FAQ

essesseff is a self-service DevOps platform that provides RBACed GitOps- and ClickOps-driven Application Lifecycle Management.

It enables teams to build, deploy, and promote applications through a trunk-based GitOps workflow with full visibility and audit trails.

essesseff integrates with GitHub and Argo CD, giving you complete control over your code, configuration, and infrastructure with zero vendor lock-in.

1. Source repository
2. Configuration repositories:
   • config-dev
   • config-qa
   • config-staging
   • config-prod
3. Argo CD repositories:
   • argocd-dev
   • argocd-qa
   • argocd-staging
   • argocd-prod

It depends. If your account is intended to be "Read-Only", then no. Otherwise, yes, essesseff requires a GitHub account.

You'll need to link your GitHub account to your essesseff account, and you'll need a GitHub organization to create apps.

essesseff uses GitHub for source code management, GitHub Actions for builds, and GitHub Container Registry (GHCR) for storing container images.

Each essesseff app license includes:

• One complete essesseff application with 9 repositories (source + 4 config repos + 4 argocd-env repos)
• Unlimited team members and deployments
• Full RBACed GitOps- and ClickOps-driven DevOps Application Lifecycle Management
• Self-service onboarding and operations
• Complete visibility and audit trail of builds, deployments, and promotions
• Integration with GitHub and Argo CD
• Zero vendor lock-in - you own your code, config, and infrastructure

essesseff uses a simple per-app subscription model.

Currently, we offer the Single App Bundle (x1app) with monthly ($100/month) or yearly ($1,100/year) billing options.

Each license covers one complete application with all 9 repositories.

You can have unlimited team members and deployments per app license.

Also, when an essesseff app is removed from essesseff, its license can be re-used on another essesseff app.

Yes, you can cancel your subscription at any time from your account settings.

Since you own your code, configuration, and infrastructure (GitHub repositories, GitHub Actions, GHCR images, Argo CD, and Kubernetes), there's no vendor lock-in.

When you cancel, you retain full access to and control over all of your resources.

Yes, essesseff requires you to have your own Kubernetes cluster and Argo CD installation (essesseff app templates -- many of which are free to use -- provide extensive documentation on how to install/configure Argo CD from essesseff app repositories).

essesseff manages the GitOps configuration and deployment pipelines, but you maintain full control over your infrastructure. This ensures zero vendor lock-in and gives you complete ownership of your deployment platform.

Personal accounts are for individual users. Team accounts allow multiple users to collaborate on apps, organizations, and deployments. Team accounts support role-based access control (RBAC) with the following roles:

• Account Admin (owner)
• DevOps Engineer
• Developer
• QA Engineer
• Release Engineer
• Read-Only User

1. Sign up for an essesseff account and link your GitHub account
2. Create or join a team account
3. Add a subscription to your team account
4. Create a GitHub organization (or use an existing one)
5. Create your first essesseff app
6. essesseff will automatically set up the 9 repositories and configure the GitOps pipeline
7. essesseff app template(s) provide OOTB functioning app image builds, and detailed information on how to configure Argo CD in your K8s cluster(s)

Nothing changes - you keep everything. Since essesseff uses your own GitHub repositories, GitHub Actions, GitHub Container Registry, Argo CD, and Kubernetes infrastructure, all your code, configurations, images, and deployments remain fully under your control. essesseff simply stops managing the GitOps configuration updates and build/deployment history, and you obviously lose access to the essesseff UX (for centrally managing team members and roles, efficiently managing life cycle of essesseff apps as logical constructs, for code promotion/re-deploy/rollback, etc.), but you can continue using all your code/config/infra resources independently if you choose.

When you create a new essesseff app, essesseff creates 9 new repositories for you. If you have existing code, you can push it to the source repository that essesseff creates. The image build version in the Chart.yaml and values.yaml of the configuration repositories is managed by essesseff to maintain the GitOps workflow structure, but otherwise you are free to use and extend your Helm charts/overrides/etc.

Yes, essesseff's opinionated trunk-based GitOps architecture supports multiple environments (DEV, QA, STAGING and PROD) through the configuration repositories:

• config-dev
• config-qa
• config-staging
• config-prod

You can find your invoices in your team account's billing settings. Navigate to your team account, then go to the Billing section to view and download your invoices.

We accept all major credit cards, Paypal, etc. through our payment processor, Stripe. Payment is processed securely and automatically for recurring subscriptions.

Currently, essesseff offers the Single App Bundle (x1app) subscription plan. If you need more apps, you can purchase additional app licenses in bundled quantities of your choosing. Subscribed to licenses are pooled together, and app licenses are applied in a first-in-last-out (FILO) manner. Plan changes can be made from your team account's billing settings.

We're happy to discuss custom pricing for non-profits and educational institutions. Please get in touch through the contact page.

1. Your code lives in your GitHub repositories
2. Your builds run in your GitHub Actions workflows
3. Your container images are stored in your GitHub Container Registry
4. Your deployments are managed by your Argo CD installation
5. Your applications run on your Kubernetes cluster
6. essesseff provides its opinionated DevOps ALM platform to coordinate and manage all of the aforementioned systems
7. You can stop using essesseff at any time and continue with your existing infrastructure, code, and configurations

1. Account Admin (owner)
   • Full account control
   • Billing management
   • User and role management
   • As well as all permissions of all other roles
2. DevOps Engineer
   • DevOps operations
   • Organization and repository management
   • User management
3. Developer
   • Write access to development repositories
   • Create pull requests
   • Full GitOps-driven CI/CD to development environment
   • Declare release candidates
4. QA Engineer
   • Write access to QA repositories
   • Acceptance (promotion) or rejection of declared release candidates
   • Declaration of release candidates as stable or rejected
   • Testing and quality assurance
5. Release Engineer
   • Release management and deployment coordination of releases declared stable by QA to staging and production deployment targets
6. Read-Only User (member)
   • View-only access to account resources

1. Captures the push event and creates an image record
2. Monitors the GitHub Actions workflow run for build status
3. Tracks when the container image is published to GitHub Container Registry
4. Upon successful image build completion, essesseff automatically deploys the image and config-dev settings to the development environment
5. Subsequently:
   • Developers may then propose an image deployed to DEV be promoted to QA by declaring it a release candidate
   • QA Engineers may accept or reject release candidates
   • If accepted by QA, a release candidate image is automatically deployed to the QA environment with config-qa settings
   • QA may still reject a release candidate or declare it stable
   • If declared stable by QA, a stable release image may then be deployed to staging and/or production environment(s) by a Release Engineer with the corresponding config-staging or config-prod settings
6. essesseff provides full audit trail of who built, deployed, and promoted what, when, and where across the entire image lifecycle

Provided you either use a similarly configured "app-of-apps" implementation of Argo CD on your K8s cluster(s), yes, essesseff should work with your existing Argo CD installation. essesseff manages the image version in the Chart.yaml and values.yaml files of the GitOps configuration repositories (config-dev, config-qa, config-staging, config-prod) and Argo CD repositories (argocd-dev, argocd-qa, argocd-staging, argocd-prod) that Argo CD monitors. When you promote applications in essesseff, it updates these repositories, which triggers Argo CD to deploy to your Kubernetes cluster(s).