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up vote 7 down vote favorite
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The BitBucket capabilities, and pricing (up to 5 users for free) left me wondering what the catch was... there is no such thing as a free lunch, after all.

What is BitBucket getting out of my unpaid participation, besides a handsome man to freely include in their promotional materials (per the TOS)?

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You can always fish ... – ldigas Oct 25 '11 at 1:17
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This is also called the freemium model. – birryree Oct 25 '11 at 1:35
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What they get out of me: 1) a few bug reports, 2) I'm always suggesting bitbucket to friends and colleagues (and numerous times on this site, on related questions), 3) I'm now a paying customer (after being extremely satisfied as a non paying one) – Yannis Rizos♦ Oct 25 '11 at 6:46

3 Answers

up vote 13 down vote accepted

This is the same profit model that people have been using for years, since the rash of free anti-virus software for individuals.

Basically, you will get used to using BitBucket, and when there comes a time that you are working at a company who needs a service like BitBucket, you will go straight there rather than evaluating the alternatives. Then they will make money from your participation.

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so they want to hook me as a private user, and then hope I lobby for adoption of their service by my employer? – Andrew Heath Oct 25 '11 at 1:06
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@AndrewHeath: Yes. Such models have proven effective in software sales; there is no reason it shouldn't work in service provision. There is a higher risk though, because in software it costs you no more to provide a free version, while if you have nothing but non-paying users of a service then it becomes expensive. But then there is always the Wikipedia approach of saying "if you want us to continue, then we need $X in donations." – pdr Oct 25 '11 at 1:11
up vote 10 down vote

@bitbucket answered this a few times. To put it short, pretty much they like to make their income off businesses and teams who can afford it. Free users are not costing them that much, and when the time comes, a once time single user who upgraded to a team, which needs more serious support, will probably upgrade to a paid account as well. After all, IMHO, their prices are pretty reasonable.

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I'm located in a socially harmonious country that protects me from conduits of capitalist filth and propaganda like Twitter, so I apologize if I missed an oft-discussed issue on their feed. – Andrew Heath Oct 25 '11 at 1:30
@AndrewHeath - same here, except the twitter propaganda :))) – ldigas Oct 25 '11 at 2:32
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@AndrewHeath - Sorry about that ;) Seriously, if you plan on using BitBucket their tw. account is a wonderful source of information. The crew is also really helpful if you have a problem with a particular feature at any point. I haven't had any, but have seen particular quircks solved in a matter of minutes. Don't know about you, but I always value helpful chaps more than any feature in a service. – ldigas Oct 25 '11 at 2:36
@Idigas - I've added their blog to my aggregator. I'll make a note to fire up the VPN and check their twitter feed once a week or so. thanks :-) – Andrew Heath Oct 25 '11 at 2:38
@AndrewHeath That's irony right? – Tivie Feb 22 at 15:46
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up vote 2 down vote

Bitbucket works well with other services like Atlassian Bamboo (CI) and Atlassian Jira which are a paid services.

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Thanks for making your first Stack Exchange Programmers post. – DeveloperDon Oct 30 '12 at 4:58

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