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Ask HN: GitHub vs Bitbucket

14 points by gurgeous ↗ HN
At the moment my company is dead in the water due to yet another GitHub outage. They seem to hit weekly now. I'm considering switching to another provider today.

How does Bitbucket stack up in terms of reliability? Features are sort of irrelevant compared to recurring downtime.

20 comments

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VMG
Are you just looking for git repository hosting or also issue tracking plus wiki? The former is much cheaper than the latter.
WestCoastJustin
Why not use git, gitolite, and gitweb on your internal network?
selectnull
One good (and for me the most important) reason is not wanting to support/manage/upgrade a server.
iframe
gitweb seems good, I'm gonna try it.
luser001
It's very easy to install under Ubuntu.
mgamer
BitBucket is an Atlassian product, I believe in Atlassian quality and recommend BitBucket will all my heart, its super realiable and also very cheap.
[dead] taligent
Please. Everyone who actually use most Atlassian's products know that they are some of the buggiest, slowest apps around. I mean why does a Wiki need 1.5G of RAM in order to work optimally ?
padseeker
As a bitbucket user I can say that I've been using it for about 14 months and I can only recall one outage. But take that info with a grain of salt.

It may not be github's software as much as they are the number 1 git hosting service and therefore they are the biggest target for hackers.

I might be talking out of my ass here but it feels a bit like the argument for using Apple versus MS, i.e. there are no viruses for Macs since they are more secure... until Apple grew in popularity, which then attracted more hackers to write viruses for Apple's OS, which showed that it is was not invulnerable.

I doubt Bitbucket will supplant Github as the goto git hosting service, but if they grow they might be subject to more attacks? Just a thought to consider.

jacobsimeon
How does a github outtage cause you to go 'dead in the water'. You're still using git. If you need to share code among devs, you could always use git-daemon[1].

[1]: http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-daemon.h...

procyon
agree. We heavily rely on Github as well but we have managed to get around the outages.

However, we have moved to bitbucket recently b.c their pricing was better suited for us.

xauronx
Personally I love Bitbucket. Unfortunately you'll get scoffed at by the "true nerds" for using such a second rate product (aka less trendy). Their new UI is really awesome and you really can't beat the price (free).
bbissoon
BitBucket is awesome. I've used it for months and I've had no issues at all. Great new UI as well!
bogs
If you want fit hosting I recommend getting a 1GB VIPs and installing Gitlabhq. Try it out it is awesome using it for personal stuff.
shared4you
I've been using BitBucket for the past 3.5 years, can't remember having a problem even once.
sergiotapia
I prefer BitBucket because it's not as expensive and really really solid. Not one problem in over 3 years using it.
ing33k
I use Bitbucket for private repos and Github for public repos, Isn't Github more social .
kingofspain
From personal experience, in 2 years on Bitbucket I can remember one unscheduled outage and that was only a few minutes IIRC. This from daily use at UK time.

And to echo xauronx, the new UI really is great and pretty much did for my Github envy.

ishbits
If you want to use BitBucket, but still get the exposure of GitHub, its relatively easy to setup an hourly sync.

Just turn off the wiki and issue tracker at GitHub, and link to the BitBucket ones in your README or something like that.

trebor
I use Github professionally, and for my open source projects. The visibility of a project on Github is hard to beat, and is often found just because it's on Github. Outages usually come on the front-end, and often I've been able to push to Github within minutes of finding an outage. That said, we're a small company with almost no remote collaboration on a given project, so outage doesn't affect us much.

However, for my serious, closed-source projects (that I might want to become products) I use Bitbucket. So far I've experienced no outages.

Goranek
Github for open source project Bitbucket for private usage