We have about 20 total software developers who would benefit from using a particular Marketplace App (Plugin) but around another 230 other users from other areas of the company (mostly manufacturing-related) who have no need for that app on the Jira project they work on.

So now we are going from a $60 USD per month charge for the software developers ($3 each, which is reasonable) to a $520 USD per month charge ($26 each for the software developers), which is just NOT going to happen.

This sort of nonsense drives users away from Jira entirely, and surely prevents many Jira users from wanting to engage with a Marketplace App when the per-ACTUAL-user costs are artificially driven so high because App licenses can't be individually assigned or assigned to a specific subset of users.

The only solution I can think of is to literally create separate Jira Cloud instances for the software developers and for the rest of the business, but some people will inevitably cross over both Jira instances and then we'll be paying double for the Jira license for them- AARGH !!!!

Fix this please Atlassian!!!!

Some companies have enterprise licensing and they are expected to pay same amount for hundreds of add-ons which only useful for specific teams and projects! Not looking to be inclusive or flexible to other vendors or their partners.

This request has been repeatedly made over the years, yet Atlassian consistently overlooks it and shows no willingness to explore potential solutions to address this issue.

there should be flexibility in place, by way of allowing Security groups or lower tier allowance on the application host. it should only see that is it licensed or not.

Really Important Request!

I can just agree with all the statement mentioned here. In our company the software developers would be the smallest group. But if we need a plugin for the SW development we need to buy it for the whole company Program Management, Project Management, Finance...

This seems not to make sense for me.

Could we ask Zephyr Scale's justification for not being able to limit the number of users? There should be a real reason for not being able to prioritize this ask(about 800 votes for this ticket already).

This is very much required. The push should also come from the Market Place companies. The model should work in everyone's benefit rather than one entity benefitting out of it.  

Let's all be realistic here.  A lot of us our software developers and we know how this game works.  If Atlassian had started off with the more preferred plugin model everyone would be happy and this wouldn't be a thing.  Unfortunately Atlassian now likely receives a large % of their profits from this business model and are likely risk adverse to try a different model that would make their customers happy.  There is a chance that people would be more likely to use plugins and Atlassian would recoup its lost income.  There is an equal likely chance that Atlassian would lose a ton of money.  So until there is a competitor that does this sort of thing better we are all for better or for worse stuck in this model.  This same thing applies to other features that should really part of the basics: Centralized project management. combined roadmps, product versions for multiple projects without having to switch to the extremely expensive premium version.  Without any real competition Atlassian does not really have to do what it's users want.

Yes, we are badly looking forward for this.
I have a plugin which costed 9K Dollars earlier when I'm in Server mode, but the same plugin with DC Mode costs me 25K Dollars, which is crazy.

So, I would like to have a lesser licensing option to purchase add-ons.

It will greatly benefit the customers and also the add-on vendors as people tend to try and buy more if such policy is approved by Atlassian. 
Sad, to see it is not even assigned!

Infact, we are all landlocked by Atlassian I can say.

There were 1000s of customers reporting and voting for it ( multiple duplicated tickets were tagged to this ticket ), but not even a single one stays assigned, ill !

Seriously.  Come on Atlassian.

Hey Atlassian, 

its been 7 years now and absolutely nothing has moved, no real communication with users, a half-hearted, meaning free message from June that feels like throwing a bone to a dog just to make it quite for a while. 

Douglas has a very good point that Jira work management has significant impact on this. Because of this pricing issue your users are not able to work in the best way they want because they have to decide which addon to use because they might not be able to afford all of them. This is not user friendly!! its also not very agile to have a this waiting for many years without any improvement. this is a big topic with lots of interest from users all over the world ... aaaand you do: nothing :/

I can understand Atlassian's resistance to this change.  An eco-system has been achieved with pricing (in some cases) based on an understanding that some clients have a large number of Jira users but a smaller number of plugin uses. 

