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Stack OverflowOpinion of Hosted SVN providers?
[+67] [39] JP Richardson
[2008-09-16 04:28:32]
[ svn ]
[ http://stackoverflow.com/questions/69384/opinion-of-hosted-svn-providers ] [DELETED]

What is your opinion of the various online Hosted SVN providers? How do they all compare? I'm looking for thoughts on Assembla, Unfuddle, BeanStalk, CVSDude, ProjectLocker, and any others that I forgot to mention. Thanks for your insight and input.

(4) Robert Harvey: Where would such question be "on topic"? - Tomáš Fejfar
[+42] [2008-09-16 04:30:16] nickf [ACCEPTED]

I've used assembla.com [1] for the past year or so and they've been brilliant. No downtime (that I've noticed), and when it's entirely free, what's not to like?

Update: As of 17th October, Assembla doesn't offer free private hosting. You can still get publicly visible spaces for free, but a private space will cost US$3 per GB per month + US$2 per User per month. This is pretty reasonable IMO.

[1] http://assembla.com

Seconding this. Best host I've ever used. - Cody Brocious
As of Oct. 17, Assembla is no longer free for private spaces =( - Neil Williams
(2) I used to use Assembla, I now use xp-dev.com. Highly recommended. - Hooray Im Helping
(9) Now free private SVN/Git are back, but it's only a repository - Trac or any of their other services requires an upgrade. - Beni Cherniavsky-Paskin
quick comparison of xp-dev, unfuddle (200 mb free) as of 8/27/10 shows assembla at 2 GB free and quick support works nice. - Gmu
I've change to bettercodes.org because Assembla doens't allow free private project. - Fabricio PH
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[+24] [2008-09-17 17:15:55] Carlos Gil

We are using unfuddle [1] (the free plan) for about a year: very easy to setup and reliable.

[1] http://unfuddle.com/

unfortunately ive found unfuddle's svn VERY slow. do you know of any way to speed it up? - Steven
And even the free things can be private - Legolas
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[+11] [2009-05-15 20:07:19] Eric

I've been using ProjectLocker for around 6 months now and it has worked very well. I would definitely recommend it.

http://www.projectlocker.com/


I've signed up there, used for a week or two, very happy, and was about to suggest it to a firm I'm contracting for. But I realized that the maximum user limit of 30 (for $30/month!) would be too limiting after a while. They need an unlimited plan, because the service seems good. - Jerph
they have updated their plans, but currently max out at 100 users for $100/month - Nathan Koop
The largest ProjectLocker plan now goes to 250 users. - runako
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[+9] [2008-09-16 04:36:28] Joshua Hudson

I've used BeanStalk pretty much since they started. They had a rough moment or two at first, but have recently moved data centers and with that move I have had zero problems with them. They have an excellent UI for web browsing. Could not be happier and the price is great.

Security/privacy is always a concern I guess, but I don't worry about it much. I'm the only developer and just use Beanstalk as a single place to store my code as I work on it.


(1) Their web interface is also amazing. - Joey Robert
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[+9] [2008-09-16 05:46:36] Jay Bazuzi

Regardless of where you host your source control, if your code is valuable, remember to make an offsite, offline backup. Something that won't be lost to fire, theft, earthquake, lightning, or malicious deletion.


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[+6] [2008-09-16 04:48:09] DarenW

I have worked for control freaks who want all the family jewels kept in the house. A related question is: What would it take to persuade the boss to go with a hosted svn instead of in-house? There'd have to be a big advantage. For the case of svn, it's pretty easy to set up, even for a non-pro developer. Even being free (as in beer) won't cut it; the question arises of who pays their electric and internet bill?

Scientists and others with long-term archiving concerns will won't be impressed by a solution that looks good for the next year but no one knows where it'll go later on. How do we know the hosting company won't go belly up in six years?

One situation where hosted svn may make sense, is when a small working group with no permanent location, servers under their control, or cooperative institutional IT support, wants to establish a repository for a project.

Another situation: for students who want to get familiar with working with svn but don't want to monkey with setting it up, and have no long-term intentions with it.


