Software development is essential to create a business website that makes you more distinguishable and stand out from competitors. By using an excellent software developer, you can improve the experience of your clients and increase the productivity within your organization as well.

Not only that, but software developers can also make complicated processes simpler. Thus, results can be delivered easily and quickly. In software development, code writing is used to successfully program the unique specifications and objectives that you want to see on your website.

In this article, two software development platforms will be tackled – namely, Team Foundation Server and GitHub. Their unique features and functionalities will be discussed and compared, along with their value and other capabilities. By the end of this Team Foundation Server vs GitHub Comparison, you will determine which of the two software is worth giving a try.

Team Foundation Server

Overview

Team Foundation Server, now known as Azure DevOps Server, is a product of Microsoft which provides solutions for issue tracking, source code management, and project management. To add to this, Team Foundation Server is also a project tracking, software shipping, and code sharing solution.

Because of its continuous integration, task tracking, and helpful planning tools, Team Foundation Server can improve your business’s project development. Other agile tools that this software is equipped with are dashboards, scrum boards, and Kanban boards. With these, you can quickly overview tasks and prioritize those that need to be accomplished as soon as possible.

Team Foundation Server provides extended features to improve better software team collaboration. Additionally, it supports Microsoft components such as Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Project, and other cloud development services. It supports Mac, Windows, and other web-based devices.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Unlimited code repositories
• Data consistency
• Team collaboration
• Built-in code reviews

Cons:

• Poor web-based navigation
• Dashboards have limited functionality
• Non-Microsoft integration can be difficult
• Additional price for extra members is expensive

GitHub

Overview

GitHub is known as one of the best social coding platforms because of its limitless and powerful features. It provides software development, version control, code sharing via cloud, and many more control management functionalities.

By using Git, users can collaborate on creating projects and sharing ideas. Aside from this, GitHub’s features focus on code management, workflow, collaboration, security, and marketplace and integrations allowing users to take their team collaboration to the next level and increase productivity.

Aside from this, GitHub supports all the programming languages that you need and integrates with third-party applications. Moreover, GitHub repositories allow you to store your documents on GitHub and store each of your document’s revision history. If you are looking for backup software to secure your files, check this research to help you.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Reliable issue tracker
• Productive collaboration codes
• Ideal for creating a backup of your work
• Integrates with several apps and systems
• Provides more modern tools

Cons:

• GitHub repositories require getting used to
• Migrating repositories can be difficult
• Free plan does not provide private repositories
• It lacks Window support

Features Comparison

Drag-and-drop

GitHub provides a drag-and-drop functionality like that of Team Foundation Server’s, which allows users to drag and drop tasks to Kanban boards or scrum boards. But, GitHub calls this functionality as the Drag-and-Drop Gist Code. GitHub designed Gist to give users a host code snippet. Additionally, you can simply browse and discover more code snippets in various languages. What’s more is that through GitHub, users can directly add codes to their files by simply dragging and dropping them. It is effortless and easy that you only a few clicks and little time to do this.

Managing Deliverable

GitHub is an excellent platform to manage projects and deliverable, collaborate with other users and create and assign tasks. Meanwhile, Team Foundation Server allows you to organize your backlogs in a hierarchical list to quickly view your deliverable. You can filter your backlogs by using the “Show or Hide In Progress” functionality. In this way, you can manage your items or tasks more effectively and track current ones. A multi-team backlog ownership is also provided to help you manage your team’s backlogs efficiently. Check this article to learn more about tracking your project’s progress.

Task Management and Agile Planning

Task management is made more accessible and interactive in GitHub. You can create tasks and checklists to track specific parts of your ongoing projects. You can then assign these created tasks to up to ten team members and notify them by using “mentions.” Team members can also add comments to these tasks and projects, and enable notifications to keep them updated. There are many task management software options to choose from, check our guide here to discover them.

Similarly, monitoring your team’s progress and managing operational issues are also easier with Team Foundation Server’s Agile planning. The software’s Agile project management enables you to create team-based planning capabilities, assign tasks using the drag-and-drop feature, and monitor your burndown chart’s real-time progress.

Version Control

Team Foundation Server provides incomparable capabilities for your source code management. It has flexible version control and allows you to collaborate on code. Its command and control code policies will enable you to organize your projects in any way easily. Team Foundation Server uses centralized version control, which only allows one user to keep the history of its older versions.

On one hand, GitHub is a distributed version control. This means that its codebase – including its full history – can be viewed by every user.

Integrations

Team Foundation Server offers many amazing features and integrations that can help you manage your software development more effectively. It provides continuous integrations and delivery, end-to-end traceability, migration, Java support, branch visualization, and many more.

Aside from this, Team Foundation Server integrates with Microsoft Office tools such as Microsoft Excel, Project, and Project Professional.

At the same time, GitHub also provides a myriad of integrations that allows users to utilize third-party tools. From GitHub’s marketplace, you can find a variety of integrations and GitHub applications that support code review.

Pricing

To achieve a more effective Team Foundation Server vs GitHub Comparison, pricing for each software’s licenses will also be discussed. This will help you determine which of the two is more affordable and practical.

Both Team Foundation Server and GitHub offer a free version you can download and install in any Windows 7 or higher computers. Although its inclusions are limited, it can still be considered a good deal.

Team Foundation Server’s free version is only limited to five users, can only be installed in one server, and this version does not support some advanced features. If you work with large teams and projects, Team Foundation Server’s free version may not work. Instead, you can use GitHub’s free version, which is best for users who want to create open-source projects.

Next is Team Foundation Server’s paid license, which is called the Visual Studio Online. This version is cloud-based and has two options: basic and advanced. The basic option is free for a maximum of five users, then a monthly price of $20 will be charged for additional users. In comparison, the advanced option costs $60 per month for all users, including more advanced features that you can not enjoy in the basic option.

Besides Team Foundation Server’s free version and Visual Studio Online plan, users can install the full version of the software at $500.

In comparison, GitHub’s second-tier plan is the Developer plan, which costs $7 per month. This plan can be more advantageous than Team Foundation Server’s Visual Studio Online plan since users can collaborate with one another. It provides unlimited access to both public and private repositories.

GitHub’s Team plan is also available for $9 per month for each user. For five users, it can be purchased for $25 per month. Some of its inclusions are organization accounts, team and user permissions, and unlimited access to public and private repositories.

The Business plan on GitHub.com is their third top-tier plan. This plan is GitHub hosted and costs $21 per month for each user. With the Business plan on GitHub.com, you can create organization accounts, access provisioning, 24/5 support, and 95% Uptime SLA.

Last but not least is the Business plan on GitHub Enterprise, which can be purchased at $21 per month for each user. This plan can also be sold in packs of ten users and billed annually. With the Business plan on GitHub Enterprise, users can access provisioning, make advanced audits, create multiple organizations, and self-host on their own servers.

Which is the better software developer?

To wrap up this Team Foundation Server vs GitHub Comparison, both software has proved themselves capable of helping users create a more reliable and functional collaboration platform. You must choose a software developer that suits your needs and can provide the specific features that you are looking for.

Although both software possesses very similar attributes, each of them functions differently. If you want a more centralized software developer, you can try using Team Foundation Server. On the contrary, if you want a powerful yet complex distributed software developer, GitHub can be your choice.