To avoid upsetting the pre-existing plug-in developers, a separate type of plug - lets call it a Team Plugin - is necessary. This can then be priced at a level that reflects a particular teams use.  This might be higher than the regular plugin price due to the fact that it is licensed to a subset of Jira users but would be easier to budget for.

This model could maybe be justifieid when the Atlassian user base was mainly software teams...? They'd all work in a similar way, write code, squash bugs... So you could maybe justify that one addon would benefit all software teams in a similar way?

Jira Service Management, Jira Work Management and Jira Software are used by different teams in different ways and there is no way that one addon is going to benefit all teams in a similar way.... But yout still pay for your whole cloud user base.

Organisations I work with are actually less likely to buy addons now because there isn't value in buying 1000 addon licences for something that 100 people will use. They'll change processes / behaviors / use workarounds.

There has been one comment from Atlassian on this topic and my interpretation of it is that they have no interest in providing the best value to customers by allowing them have greater control over addon licences. I would love to be proven wrong.

"This is not currently on our public roadmap..."

We don't want to change this revenue model. Addon developers do the development effort and maintenance to provide functionality for enhancements / gaps in our products and [we literally make billions from it|https://www.atlassian.com/blog/add-ons/marketplace-momentum] From a business standpoint, it's amazing, relatiely low effort, high reward.

"... we understand some customers have a need for greater purchasing flexibility..."

We understand that customers don't want to pay for 1000 addon licences when customers only want 100 users to acccess / use it however leaving it this way makes us 800% more money (in this example).

"our desire is to make it as frictionless as possible for our customers to purchase Marketplace apps as part of the complete Atlassian solution"

 Our desire is to make it as easy as possible for customers to give us the most amount of money.

Jira Work Management (JWM) should be the catalyst for change here. 

In the past, it could easily be argued that the plugins apply as a whole to any software development team. If only a subset of the team typically used a plugin it was up to the plugin vendor to adapt their per user pricing to reflect that subset.   

With JWM, we now have a completely new set of  Atlassian software consumers - non technology / non software users that are using the products for business administration.  This might be Legal, Marketing, etc etc.  The number of Jira Software / Core users has no bearing on the number of JWM users.   It cannot be argued that the size JWM user base should cause an increase in the cost of plugs used in the Software development space.   The relationship cannot be applied. 

In 2022/23, if Atlassian are serious about JWM, then they will now address this. 

I found this ticket in my research for the same issue that all of the above folks are experiencing.  I see this Jira ticket was created in 2016.  It's been 7 years and there hasn't been any traction?  I would be interested in hearing from Atlasssian on the reasoning behind keeping this pricing structure with their add-ons. It makes no logical sense for the businesses that utilize Atlasssian for their products and wish to add plugins for their workflows. Therefore, I would really like to understand the business logic behind it.  I can only speak for myself... but if we were able to purchase add-ons for just the groups (or roles) for those that need it, we would be more apt to purchase other add-ons for our workflows/business.  But because we can not do that, we move along and find somewhere else to invest our money.  Hence Atlasssian misses out.  Would really appreciate an update on this matter. 

I've read through the comments and would like to add my $0.02 and agree with the opinion that the current pricing model should be adjusted to align the total plugin cost with the number of users authorized to use the plugin.     For example, there is a particular plug-in that would be very useful for three of my users, but my other 40 users would never use it.    It is very difficult to justify and obtain approval for the additional $1200 per year (41% annual increase) for an add-in only utilized by 10% of the users.  The inefficiency of that model is immediately identified and the proposal is rejected.   The issue is not the lack of a software budget, but rather that the pricing model itself doesn't make sense.     People intuitively want to get more when they pay more, and the existing model doesn't provide that. 

Now, consider that you may over time need multiple plugins to achieve the various functionalities, which may be used by a very limited subset of your user base,  and this inefficiency begins to compound to the point that is ridiculous.     I don't claim to know the perfect solution but will state that this is a pain point for my small/medium-sized organization and that it will play into our decision on whether to stick with Jira or find another solution.   

