@DustinB Been using it since 2012, non-profits fell under the academic tier and it was originally by number of cpu which was 2 cpu per host, under 192G ram but again didnt include vmotion etc, just plain ole esxi why I used Veeam since it brought replication into the mix again still using them at a very low cost. They had essentials and essentials plus and the academic pricing was very low, my understanding is they would rather you use VMware vs something else. Again I have receipts going back to 2012, pretty much same price for all these years until Broadcom entered the picture. There was nothing sus about it, you had to verify your non-profit category and fit within the limts, it was pretty standard pricing for a low number of cores, I could go to CDW or any reseller and get the same pricing. Why you have so many small companies jumping ship many were using vmware essentials which was WAY cheaper then what they are doing now which the only option is Standard and it now requires min of 16 cores per host @$50/core. That is the new and wonderful world of Broadcom...
Anyway, this was pretty common stuff under VMware, why so many folks were using it, even the small shops.
