Bitbucket Reviews

It's a source control system. We have lots of source code and we wanted to move to Git and there are a lot of different Git solutions out there, including free stuff. But we liked the features of Bitbucket, because it takes off some of the sharp edges, so to speak. It's a more professional version than the free open source Git that's widely available.

We have a couple of different tools that allow us to tie source code changes to report bugs. It's integrated with our bug tracking system and also integrated with our requirement tracking system. So we have better facilities. We could integrate these solutions using command line "hooks", but when we do it all manually, it's not likely to happen.

Even with the automation, we've had some situations where we've had mistakes. Developers have integrated code into the wrong place by mistake, so there's a fairly steep learning curve.

Being in the cloud and using large repositories can be slow. They should improve synchronizing very large repositories.

I have been using Bitbucket for six months. 

It's pretty stable. We just had one incident where one of our developers somehow got access to somebody else's code using his own credentials.  He logged in like he normally does but could not see our source code; all he could see was somebody else's source code instead. That's a security problem. They cleaned it up somehow and the next time he logged in, there was no issue.   

We don't have any issues with scalability. And no issues with availability today. It's on the cloud that you look for is, it's accessible worldwide, it's always working and you don't have to rely on your IT to keep it running.

There are around 100 users in our company. Their roles are Developers, DevOps, and QA.

We use several different source control systems and it's a big deal to change.  All the groups that were interested have now made the jump. 

I haven't contacted customer support. When we had the incident with the employee logging in with his credentials, we called support and told them this one guy had a problem. Other than that incident it's been stable and available. No real complaints.

The setup was kind of complex. We started out with some simple examples and that was easy enough. But then when we went to migrate real code repositories, we had to get into what they call large file storage, which was complex to set up.

The deployment took about a month with a small focus group and I would say it probably took two or three months to get everybody comfortable using it.

We use it on the cloud. It's the latest and greatest. You don't have to pay for maintenance and you get automatic updates and hardware and backups and all that nice stuff. I paid a little premium for it, but you get a lot of benefits.

Licensing is on a monthly basis, it's available on their website. They have a free version, a pro version and then they have an enterprise version.  The Pro version is kind of the middle of the road for about $7 per user per month.

I would advise getting some Git training.  Something like 85% of all developers use Git. So it's like the defacto standard for source control.  Bitbucket is a brand of Git that has some nice features on top of the core functionality.

The biggest lesson learned was, we should've done a little bit more training for the developers. It was very informal and should've probably been more formal, not necessarily sending everybody to university or a class, but a little more hand-holding.

I would rate it an eight out of ten. I give it this rating because there was the integration with the other tools.

We have around 700 users for this product in our company and a maintenance team of four people. I've recently put in an order to increase that to 1,000 users in the near future and hope to bump this up to 2,000 users down the track. We are end users of this solution and I'm the Head of the DevOps Engineering Center.

It's the code check in and code version controlling.

There is room for improvement in terms of the branching strategies. Instead of leaving the branching strategy for users to decide, Bitbucket could provide some default branching options for users to adopt. For now, users need to configure branching strategies from scratch as there's no template for the code branching. If they came up with a couple of default budgeting strategies, it could be used immediately. For example, there's a branching strategy called GitFlow, which is widely used in the market. It could be included in the tool as a template and adopted quickly and used immediately rather than having to create it from scratch. 

Secondly, when it comes to the code reviewer, there's no way to restrict the number of reviewers, it can only be modified by the project managers on the fly and we don't want the project managers modifying the code reviewers. It should be restricted to the tool administrators. This is another gap in the solution. They really need to give out of the box integrations to all DevOps tools and the cloud tools without the need for additional plugins.

I've been using this solution for five years. 

This is a stable solution and has a very good backup mechanism. There's only an issue if you don't have your backup running and there is a hardware failure or if the database goes out of sync. If that happens, recovery of Bitbucket is very, very complex.We encountered an issue as a result of some incorrect commands triggered by our engineer and it was very difficult to recover. We had to engage the Atlassian product engineers and they also had problems. Eventually, we had to recover each and every line of code manually. If you're using Bitbucket as a code repository or a version controlling tool, users need to ensure that the necessary backup for the file system and databases is configured appropriately. If not, then your recovery will be impacted.

It's a very scalable solution especially if it's hosted on cloud. The only thing is that the developers need to be aware of the number of code branches that they are creating, and carry out the proper housekeeping of the code. If that doesn't happen then the growth of Bitbucket will be enormous, and it might encounter some disk utilization related issues. I would suggest not to rely fully on the tool's capability for scaling up and down. Users need to be aware of what needs to be cleaned and housekeeping required. That aside, it's very scalable.