Edited on 12/5/2023

We moved to another product about 4 months ago, in large-part due to this licensing practice for add-ons.   To get the functionality we needed for a few core users became quickly cost prohibitive.    The product we moved to has licensing which scales much better for how we use the product.  The amount of activity/requests to Atlassian to change their model and the lack of response is a bit depressing to be honest.   

I know commenting here notifies way too many people (sorry), but I'll add that working in a "medium-large-ish instance" (1,000+ users) the current situation means that the default answer to a request for a plugin is "no" - even if it's free (since that may lead to the plugin going away or being charged for in future). I'd guess the more licensees, the more likely you'll say "no" to everything.

This leads to certain high-profile plugins being paid for (Scriptrunner, Tempo, etc) and all other plugin creators "missing out" except in certain circumstances (someone is willing to pay either way - or an overwhelming need for the majority of users).

I would however mention one "positive" of the current situation. With a minimum number of high-profile plugins (which we presume are well tested), I can't remember (touch wood) the last time I've dealt with any plugins conflicting with other plugins. In a world where we have dozens and dozens of active plugins (no, I currently don't have many), that could lead to a lot of troubleshooting - not just for administrators but for the plugin makers themselves. 

That said, I'd prefer the option to apply plugin use to groups so we could at least try more plugins and decide on the increased troubleshooting risk ourselves.

Scott

@c2a4d85bc47a that is a fair point and potentially true in a lot of cases (only Atlassian can know), potentially this would be more true for large organisations. In the example you give where you only need the plugin for 1 user in an organisation of 100, wouldn't this be rejected due to the high cost/actual user?

In the organisations I have administered for, we would certainly have spent more money on plugins through the marketplace, rather than resorting to other applications external to Jira.

Saying that revenue will increase if they change this, doesn't make it true.

They will lose more than they could possible get by people buying out new add-ons. I mean think about it, if you pay for an addon that costs £10 per user, you only need it for 1 user but you have 100 users on your company, that's £1000 income. If they fix the pricing model that £1000 will become £10.

Yes it will encourage you to try out new addons, but it's VERY unlikely that you will buy enough addons to make up for the £990 they lost. Even worse: that missing £990 was for something you weren't even using, so there's no labour for them at all. So even if your activities in buying addons increase enough to make up for the lost revenue, it will now be for something you actually use, so they will now have to support.

This is why they are not moving to change it anytime soon. This is a move that will cost them money to implement and will cost them loss in revenue. There is no incentive at all for them to touch it.

The point in case here is whether that pricing model is FAIR on us, their users. It obviously isn't.

I am going to share my piece of story.

Ussually someone from team or management comes with a request. May it be some enhancement to support development, managers, sales etc. I check marketplace and find an iteresting plugin that might help with their troubles. The are happy and ask me how much does it cost. The cost is ussually something between 1 - 3,5 dollars per Jira user, their eyes beam and tell me: "Great! Can you get it for us?"

Then I spend 5 minutes explaining them it is cost for for every Jira user. Every Jira user!

They throw confused glance at me: "We need to pay for every user in Jira even though only our team in -enter department / team- will use it?".

"Yes!"

"Really?"

"Yes!"

"Then we don´t want it. We will stick to excel and e-mails."

In conclusion, we would use much more plugins and solutions from marketplace but current pricing policy is WIN MORE for already estanblished and dominating 3rd party providers cause they will always have features that are helpful for wide number of roles and users and ALWAYS LOSE for those offering solutions for specific user groups.

I can understand Atlassian's concerns that changing the current license model to allow only needed users to paid-app will greatly reduce the income of the 3rd party economy, but separating the license model will encourage more users to try more paid add-ons. a lot of users like myself have to give up trying because of the expensive cost. If allow admin selects a few users to paid-addon, the single company license fee will drop but the installation amount will be greatly increased, and small tools will have more installation opportunities, so the overall license fee might be increasing.

