Ahh, i feel like this is probably the case for most of the corporation backed software out there - apparently offering just support isn't always a viable strategy to remain in business, so many out there lock bits of more advanced functionality behind pay walls: like many of the features of GitLab (https://about.gitlab.com/pricing/gitlab-com/feature-comparis...) and something like Artifactory (https://www.jfrog.com/confluence/display/JFROG/Artifactory+C...)

I'm not sure whether that's a bad thing, though, since the alternative would be having no free plans/editions for those pieces of software at all, or maybe just using them for a few years and the company going bankrupt.

Thanks for chiming in. Any chance that you tried an older, pre-v1.0 version? I used to share some of your considerations, but lately I've seen Nomad evolve at a quicker pace and catch up with some of the features I wanted/liked (ex.: readiness checks were introduced in May 2021 with v1.1, going by the changelog).

As others have already said and basing on the official docs (https://www.nomadproject.io/docs/enterprise), the few Enterprise-only features left don't really feel necessary to me for small-medium deployments; especially when there's an Ops team that can oversee things anyway.

Not trying to play the devil's advocate here, I'm genuinely interested in what I might be missing with my current approach.