GitHub vs. Perforce P4

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
GitHub
Score 9.1 out of 10
N/A
GitHub is a platform that hosts public and private code and provides software development and collaboration tools. Features include version control, issue tracking, code review, team management, syntax highlighting, etc. Personal plans ($0-50), Organizational plans ($0-200), and Enterprise plans are available.
$4
per month per user
Perforce P4
Score 6.9 out of 10
N/A
Perforce P4 (formerly Helix Core) is the company's version control and peer code review solution. Perforce offers add-on products for code review for free, and Git support products.N/A
Pricing
GitHubPerforce P4
Editions & Modules
Team
$40
per year per user
Enterprise
$210
per year per user
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
GitHubPerforce P4
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
GitHubPerforce P4
Considered Both Products
GitHub
Chose GitHub
The branches in Perforce and SVN are replicas instead of links/trees like in Github. Those two tools do not have rich APIs like that of GitHub. Subversion and Perforce do not support local repositories, which might hamper the development, if developer is coding and the tools …
Chose GitHub
I find GitHub more user-friendly; code is much cleaner and it can be integrated with CICD and code pipeline which makes the release process much smoother and faster.
Perforce P4
Chose Perforce P4
Today's web based software makes them easier to integrate into a development process. JIRA with integrated Bitbucket as the versioning tool, is ahead of the competition. However for large organizations, Perforce is still a very good choice. GitHub can be used as free tool, but …
Chose Perforce P4
Perforce is internally hosted, which makes it quite a bit faster. I found it easier to use that GitHub and Bitbucket, at least in terms of checking out files and creating changelists. GitHub and Bitbucket are much better for smaller teams, as they are cloud hosted, making …
Chose Perforce P4
In my opinion, Perforce Helix Core is on a top level of irritation and anti-user experience. In my experience, I can't do simple things like 1 word file edits, while I have never been confused when using something based on Git.
Features
GitHubPerforce P4
Version Control Software Features
Comparison of Version Control Software Features features of Product A and Product B
GitHub
9.2
10 Ratings
6% above category average
Perforce P4
7.9
1 Ratings
9% below category average
Branching and Merging9.610 Ratings8.01 Ratings
Version History9.510 Ratings8.01 Ratings
Version Control Collaboration Tools9.59 Ratings8.01 Ratings
Pull Requests9.710 Ratings8.01 Ratings
Code Review Tools8.79 Ratings8.01 Ratings
Project Access Control8.910 Ratings8.01 Ratings
Automated Testing Integration8.610 Ratings8.01 Ratings
Issue Tracking Integration8.510 Ratings7.01 Ratings
Branch Protection9.79 Ratings8.01 Ratings
Best Alternatives
GitHubPerforce P4
Small Businesses
Git
Git
Score 10.0 out of 10
Git
Git
Score 10.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Git
Git
Score 10.0 out of 10
Git
Git
Score 10.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Perforce P4
Perforce P4
Score 6.9 out of 10
Git
Git
Score 10.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
GitHubPerforce P4
Likelihood to Recommend
9.6
(131 ratings)
5.9
(15 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(1 ratings)
6.6
(5 ratings)
Usability
9.4
(10 ratings)
7.0
(3 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
6.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
8.8
(26 ratings)
9.6
(3 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
GitHubPerforce P4
Likelihood to Recommend
GitHub
GitHub is an easy to go tool when it comes to Version Controlling, CI/CD workflows, Integration with third party softwares. It's effective for any level of CI/CD implementation you would like to. Also the the cost of product is also very competitive and affordable. As of now GitHub lacks capabilities when it comes to detailed project management in comparison to tools like Jira, but overall its value for money.
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Perforce Software
While Perforce Helix is the best version control software out there, it can also be used to track your documentation, training videos and materials, and requirements. If you have strict compliance requirements, it can be used to ensure that those requirements are satisfied. Perforce Helix is incredibly flexible and can meet the needs of individual users as well as companies with thousands of users.
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Pros
GitHub
  • Version control: GitHub provides a powerful and flexible Git-based version control system that allows teams to track changes to their code over time, collaborate on code with others, and maintain a history of their work.
  • Code review: GitHub's pull request system enables teams to review code changes, discuss suggestions and merge changes in a central location. This makes it easier to catch bugs and ensure that code quality remains high.
  • Collaboration: GitHub provides a variety of collaboration tools to help teams work together effectively, including issue tracking, project management, and wikis.
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Perforce Software
  • The branching mechanisms in Perforce allow for an enormous codebase to be duplicated into release versions weekly with little impact upon things such as the speed of queries against the version control.
