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GitHub

GitHub

Overview

What is GitHub?

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…

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Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

GitHub is a versatile and widely-used platform that offers a range of use cases for developers, researchers, and organizations. Users …
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Developers love it

9 out of 10
September 25, 2021
GitHub is used by different departments in our organization. GitHub is used as a version control platform and deployment of our source code.
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GitHub Review

8 out of 10
May 19, 2021
Git is very good for agile planning and maintaining the code according to different versions. In our project we work on three release …
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GitHub is good VCS.

9 out of 10
May 12, 2021
GitHub is VCS is vastly used by organizations so does us. All of our developers are using GitHub to store code on the cloud and it's easy …
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Awards

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Reviewer Pros & Cons

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Pricing

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Team

$40

Cloud
per year per user

Enterprise

$210

Cloud
per year per user

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://github.com/pricing#compare…

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Starting price (does not include set up fee)

  • $4 per month per user
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Product Demos

How to use the new Jira and GitHub integration - Demo Den December 2021

YouTube
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Product Details

What is GitHub?

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.

GitHub Video

CEO Nat Friedman will introduce a demo packed session highlighting the latest feature updates. You'll hear directly from the Hubbers who helped build them and learn how we successfully use GitHub at GitHub to build GitHub on GitHub. As always, feel free to leave us a comment ...
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GitHub Technical Details

Deployment TypesSoftware as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

GitHub starts at $4.

Reviewers rate Support Rating highest, with a score of 8.8.

The most common users of GitHub are from Small Businesses (1-50 employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(1028)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

GitHub is a versatile and widely-used platform that offers a range of use cases for developers, researchers, and organizations. Users collaborate in real time through GitHub's best-in-class tooling and simple interface, which is why it is commonly used for personal projects, university assignments, and managing code in team settings. The platform serves as the main integration point with other software, including continuous integration and continuous deployment services, allowing for seamless workflow automation.

GitHub's key use cases include code versioning and management, enabling developers to efficiently track code changes and revert back to earlier points in time. It also helps manage different versions of products for efficient development and deployment. With GitHub's collaboration features, developers can easily work together on code development, push code for others to pull, and collaborate with external contributors. Additionally, GitHub serves as a code hosting platform, allowing developers to easily share code and launch different application versions. It has become the go-to platform for hosting code repositories and establishing portfolios of work for developers in various industries.

Furthermore, GitHub plays a vital role in software research and development departments by providing a secure cloud-based Git repository system. It addresses concerns about longevity, security, and code management for technical project managers. The platform's integration with other tools like Slack, Jenkins, and custom webhooks enhances its functionality as a central repository for code storage, knowledge sharing, interactions tracking, and auditing. GitHub also offers built-in issue tracking capabilities and wiki pages for effective project management.

Moreover, GitHub's ease of use and graphical interface simplify the utilization of Git across platforms within organizations. Technical recruiters rely on GitHub to identify skilled developers while students leverage it for academic projects and assignments. Additionally, researchers utilize GitHub to store repositories from previous research projects and facilitate efficient team code development.

Overall, GitHub is highly regarded by users for its ability to solve challenges related to version control, collaboration on code development across teams or remote locations, issue tracking, project management, and code review. It serves as a central repository for code and provides features like CI/CD automation, documentation management, and easy integration with third-party tools.

Intuitive User Interface: Many users have found GitHub's user interface intuitive and easy to navigate, making it simple for them to explore repositories without the need to clone them. They appreciate how it simplifies the process of navigating through repositories, providing a user-friendly experience.

Fast Data Processing: Several reviewers have appreciated GitHub's speed in updating, packaging, and compressing data. This fast data processing allows for quick merges and highlights code changes efficiently, enabling developers to work with agility.

Robust Version Control: Users highly value GitHub's version control functionality as it provides a historical timeline of code improvements and the ability to revert back to older versions. This feature has been praised by many for its reliability and usefulness in maintaining code integrity throughout development projects.

