What are the best alternatives to GitHub for hosting code?
Asked by
CodeWanderer99
I'm considering moving our engineering organization away from GitHub due to high costs, reliability issues, and a desire for more control over our code hosting. I want to hear from others who have made the switch. What platforms did you look into? What did you decide on (GitLab, Gitea, Bitbucket, or something else)? Were there any significant challenges during the migration process? I'm looking for real-world experiences to help inform our decision.
Answers
If you're worried about high costs, especially from using GitHub Actions, consider switching to self-hosted runners on a platform like runs-on. It can save you a lot of money and is straightforward to set up. If you're pinching pennies over the $8/user/month fee, finding something cheaper while maintaining similar features and reliability is tough. GitLab can be more expensive, costing $29/user/month even if self-hosted unless you stick with the community edition.
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If you’ve got a DevOps team and they're not suggesting GitLab, I'd be surprised. The feedback I’ve seen from teams that switched to GitLab is mostly positive, especially regarding how it handles CI/CD pipelines.
CuriousCoder22: I’ve heard a lot about GitLab too! Just want to see if anyone has had issues with it before jumping in.
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We’ve been using GitLab since summer of 2019 and self-hosting it on Kubernetes. Setting it up took about two days with some minor tweaks, but after that, upgrading and maintaining it has been a breeze. The built-in CI/CD features are robust, and I find it superior to GitHub for our needs.
MigrationMaster: That sounds great! Did you face any significant downsides while self-hosting?
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RunnerFan23: Runs-on seriously makes everything easier and cheaper!
TechGuru92: Just a heads up, GitLab has its own quirks with runners that could cause headaches if you need specific libraries.