NetBox User Survey Results

[Jeremy Stretch]

The 2017 NetBox User Survey has concluded with 280 responses! This is the first real look we've gotten at NetBox's user base, and I appreciate everyone who took the time to respond. Here are the results.



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Commercial enterprises comprise the majority of the user base, which isn't surprising, though we've got some healthy representation among non-profits, government, and education as well.



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DCIM and IPAM are of course NetBox's bread and butter. Nearly half of users utilize the tenancy feature. Not many people use secrets, which is understandable. Decrypting secrets should be a bit more user-friendly in the v2.0 release.



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I was a bit surprised that one in five people routinely use the admin UI for functions that are available on the front end. Whether this is out of habit or convenience I'm not sure, but the redundant portions of the admin UI are being removed in v2.0 in the interest of consistency.



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A writable API has long been NetBox's most requested feature. Fortunately, v2.0 is right around the corner, and the first beta is already out if you want to kick the tires.



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Most people are reasonably satisfied with the pace of releases. I suspect that the 14% of users who want more frequent releases are anticipating a particular feature or two.



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There's a pretty even split between users who prefer to download release packages and those who prefer to follow the main branch. The "other" slice is likely people who run NetBox in a container.



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Clearly I haven't done a great job of publicizing the mailing list, but it's growing. We're up to nearly 200 members now!



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The GitHub issues are pretty active even with well under half of the user base represented.

If you could make one change or addition to NetBox, what would it be?

The responses to this question varied widely, although a writable API was the most common (with 25 mentions), as expected. The good news is that virtually every requested feature has already been catalogued in the form of a GitHub issue.

Do you have any other feedback for the development team?

Responses to the final question were overwhelmingly positive and appreciative. Thank you! A few people lamented that I can be quick to dismiss new feature requests, and I agree. But I also maintain that we must limit scope and defer cosmetic improvements until the backlog of higher priority enhancements has been addressed. (And with over 70 feature requests currently open, that's going to take some time.)

Many thanks to everyone who provided feedback! I'm very excited to see how NetBox v2.0 progresses!

Jeremy