I think this is one of the most important feature upgrades to your products.

There are so many Jira/Confluence issues raised and never implemented with apologetic comments that in current economy you had to close them down... with silver lining options pointing to marketplace solutions.

I like the marketplace, but it's not workable for organisations that have many different types of users in Jira/Confluence.

It's very hard to justify purchase of a solution for a problem that affects only one user group if it has to be licensed for everyone.

This also creates a financial barrier to onboard new users if one department piloted Jira for their needs with paid plug-ins, e.g. IT delivery inviting business users to use Jira for approvals.

Interesting to see, that this issue is even unassigned. at least as of now.
seems nobody really interested in working on this...

as said before, we were walking away from TEMPO Timesheets we used earlier for a couple of users and now use clockify to do this, which privides a free Jira integration.

Well @Harsh Dhaka that only took 10 tickets and 7 years for Atlassian to provide a response to something that affects every customer and is clearly an issue that will be the main reason they leave for an alternative.  As noted in a recent comment, "gathering public interest" is not a great way to gauge how much this irks your customers.  Here's something for your roadmap....under the urgency and impact, add an angry scale.  On a scale from one to ten, how angry does this issue make you? One is not at all, ten is steaming mad.  I can assure you that the fiscal impact, the lack of flexibility and the fact that it takes Atlassian years and years to respond to issues that could potentially reduce revenue for them (although if they were to market it properly it would like increase their customer base thereby increasing revenue), but significant increase their customer satisfaction (which does not appear to matter to Atlassian), everyone would mark this a "10" on that scale.

Came here looking to reduce XRay cost. Only handful of QA team members need this but we are paying for all users accessing JIRA.

Gathering public interest is a poor way to classify this issue, especially if it's determined to not be on the roadmap. How much public interest would there need to be to get this on the roadmap? Are there blockers in place that prevent Atlassian from changing the agreement between plugin developers to sell any given license to all seats within an instance? If such an agreement is in place, I feel that that should be made public, as this request as it stands is misleading, and looks like it could be a component one day 

This is not currently on our public roadmap but we understand some customers have a need for greater purchasing flexibility and our desire is to make it as frictionless as possible for our customers to purchase Marketplace apps as part of the complete Atlassian solution. If/when Atlassian adds changes to our license policies tying user counts of apps to the host Atlassian product, we will share more details.

@Murat I understand what you're saying, and I don't disagree on principal, but for me accepting the payment model means not buying add-ins that aren't useful to all users, so they're losing money from me, and I suspect from others as well. When we migrated from Server to Cloud we dropped most of our add-ins because the cost went up exponentially compared to the buy once for all users model in Server.

May I suggest that fellow atlassian users interested in this feature try to locate their atlassian account manager and push them for this to be reviewed and possibly added to the road map or an update provided.

I have been rethinking about this, at least partially. Sure we have a lot of generic Jira users and some addons are only used by say 10-20 people - if even that but who would develop and maintain good plugins if they could only bill very few people? Remember, most (almost all I dear to say) of those who develop these plugins do it with a hope of earning money, and just to sell a few licenses is seldom economically sustainable - software development and maintaining that software requires recourses. So for this reason I will simply accept the payment model and move on.    

For information to you all - we have been using Miro for project overview work and they keep adding features that support project planning and visualisation - at least for an 'epic level' overview. The cards Miro uses to represent tasks can be linked to Jira issues and they have GANTT charts on their roadmap. Major difference to Atlassian - they listen, and react openly. We will not be buying the expensive Big Picture plugin that does the same thing, and certainly not when only about 20 of our 250 licenses will actually use it.

I will now unsubscribe from this topic because Atlassian clearly don't give a sh1t and we are all just wasting our time here.

this will never happen.. I suppose this has vested interest for Atlassian so they may not want to act on this...

this is purely gathered from the fact that from 2016 this request has not made it to their `to do` list.

Made in 2016 and still gathering interest. 