The technical support of the solution is problematic. If you subscribe to 24/7 support then you're fine. Otherwise they're available eight hours a day, not necessarily during your business hours. Unfortunately, there is no phone number to call the customer care directly which is frustrating. The only option is to raise a support ticket and then wait for them to reply; most of the time they try to avoid the calls and do most of the communication through the support ticket, which is very painful. I've worked for other large companies where they provide a dedicated phone number for customers and escalation of the ticket can be requested. Atlassian is a very poor support model

I've been impacted a couple of times. Even if you put in an escalation request you only get a reply when they get to it and turn on the escalation in their own sweet time. It's very difficult and frustrating. Instead of going for the Atlassian support, we paid a third party vendor, an Atlassian support partner, and we took an annual maintenance contract with them.

Atlassian don't want their customers dependent on them but want them to take up support services from their preferred support partners. There are different levels and if you need something urgently, they'll suggest you contact their premier support partners. It's not a good model and I would rate them poorly in this regard.

I still use Jira and Confluence and have done for many years. It's the same support model for all tools, just like Bitbucket.

The initial setup is not very complex. It took us about a week, perhaps less.

The price of Bitbucket is on the high side, but I think that's because of the tool's capability, which is justifiable. If you're purchasing for a smaller number of users then the license cost per user is definitely expensive, but if you buy a greater number of licenses, then it likely becomes a little cheaper.

Atlassian is a very clever company. They sell the base product a little cheaper, and on top of that they sell many important plugins or add-ons which you need but which are also expensive. You might think you have a reasonably good deal but the base product will not have some of the important features and if you look at the final cost, it's a little expensive. But the tool has good capabilities and very good features not explored by many other Git based version controlling tools like GitLab or GitHub.

I would have given Atlassian a nine out of 10, but because of the technical support issues and pricing, I would give them a seven out of 10 rating. I wouldn't even complain about the cost but they really need to improve their support model. 

We develop our own applications and all of our source code activities are managed and tracked on Bitbucket.

Bitbucket is a standard git implementation with perfectly coordinated screens, it's secure, and we have had no problems with it.

We are satisfied with the user interface.

The installation of Bitbucket on our server was not as easy as other Atlassian products, so it is something that can be improved. The same is true for the upgrade process. I have upgraded it twice, and it is similar to the initial installation.

I have been using Bitbucket for two years.

We have had no problems and I'm satisfied with the stability. We use it quite heavily because all of our applications and updates are handled on different branches in Bitbucket.

I cannot say much with respect to scalability because we are a small company with a maximum of five people who are using the product.

In the two years that we have been using Bitbucket, we have not needed any support.

Prior to using Bitbucket, we were using the freeware version of SVN. We switched because Bitbucket has better features, especially for source code maintenance.

The initial setup was a little bit complex. It requires more intervention on the Linux console than the other Atlassian products. You need to adjust more files, for example.

It took us about a month to deploy and three people were involved in the process. Only one person is required for maintenance because it is generally maintained by Atlassian.

The deployment was done by our in-house team.

We have seen ROI but I cannot easily quantify it with numbers.

We are using the minimum package with ten users and we are happy with the price because we are a small company. With our small number of users, our licensing fees are approximately $10 USD per month. There are no fees in addition to this.

We evaluated GitHub but we require our own server for source code management.

This solution is good and it covers all our needs. Periodically, I receive announcements from Atlassian, mostly concerning the security features. They are fixing the newly discovered vulnerabilities and also, there are some other improvements in the features. Normally, I am not affected by the new features because we don't require them.

My advice is to start using this solution because it works very well and we are very satisfied with the functionality. If somebody knows how to configure git for libraries then they can implement Bitbucket as well.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for managing our own repository.

I don't have too much experience with Bitbucket; I use GitHub more often.

It's easy to switch back and forth between Bitbucket and GitHub.

The code review and creation of requests need improvement. In GitHub it's much easier and broader and that makes everything easier to see.

The solution is not user-friendly. Right now, the solution is not so easy to understand. It needs to update its design and overall user experience.

I've been using the solution for several months.

The solution is relatively stable. It's much more stable than GitHub.

The solution is fairly scalable. I'm not sure if scaling affects pricing, however. We often have around 100 users on the solution, but it depends on the project.

I've never had to contact technical support.

We did previously use a different solution. We switched to Bitbucket when we switched projects.

The initial deployment is rather straightforward and only takes 30 minutes to an hour.

I handled the implementation myself.

We use the cloud deployment model.

We use the solution pretty extensively, but it depends on the client and the project.

I'd suggest those considering implementing the solution try all the functionalities in the trial period. That way you can decide if it will work for your projects.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

Our primary use case of this solution is as source repository. We use it to store all the source codes. So we basically use it for easy management of access to the source repository and creating pull requests. It also helps us to manage and get an overview of the different branches we have. It integrates into JIRA seamlessly so you can see the task effects on a JIRA task and Git.

