This page is heavily out of date due to both Github and Bitbucket changing their pricing structure. It still offers free private and public repositories as of June 2017. I now use Gitlab for private repo’s.
So I have decided to trial Bitbucket [bitbucket.org] for my private source code repositories as it provides upto 5 users with unlimited public and private repos. For now at least I will be leaving my public repo’s on github [github.com]
There are some great bitbucket features which github lacks at the moment (Or in my opinion it lacks). These include (And people please correct me if I am wrong here - they may be well buried options on github)
- The ability to CNAME a DNS record to your bitbucket repo
- Project options seem better tied in to a business environment
- No public forks an option for teams
- Username Aliases (Covering for instance my preferred and works email)
- Up to 5 users for free in teams
Yes Github’s frontend is superior to that of Bitbucket - especially some of the fancy graph and results tools. And yes the community ethos is larger on github (As an awful lot of people use it) but at present I am trialling github for public stuff and bitbucket for corporate/private - I am not abandoning github - that would be foolish.
Github’s $12 a month for a small plan (10 private repos) is really good value - but I would rather pay per user than per repo. I have a lot of repos and not many collaborators) The “team” option Bronze package at $25 per month is slightly less valuable to me (Other than it gives my “company” and my “personal” account identities without having to sign in/out of Github all the time) but I figured on Bitbucket as it’s free (Up to 5 users) it’s a good value option to have - especially as my client base grows (I hope…)
The other thing I prefer about github is the service hooks are a lot more complete on github too. For instance I use redmine.org (Although I am looking at the forked chilliproject too) for my sourcecode issue tracking but I like the ability to have “reserved” areas for my clients where I can share docs, comments roadmaps etc without them necessarily needing a github account (Git is beyond most of my clients). Yes I could use a third party services for this such as basecamp [basecamp.com] or an Atlassian stack [atlassian.com] - but Redmine gives me everything I want for free. Altassian is really good value up to 10 users - but sadly $1200 is beyond my budget for software (Per piece - 2 or 3 pieces are required for a redmine like experience) And basecamp is cost per project - again I would rather a per user charge due to my more limited user numbers over project numbers.
So the above is a (slightly confusing I admit) look at why I am trialling Bitbucket. The Pro’s of github for public stuff (In my opinion) outweigh that of bitbucket - BUT the more corporate orientated private nature of bitbucket suits where I am now for private stuff (And saves me having to host and secure a gitweb installation) I will let you know how I get on :-) Comments welcome, as always.