Challenging to administer team members: Some users have found it challenging to effectively manage team members and collaborators across multiple repositories on GitHub. This becomes particularly difficult when there are varying access rights and roles, requiring extra effort and attention.

Confusing differentiation between user and organization accounts: Users often encounter confusion when trying to differentiate between user and organization accounts on GitHub. This lack of clarity can result in wasted time as they struggle to locate relevant settings or features within the platform.

Slow loading times: Atom, the text editor used in GitHub, has been criticized by users for its slow loading times. This delay can lead to frustration among users who expect a more seamless experience while navigating through their projects.

Users have made several recommendations about GitHub based on their experiences. Here are the three most common recommendations:

  1. Start with official documentation and use Git and GitHub via the command line. Users suggest that newcomers to GitHub should begin by referring to the official documentation. They also recommend utilizing Git and GitHub through the command line interface for a seamless experience.

  2. Explore integrations with Visual Studio Code and ClickUp. Many users recommend integrating GitHub with Visual Studio Code and ClickUp, as it enhances their workflows. This integration allows for smoother collaboration and improved project management.

  3. Improve user-friendliness and accessibility for new users. Some users believe that GitHub could be more user-friendly, especially for those who are new to the platform. They suggest making it more accessible by simplifying the interface or providing more comprehensive guidelines.

It is important to note that these recommendations reflect the opinions and experiences of users and do not represent a consensus among all users.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-20 of 20)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Every day, we use GitHub for end-to-end SDLC, including project management, codebase CI/CD, and package management, among other things. The branch protection policy has no impact on the production codebase. We handle our automation and deployments with the help of GitHub Actions.
  • GitHub Action for your automation, build, test and deployment any platform and any languages
  • GitHub help store our artifacts and dependency with in Github using GitHub packages
  • You can integrate with the other third party applications like Jira, Azure DevOps etc..
  • GitHub helps to integrate Development IDE like Visual studio, Eclipse, and jet brain ides etc..
  • issues and projects they have to improve little more functionality like conditions for the particular issues or labels
  • issues create, update, delete options for respective teams or user
  • in developer workflow mandatory for issues or work-item functionality
With GitHub, you can integrate other third-party applications for project management. You can also scan your source code to find vulnerabilities and hardcoded tokens.
September 25, 2021

Developers love it

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
GitHub is used by different departments in our organization. GitHub is used as a version control platform and deployment of our source code.
  • As a repository it's great. It houses almost all the open-source applications/code that anyone can fork and play with. A huge collection of sample codes available with problem statements across different domains make Github a one-stop location.
  • I use GitHub with Windows and the Git Bash is superb. It [is] a powerful alternative to the Command Prompt and Powershell. Allows me to run shell scripts and UNIX commands inside the terminal [on] a Windows PC.
  • GitHub integration with almost all cloud development/deployment platforms is amazing. Deploying a new application in Azure is really smooth. Just link the GitHub repositories and it's good to go. From automatic build to deployment everything is just amazing.
  • 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.
Best suited:
  • When we want to setup an automated deployment pipeline.
  • When we need a repository while working on open source projects supported by a huge community.
  • If you want to deploy the programs in cloud platforms. Tested on platforms like AWS, Azure, GCP, Heruko.
Less appropriate:
  • When the need is just for version control. GitHub is more than that.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
GitHub is easy to integrate with other tools and it makes it easy to research and find what code changed and when with the pipeline. It is the most trusted place to store your project code and is also useful as a collaboration tool to get others involved in our work.
  • GitHub has a powerful UI for creating pull requests
  • It makes it easy to research and find what code changed and when.
  • It is reliable and dependable. I've used it for four years without issue.
  • I would like to be able to view commits by user.
  • Conflict management could be improved.
  • Navigating around a GitHub repo can be a little confusing until you're used to it.
For small team projects or open-source libraries, GitHub is a great and affordable option. It is the best solution for code version control and collaboration on software products. It helps us build great software, and integrates with many services we use to help us be more effective with a distributed team.
Tim Hardy | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are using GitHub in our development team as our source control solution. GitHub allows us to easily work from either the office or remotely. Git's distributed version control makes branching incredibly easy, and GitHub provides the most seamless and easy to use Git solution I have found. GitHub provides a ton of integration options with any tool you are using.
  • GitHub makes it easy to research and find what code changed and when.
  • GitHub is easy to integrate with other tools.
  • GitHub is reliable and dependable. I've used it for nine years without issue.
  • When browsing history of a file, GitHub could make it easier to see the file after a particular commit instead of just being able to quickly view the commit. I'd like to be able to see the commit or the file itself in one click.
  • I would like to be able to view commits by user.
  • I would love to be able to traverse code on GitHub (go to definition, etc) - the good news here is that they are working on these features!
Any scenario where source control is needed is a scenario where GitHub is well suited - that means, any time you are writing code and don't want to immediately throw it away once you are finished. GitHub is especially well-suited for remote work and any work where integration with third-party tools would prove helpful.
October 13, 2019