People are not going to pay for what they don't use. As soon as this is resolved there will be a significant adoption on plug-ins which is a win-win for everyone. Maybe add a permission scheme layer.

if (user.permissions.plugin)

+1

It occurs to me that the preceding comment might be better received by Atlassian leadership if written in DACI format.  Please consider submitting the following for inclusion in decisions regarding the near-term roadmap.  I hope this reformatting can help speed the approval process toward a speedy implementation.

Decision: Should Atlassian implement the proposed solutions to minimize costs resulting from increased plugin prices in the cloud for its customers?

Approver: Atlassian Management

Contributors:

• The proposer
• Atlassian's software development team
• Atlassian's marketing team
• Atlassian's customer support team

Informed:

• Atlassian's finance team
• Atlassian's legal team

Criteria:

• Cost-effectiveness of proposed solutions
• Impact on customer satisfaction
• Technical feasibility of proposed solutions
• Legal compliance
• Financial impact

Decision: After careful consideration of the proposed solutions and criteria, Atlassian Management [ should approve | approves ] the implementation of the following solutions:

• Group-based add-on access
• Limited add-on license costs
• An administrative dashboard to analyze add-on usage

Rationale: These solutions will add value for customers by reducing costs resulting from increased plugin prices and make it easier to adopt new add-ons and identify their value. Furthermore, these solutions align with Atlassian's commitment to providing exceptional customer service and innovative software solutions.

TLDR Version

To add value for its customers by minimizing costs resulting from increased plugin prices in the Cloud, Atlassian should consider three solutions:

1. group-based add-on access,
2. limited add-on license costs, and
3. an administrative dashboard to analyze add-on usage.

Atlassian's current add-on pricing model and lack of usage analysis tools make it difficult to adopt new add-ons and identify their value. Atlassian should modify the add-on portion of their pricing model and provide administrative users with the necessary tools to continue advocating for this ecosystem/platform.

Longer Version

I, too, am very interested in minimizing cost.  WHY?  With the move from Server to Cloud, many of the plugins have increased their prices (on the order of 10-fold increases).  What used to cost $600/year is now costing me $250/month.  To address this situation, I see three key ingredients that Atlassian MUST consider:

1. The ability to assign add-on access for particular groups, akin to assigning Atlassian application access via the groups/users administrative interface.
2. Add-on license costs (naturally) being limited to the number of users who actually have permission to use those add-ons.
3. Creation of an administrative dashboard that helps users like me see some analysis of add-on usage by groups and users, across the entire system, and per space/project, etc.  Why do I want to see this analysis?
   1. To determine if add-ons provided in response to users' request are actually being utilized by anyone AT ALL.
   2. To determine if valuable add-ons have been adopted by the requesting team's members, and/or by others in the organization.  This data would facilitate better communication of add-on features and benefits through onboarding and supportive educational outreach.
   3. To identify if/when particular add-on costs should be most appropriately charged/billed to a particular project/client/etc., or if it is more appropriate for all add-on usage to be attributed to overhead.  (Note: Any opportunity to distribute costs for Jira systems (including add-on costs) makes Atlassian's offerings appear more affordable to the company.  Not doing this makes it appear that Atlassian is growing exceedingly expensive ... not necessarily the case.  Point is: NOT HAVING THIS INFORMATION IS GOOD FOR ADD-ON CREATORS, AND VERY BAD FOR YOUR SALES/RETENTION EFFORTS.)

If there are other ways of accomplishing the needed analyses, I'm certainly open to comments from the community.  Regardless, let the following key points not be lost ...

• Atlassian's blanket model of passing-through costs for add-ons for ALL user seats prevents the adoption of more add-ons.  Group-based add-on access is the answer.
• Atlassian's failure to provide tools for analyzing usage of add-ons (particularly pricey ones) creates an unnecessary administrative burden for people like me, and feeds my reluctance to consider any new plugins. 
  Put another way: Inability to analyze costs undermines Marketplace success by obscuring add-on value identification.  The resulting ignorance encourages the adoption of a blanket policy forbidding ANY new plugins from being adopted.  

