Many people over the past few months, have been asking the same questions over and over again about the services over at XP-Dev.com. I don’t mind answering them with the same answers, but I think it is time to put all of these questions into one place and discuss them.
Why are you offering Subversion Hosting for free ? Is it too good to be true ?
Let me set something straight:
I offer it free because I really do not believe that anyone should pay for something so simple to setup and run as Subversion.
Here is the reality: I setup Apache using mod_svn, mod_dav, mod_ssl and mod_auth_mysql once. Believe me: only once and never ever ever ever (ever!) touched it again. No, I am not kidding – only once! No tinkering needed, it just runs like Forrest Gump (no pun intended to all you Gump fans out there).
It does cost $$$ to host it, including my time to add more features to it. Disk space and bandwidth is getting cheaper. They are not free, but then again, if you average it across the number of users that I have on XP-Dev.com, the figure looks really, really small. It is a cost nonetheless, which I’ll try to cover below.
So, we’ve established it does cost money, how are you covering these costs ? Are you really rich ?
OK. I wish I was rich, but the truth is – I am not. I could claim I was rich and lie to you all, but then I would not get any glory every time I look at my monthly bank statements.
So, where does the money come from to pay for the services ? Well, at the moment, I am paying for it. But I won’t be doing this forever.
I have got a few models to generate revenue and these models will be implemented in the next few months. I can’t reveal them to the public just yet, but rest assured that the usage of Subversion and project tracking on XP-Dev.com will always remain free. This is how I started and envisaged XP-Dev.com, and that is how it will always be.
Free Subversion Hosting and Project Tracking on XP-Dev.com is a life-time guarantee.
You’re offering a free service. There’s a catch to it, right ? Are you selling our code to someone else ?
No. Nada. No catch. I am not a petty code trader. I don’t go around knocking on other peoples doors saying “PHP codez $4 per line! .. $3.50 per line! .. $3.40 per line! ..”. I could not even be the least bothered about what everyone else is coding. I have my own ideas to push forward and materialise (one of them is XP-Dev.com, there are a lot more in the pipeline).
So, your code is safe on our servers. No one else other than the ones you have permissioned are looking at your repositories. We do have backups that run every night and copied over off-site, but they are all encrypted before leaving the server.
I put all my code on XP-Dev.com. I am a consumer of my own service. I believe that anyone who offers a service should always be their own users/clients/customers. You should see your service from the customers point of view.
If someone else looked at my code and data, I’d be really worried. I respect that tremendously and try my very best to lock down the server.
What you see is what you get – WYSIWYG. There are no catches at all. Your code and data are safe. We have a “no prying eyes” and “mind your own business” policy.
OK. So it is a genuine service that is FREE with no strings attached. Then I suppose it will have to be an overloaded, slow service ?
Never! This is one of the things that come out from being a consumer of your own service. If the services do get slow, there’s going to be one really noisy, angry, verbal user – me. And I’m really scared of him.
On a serious note, I’d be disappointed with myself if the service ever comes to a unacceptable quality. At the moment it’s fast and quick and I intend on keeping it that way. If it every becomes slow, I’ll be there in front of the queue shouting.
I’m not too sure if this is a good thing, or a bad thing – I’ve only ever worked in the Front Office for Investment Banks building real-time (well, its near real-time) trading and pricing system. They are all high performance scalable systems. The systems I work on can cost a trader anywhere between $100,000 to $500,000 if latency went up a nudge above 10ms (yes, that’s milliseconds!). XP-Dev.com is a testament of my experience building & architecting these crazy systems (trust me, they are crazy!). If performance degrades, it will be a major failure on my part and I’m a really proud person 
.
It is a great service. How can I help ?
This reply is a cliche. There are a few ways you can help.
If you are not a user, register now!
If you are a user, and have any problems, queries or just want to say thank you, then please tell me, or email admin@xp-dev.com. Every single non-spam email that goes there gets a reply. If you don’t get a reply in a few hours, then it’s probably SpamAssassin acting up. You should use this form instead.
If you are a user, or not even one just yet – you can help by telling your friends, mom, dad, brothers, sisters, relatives, neighbours, cats, dogs, fish and everyone else about XP-Dev.com. Digg it, Buzz it, Reddit. Do whatever. Just keep spreading the word. I really appreciate it.
If you have any other questions or concerns, please post them as comments to this blog entry, or do contact me directly.
Tags: Linux, Management, Project Tracking, Subversion, XP-Dev.com
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[...] directly regarding concerns about how he pays for bandwidth and storage. He directed me to his blog post — and so far so good. He seems like a good entrepreneur, letting the customers come first [...]