GitHub Review

Brett Knighton | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
GitHub currently isn't the main product we use for hosting our repositories. We primarily use Bitbucket currently and have plans to move to Azure DevOps whose repository hosting/management is re-skinned GitHub. My use of GitHub has primarily been working with open source libraries.
  • I prefer the way GitHub presents/manages code reviews.
  • Making changes and opening pull requests are incredibly easy in GitHub. When you have a small change you need to make it's incredibly annoying to have to pull then branch then commit then push then go back to the browser to open a PR.
  • Built-in wiki, issue tracking and reporting, and other tools can be incredibly useful.
  • Browsing through a repo is pretty primitive. Digging into a folder is a link to a new page. For medium to large repositories, it's extremely cumbersome. The way Azure DevOps manages this is incredible. It gives you a folder explorer as you'd find in VS Code. You can quickly browse through a complex repo and make in line changes and submit a pull request all from inside the browser.
  • Navigating around a GitHub repo can be a little confusing until you're used to it.
For small team projects or open-source libraries GitHub is a great and affordable option. I'd be more hesitant to use it with large complex projects, not because it wouldn't work, but because I've used tools that are better suited. I'm sure Microsoft won't be mad at me for continuing to put in plugs for Azure DevOps seeing as they own both.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use GitHub for personal projects to host my codebase for JavaScript-based web applications and projects used for learning different frameworks. It's one of the few major players between (others being Bitbucket and Gitlab). We don't use it at my day job because they only recently offered private repositories. We don't have open-source projects at my current company.
  • It's very easy to use. It walks you through much of anything that you may have questions with. Like how to link a local repo to your online one.
  • It's ubiquitous. So many open-source projects are hosted on GitHub.
  • Integrations abound: With that ubiquity, you get some great benefits of tie-ins existing and new tooling. For example, there are continuous integrations for deployment and cutting-edge integrations with tools like Zeit Now and Netlify.
  • They have some nice-to-have features like security bots that will auto bump versions of dependencies for your project (if you desire.)
  • The social aspect of it is pretty nice and works well.
  • It's a good thing to have for a developer resume.
  • Git can be cumbersome and confusing as a whole, so sometimes the UI is a little too basic.
  • It got bought by Microsoft.
Now that it has private repositories, I feel like it is much easier to recommend. It competes better with Bitbucket and Gitlab as a result. If you don't mind it being bought by Microsoft, you get a more integrated widespread tool. New technologies like Netlify and Zeit's Now services were early to adopt GitHub repos as a source to pull code repo images from before they integrated with Gitlab and Bitbucket. So going with GitHub does get you in the door with other tooling faster. As the new guys (like Gitlab) gain more and more traction, these benefits probably go away and it's up to more personal preference and the UI.

