I’ve been looking into better ways to host my repositories for clients, manage task lists, documents, etc. I like github. It’s a good interface. It works. I could use a few more features in the Issues module, but it’s nice that they keep it simple. I’ve tried BitBucket and Assembla, and looked at several others. I’ve managed my own servers. In every test, github wins.

Except for price. github is often the most expensive. Especially if you need what I need, which is several small repositories, each with a small number of collaborators (often just one or two). But just a few of those can push you into the Medium plan, or even into the Bronze plan.So I was complaining about this to my wife. I say “Wife, github is just too expensive. Why do they have to be like that? I really like using them.”

“Oh,” says Wife. “What are we talking about?”

“Well,” I say, “it could easily be $25/month.”

“$300/year?”

“Yeah.”

“And it works really well? And makes business go more smoothly?”

“Yeah…?”

“And you need some service for this, right?”

“One way or another.”

“Get over yourself. Pay them.”

And I started to think about it. If I’d billed the time I’d already spent researching and designing scripts to work around issues, I’d probably have covered a year or two of service.

Some services have gotten so cheap, you get used to what you think they “should” cost. I remember haggling in markets in Shanghai and friends saying “Rob, you’re buying a scarf for $2 and you’re haggling over the last 50 cents.” My attitude was, yeah, but in Shanghai that scarf should be 8 RMB and she’s asking 14. At home I’d think nothing of paying $10, but in Shanghai I feel ripped off paying more than a buck. The whole Internet is a Shanghai market sometimes.

Quality is worth paying for. As a developer, I expect to be paid for the quality code I write. Time to pay others for theirs.