I had to overcome that 'control freak' thinking from our CEO, too. (5-person company, 2 of which are coders) We were able to persuade him that there was a non-trivial efficiency (MONIE$!) to outsourcing tasks that were not in our core competence. SCM, email, network maintenance, etc. - Stu Thompson
Stu is right. With management it comes down to money. Take into account the cost of maintaining your own server, patching, updating and upgrading not only the SVN server but the underlying hardware and OS. Add to that costs incurred if something very bad happens. - dtc
Maintaining your own backups of the Subversion server is the expensive item on my group's list, because doing backups well is Tough, Tedious, and Terribly Important. - Dean J
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[+6] [2010-05-12 07:19:46] Zygimantas

I had an awful experience with Asphostcentral.com They were offering hosted TFS2010 services and published following advertisement:

"Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) uses Team Foundation Server (TFS) as the data storage and collaboration backend. TFS provides a source control repository, work item tracking and reporting services. [...] ASPHostCentral.com, as the leading ASP.NET and Windows Hosting Provider, proudly announces the availability of Team Foundation Server 2010 service on all our hosting plans. You can always start from as low as $4.99/month to get this service."

After reading this advertisement I was sure, this service will completely fulfill my need to host my personal blog source code in hosted TFS database. But after purchasing hosting plan to $80 and posting question to company help desk, I was surprised, that TFS "is not remotely accessible"! So it's installed, but there is no way to use it. Maybe I understand the technology wrong, but how can use use TFS it is not remotely accessible?

Their reply was: "Yes. I understand that we provide the TFS but it will not be accessible remotely. Is there any particular activity you like to do beside source controlling? You can always build your own TFS 2010 locally and deploy the working project on our server."

My suggestion, keep away from Asphostcentral.com, I have already read couple negative comments about this "company" but decided to try myself and burned.


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[+4] [2008-09-16 04:49:16] marcospereira

+1 for Assembla.

A easy to use out of the box svn with trac and other tools.


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[+4] [2008-10-19 15:04:17] Till

We've been using CVSDude [1] ( Team-plan [2] for 30 USD/month) for a year os so now. And while they never really screwed up, I also can't recommend them for numerous reasons.

  • Their (old) webinterface was pretty slow and limited. You had to email them for every bit. Sometimes it just stopped working. While they moved us to beta, beta is really a beta and progress seems to be rather slow. Unfortunately.
  • They are too slow to report system issues. Very often you (as the customer) notice a hickup, you email in and they will reply 8 hours later that the issue has been resolved. They also have a status blog, which is the same - post-mortem reports all over the place but nothing if the issue is going on. (We've had like ten or so incidents with them over the last year).
  • Customer support seems to be run by people who don't read email. My boss signed up for the account so his address is on file and gets all the replies from them. Even if you request to be set CC they constantly ignore it. One of the people from CVSDude told us that setting someone CC is possible, but yet they fail to do it every single time. The CC issue is sometimes critical because we all sit in different timezones so by the time my boss gets to his email, it's like six or eight hours later.
  • More a minor, but their usernames are "global", so for example if you migrate SVN from somewhere else and you have tom, joe and peter as usernames, you will need to rename those since some other CVSDude customer already has those. (Chances are pretty high at least.)

On the brighter side...

  • We've never lost data since we've been with them.
  • Once you get ahold of them, they do all kinds of stuff custom for you.
  • All the hickups we noticed were mostly DNS/connectivity related from their upstream, never a real failure running the system. So they seem to be knowing their stuff well.

Personally, I just signed up with hosted-projects.com [3] (2 week trial), primarily because they are in my timezone and I can pay them through wire and to evaluate some other options for us. Also, their interface is rather basic but it all works so well. I like that. :)

If wire transfer wouldn't be a concern, I'd recommend unfuddle. Assembla has too many bells and whistles for my taste. :)

[1] http://cvsdude.com/
[2] http://cvsdude.com/product.pl
[3] http://hosted-projects.com

hosted-projects.com is not longer offering hosted Trac. - Stu Thompson
@StuThompson I'm still using it? - Till
Not for long. They've sent out mails that start "Dear Customer, six years after our inception we regret to inform you that due to considerations regarding our future business ventures we are leaving the shared hosting market...." - Stu Thompson
I got those emails. I didn't know what shared hosting had to do with hosting VCS. I need to review them. Thanks. :) - Till
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[+3] [2008-09-16 04:34:26] SaaS Developer

I have been using Assembla for several months now and overall I am very satisfied. It is very simple to setup and get going with. I am using it on a small remote team and would definately recommend it for this type of environment. We have used the hosted svn, Trac-issue tracking, and wikis without any serious issues.