But then again, having a "GitHub profile" is a worthwhile endeavor for any developer looking to get a job.
Frank Ramirez | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
GitHub is our primary code repository for the company's web app. It allows us to effectively collaborate as a team on our codebase, while providing an easy system to track and manage changes. GitHub essentially serves as the Google Docs for our code. Specifically, it allows multiple software engineers to work on the same code in a separate environment that protects the primary codebase and is only merged in when it's working as expected. This allows for all kinds of collaboration, including with remote workers all over the world.
  • GitHub's ease of use is one of its biggest strengths. The site is structured around Git, a code version control system, which is used by developers around the world. GitHub's UI is minimal and allows you to focus on what's important, whether it be your branches, pull requests, or issues.
  • GitHub's integrations and tools are fairly ubiquitous. You'll likely find an integration with GitHub on every development tool with integrations. This makes it easy to incorporate in whatever workflow you may have.
  • GitHub is incredibly reliable. I don't remember the last time it was down for any significant period of time. This is essential for companies that rely on it for their daily operations.
  • While GitHub's spartan UI gets the job done and doesn't distract, it has some room for improvement to make things even more intuitive, especially for newer users. There's a certain amount of learning curve that could be made less steep.
  • There's so much you can do with Github that it's fairly common for a user to possibly only use a small fraction of what GitHub can do. Improving Github's discovery features would help surface some of the non-essential features that are quite useful.
GitHub is uniquely suited in situations where distributed teams need to collaborate on the same codebase. It allows non-destructive work in the form of branches that allow you to merge working code when it's ready. Different software teams can work on different parts of the codebase and each have an approver that serves as the gatekeeper for the merged code. This protects the primary codebase from non-approved or buggy code.

