Docker Inc. updated and extended its product subscriptions, including a new high-end subscription tier for larger companies and an updated pricing structure. The move comes a year after the vendor made a similar change to its core Docker Hub feature that garnered considerable industry attention.

The new tier, Docker Business, is designed for central management of Docker development environments at scale. It “gives a centralized software-as-a-service-based management plane with content restrictions and access control,” Jeremy Castile, senior director of product marketing at Docker Inc., told SDxCentral in an interview.

Docker Inc.’s business tier “has that extra layer of enterprise expectations for management and security and compliance that doesn't get in the way of a developer,” Castile said. This tier helps developers avoid accidental security exposure to container images and also provides an organization with better insight into how their teams are building applications, he added.

One of those new security features is Docker Image Access Manager, which is not included in Docker Inc.’s other subscription options. When activated, the tool improves security by limiting which container images developers can pull.

This feature helps organizations “gain more control by configuring Docker Hub organizations to only allow limited subsets of images” such as Docker-verified images, Castile explained. “This is a big key feature that customers have been asking [for],” he added.

Castile said there will be more features arriving to Docker Business in the future, including single sign on (SSO) and remote management for Docker Desktop.

Docker Business is designed for organizations with at least 50 users, and pricing begins at $21 for each user per month.

At the other end of the tier, Docker Free has been renamed Docker Personal, though it remains free of charge for individuals, educational purposes, non-commercial open-source projects, and small businesses with fewer than 250 employees and less than $10 million in annual revenue. Docker Personal still includes free use of all Docker components, including Docker Desktop.

The mid-range Docker Pro and Docker Team subscriptions now include commercial use for Docker Desktop. Docker Pro is one step above Docker Personal and targeted at individual developers. Pricing for this tier begins at $5 per month and is limited to one user. The Docker Team subscription tier is designed for teams of at least five developers and costs $7 for each user per month.

Docker Inc. also announced updated guidelines to qualify for use of its Docker Desktop platform through the free Docker Personal subscription, along with a grace period before these updates are implemented. 

Small businesses with fewer than 250 employees earning under $10 million in revenue qualify to use Docker Desktop free of charge. Businesses with more than 250 employees or more than $10 million in revenue will now require a paid Docker subscription at the Pro, Team, or Business tier.

The vendor is extending a grace period for new and existing users until Jan. 31, 2022, before enforcing the pricing change. 

The updated terms “reflect our need to scale our business sustainably and enable us to continue shipping new value in all Docker subscriptions,” Docker Inc. CEO Scott Johnston wrote in a statement on the pricing moves.

Johnston used the term "sustainability" last year when the vendor made the controversial move to introduce rate limiting on image pulls from Docker Hub for anonymous and free authenticated customers. In touting that move, Johnston said the vendor needed to be focused on providing a sustainable business model.

“And that, based on economic realities, is not sustainable, particularly when not only do we have tens of millions of developers today, but we expect tens of millions of more developers tomorrow to be joining us,” Johnston explained at the time.

The move drove Amazon Web Services (AWS) to launch its Amazon Elastic Container Registry Public (ECR Public), positing itself as a competitor to Docker Hub.

Docker Inc. marketing VP Matt Carter told SDxCentral in an interview that AWS' launch showed the value of Docker Inc.'s products. “I think [ECR Public has] validated what we're doing in terms of container-based delivery, the importance of images, and so forth,” he said. 

Carter did note that Docker’s verified images set it apart from a competitor like ECR Public. “The Docker-trusted content we've been investing in gives people that security and that confidence they need [to build applications], especially right now," he explained.

Carter also noted that the grace period was "absolutely" a result of the impact of the vendor's last move. “We trust our customers to do the right thing, and we don't want to be disruptive and have something that's working get turned off” as a result of non-compliance with rate limiting guidelines, Carter said.