Please, please, 1) change the model for pricing add-ons in the cloud, and 2) give me the tools I need to continue being an Atlassian advocate.

See Also: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFCLOUD-39235

This is really frustrating that we need to buy unnecessary license just to match with number of licenses for base Jira user licenses. Atlassian need to act fast to match with the features provided by other competitors. 

Please let us know how many votes really need to bring it as a priority feature and  become part of roadmap.  

We have steered away from potentially useful plugins as they would only have been viable for a handful of users - licensing for a medium sized company is cost prohibitive.

Likely we would be spending more on plugins if we were able to target specific users - as justification for the cost could be made on a user by user basis.

.... just good business model for Jira Bad for us. 

+1, because it would make a lot of sense to target add-on purchase/license only for a group of users who need it in a company.

I have been on this thread for quite some time and see that this post is even older than that.

I do believe that this is a case of intent that @Jira does not want to focus on this query as they may have some commercial implications.

this seems way more a policy issue than to be a technical issue.

@Jira team : Would recommend to call out clearly what is it that you guys intend to do with this. so that all can plan accordingly

When I speak to my customers, they ask why we need to buy test-related addon for developers and other stakeholders. They started feeling that TFS, Polarion and other tool have better support that JIRA. At least now, Jira needs to think about the addon licensing differently. 

+1

+1

+1
The fact that this isn't possible yet is extremely vexing.

+100

Shame, that's what happens when someone has a lot of $$ and wants more and more.

+1

+1

+1

I might be wrong here, but I don't believe it will happen, at least not in the near future. Reasons behind it:

1. There is no competition that would be close to Jira capabilities. Sad, but true, and if you know any, please, share.
2. There are large corps who probably is OK with this pricing model. Maybe cases are different than mentioned here, instead of 2/500 users using plugin is more like 200/500 users, and they tolerate it.
3. As mentioned in previous comment - 6 years with 0 response from Jira.
4. There was a topic regarding Archiving feature. Jira heard it (at last), they made it ... a PREMIUM feature . This was done not so long ago, and this one, at least for me, killed any hope regarding addons pricing.

WHY IS THIS TAKING SO LONG ATLASSIAN????  THIS HAS BEEN OPEN FOR NEARLY 7 YEARS!!  IF WE TOOK THIS LONG FOR OUR CUSTOMERS WE WOULDN'T HAVE ANY!!!

YES, THIS IS PURPOSEFULLY IN BOLD, UNDERLINED AND IN CAPITAL LETTERS!!!  DOES THAT HELP TO GET THE ATTENTION THIS NEEDS NEARLY 7 YEARS LATER???  

For the record, I left a suggestion/comment 1 year ago:

I could not agree more.  We are considered SMB and each time I add a plug in I am paying for the entire org when there are often only a few that use the capability.  Some on the other hand are user based subscriptions.  I am struggling to understand:

1. Why this is not a standard across the board, i.e. leverage permissions/roles for access to features and plug-ins         **

1. Why this has been open for 5 years and no action!  What is the threshold for reviewing and updating the interested customers?                                                                                                        

1. Assuming the above is certain number of votes/comments, etc., are the totals in the linked tickets appended and who does a search in the DB to link similar tickets so they too can be included?

Atlassian has developed some great tools, however the competition is becoming stronger and unless this is considered, I feel we too will have to look at a secure, scalable and affordable alternative.

Looking forward to the timely response from @Atlassian 

Hi All I think we are all upvoting the wrong story.

please vote on this for the feature to be considered

https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRACLOUD-78940

this is indeed Useless. we have a permission scheme to enable for a user or disable.. atleast the license can be added as a product, the way an admin gives access to an Atlassian product like a JIRA/Confluence/TRELLO etc

This is nonsense.  We are evaluating test management addons on jira for our development team. (around 20 test engineers) but have to pay for 600+ users? this needs to change.