There aren't many situations where you should use GitHub. Even a single programmer would benefit from using it. Furthermore, it has other uses related to issue tracking and documentation that increase its value.
Kyle Taylor | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We currently utilize GitHub as the default code repository host for clients who either don't have a current version control system or for internal projects that need hosting. It's primarily used across our whole delivery team, while projects from other departments may be hosted there as well.
  • Github integrates really well with 3rd party systems, especially those used for continuous integration.
  • Github provides a number of built-in tools to support the project management process.
  • Github is ubiquitous in the sense that it's rare to find a platform or organization that hasn't used it, making it much easier for onboarding.
  • Some of the extended features, like "Projects", can be a little too lightweight and users may spend too much time setting it up and not end up using it.
  • The process for accepting invitations is kind of odd and doesn't always provide direct instructions to end-users.
I believe because GitHub has become so ubiquitous, there aren't many technical or code-based projects it isn't suited for. Even for repositories that are strictly for documentation, it serves well as for revision controlled documents. There can be some limitations through the integration APIs that other platforms like Gitlab may be able to fill better.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our department uses GitHub as its dedicated private repository for our production-facing web applications. In general, GitHub is popular across our organization (a public university), especially for students. GitHub gives us a high-quality, secure, cloud-based Git repository system at no cost, allowing our team to safely store application code, and to pull updates to our test and production environments, with minimal effort.
  • GitHub is a great, free or low-cost cloud-based Git repository system for smaller teams; it's easy to add members and collaborators to one or more repositories, as well as to modify user roles and rights.
  • GitHub provides a handy and highly transparent front end on top of the renowned Git system. Visibility into developer productivity, including code commits, is well-represented in GitHub's dashboards.
  • GitHub provides extremely detailed and focused user support documentation online, allowing every team member to build their Git skills incrementally while ensuring that most basic issues are handled quickly via end-user self-service.
  • GitHub packs a lot of functionality into its website; sometimes it can be difficult to navigate to the correct sub-page; the various drop-down selection boxes and sidebar menus can be confusing to users, especially ones with lightweight experience with the interface.
  • GitHub allows for substantial flexibility in user account management - Administering dedicated team members and collaborators across a large number of repositories can get tricky, especially if users have varying access rights or roles across various repositories.
  • Knowing the difference between user and organization accounts is key, there have been many times where I've wasted minutes looking at the wrong account trying to find a relevant setting or feature. For example, to view correct account billing information, one must be on the organization account, not the user account that has administrator rights for the organization.
GitHub is a great, free option for individuals, who can take advantage of unlimited public and private repositories. For team-based organizations, it's a reasonably low-priced, high-quality way to reap the benefits of a cloud-based repository system. Larger organizations with multiple teams may find hosting their own Git servers to be a more cost-effective option when compared to GitHub's Enterprise pricing plan, but said plan's support for cloud and self-hosting options allows enterprise users to have their cake (on-premises ownership of code repositories) and eat it, too (use of GitHub's sophisticated web-based front-end to Git).
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Github Enterprise across our entire IT organization for hosting our project repositories. It solves the problem of source control for enterprise applications and it does that really well. It also has solid API's and its very well integrated with other Continuous Integration tools, that makes its customization quite easy.
  • Easy and intuitive UI. This is a big plus for anyone wanting to just explore the repository without cloning it.
  • Solid security model for repositories. You can provide Dev access or limited access to the repositories that enable collaboration across the org.
  • Robust Pull Requests (PR) model. We use PR to do code reviews and the PR feature set is easy and intuitive. You can request PR's for other dev's, they can write comments at a specific line of code and you can reply back to that comment using their UI. All of this enables healthy communication on code.
  • Endless customizations. Github is wildly popular, so it has solid integrations with other developer tools. You can also add webhooks to trigger deployments when a new branch has been merged into Master. This allows for a seamless continuous integration pipeline.
  • Robust API documentation. The older version of Github offers easy REST interface and their newer API implementation uses GraphQL, which is robust and allows Dev's to build their own tools on top of Github
  • Branch Protections. You can protect a specific branch on your repo and restrict who can directly commit/delete that branch. This prevents unintended code base deletions .
  • Project tracking using Github. Github also provides tracking using its interface. You can create development tasks, assign them and track the left over work using the Github interface. Which makes it a one stop shop for everything.
  • The Pull Request screen would hide the previous comments when a new commit has been made. This could be a bit confusing tracking all the comments on a PR.
  • The network tracking branch could also use some improvement. It's hard to track all the open branches and where they all merge on the repo. The screen could use some improvement.
  • It does not provide integrated CI tool. There are competitors of Github that provide integrated deployment tool and Github could use that improvement.
It's well suited if you want a no-nonsense version control for your organization. GitHub is quite popular and you have tons of solid integrations that would simplify your continuous integration pipeline. The open source git tracking allows you to work while you are offline, so you don't even need to be online all the time to make the commits. However, GitHub is a bit expensive compared to Gitlab or other alternatives. So, if cost is a concern, I would look elsewhere.
Adam Montgomery | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
GitHub is used by my organization's software and app developer team to share code and collaborate on developing projects. It is used to store and share code among team members, especially on projects where the code is constantly being updated and changed. GitHub also helps us solve coding issues and problems that arise when working on a project.
  • It acts as a central repository for projects that involve coding.
  • It's a great platform for collaborating with team members.
  • The platform is also a great resource to turn to when you are stuck on a coding problem; there's a real feeling of help and collaboration among the users.
  • There is an excessive amount of email notifications when projects are updated; there is some control over the amount, but not enough control.
  • If you are not familiar with the command line, working with GitHub can be a little challenging.
  • For people new to the world of GitHub and Git, it can take a little bit of time to fully grasp how to utilize the platform.
If you are working on a project that requires code and has more than one team member, I can't think of a better tool than GitHub. GitHub also is very well-suited for tracking the progress of projects with such features as project read me, commit tracking, and wikis. It also a great tool for searching and reviewing open source coding projects.
Garett Dunn | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It's being used by a few departments within the organization. Different groups used it to varying degrees. Of course, it was used as a version control system, but other groups (like the one I was a part of) also used it for CI/CD purposes. I think this is where GitHub really starts to shine. It's definitely useful just as a Git repository, and we would gain a lot from that. But what brings it over the top is its integration with a lot of other tools we used, including Slack, Jenkins, and custom integrations utilizing webhooks. This allowed us to use GitHub as a central repository, not just for code, but also for knowledge, interactions, auditing, etc.
  • Makes collaboration over code incredibly simple. The UI is designed in such a way that anyone can pick it up very quickly. There are seemingly small features like being able to tag people in Issues, and the fluid process of doing PRs, that all come together to make it simple and enjoyable to use.
  • It is very robust and reliable. We used the self-hosted version and it was incredibly reliable, with very few issues over a long span of time.
  • It is very much the de facto standard for open source coding. This means that the friction for developers to both manage any open source parts of your code, as well as integrate open source code into your existing codebase, is very low.
  • GitHub has a lot of third-party integrations, but it isn't natively integrated with other project management tools, like something like JIRA and Bitbucket are.
  • It does its core work of code collaboration and review very well, but doesn't offer much in terms of other features. Gitlab, for example, has CI/CD tools built in. This item is a con for some and a pro for others.
GithHub is best suited for any size of a team of developers. It's also well-suited for other types of engineers like network and system engineers who are trying to "codify" their infrastructure better.

