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Ask HN: Fully-managed GitHub alternative on a custom domain?

6 points by Seb-C ↗ HN
I am looking for a fully managed GitHub alternative that I could use on my own domain, but without having to handle or maintain any server (full-saas).

I looked at GitLab and would gladly pay to support it, but even in the paid plans it does not seem possible to use a custom domain, the repositories are always on `gitlab.com/example` rather than `gitlab.example.com`.

11 comments

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bizzleDawg
There are self-hosting services such as https://gitlabhost.com/ for gitlab which can host you a private instance on a (sub)domain as a SaaS.
Seb-C
Thanks. That's the only one I found as well, but that's very expensive.
cpach
Many SaaS pricing plans are quite expensive IMHO, probably because they cater to US companies.

Just out of curiosity, may I ask why you want your own domain for this specific purpose? For SEO juice…?

Seb-C
I only want to avoid the vendor lock-in that means being in someone else's domain. I don't need any more features than standard github or gitlab actually.
brudgers
The prices look sustainable to me. If you take a dependency on an external service, you probably want that service to stay in business. Which a service competing with zero dollar pricing can't do.

Either your problem is worth a few hundred dollars a month or it isn't. That's not a pricing problem. The vendor is segmenting the market and focusing on segments where there is a business case.

Seb-C
> Either your problem is worth a few hundred dollars a month or it isn't.

That is totally wrong.

Github's plans starts at $0, $4 and $21 dollars per month.

Gitlab's plans start at $0 and $21 per month.

Bitbucket's plans starts at $0, $3 and $6 per month.

So yes, a plan starting at $80 is expensive.

I don't need any more feature than those services, I just want to support the right company and don't want to be one someone else's domain.

I've developed multi-tenant/multi-domain myself on saas applications and it's not a big deal, so I find it surprising that no company provides this. 20 years ago this kind of thing was already possible with saas-hosted applications (PHPBB forums for example...)

And I'm not a company, It's for an open source project.

brudgers
You’re not in a market segment the company is pursuing. Avoiding price sensitive customers is a good business sense. They would need to support twenty $4 customers for the same revenue as one $80 customer. Their overhead would be higher. And profits lower.

There are good reasons not to take on customers for whom a thousand dollars a year is a deal breaker. Among them is it favors B2B relationships over B2C.

GitHub had free plans. There’s no point competing with that.

pestatije
Excuse my ignorance, but wouldn't a proxy do this?
cpach
I don’t think that would work. SameSite cookie attributes and stuff like that would get in the way.
tg22
You have self-hosted Gitlab and you can place it wherever you want