  • Action triggers permit such things as automated builds of software versions, dynamic messaging when issues are identified either within or prior to a build process, and much more.
  • Locking provides the ability to prevent modifications of stable, tested versions in order to ensure validity when they are released.
Read full review
Cons
GitHub
  • Not an easy tool for beginners. Prior command-line experience is expected to get started with GitHub efficiently.
  • Unlike other source control platforms GitHub is a little confusing. With no proper GUI tool its hard to understand the source code version/history.
  • Working with larger files can be tricky. For file sizes above 100MB, GitHub expects the developer to use different commands (lfs).
  • While using the web version of GitHub, it has some restrictions on the number of files that can be uploaded at once. Recommended action is to use the command-line utility to add and push files into the repository.
Read full review
Perforce Software
  • Perforce tends to feel backwards in how it approaches certain tasks, like branching and integrating - even once you figure out how it wants you to perform these tasks, you will likely forget when it comes around to the next time you need to do them again.
  • Perforce has a higher price tag, comparatively.
  • Perforce make some tasks very easy, and yet other tasks very difficult - it doesn't always seem to have found its target user's proficiency.
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Likelihood to Renew
GitHub
GitHub's ease of use and continued investment into the Developer Experience have made it the de facto tool for our engineers to manage software changes. With new features that continue to come out, we have been able to consolidate several other SaaS solutions and reduce the number of tools required for each engineer to perform their job responsibilities.
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Perforce Software
We are fully committed to our use of Perforce. It works well within our organization and our desire to share our code base with our customers. Their support staff are responsive, inquisitive, and eager to improve their software. I feel like we have a direct line to their design/feature team as they often solicit our feedback.
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Usability
GitHub
GitHub is a clean and modern interface. The underlying integrations make it smooth to couple tasks, projects, pull requests and other business functions together. The insights and reporting is really strong and is getting better with every release. GitHub's PR tooling is strong for being web based, i do believe a better code editor would rival having to pull merge conflicts into local IDE.
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Perforce Software
With Perforce Helix, you can use it via the command line, via P4V, or any of the other APIs included with the product. It is extremely easy for new users to get up and running. Users of Perforce Helix only have to pull in the files of interest to them. Also, Perforce is very easy to script and integrate into your CI/CD pipeline. Streams allows you to have pinpoint control of your workflow, and P4Search is the absolute best--I wish Perforce (the company) would talk more about this. It is absolutely fabulous!
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Reliability and Availability
GitHub
No answers on this topic
Perforce Software
In our large environment, Perforce is rarely "down". We have regular maintenance windows and from time to time Perforce can feel a little slow, but its always available. Tech support has always worked with our engineers and IT department to make sure that any real performance or stability issues are addressed quickly.
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Support Rating
GitHub
There are a ton of resources and tutorials for GitHub online. The sheer number of people who use GitHub ensures that someone has the exact answer you are looking for. The docs on GitHub itself are very thorough as well. You will often find an official doc along with the hundreds of independent tutorials that answers your question, which is unusual for most online services.
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Perforce Software
I had two representatives from Perforce contact me after downloading it but never responded when I had questions. I also had a difficult time finding good training material for getting started. There is a lot of available support material when running into issues, though, because of how many large companies use it.
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Implementation Rating
GitHub
No answers on this topic
Perforce Software
This rating is related to setting up an environment from an existing Perforce repository. Initial setup of Perforce as the repository for the company was done by a separate team long prior to my inception.
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Alternatives Considered
GitHub
While I don't have very much experience with these 2 solutions, they're two of the most popular alternatives to GitHub. Bitbucket is from Atlassian, which may make sense for a team that is already using other Atlassian tools like Jira, Confluence, and Trello, as their integration will likely be much tighter. Gitlab on the other hand has a reputation as a very capable GitHub replacement with some features that are not available on GitHub like firewall tools.
Read full review
Perforce Software
Git is great, I love Git. But it's not great for dealing with binary assets, even when using Git LFS. Locking is not as simple as on perforce. Git presents some problems on using for non-tech people it can get overwhelming and tech people have to come by and help.
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Return on Investment
GitHub
  • Team collaboration significantly improved as everything is clearly logged and maintained.
  • Maintaining a good overview of items will be delivered wrt the roadmap for example.
  • Knowledge management and tracking. Over time a lot of tickets, issues and comments are logged. GitHub is a great asset to go back and review why x was y.
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Perforce Software
  • Decreased our implementation costs by allowing versioning and back out of customizations made in the field.
  • saves developers time through automation of changes between branches - they think less of the plumbing and have more time to write code.
  • Downside is training/managing expectations of new developers who come in assuming they will use Git.
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ScreenShots