GitHub is really designed around Git. There are wrappers to make other systems (like Mercurial or SVN) compatible, but this is merely hiding it from the user, while still using git underneath
Christine Alling | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
As a technical recruiter, I use GitHub to identify users of the site who are skilled in specific technologies. For example - if there is a discussion about using microservices to break down a big ball of mud, I would then start looking at the profiles of developers who seem to have expertise in this area. It's especially helpful when recruiting for developers - just because someone codes in Java, doesn't mean they're a fit for a Java Developer role - it's about what they've done in Java. Github helps me discover WHAT they've done - not just what language they've used.
  • Identifying developers who have particular skill sets or interests beyond the stack they use.
  • Demonstrating a developer candidate's knowledge, coding, and philosophies
  • Showing that a developer is dedicated and passionate about their work - GitHub is voluntary - if they're spending time on there, it's because they want to be.
  • Finding the passive seeker - GitHub isn't a job board.
  • A lot of developers and recruiting sites don't realize how important location still is - not everyone is willing to allow remote workers. Being able to know where the developer lives would be so helpful.
  • It would be great if companies could create exercises for people to complete - just to see if they are a fit. To make it part of the hiring process would require validation. If it's a voluntary exercise, it would be easy.
  • Knowing the background & years of experience of the developer.
It's more appropriate if you're willing to relocate or allow people to work remotely. Very challenging to isolate local candidates, geographically. Also challenging to see the scope of their work and abilities. It does a great job of identifying specific skill sets of developers and what tools they've used. Like, if you want someone who is an expert in AWS, you can search for people who answer those questions.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
As we build open source projects, GitHub is the best place to welcome contributions from the outside but also manage processes internally better. We have best practices to not merge our own Pull Requests and review those of others before merging, we use GitHub in conjunction with other managing tools which use GitHub to track progress, including Milestones and Epics to categorize issues better.
  • While it's focused on technical people and developers, the entry barrier for non-technical people and project managers is relatively easy as well.
  • The Projects and Wiki within a GitHub repo make it easier to keep all the aspects within GitHub and not clutter any process with 3rd party tools for documentation and project management.
  • Uploading files is a neat feature which does not require to push files via git in a command line.
  • Creating new folders in the interface is unintuitive as you'd need to create a new file first.
  • Branches might be confusing for users not familiar with Git.
  • Notifications are often overwhelming and they should be grouped in more customizable ways.
Software projects are a perfect fit for GitHub. Managing them is also a breeze. However, managing writing or design assets might not be ideal as Git is designed for line-based files (code) not binary files.
Stephen Bussey | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
The entire engineering and product organization has logins to GitHub and uses it to develop all of our software and even some of our processes (through Wikis). The big problem it solves is source control centralization for the organization, with the largest use case being code pull requests for all new code that goes into production.
  • The pull request system is very easy and intuitive to use. New engineers, even that don't use GitHub otherwise, can quickly get up and running with it.
  • GitHub makes the cross between private/public very easy, but also protected. It's not possible for an employee to take a private repo public without manager / admin approval.
  • GitHub has pretty good uptime for such a core business tool. they've had some issues, but that's generally expected over time.
  • Some setup around private keys has been confusing over time. An account and project cannot have the same private key added, so it can be difficult to migrate from a single bot repo to multiple.
  • Native integration with other tools like Jira for the project flow could make it more likely for a development team to be able to switch between the two.
I generally would recommend GitHub for any source control needs, outside of extreme situations like very large organizations (multiple thousand developers) where I do not have experience. For any organization that needs good control of source code, and that interfaces with public open source projects, it's very recommended.

