

Assembla now offers free private Git and SVN Repository Hosting - meroliph
http://blog.assembla.com/assemblablog/tabid/12618/bid/12217/April-14-Repo-Blitz-Free-unlimited-SVN-and-GIT-and-much-more.aspx

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justinchen
I could have sworn their accounts used to be free and then they took away the
free accounts in 2008.
[http://blog.assembla.com/assemblablog/tabid/12618/bid/7019/N...](http://blog.assembla.com/assemblablog/tabid/12618/bid/7019/New-
subscription-plans-Clarification-and-even-better-pricing.aspx)

I remember because we were using assembla for some stuff and then moved away
when they started charging. I guess that move didn't work too well for them.

~~~
ovidiu
This is a good reason not to use assembla ever again. The same thing happened
to me.

~~~
lenart
I "complained" on their blog and got a fair response from their team. Here's
what they said:
[http://blog.assembla.com/assemblablog/tabid/12618/bid/12217/...](http://blog.assembla.com/assemblablog/tabid/12618/bid/12217/April-14-Repo-
Blitz-Free-unlimited-SVN-and-GIT-and-much-more.aspx#comment39418)

To summarize: they didn't have a sustainable business plan and when the costs
got too bit they canceled free service. They say now that they're better
prepared.

Maybe they're worth giving another try?

~~~
Loic
This is why on Indefero I offer only a limited space free account (still with
your own domain). The percentage of people using for free such large offers is
too high. This is because you are dealing with people who know how to
integrate with different services (googlegroups, wikispace, sourceforge, etc.)
and can get a really nice setup for free.

From a business point of view, I definitely prefer to have less visibility but
a higher percentage of paid customers. This allows me to create a product
which is of high quality on the long term because I have money to do so. And
in fact, discussing with my customers, they prefer it that way.

Note that the free offer of Assembla is not free, you get direct advertising
when accessing your space.

But if we do small maths and we consider that Assembla has the incredible 5%
conversion rate from free to paid. This means that on average they will have
for 100 users:

95 x 1GB of "free data" 5 x $49 x 2.5GB of paid data

I take the 50% usage as on the long run it what my personal stats gives me.

So about 100GB of data for $245 per month. As you need a triple backup to be
robust. It means 300GB of data to maintain for $245 per month.

It is possible, but the margin will be razor thin if you want to provide
quality. It is a bold move, I am eager to see how it develops.

~~~
j_baker
On the other hand, you offer an open-source version (which is great by the
way), so it's not really a huge deal if the free version isn't that great.

~~~
Loic
Thanks for the nice comment! You are right, but this is not because of
marketing grounds, this is because I would personally never use a software as
as a service for my code/projects where I cannot move out of it without losing
my data _and_ workflow.

This is another subject, but for a critical part of my business, I want to
always have full control over my data and workflow. By allowing people even
with the free account to have their own domain and a full backup compatible
with the open source (GPL) version, my customers can migrate out without even
having their users noticing the change. This is my idea of freedom for SaaS.

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sh1mmer
This is fairly worrying:

"When you go to create a space, if you do not have your own plan, you will see
a field with the prompt "If another subscriber will pay for this space please,
provide his email or login". Enter the information for the subscriber. We will
assign the new space to the subscriber, and that person will get a note with
the option to decline."

So if I don't check my mail someone could bill me for their spaces because I
didn't give my disapproval. Um, I'm pretty sure I have to explicitly agree to
pay for a service, not disagree to not pay for it.

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elbenshira
All the hippies are using GitHub (me included), but with free private hosting,
I'm going to try Assembla out.

Good move, Assembla.

~~~
andysingleton
I run Assembla, but I will say that Github is a good service, and they do a
better job with code sharing and individual repositories. Assembla is more
oriented toward managing teams. This is not a move to go against Github. We
still offer Github as a repository tool. You can use Assembla ticketing /
collaboration / team management tools, and link them to code commits on
github.

~~~
pjhyett
Thanks for the kind words. GitHub does have an organization/teams feature
currently in beta and should be released publicly within a month or two.

