture decisions". So it looks like we are good to exceed this number bearing the disclaimer in mind.

[almereyda]

Yes, I had also noticed performance issues in the past, but since addition of the MQTT queue and more separation of concerns into separate microservices, think the live collaboration server, things have improved vastly on our self-hosted instance.

[theparthacus]

@almereyda says,

When searching the code for "12" or "500", only the latter results meaningful responses to this.

The number appears to be a meta datum, which is carried around. But I'm unable to find places where it is evaluated against a set of constraints.

plane/packages/constants/src/workspace.ts

Lines 4 to 11 in feb88e6

	export const ORGANIZATION_SIZE = [
	"Just myself", // TODO: translate
	"2-10",
	"11-50",
	"51-200",
	"201-500",
	"500+",
	];

Searching for "organization size", we learn that there are multiple places in which it is used.

Previously it was called "company size":

plane/apiserver/plane/db/migrations/0035_auto_20230704_2225.py

Line 10 in feb88e6

obj.organization_size = str(obj.company_size)

It is also a manually set variable, which does not carry any value about how many users are registered to an instance.

this number is a part of the metadata collected to understand the kinds of orgs that are signing up on Plane and how they plan to use it. this number has no bearing on plan restrictions whatsoever. that kicks in at the workspace level and only when you add 12 people to a workspace. try adding a 13th person and you should see an error. if you don't, please report the bug. 😉

Searching in other places, I wouldn't find any codified policy which restricts sign ups on self-hosted instances. Maybe the limitation only exists in the licence, in order to be prepared in case one needed to be?

nope, nope. the restriction exists as a hard-coded limit with the Free plan on the Commercial Edition. the ethos of it is in line with what you say—to prevent shocks when upgrading.

I'd be interested if someone was able to find some kind of telemetry or other metadata about an instance, which leaves it without explicit consent.

that doesn't happen outside the scope of our declared telemetry, but again, if you find an example, report it.

@pseudokool says

However, after this post, came across another discussion here (can't find the link - will keep looking). Which talks about the limits: "... the apparent 12 limit on the community ver. .." is supposedly when performance starts getting affected "because of initial architecture decisions"

there is no hard-coded restriction on the Community Edition, so the link or the conversation you are referring to must have talked about the Commercial Edition and why we mention an approximate restriction in some places. while all self-hosted editions come with some infra-related restrictions that can be pushed higher with an increase in infra, we have never talked about that limit for the Community Edition. because we didn't need to.

folks were worried there was an artificial restriction on the Commercial Edition, so we clarified there wasn't and any numbers we had anywhere was indicative of the threshold at which performance degradation was reported by our users. ↓ is taken from this live page as of today and clarifies our rationale very, very well.

[UbiquitousBear]

If you're a bank, you're likely subject to regulations and SDLC scrutiny. You'll want to purchase Pro or Business (which require you to contact them). These are not free.

[mustafa0x]

Is the live collaboration server available in the free self hosted version of plane?

[theparthacus]

no, not yet.

[almereyda]

I must politely disagree. In our instance, we can collaborate on documents and updates are synced instantly to multiple clients. Also, the manifest now contains this:

plane/deploy/selfhost/docker-compose.yml

Lines 89 to 100 in f70eae2

	live:
	image: ${DOCKERHUB_USER:-makeplane}/plane-live:${APP_RELEASE:-stable}
	command: node live/dist/server.js live
	environment:
	<<: [*live-env]
	deploy:
	replicas: ${LIVE_REPLICAS:-1}
	restart_policy:
	condition: on-failure
	depends_on:
	- api
	- web