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[+3] [2008-09-16 06:25:51] Josti

I am using assembla.com for student projects. Collaboration over assembla is great, though not using each and every feature of assembla.

I'd recommend it without a doubt, unless you need absolute privacy... then a self-hosted (SSL) solution would be my choice.

I use a self hosted SVN for personal projects, which do not need collaboration and 100% stability, because I tend to joyfully wreck my own server ;)


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[+2] [2008-09-16 11:45:30] Travis Laborde

I've used Assembla for a while now and it's great. Once very nice thing is that your repositories are available via http AND https which helps if you are sometimes firewalled.


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[+2] [2008-09-16 11:51:55] Slavo

Edit:
I also posted an update: http://slavoingilizov.com/blog/2010/09/29/re-comparison-of-project-hosting-solutions/

I've written a post on the topic:
http://www.slavoingilizov.com/blog/2008/01/30/comparison-of-project-hosting-solutions
Only comparing three, but you may find it useful. I think Assembla is actually very good.


Good posts, but IMO it's bad form to post an answer that basically says "for that information, read my blog post". It's a little like when programming book authors answer questions on forums with "read my book for the answer". I mean, a short summary would be nice. - Lèse majesté
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[+2] [2008-09-16 13:53:56] stephanea

I have used Assembla, which is the first free svn hosting site I found that didn't force me to disclose my source code to the public.


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[+2] [2008-10-18 00:53:46] pabloide86

+1 for Assembla too! I'm been using it for more than 1 year and it's great! There are new tools and features that are very usefull...


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[+2] [2009-05-20 00:38:41] Lucifer

I am also looking for a hosted SVN solution at the moment...

I found this link useful Subversion (SVN) Hosting Comparison:

http://www.svnhostingcomparison.com


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[+2] [2009-11-25 12:58:24] GDR

Beanstalkapp is crappy, they have problems with large repos and - the most annoying thing - they have completely unresponsive support.

If my boss wasn't happy about the basecamp integration, I would never use it.


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[+1] [2008-09-16 04:32:23] Ady Romantika

My only concern about online providers is privacy. I am not saying that the hosting companies will take your code and run away with it (or sell it) but there is always the chance. Perhaps a disgruntled employee?

I am a control freak and runs my own subversion server on a DSL line. But of course, I don't have that many users.

If you're serious about the code you will be hosting I suggest invest on a decent server and put it online somewhere. That's just my opinion.


(4) I disagree with the "if you are serious about your code" mentality, and conditionally argue the opposite. Programmers do not necessarily make good administrators, and if one is "serious about their code", then they are going to ensure that a professionally run SCM tool is in place. - Stu Thompson
(1) Stu, I agree with you. I was seeing it from the point of System Administration and Privacy. Developers need to be sure that their SCM is professionally managed. VERY careful consideration is needed to make sure that the code is safe. As safe as a bank would do :-) - Ady Romantika
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[+1] [2008-09-16 04:48:39] Joshua Jonah

With free accounts on shared SVN it's hard to find a private one. I'd say just setup SVN and trac on your webserver.


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[+1] [2008-09-16 05:42:04] Stu Thompson

I'm with www.hosted-projects.com (Germany-based), and am pleased. Includes Trac, SSL and optional extra roll-your-own 3rd-party backup.


I've just signed up the other week, how long have you been with them? - Till
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[+1] [2008-09-16 11:39:02] BigJump

We've also been evaluating various hosted SVN providers. I'll add CodeSpaces [1] to the list which has a pretty slick web UI and offers the usual SVN goodness.

One of the issues which has prevented us from yet adopting a single provider is the network latency we are experiencing from some providers.

[1] http://www.codespaces.com/

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[+1] [2008-10-28 00:42:15] mchean

+1 for Assembla, even with the new pricing. Student plans are still free though.


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[+1] [2008-10-28 04:14:05] ryan holbrook

+1 for Assembla.

I've been using assembla [1] for the past few months and it works great. You've got your options with them too. If you're a student you can get them to give your class free hosting, or simply place your project on public. Otherwise its cheap and def worth small price.

