GitLab Team Member here. If you could reach out to your account team, that would be great. We’d love to hear your thoughts and have an opportunity to understand what is valuable to you. We realize that this is a significant change for Starter/Bronze users, and we want to make sure we can provide you with the best possible service through the transition. We’re also offering a free upgrade to Premium for the first 25 users, which may help you get a better sense of Premium's value for your team.
We're in the same situation. We're in bronze only because of approvals, team of 17. We picked Gitlab precisely for best price of this feature on the market. We've already paid for full year starting February, in December.