ex-GitLabber here, and yes this is a pretty common scenario. GitLab as a product is pretty good, however GitLab Inc, is not great at supporting the broader community especially the SMB-Mid tier self-hosted users. (If you're big enterprise you'll get white glove support)

It's a bummer because they had so much potential to dethrone GitHub a few years ago but really missed the opportunity to position themselves as a viable alternative. That said I still use gitlab.com for my personal projects over anything owned by Microsoft.