[1] http://www.assembla.com/preconfigured_spaces

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[+1] [2009-02-13 00:20:04] Jarin Udom

I like Beanstalk. It's cheap, much faster than it was before, has private repos with SSL, and integrates with Basecamp, Lighthouse, and Twitter.

http://beanstalkapp.com


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[+1] [2010-09-03 14:16:50] Floyd Price

Check out this great Subversion Hosting Comparison site:

http://subversionhosting.dbur.com/

It has (at time of writing) 62 Subversion Hosting products to compare.


This site has been updated to include 69 product comparisons. - Floyd Price
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[+1] [2010-12-08 18:29:27] Jonathan Rioux

RiouxSVN [1] is totally Free and private. You can share your repositories with an unlimited number of users. You can also make your repositories public for open source projects.

[1] http://www.riouxsvn.com

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[0] [2008-09-16 04:36:06] gnutgnut

used versionshelf for a couple of months now, seems just fine.


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[0] [2008-09-16 04:52:08] Don Kirkby

Is open-source an option? I've used Google code for a few small projects, and I've been very pleased. I also like all the other features that come along in addition to source control. Currently, they're still on Subversion 1.4.


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[0] [2008-09-16 05:52:11] George V. Reilly

I've used both OpenSVN [1] and DevjaVu [2] for personal projects. Of the two, I prefer DevjaVu, as OpenSVN is often slow. Otherwise, both are fine.

[1] https://opensvn.csie.org/
[2] http://www.devjavu.com/

OpenSVN seems to be "full" :-s - fretje
I switched to Git and GitHub since I posted the above. Git works fine on Windows these days. - George V. Reilly
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[0] [2008-09-19 17:43:22] goodwill

Linode and DIY with your own linux if you run ISV. I use ssh+svn with an Ubuntu server there, stable and fast.

http://www.linode.com

And of course you can just do a lot more there besides hosting SVN :)


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[0] [2008-10-19 08:25:15] Vitalie

+1 for Assembla, great tools, now with pre-configured spaces: http://www.assembla.com/preconfigured_spaces

A few clicks setup to start a real project, something like IDE project templates.


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[0] [2008-10-28 04:16:05] Tim

wush.net works for me.


While this link may answer the question, it is better to include the essential parts of the answer here and provide the link for reference. Link-only answers can become invalid if the linked page changes. - J.N.
Uh, there is no link in my answer. - Tim
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[0] [2009-02-13 00:17:39] Domchi

I have only good things to say about GeekISP [1]. CVS/SVN, Trac, database, SSH, (oh yes, and web hosting if you need it), with great user support.

[1] http://www.geekisp.com

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[0] [2009-02-16 21:06:50] Vassili Altynikov

We've used DreamHost [1] for the last couple of years and would highly recommend it - you get unlimited storage, can create unlimited number of repositories and get full shell access in case if you need to install WebSVN [2] or add some hook scripts to integrate with bug tracking software like FogBugz [3].

[1] http://dreamhost.com/hosting-features.html#svn
[2] http://websvn.tigris.org/
[3] http://www.fogcreek.com/FogBugz/docs/60/topics/advanced/SourceControlIntegration.html

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[0] [2009-05-15 19:49:14] TheFoot

I've used both Assembla and Unfuddle, and would give Assembla an edge there. Another new possibility, still in 'beta', is http://workspace.activestate.com/.


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[0] [2009-05-15 20:02:58] philsquared

We use Unfuddle and it's been flawless. We use both Subversion and GIT repositories. The help it gives you setting up and connecting to the services is great.

I don't have experience of the other services to compare, but I can highly recommend Unfuddle on its own merits, at least.

The fact that it's now using Amazon S3 for backup too feels reassuring (to me, at least).


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[0] [2009-12-02 13:22:07] mnml

If you are not working on a opensource project, the best free hosting seems to be unfuddle [1]. It has all the tools I need, Unfortunately it's limited to two devs.

[1] http://unfuddle.com/

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[0] [2010-09-10 20:58:07] Wayne Allen

devZing just added Subversion hosting

http://devZing.com/subversion.php


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[0] [2010-11-13 12:27:04] chieroz

I manage a small team (PHP/MySQL web applications) and I am testing Unfuddle (good feeling & interface, zero problems in setup), Indefero (zero problems, a little bit too basic & rough in the interface, but it's very cheap) and ProjectLocker (looks a little more complicated).


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