Hi Roopinder,
thank you for your service. I was using assembla till now for small projects svn, but as it is becoming a paying service, i’ll give xp-dev a try !
Hi JulienV
Your welcome for the service! Give it a try, and if there’s anything that I could help with, please do drop me a note, or just mail admin@xp-dev.com
Enjoy!
Ok, usually I never comment on any blog I read, but you seem to be too nice to say “No”
I gave assembla a try but because it wasn’t free and it was very slow, I didn’t continue using their system. Just want to thank you for your service, it has helper me and my buddies to co-operate in an easy way. THANK YOU!
Hi Mike,
I am extremely happy that you’ve found XP-Dev.com useful
If there’s any feature you’d like to see on XP-Dev.com to help you and your buddies collaborate to higher levels of efficiency, do drop me a note!
Cheers!
Hi Roopinder,
I was using Assembla’s free service as well.
Now I am considering CodeSpaces as it seems to be the only closed-source Subversion service supporting revision property changes (and thus import via svnsync(*)). Alas it also seems very slow.
Maybe you could support that as well? I guess that should only be allowed when SVN commit Emails are activated so as to use them to avoid losing track of property changes.
Cheers,
Guillaume
(1): I know, I could ask you directly to load a dump, but I’d like to be able to fix commit messages as well, I remember it bothered me quite a few times before not to be able to do it.
Hi Guillaume,
I’ll put it under my todo list. At the moment I’m a little tied up getting the new xp-dev.com release out of the door.
Will be putting something on the website and blog it here as well once it’s out.
Cheers
Roopinder
Roopinder,
Thanks a ton for hosting SVN, you’re on to a wonderful loyalty base by keeping it free and fast. Good job!
Hello,
I just discover this by the SVN Tigris website… amazing! thanks for your effort! So my $1 contribution: if you need translations into Spanish for your website contact me! Im a Python developer and Linux Admin.. I just go to sign in your service and test it with some projects.
Thaks!
Mario
Cyril – thanks for the kind words
Mario – internationalisation is definately something I am looking at and *hopefully* it will be done sooner rather than later
Hi Roopinder,
I have just seen the new xp-dev,com: congratulations! Its looks are clean, trust-inspiring, uncluttered: just everything a developer can hope for!
I like that, don’t ever change it from now on! 
I opened http://www.xp-dev.com/support/6/ for revision property changes support, hope you don’t mind the constant nagging!
As I see there is now an automatic import function, I feel very tempted to just use it now anyway!
Cheers,
Guillaume
Thank you for this service.
I just like it. Comes handy.
Simple and clean for small things I will use it for.
Already using it.
sounds ‘too good’
joking, i’ve been searching for quick&fast svn hosting, i’m university student and, i need to have my code always accessible – i’ve came across many commercial services, but trying this one out for sure!
Thank You!
Wow! Thanks, man! I really appreciate your service because it’s free, handy, amazing…
@Guillaume
…and it’s one of the only closed-source Subversion services, CodeSpaces too, but that’s buggy and very slow.
You are awesome, I thought you would love to hear it. Hear it again, you are AWESOME!!!
OK, now I am using it and I love every moment of it!
So again thanks Roopinder for this great service, and you even implemented revision property changes support in no time, you rule man!
@Floris: Agreed, others are either slow/unreliable, bloated or both!
Many thanks for the kind words – all of you are really too kind
There’s more to come along – but I will definitely try to keep things lean, clean and mean!
I still with assembla as of this time, and looking for a way to setup my own svn server, i stumbled upon a blog which gives a short idea about your XP-Dev.com, I’ll register and see what’s in it
and ah…. thanks for the service 
Reynolds – if there’s anything that’s missing from xp-dev.com, please do tell – I’m always listening to what others ask for, and attempt to get most of them sorted out.
You Rock! this service is needed, and extremely well done, cudos to you.
I have a small request – the whole website would have been even better through the use of unicode – currently the aumlauts (o:s with two dots, a with one and two dots – typical swedesh chars) dont work (displayed as ?)
hm, this might be a support ticket?
@philip – it’s on the work queue. I did hack the framework up really quick and did not consider unicode support as the highest priority. But it will be done!
Hi Rupinder
COngratulations on doing such a great job on XP-Dev. At Xp-Dev I found exactly what I was looking for and even more. Wish you good luck for your plans with this site, I am sure it will be a big hit.
Tajinder Singh
Hi Rupinder,
This looks to be a fantastic service which I’m really excited to start using. One thing though, the SSL is invalid because it’s self signed.
Will this be changing soon?
Thanks
Michael – not for long, I’ll be getting CA signed certificates soon.