~~~
icefox
Interesting, given that GitHub is several years old and has a huge user base
there must be something right for GitHub to have not needed a teams feature up
until now. Was this a feature that users were asking for or a feature that
when watching users they would very much benefit to have?

~~~
pjhyett
We just turned two and folks have been asking for team support since before we
launched. We've never been in the habit of building features we merely think
people want.

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slig
For 6 usd/month, unlimited git and svn, trac and webdav and automatic backups,
I'm a happy RepositoryHosting (<http://repositoryhosting.com/>) user.

~~~
qeorge
Came here to say this, we also use repository hosting and love them. Can't
beat the price.

Have also used Unfuddle when working with other shops. Its nice too, and has
some Basecamp-esque features if you want something beyond trac.

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mshafrir
Unfuddle has been doing this for a while.

~~~
theBobMcCormick
Unfuddle's free accounts only allow 1 project and 2 users. Which is a bummer,
because I really liked Unfuddle's interface, but I'm not gonna commit to a
monthly service until we actually have revenue. :-(

~~~
pchristensen
Unfuddle does a lot of things really well. $9/mo or $24/mo isn't going to
break the bank.

~~~
theBobMcCormick
They definitely do, and once I _have_ > 9-24 dollars a month in cash flow I
very well will consider paying for their service. :-)

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thehodge
I'd really love to move to Assembla but the packages are a bit strange, starts
40 users and 1 repo? I carn't see many projects having 40 users and only one
project at a time, I did ask if I could sacrifice some users for repo's, we
work with smaller teams so 10 repo's and 10 users but they declined.

The pay as you go is great until you realise you have to pay for each member
of the team and each project, so if I work on two 'spaces' I'm classed as two
separate users... it soon gets expensive

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emehrkay
Assembla is great. The only reason that I stopped using them is because they
stopped offering free services. Glad to see that it is back

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Dauntless
Sorry, but after what they did when they closed the free private accounts some
time ago, I ain't going to touch it again.

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oldgregg
I just signed up to try it. Comprehensive but simple UI. EXCEPT, in free mode
it LITERS the interface trying to get you to upgrade. I don't use much of the
social features of github for private projects so it still might work and I'll
just never log into the website... really annoying ads though.

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10ren
As a business hacker, this reminds me that when your costs are cheap enough, a
free version that your customers can use properly is the best possible
advertising. Like the shareware version of Doom.

As a code hacker, I've just setup a git repository with them. They have superb
help - cut-and-paste to set up your ssh key, start a git repository and push
it to them. Great for learning git.

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sandGorgon
is there any good non-commandline way of using git on windows osx and linux ?

SmartGit comes to mind, but what are you guys using ?

~~~
tuxychandru
The only case I generally need a GUI tool is for diff and merge. Meld handles
it very well for me on Linux and git supports it by default.

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lenart
Like justinchen said they already offered free SVN and GIT hosting. Then one
day they sent out newsletter saying that they're not providing free hosting
anymore and that all repositories will be made public. I had to move all my
projects to another repository and promised myself never to go back. I don't
trust them, sorry!

~~~
andysingleton
We did offer free services for about 3 years. Then we had to reduce the free
services because of rising hosting costs. No repositories were made public. We
maintained private service for everyone for four months, and then restricted
usage to read-only, for the people that didn't subscribe. So, no repositories
were made public, people got three years plus another four months of free
service, and the average charge for people that did subscribe was about $12
per month. If you can't afford that, you don't have a serious projects.

In this round, we have made substantial changes to the business model. Only
the repository is free, so we can sell our premium ticketing, collaboration,
and management tools. And, we have hosting affiliates that pay us for leads.
Plus, the underlying service is profitable and supports the level of admin
quality that is required.

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mrinterweb
I might have to downgrade my Github account and move my private repositories
over to Assembla.

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tangodelta
i just got a free repository at assembla. they try to sell you a server at
rackspace. if they can make some money doing that, more power to them. it's
not presented in an obtrusive way. maybe that's how they will pay for free

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zavulon
This is great. So far I have resisted moving all of our repositories from
self-hosted SVN to Github only because it's not free, and I don't see enough
benefit to pay for it.

However, we could definitely use Assembla

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andresmh
I have a couple of open projects on Assembla. I've been very happy with their
service and up time. I find Git to be an overkill for the kind of things I
need, so SVN is just what I need.

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HowardRoark
Goodbye to Github. Goodbye to the private Git repo on my VPS!

