I run a small company on a Pro plan and we have 4 members deploying Github repos to Netlify. We noticed that if: (a) one of our freelancers creates a feature branch and (b) one of my 4 members merges it in response to a PR, then the freelancer is pulled in as a paid contributer.
We do not intend to upgrade to Enterprise and so must guard against freelancers being automatically added in this way. These freelancers are not even performing a merge to develop or master branches. It feels like the Netlify product is being shoved down our throats.
At the moment, our only recourse appears to be to REJECT the automated build permission requests and then manually trigger a build. Is there another way that we can be in control of licensing without this product totally mucking up our work flow?
Netlify only intends to charge you for team seats for builds triggered by commits we build directly from git notifications from your git provider. While we will not be able to provide tech support on how to work around our pricing system, some workflows that will not add to your account’s seat count include:
Configuring Netlify not to build non-production branches for your site(s). If teammates only commit to those branches, they will not trigger builds and thus will not require seats on your Netlify team.
Configuring Netlify not to build Pull Requests/Merge Requests for your site(s). Note that the user who merges a PR or MR will be counted as Netlify team seats; users who have commits in the PR will not be.
All commits on public repositories (aka: non-private repos) should all build without costing extra team members or requiring any configuration change.
You can remove current team members who do not need access to our UI. This way you only need to pay for a seat in the months an individual makes a commit.
Finally, for more tips on optimizing which builds happen on Netlify, we have an article around configuring builds in our Support Forums that might be of interest