[...] XP-Dev and free Subversion book Posted December 17, 2008 Filed under: Uncategorized | If you are looking for a good Subversion hosting with no charge, then check http://xp-dev.com . This site provides a free 1.5Go space where you create as many SVN repositories as you wish ( !!! ). Every wise man may ask “why is it free without any ads?”, well the author gives a proper explanation on his blog : http://roopindersingh.com/2008/11/01/free-subversion-hosting/ [...]
[...] bit of a limbo the past few days, and it is to do with pricing software as a service (SaaS). I have blogged in the past that I do have a few ideas on generating revenue from XP-Dev.com, and pricing these ideas is an [...]
Good Job!
Great guy!
I am just disappointed at assembla, and I am extremely happy to hear about XP-Dev.
I don’t know how to say my feeling now, thank you so much for your love!
Thank again.
IL, Hung – thanks for the kind words!
There will be more coming along.
I am also moving over from Assembla since they decided to change free accounts to paid ones, and I never really used anything other than the svn features anyway. I was glad to see that you support svn over SSL as that was one of the things that always made me cringe to check in code over http when I was on a public wifi or something. Also the generous disk space and unlimited repos are definitely welcome.
Anyhow, thanks for setting up this service!
Dan
Washington, DC
I left Assembla because of known issues and I was searching for a free SVN hosting and found xp-dev. I’ve already created an account and will upload my source as soon as possible.
Thanks for the free and blazing fast service.
Ali, Dan – welcome to xp-dev.com!
[...] I came across this post that linked to this interview with the guy behind xp-dev. You might be interested in reading it. [...]
I always recommend my hosting provider, Site5.
Here’s a page that has simple instructions for getting started that I wrote:
http://julianyap.com/wiki/Subversion_on_Site5
You still have to fork out $5.95/month at Site5.
Hello.
I’ve contacted you before, but I must say it again – your service is just great!
Keep it up. 
If I may know, how much does it cost to maintain XP-Dev? I’m asking because I’d like to run a file sharing service.
@Patryk:
In terms of real, hard costs, its about £100-£200 depending on the month. In terms of development costs, it just sky rockets. I have an estimate, but it is really just my free time for now.
File sharing is an interesting market. There are tons of them out there, and most (if not all) of them form a fremium model in one way or another. It is a tough market, and you’ll need to have a good differentiator that attract users, especially business users. Having said that – there might be room for a good competitor who adds a lot of value around file hosting and making it easier for users to share their files.
Just have a look at filehosting.org – by the looks of it, they’ve basically set a really high bar in the market on the basic file hosting.
Technology wise, scalability will be the problem. You can’t afford to keep the uploaded file in memory during the upload process. You’ll need to save it to disk as soon as data is available. Thats what I do at xp-dev.com – I have seen users upload 400MB-500MB files using the web upload form without any problems.
Thanks for your reply. I think I said it a little imprecisely, but what I really meant is that I want to set up an anime sharing server where users can download files for free. I know such a service requires a fast line and at least 1 TB of free HDD space.
Do you know how much money it would take to establish such a server at home? Is it possible at all?
@Patryk:
A few things:
1. Sharing server in a niche market – that’s really good!
2. Be really careful that you’re not violating any copyrights. It’s quite a sensitive issue nowadays.
3. 1TB is a lot to start off with. I would suggest going for something smaller and build your way upwards. Its always easy to refactor your architecture if your site does get popular. You don’t really want to burn through your cash in the initial stages while you’re building your site. I tend to checkout the hosting offers section on Web Hosting Talk from time to time to see if there’s anything going out for a bargain. Have a look there if you can get anything with decent size (~150GB HDD space should be more than enough to start off). I wouldn’t pay anything more than $50 for something along the size of 150GB on a dedicated server. Going VPS is another solution as well.
The website is really cool and very useful. I am using it and i am very satisfied by the service.
I am definatly going to tell all my friends to check this site. It took me just 15 minutes setup. Compare to all other similar websites, it stands above par and this is site really clean.
Thanks a lot for this free svn service. I just created an account and it works perfectly. Such a free service is perfect when you want to setup things to work in common but don’t really know if the project is going to last for long…. Perfect to experiment things but doing the experimentation seriously !
Thanks again.
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very usefull service! great to see cool people running such projects! thanks for keeping it up!
Really thanks for your great effort.
I just spread out the words for your great service. You can check it here
http://www.mmgeeks.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=1178
Note: sorry for my double comment.