What I liked the most about this program is that it integrates seamlessly with JIRA, which really adds value to our organization. I also like it as a pull request feature, even though that feature can definitely be improved.

I think the developers are constantly working on improving the pull requests support. It already works quite well, but there are still some issues with the support of the workflow and how to actually measure the time you spend on using reviews for pull requests compared to the time you actually use for doing the task. I am not really sure how that should be handled. I don't have a good solution for it yet. 

I don't have any issues with the stability of Bitbucket. It just works as it should.

The only thing I've experienced with the scalability is that you have to buy additional licenses when you exceed 50 users. That's more related to the cost model. I don't think I've experienced any scalability issues with it so far, however. I didn't expect to either because it's primarily hooked up to Git, that's the source repository.

Only when we misuse Git, like when we add large binary files to a source repository, it doesn't go that well. That's because we don't use it like it was intended to be used. It has nothing to do with Bitbucket - it's more about Git.

I haven't used their technical support yet.

I don't know exactly what the program costs, but it depends on how many users you have. We recently upgraded from 50 to 100 users, and I think it's public on the website. I am not sure. 

My advice to others would be that, if they are looking for a stable on-premises solution, Bitbucket is the obvious choice. They can even use it if they are looking for a cloud solution, but we have a restriction that we have to run it on-premises. Therefore I think it's the smallest, best solution for us. 

I think it's worth paying for the extra features because otherwise you end up spending a lot of time configuring open source products. 

On a scale from one to 10, I rate Bitbucket a nine.

Actually, I have an E-commerce product on that solution and store it there. I deploy the product for each customer and they use it. I'm trying to use the cloud system as my center for distribution. I use Bitbucket for hosting the core code.

I'm using the private cloud because I don't want to have my source public on the internet. I'm very happy about that solution because it's precisely enough for me and my needs. Being private was very important for me, and working with the product's GUI user interface is a good experience. 

While it is a good and useful product for my application, there are several disadvantages to the system. One thing I have seen is that you can't add some better features to the wiki system. For example, better attachment and document management could be more useful. We actually use another system for our documents because the document management system was not suited for us. Maybe they can improve the wiki side of that product. The issue tracking also can be better than it is now.

The wiki side of the system can use the most enhancement. When I want to use the wiki, I have many problems writing the source code in different code languages. We are creating a web program. Because it is a web project, we want to use, for example, JavaScript and we use CSS. Then we want to use Java for the back-end. When we use different languages, we have a problem deploying them with that system.

Sorting documents is an issue, and also issue tracking over in the system is not very professional. If you compare this product with JIRA it is not very good in these capacities. There is a lot of room for improvement. Another comparison could be made with teamwork.com which is better at these things. We used teamwork for a situation where we needed both better document handling and better issue tracking. We wanted to have something like GitLab with all the features of a project management tool.

Another problem that I had involved issues with CICD (Continuous Integration Continuous Deployment). I could not configure it easily. I did not try to resolve the issue and left it for the future. Maybe it was because of the user interface or maybe because the documentation was not so good, but the CICD pipeline wasn't very easy for us to use. Maybe just adding more helpful documentation for that feature will solve the issue.

The limit on the number of users became a problem for us because we live in a country in the Middle East. The issue of spending more money and having additional costs is a really big concern for us. For example, for being the Turkish leader in the field, what we were able to charge the customer compared to what we are paying for services is not cheap. That makes it difficult to make a decent profit, re-invest and grow.

Other additional features I would like to see can help expand how we work with customers. One example is adding a notebook. There is no notebook in the product at all to write notes for your users and customers to remember details about them and have them available.

Another example would be to add a feature that allows you to integrate and converse with GitLab. Sometimes we need to write some notes for something inside GitLab, but it would be good to have the availability to add from both products and have them integrated. 

If BitBucket had online chat and online help for premium users, it will be best for users who need to get support. Programmers want to focus on the code. For example, if I want to configure something in my pipeline or in a product I am building, I may need to read 30 articles to understand what is happening on the system in order to program it. If I am in a rush and I am a programmer, I don't have enough time for that. So if BitBucket had an online chat system for support to help the developers, that could speed up development and access to support itself.

I can understand these things may not be the primary purpose of the BitBucket solution, but maybe if these things can be added the solution would be more independent, better integrated and would be nearly perfect.

This solution is perfectly stable. We never had a problem with it, and after five years it is still running as we expect. I love this program for that. 

Many software companies are trying to scale up on the cloud. BitBucket should add some features to make some better use of the cloud and other integrations. For example, if you want to migrate your product to AWS (Amazon Web Services), the AWS will try to send the source code to a codecomp system. Maybe you have something that you do not want to migrate from the source to Amazon. It would be nice to have controls for that. When you commit the code to BitBucket it would be good to be able to also commit from BitBucket to use AWS. 