If an organization is entirely private and has no open source interaction, other tools may work better. Such as on-premise source control.
Randall Kelley | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use GitHub throughout our research and development teams for version control of our products and test automation. Version control has always been a finicky process and GitHub is actually very straightforward and fairly easy to use once you get rolling with it. It's been easy to share repos across remote teams, as well.
  • Quick and easy: It's easy to create a new repository and via the command line get updates push to your remote repos.
  • Command line driven: After a small learning curve using the command line to drive pushing commits to GitHub is simple.
  • Sharing: I worked with teams across the country and we're able to easily share repo's with minimal issues.
  • Learning curve: While it doesn't take long to understand the basics, I have found there have been a few "gotcha's" that I didn't foresee causing some code changes to disappear or were hard to find.
  • I have been spoiled in the past where I was usually the only one using my code, but recently I've been sharing my repo's, so I had to do versioning the right way. That was a little confusing on main vs. forked repo and why. Then there's the local repo and then syncing everything up. Takes some time to really get it.
We're a medium sized company with remote teams and we've had very good success using GitHub. I would imagine that this would scale up to larger companies just as well. Even very small companies and teams would be benefit from using GitHub. In my opinion, GitHub is well suited for any size team.
Joel Tanzi | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
GitHub is considered by most to be the original online host of Git repositories and has become the service of choice on which to host your code for many developers. In my own business I use GitHub as a way to manage my project code, and it has been an excellent way to establish a portfolio of work to demonstrate my development skills. It is also the way I interact with the open source community as many open source projects, including React, Angular, Atom Text Editor and a ream of others, are hosted on GitHub. It solves the often challenging problem of version control for your development teams by allowing you to easily create and manage repositories, and to assign access level control to the repo such that only those that require it can merge, branch or approve pull requests.
  • GitHub has an easy to use interface that allows you to create and customize the settings of your repositories in minutes. You can quickly push your code up to your new repo and assign team members to varying roles and access to perform different operations as required. This is important for reducing the time you have to spend on managing your teams.
  • The documentation for the service is clearly and thoughtfully written with an eye for detail, and has terrific tutorials to help you progress from a novice to an advanced user.
  • The service makes it easy to contribute to other projects and submit pull requests to get your code updates into the repository. This is important both for collaboration and for contributing to open source projects.
  • It has an excellent search interface to locate repositories that you can review to learn and develop your technical skills and understanding of coding practices.
  • Github offers free accounts to anyone and you can create as many repositories as you want. However, on the free plan all repositories are public; if you want to make your repo private (which may be necessary to protect your intellectual property), you will have to upgrade to a paid account. This business model may not be sustainable forever given that other services, like Atlassian Bitbucket, offer private repos on their paid accounts, and for many businesses this may be a more compelling and cost-saving option.
  • The search feature, although powerful, can be a bit frustratingly limited at times, such as when you are looking for a specific expression within the code of a repository.
  • Because it is based on Git, an often challenging toolset with a steep learning curve for command-line users, it can be daunting for some users to wrap their heads around the concepts of version control, although to be fair GitHub does offer decent GUI applications to make this easier.
  • It can be a bit too easy at times to make a critical error that writes over an earlier change to your code which can be difficult and confusing to fix.
GitHub is an excellent tool for developers to learn and grow their skills by reviewing other's code and observing best practices, and it is a very good resource for development teams to collaborate and manage projects. Cases where issue tracking and analytics on a project are important to a business unit are well suited for GitHub's service offerings. However, if you are a small business where private repositories are a must, you may want to look into Atlassian Bitbucket as a more economical choice.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Besides using GitHub for every one of my own personal projects, GitHub is used for version control by our entire engineering team. We use it for our web applications and internal tools, and we even use it to collaborate on and store our documentation. Using version control saves countless engineering hours, and Github provides the easiest to use and most aesthetically pleasing of all the git remote project hosting services.
  • Pull request interface allows for code review, strengthening the engineering team culture and creating a way for junior developers to grow and become more productive.
  • Having timelines of the code commits assists greatly in bug hunting.
  • While working through a project, using GitHub to view the differences between an engineer's branch and master helps the engineer work efficiently and effectively.
  • No real time chat functionality.
  • No git best practices/tutorials.
  • The search functionality is very primitive.
GitHub is absolutely and totally necessary for any team that writes their own software. It allows for secure storage of the code, a beautiful interface for reading the code and comparing changes in the code. If you can't see the history of your code, engineers would spend way more time trying to debug software.
Richard Ngo | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
GitHub is used by pretty much everyone I know in the software engineering department for its valuable use as a code repository. It is most likely used by anyone that is able to create shareable code or even private repositories. I have most recently used it for my senior project at RIT, where we worked with the NTID department to use it for not only our project organization, but also for its useful integration with other tools, such as CircleCI (which would run our tests) and Slack (which would notify us about changes).

