We have a pro plan with 1 team member and use a public GitHub repo for our website source code. Do we have to pay for builds triggered by any GitHub contributors?
For instance, suppose we connect Netlify to the repo. And, suppose today we have five contributors who submit or merge pull requests, triggering Netlify deploys or deploy previews. Does this mean the Netlify cost for this billing period will be $95/month, rather than the usual $19/month?
As a side note, I am speaking of builds triggered without having to have a Netlify team member “approve” them.
The current pricing page reads “$19/month per member, including active Git Contributors”, which suggests that the price would go up. On the other hand, the discussion here suggests the price would not go up because we are using a public repo. Since these are conflicting, I was hoping to get some clarification on this.
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.
Thanks @elden! I am still a bit unsure about your third bullet point.
Will merges and pull requests that trigger a Netlify build count the merge/PR initiator as a team member even for public repositories, when using a Pro plan, resulting in the additional seat charge? Or, are you saying with public repositories, all commits that build, e.g. all builds even if triggered from a GitHub merge/PR, are all free?
No worries! We only charge for Git Contributors on private repositories. As long as the repo is and remains public, you shouldn’t see any Git Contributor charges regardless of who deploys sites to your account.
Just make sure you don’t end up with a mix of private and public at some point. If you hook up and private repos and then folks deploy sites from GitHub, they will be added as a paid Git Contributor.