In our company, we had ten proficient programmers working on the project and we have good clients in Turkey. We could scale the program as well as the number of users and our market or in other ways. I think I am confident in that. So the product is scalable in many ways.

The company can improve access to technical support. Some of the documentation was not so good. We did not use it much.

From my point of view, the setup for the Atlassian product was better than other products but had less to offer as a system. I tried to switch to TFS (Team Foundation Server), a Microsoft product, and I couldn't use that because I loved this user interface system in the BitBucket product more than TFS.

The first upload of our project was in 2015. I uploaded that code. It wasn't very hard to use the solution or do the deployment. Some of the configuration is not as easy or as good as it could be. The system has changed, but since the implementation, I have made no changes in three years.

In a way, I did evaluate other options but it was after I was already working with BitBucket. I tried to use TFS and GitLab, but I couldn't add my existing support to their systems. I loved this support system that I had with BitBucket — the system was very good. But looked at other solutions because I wanted some other features that these other products claimed to have, like issue tracking and a better wiki. These were things which I couldn't get directly in the BitBucket service. But I had gotten used to the excellent GUI in BitBucket and thought it was almost perfect. There were some things missing but the solution was perfectly enough for us. I decided there was no need to change to TFS or the GIT system after the comparison.

On a scale from one to ten, where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate this product as an eight. I love this product, so actually eight may actually not be good enough for the rating. On the other hand, there is a lot that could be incorporated or improved.

• The whitelisting feature - Except for the white listed IPs nobody can access it.
• It is on the cloud which, security-wise, is a plus point. 
• It has several flows that makes it an effective user-review system to help avoid unwanted code. 
• It also has different levels of security, different levels of encryption.

Initially, we were using other SCM tools that do not have stringent rules that your code should be reviewed first and only then can you commit the code. Bitbucket has push and pull features, that process. When someone wants to commit code, they first pull the code and submit a review request. The request goes to the reviewer and he has to review first, then only he can allow it to be merged.

This process has improved the code quality because every time we commit code it is reviewed by peers, and only then can you commit the code.

It has a distinct tree type of structure that any branch that you need to create can only be a replication of, more or less, of the changes. You can not have a branch that is totally different from the root. This is an advantage but also a drawback. Being a developer, I would prefer to have these kinds of rules. But again, that does not allow me to use the same repository for a different kind of structure so I would need to create a new repository if I am changing the whole structure of the application. You can say both, it is a drawback or it is plus of the application.

Another thing, the time it takes for the repository to get downloaded and be available increases if you are using the cloud version. The only thing we can improve is the bandwidth. If you have low bandwidth and you have a relatively large repository, say more than one GB, it will take a lot of time.

Six to eight months now.

Until now, we haven't found any issues with stability. Once only, there was an issue, we were not able to connect to the application server. That was resolved within some 15 minutes, as soon as we filed a ticket and reported it, it was resolved in 15 minutes. I don't think that there is any issue with stability.

Right now, we are at around 200 developers using it and we haven't found any issue with the scalability.

I haven't called them, but we use their technical support system by submitting a ticket. I would rate it as eight out of 10, their support by email, etc.

We were using something else initially. We switched to Bitbucket as it is a cloud version and we need to support multiple locations; people from multiple locations are accessing the code. Until now, it has been quite helpful.

Because it's a cloud version, we did not need to do any kind of setup with it. We initially started using the trial version of it for 30 days. We created some repositories and started accessing it. Later on, we bought the Enterprise version of it. There were no issues, as such, in setting it up.

We had a few options: Installing it on-prem, and we were also using the previous solution. We found that we prefer Bitbucket as we were going to get good support from a known company. The other thing was that it is on the cloud so we wouldn't have to maintain the server and deal with other maintenance issues. That's why we prefer Bitbucket.

If someone is going to migrate their own code from an SCM to Bitbucket, it could take a lot of time if your code is a bit older. That means that you have larger number of divisions, so it could really take much more time for transferring that to Bitbucket. Otherwise, there's no issue migrating. If it's something that will go directly into Bitbucket, it's just a one-step process.

When it comes to the migration process, because most developers are used to working on other tools, migrating them to Bitbucket takes some time. If Bitbucket had its own migration tool or utility that could be used directly to transfer your SCMs from the older system to Bitbucket, it would have been better. We had to figure out some way or other to do that. If they would have provided something like that, that would have been a plus point.

Overall, it's quite good. It gives you lots of flexibility to use it. It follows all of the site framework. The best practice is that you are required to have your code reviewed before it's committed. Also, there are many layers of permissions that you can apply to a repository.