GitHub is primarily for managing software source control, issue tracking, developer collaboration, CI/CD. We use it for source control, peer review, and server-side merge, CI/CD capabilities like automated test suite running for PRs and merges. We use a separate issue tracking system, but for many projects GitHub's built-in issue system is adequate, it has advantages like automatic issue references and linking of issues to commits, PRs. GitHub also offers wiki pages per project, team organization, and one of my favorites is its free static website hosting service called (GH-pages). Their static hosting is capable of consuming Jekyll (Ruby on Rails) based projects on the server-side. Open-source repositories and organizations are free of charge with a 1GB limit per repo. A limited number of private repositories for individuals (not organizations) are also free. GitHub can perform security checks of the packages used by the project and even propose recommended fixes to those in the form of generated PRs. Speaking of automated PRs GitHub offers extremely easy few click solutions to contribute bugfix PRs to open source projects and other actions can be performed solely using the web front-end.
Pros
Free hosting of open source projects and a limited number of private repositories as well for individuals.
Free website hosting of statically generated websites or Jekyll Ruby on Rails-based projects.
Issue tracking, pull request system.
CI/CD capabilities.
Enforcing rules like PR needs to be accepted for a merge and other team management and policy features.
Widely adopted, large user base.
Very friendly and easy to use UI, many tasks can be done through the web.
Cons
Organizations without a paid plan cannot have private repositories.
Free repositories have a size limit of 1GB.
Support could be slow to respond.
Migrating repositories to other services can be hard.
Likelihood to Recommend
Although support could be slow to respond that's not always the case. I'd also not decrease my rating because they don't offer free private repositories for organizations. They need to generate some profit from somewhere, and their site is very reliable and easy to use. I'm also not concerned that GitHub was acquired by Microsoft. There are extremely viable alternatives though.
My companies use github for collaboration. It makes it really easy to keep everyone on the same page, even if they're working across the world! We have people in Los Angeles, Phoenix, Chicago and London all working together through programming and project management tools included inside github!
Pros
Github is amazing for people with experience in programming. The public issue trackers have a wealth of information where I don't usually even need to go to stackoverflow anymore for help since the problem/solution probably exist
They give back to the community as well with amazing applications and tools like Atom and Electron.
Github's user interface is better than all the others, which is why many others just straight up copy it.
Cons
Their project management tools are constantly getting better but I would like to see them be a viable (lightweight!) Jira replacement.
Likelihood to Recommend
The code isn't on your computer, so if your computer breaks or a programmer quits (or your house burns down) you always have a backup. But this can be a con, as well, if you work for a company that doesn't allow the code to leave the building (but do offer an enterprise plan!)