Markus – hope you’re enjoying it
Thet – Many thanks for spreading the word
Really appreciate it
If any of you have more feedback to add, do raise a support ticket at http://xp-dev.com/support/
Wow thanks god i (ands google) i finaly found your page. I’m searching about 2 month now (hmm maybe not hard enough) for a free private svn service for a little project. I found assembla but it costs and therefor it was no option.. i’m going to register now and check your system. i hope you use redmine instead of trac
[...] работы вполне приличная. Ответ почему сервис бесплатный. Хотя в сказки я не верю. Но пока он работает почему не [...]
So far, so good!
http://joshdevins.blogspot.com/2009/02/new-project-and-source-repository.html
[...] it’s free and the founder, Roopinder Singh gladly created a post on “Why is Subversion Hosting on XP-Dev.com is free”. It should answer your questions as it did [...]
Soy un estudiante universitario q recien esta intentando desarrollar algunas aplicaciones pequeñas y cuando vi este alojador gratuito de subversion me parecio un gran aporte para los q recien nos estamos iniciando en el mundillo de desarrollo de software. Muchas Gracias por el aporte… eres lo maximo amigo..!!!
Great great great. Thanks for the service.
[...] Our founder has blogged about this [...]
Just writing this post say a lot of you and the trustworthiness of this service. I will move all my projects from Assembla and local svn to xp-dev. Thanks¡
I´m also part of the quite large assembla exodus, xp-dev its just what I needed!
It was kind of hard to find it on google, I found a http://www.straw-dogs.co.uk article and followed to xp-dev
Hi Roopinder, still find it hard to believe that you are doin this for free! I had all my code and docs hosted on my own machines but recently my HDD crashed and left me stranded for two full weeks. I gave up after that and went after some commercial hosting sites to give them a try! Oh, the fees they charge for somethign as simple as Subversion!! When I found out about XP-Dev.com, I was a bit skeptical (not to complain but the XP-Dev name does sound a bit fishy). I then started using it occassionally for some time and soon realized that your setup rocks in terms of performance and robustness. While I do maintain backups of my code (I am a bit paranoid), I have much more faith in your venture now and have started to use it as my primary.
Hopefully, I will be able to help you out sometime in the future if things go well with my venture
@Navin – thanks for the kind words! Its very good practice in maintaining your own backups. Keep it up. I do maintain all repositories backups as well, but everyone should as well. Its pretty easy to do it by just clicking on a couple of buttons from the admin panel.
[...] Free Subversion Hosting (tags: programming hosting svn subversion free) [...]
Google App Engine 시작하기 2/2…
…
I wish I could be more original, but there are 59 responses before me :p
Thanks for a wonderful experience and for keeping my faith in mankind over 12% (That is, ready for another direct impact xD).
If there’s anything you could possibly need from Argentina, please let me know (Even translating stuff or giving a tango lesson ^^)
Best regards,
Oni
[...] to end it all even more nicely… it’s for free! Check out the reason why posted by the founder. « Advanced Debugging PureMVC [...]
This worked great! I can also help with Spanish internationalization if you need. Let me know.
Regards,
Alberto
What can I say?
Smashing!
As soon as I get a job I’ll gladly pay your annual fee.
Hi Roopinder.
I was using assembla for a tiny project. I gave them up and now I’m going to try xp-dev.com.
At first I want use the free service, but if I see that it really worth I will upgrade for a paid subscription.
As you’ve said you’re not rich. So, if no one get a paid subscription soon or later you will need to shut xp-dev down and it won’t be good
hi Roopinder,
I like xp-dev.com !!! really nice job. I was using assembla for my freelance projects but now am thinking about moving to xp-dev.
I will test the free version for sometime, then upgrade to paid version.
If you need any help improving xp-dev just let me know, am quit good with php j2ee and linux/freebsd administration.
cheers mate
Thanks for wonderful project!
Thanks for this service,
Just one question, if I will not use my account for a long period, there will be deleted ?
Regards,
@ahmed – your account will remain active.
Hello Roopinder! I’ve uploaded my source code onto your site http://xp-dev.com and was planned to use the site for version control during some development. Could you please let me know when your site will be available? 2009-07-06T18:00
Hi – well aware that the service has been down for a long time. Trying
to get it back asap.
Will be putting up a notice soon on what has happened. In terms of your data – they’re all there and safe. Will post an update soon.
Blog post should explain the outage
Hi – your service is great and i’m very thankful for it.
do you have any plan adding a git?
Yes, git and mercurial are coming up as well!
Thank you very much! This is a great site for us non-profit-making small project developers!
Thank you for the service, it’s really useful to develop our project with multiple users.
Hi,
I will give a try to your service for my own start-up.
However, thank you for your initiative (and the cost
) and I hope that you will successfully monetize your venture.
Hi, Thank you! This is awesome! Keep on rockin’