Which pricing model is more effective: GitHub's or Bitbucket's?
I have a product that I plan to release soonishly. I am planning on doing a free-for-public, pay-for-private pricing model. For the latter, the choice is essentially between Github's model and Bitbucket's model. Github allows unlimited private collaborators but charges by the project. Bitbucket allows unlimited private projects but charges by the collaborator.
My question is: have any of you decided between these pricing models for your product? If so, how did you decide? Also, any related resources would be appreciated. Thanks! Disclaimer: I have no slightest idea about economics. And I'm not sure the following is a good idea. So, don't listen to me. As I get it, you probably want to let users start for free when their requirements are small, and start changing as they grow. I suppose everyone has different needs, though — some value ability to spawn a dozens of tiny private repos, but some want just one for a relatively large team. Then — just a wild idea — maybe assign some value for resources and services you provide and give a quota of what's free? Say, maybe, the formula could be repository count multiplied by collaborator count, so mediocre usage will stay under the threshold, raising either repo count or collaborator number alone (possibly, until the number is sufficiently large) still wouldn't be enough to leave the free tier, but raising both would nearly instantly require paying for your services. Something along those lines. This probably could be confusing to customers (although some flexible cloud providers seem to deal with it with those fancy price calculators page with resource sliders), but maybe you'll think something. Or not. And it certainly depends whenever your customers actually want such flexibility and there's enough diversity of use cases among them. Maybe they don't care and everything fits into something simpler. Then, for me, I think it's BitBucket's model — even though most of my repos are public (and are on GitHub), I have two private ones (on BitBucket), with no collaborators. Interesting idea! You remind me that I have seen such pricing calculators before, e.g. on Heroku's website. Yeah, I could see a more complex approach working well to let me cover all the bases. Thanks! I prefer BitBuckets because I don't want pricing to become an issue in how I split up my projects. They also have free private repos if you have 5 collaborators or fewer. Bitbucket has better pricing for closed-source projects, Github has better pricing for open-source projects. It really depends on the structure of your market and your competitors. There's not enough information in your post to say anything more helpful than that. Thanks for your reply. You're right, of course. But rather than try to explain my market, target user, competitors, etc., I think I can translate discussions of Github vs. Bitbucket fairly well into my situation. So, can you elaborate? Why is Bitbucket better for closed-source and Github better for open-source projects? GitHub is free for public repos up to unlimited number of participants. This is great for open-source projects. BitBucket is free for private repos up to 5 users. This is better for closed-source projects. Pricing is a big interest of mine (30,000 words into writing a guide on it). Understanding your ideal pricing depends upon understanding your customers and your value proposition. We need more information before we can tell you what to charge and how to charge it. Nice! I see your guide here: http://taprun.com/pricing/ . I'll check it out, thanks! I think the Github vs. Bitbucket question is a proxy that I can easily translate into my scenario. So in that case, what are the relevant factors? It would definitely help if you said more about what your product is. But generally speaking, from the customer's perspective, you should charge for the thing that the customer can predict better up-front, so that it's easier for them to assess your value proposition. You might want to take into account your own costs as well, if applicable. The interesting thing about Github vs. Bitbucket is that both usage patterns can make sense depending on the project and user. For individuals, you might have a lot of repositories for small projects that end up abandoned after a while. For teams, it might make more sense to have a flexible headcount. Ah, very good point, to consider what is easier for the customer to predict. I had not considered that. Thank you! Nice guide! That is very useful, to consider the perceived value rather than the absolute value. And I found many other nuggets of wisdom. I look forward to reading the rest. Thank you! A quick and short answer is which one is your target customer segments want most. By the user is more typical for enterprise software (in general, not limited to SaaS) and probably more related to cost in comparison with by the project.