GitHub addresses accessibility within the team and organization, as it is able to function as a team's main code repository, as well as a great way to track issues stemming from the project. This was done by utilizing GitHub issues, another useful aspect which organized bugs, issues, enhancements, etc., in a way that was useful for the project team.
  • Branch organization: This had allowed teams to review other team member features separately before merging any pending changes (via pull request) into the master branch. The visual given within GitHub makes it clear what changes were made and allowed for easy code review.
  • Issue Tracking: The bug tracking in GitHub allows teams to keep track of the different issues presented by the team, with a timeline of changes and happenings within the application.
  • Integration: Its integration with other tools like CircleCI and Slack have made it extremely useful in keeping the team up to date with the changes made within the system.
  • Cleaner User Interface: The user interface could be a little bit more intuitive to users that do not know all of the features GitHub has to offer.
  • Clear way to see changes not in a pull request, since you can see individual file history fairly easily, but not overall application file changes,
  • Better user search: When adding members to a project, sometimes the search is not as well organized as it could be.
It is appropriate depending on if the organization is already using some sort of repository already, like GitLab or something like that, but if not, I would definitely prefer to use something familiar and reliable. While there was an instance of GitHub being down once throughout my 4 years of using it where it mattered, I would still recommend this. It is even a good idea for individual projects, because then you have a place where your projects are backed up.
March 22, 2016

Get GitHub

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
GitHub is being used as a primary version control system for both our products. The entire engineering team uses it and it solves our issue of version control, code inspections, and documentation.
  • GitHub has a great wiki system that we are just starting to implement to include details for the other non-technical members of the organization who have to use the software.
  • Code inspections are widely used via pull requests. It makes it easy to look at the code being pushed into our master branch before it's pushed in.
  • The third party integrations with GitHub are great. Azure allows us to connect directly to the GitHub repo and continuously deploy our code as the master branch gets updated.
  • Under the hood it's a little confusing. This xkcd comic sums it up perfectly: https://xkcd.com/1597/
GitHub is well suited for any software project that could benefit from version control. It is especially suitedfor mid sized teams but I've used it for my own personal projects as well.
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