Issues-Only Users

We would like to see the ability to add issues-only users to GitLab EE Premium that do not count against licenses. Alternatively, paying a lower rate for issues-only users would be a good option. We wish to be users of the Premium product at $199/year but couldn't possibly afford this for all the employees in our startup (especially since we have to pay up front for a whole year).

It would be great if there was some way that the employees in the other departments in our company (90% of them) could create issues and see where they stand. Right now, our only options are to downgrade to an EE starter license and lose the functionality in Premium, or have some kind of external issue tracker.

I'm aware that service desk allows users to create issues via email and see updates, but it gives them no visibility into where in the backlog the issue exists, and thus when it might be complete.

We are currently considering building a standalone read-only issue board for our external team members, but it seems like this is a very common use case and something that GitLab could or should make possible.