This was exactly the reason we used Bitbucket in the beginning, even if it was worse in some aspects. Github would have been simply too expensive (or restricting) with our "it's always in source control" approach, even for smaller prototypes.

We're happy Gitlab users now by the way - and I'm curious how long Github will survive with their over-valuation as the alternatives get seriously better now - the lock-in and network effects are quite shallow IMHO.

Just wanted to add that if you don't want to run GitLab yourself our GitLab.com is free with unlimited private repositories but it also has also unlimited private collaborators https://about.gitlab.com/gitlab-com/

I never realized gitlab.com offered free private repos. Thanks!

Any API on this service?

Sure, see http://doc.gitlab.com/ce/api/

The interface is horribly (painfully) slow. On the API side...any of the params I post when hitting the create project endpoint are not taken into consideration. With the following data posted to the API I still get public builds, issues not enabled, wiki not enabled and so on: {'issues_enabled': True, 'description': None, 'visibility_level': 0, 'public_builds': False, 'wiki_enabled': True, 'snippets_enabled': True, 'merge_requests_enabled': True, 'name': 'testfoo'}