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Why GitHub’s pricing model stinks (for us)

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Re: Why GitHub’s pricing model stinks (for us)

#11

Post by Argorak »

molf wrote: post #8

Agreed, Github does not make sense for small consulting companies. We have hundreds of repositories (way more than the Github top plan) and only 10 employees. We have been hosting our own git server (previously Gitorious and now Gitlab) and haven't looked back. Way more economic than Github enterprise. I guess these days Bitbucket or hosted Gitlab would also be a reasonable alternative.

We solved that by having the client decide on the code hosting. If the client decides for Github, he is expected to create an Organization and pay for the private repos he uses.

Re: Why GitHub’s pricing model stinks (for us)

#13

Post by nicholassmith »

It might stink for you, but if you put it down in rational terms it's not actually much. If you start with a Micro it's costing you $5 a month, which (without knowing how much you charge per contract) is probably about 10 minutes work on one contract. 10 minutes of work for all the GitHub goodies.

We all want things to be cheaper, but sometimes you need to rationalise things off and realise whilst they emotionally look expensive, they're actually really not when you work out what the cost is to you in terms of work to cover it.

Put it this way, if you go to BitBucket (they're great as well! Highly recommended!) you'll save money, but lose the headline features of GH. For you this may or may not be a big problem. If you go down the self-hosted route (super valid!) then you've got a specific amount of admin time that needs to be put in per month by either a dev or sysadmin and that's more than likely to either cost the as much or more than GHs pricing.

Pricing is hard, but GitHub is pricing where GitHub needs it's prices to be.

Re: Why GitHub’s pricing model stinks (for us)

#14

Post by sgentle »

I agree and I wish I'd written this article myself. One of the great things about git compared to the version control systems of yesteryear is that it's lightweight enough and (with Github) discoverable enough to make many small repos a viable development pattern. I never liked the old giant-repo-for-all-the-code system, although I understand it's still popular at Google and many other large shops.

I think what really rankles is that it fires up my developer edge-case sense. Wait, so you mean I can have one repository of 100MB, but if I have two of 50MB that costs more? Bits are bits, so why are you punishing one particular factoring of my data vs another? That's like charging for S3 per top-level directory, or for iTunes by album. I feel like charging per repository makes you feel bad about making more repositories, which can often lead to feeling bad about good decisions.

Also, realistically, a cost per developer is so miniscule compared to the overall cost of that developer. The proportional cost per project is much higher, particularly if it's some skunkworks side-project and you're the one trying to explain why you should double how much you're paying github so that you can have a live coffee consumption dashboard for the break room.

It might be irrational, but it's the truth - we associate costs together in buckets, and Github is associating itself with the wrong bucket.

Re: Why GitHub’s pricing model stinks (for us)

#15

Post by cdavid »

TamDenholm wrote: post #3

I think the reason its priced like that is its far more profitable than any other way. Developers like loads of repo's for their many side projects etc. Just a note though, if you're a consulting company and cant afford $200 a month for the 125 repo's, you should be charging more.

200 $ / month is indeed nothing. The problem is when you need more. Arguably, github enterprise follows exactly the model of price per collaborator.

Re: Why GitHub’s pricing model stinks (for us)

#16

Post by d0m »

nicholassmith wrote: post #13

It might stink for you, but if you put it down in rational terms it's not actually much. If you start with a Micro it's costing you $5 a month, which (without knowing how much you charge per contract) is probably about 10 minutes work on one contract. 10 minutes of work for all the GitHub goodies. We all want things to be cheaper, but sometimes you need to rationalise things off and realise whilst they emotionally lo…

Or the client can pay for it. I.e. add x$/mo to the maintenance cost for "code hosting" or whatever.

Re: Why GitHub’s pricing model stinks (for us)

#17

Post by sytse »

mcintyre1994 wrote: post #9
sytse wrote: post #5

Disclosure: I'm a co-founder of GitLab.com I agree that a per seat pricing model is better because it is more predictable and relates to the value a company gets. We plan to use such a model on GitLab.com http://blog.gitlab.com/pricing/ Also, if you self-install GitLab it is completely free (MIT license).

Out of interest, how would you say you compare to BitBucket? Your given plan structures seem to suggest that their pricing structure per user is superior. "A startup with 30 repos and a team of two is completely free." Same with them. "A professional plan with 60 repos and 5 collaborators is $9 per month." 5 collaborators is free with them. "A business plan 150 repos and 10 collaborators is $72 per month." BitBucket…

Thank you for the question.

We want to make sure that the pricing only increases in small steps. If you add one more user you should never go from $25 to $50.

We also have a free issue tracker, you don't have to pay for it. Jira prices are 4 times more expensive than BitBucket prices.

And of course there is the option to go self hosted easily in the future.

What do you think we can improve in the pricing of GitLab.com?

Re: Why GitHub’s pricing model stinks (for us)

#18

Post by nicholassmith »

d0m wrote: post #16
nicholassmith wrote: post #13

It might stink for you, but if you put it down in rational terms it's not actually much. If you start with a Micro it's costing you $5 a month, which (without knowing how much you charge per contract) is probably about 10 minutes work on one contract. 10 minutes of work for all the GitHub goodies. We all want things to be cheaper, but sometimes you need to rationalise things off and realise whilst they emotionally lo…

Or the client can pay for it. I.e. add x$/mo to the maintenance cost for "code hosting" or whatever.

Or that, it is technically a per project expense.

Re: Why GitHub’s pricing model stinks (for us)

#19

Post by RyanZAG »

mcintyre1994 wrote: post #6
diziet wrote: post #2

Github does have per seat pricing (for their enterprise product, which is meant to be hosted locally): https://enterprise.github.com/pricing - it costs $21/seat/month. With their per repo pricing I'd imagine they are more likely to earn more revenue per user, since so many developers will end up having many old pet projects in private repos sitting there.

BitBucket's pricing is at $1/seat/month in the worst case though (assuming you match one of their intervals there). But yep I agree, Github is surely significantly more profitable than BitBucket.

Definitely agreed - I use BitBucket to store some private projects, which also means I don't pay them anything (yet). Seems not terribly profitable - I keep a backup elsewhere assuming Bitbucket will go down eventually from lack of funds!

Re: Why GitHub’s pricing model stinks (for us)

#20

Post by kaolinite »

easytiger wrote: post #4

I really do not get the big deal. Just set up ssh on your own server and voilà... free unlimited repos. sure you miss out on some tools. But what's more important... repo storage/usage/access/privacy or a pretty graph of your commits? Perhaps catting a ssh key to the end of a text file is a bit too much complexity for a company who claim to be selling themselves as expert software solutions developers. And if you do…

Because it's more work to do. Instead of setting that up, you could be working on your product. The company I work for does the same - code is all hosted locally, emails were (until recently) hosted locally, document sharing too. It was cheap but every so often there'd be a problem and it'd go down for 15-30 minutes, which would cost a few £1000 in lost productivity.
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