You pay 200 employees but don't want to spend $19/user/month on software for a company hub? That's not really a small company, and this seems like a budgeting problem if money is that tight.
You can also try running multiple installations with a separate dev-only instance with more features. Also have you tried contacting Gitlab to negotiate? A few emails can go a long way.
I would say 200 employees is fairly small company; and depending on the line of business it is certainly small enough that profit margins and thus spending may need to be closely watched.
If you consider that the OP has only 10 out of 200 users that need the advanced features, but has to purchase the advanced features for all 200 users for anyone to use those features that is $45,600 a year.
Now if it were possible for example to have a mixed licensing model; buy 10 Premium licenses for the users who need it and 190 Starter licenses for everyone else then that is $11,400 a year. That is a difference of $34,200 a year so it may be the difference between being able to hire another employee or not.
As stated, they can run separate instances, or spend 5 minutes contacting GitLab to negotiate.
200 employees is not small, that is considered a medium sized business. Millions of companies around the world never get past single-digits. With payroll extending into 10s of millions, $35k sounds rather trivial if it really is powering the company hub and the value that brings.
"200 employees is not small, that is considered a medium sized business"
I'm just curious what your basis for that is? To go with some kind of standardization on the term "small business" I would say the safest definition (within the US) would be to follow the SBA guidelines that define a small business. Depending on the industry a small business is defined by the SBA as a maximum of anywhere from 100 to 1500 employees. So it is not cut and dry that this is or is not a small business; industry and also potentially revenues in millions of dollars would need to be known to determine absolutely if it by definition a small business.
You can also try running multiple installations with a separate dev-only instance with more features. Also have you tried contacting Gitlab to negotiate? A few emails can go a long way.