Bitbucket Server reaches end of support in February 2024

Atlassian first announced the end of support for its Server products back in October 2020. Bitbucket Server will reach that end-of-support date on February 15, 2024. After that date, customers will no longer receive technical support, security updates, or bug fixes for vulnerabilities from Atlassian. The instance itself will keep running, but organizations that stay on it will be responsible for their own security and troubleshooting.

Four paths forward for Bitbucket Server teams

Current Bitbucket Server customers have four options as the deadline approaches:

  1. Remain on Bitbucket Server with no support or security patches
  2. Upgrade to Bitbucket Data Center at higher licensing costs
  3. Move to Bitbucket Cloud and accept product limitations
  4. Switch to a different developer platform such as GitHub

Staying on Bitbucket Server

Continuing to use the product after the support cutoff is technically possible, but it means operating without security updates, which Atlassian describes as essential for protecting against threats and vulnerabilities. Any support needs must be handled internally.

Moving to Bitbucket Data Center

Bitbucket Data Center is Atlassian's self-hosted alternative and offers improved performance and reliability over Server. The license upgrade itself is straightforward and can be done through the instance UI. The real cost difference comes in licensing fees. Using 2021 Server pricing for 50 developers, an organization would have paid $3,000 in the first year and $1,500 in subsequent years. Under current Data Center pricing, that same 50-developer deployment costs $4,200 per year every year — an extra $1,200 in year one and $2,700 more annually from year two onward. For larger deployments, 500 seats cost $14,550 in the first year under the old Server model and $7,275 in later years; Data Center pricing for 500 seats is $20,200 per year, every year.

Switching to Bitbucket Cloud

Atlassian recommends Bitbucket Cloud as its migration path and offers tools to assist with the move. However, the cloud product has notable constraints:

  • Data is hosted in the USA with no data residency controls, which may conflict with organizational or regional requirements.
  • It does not meet FedRAMP standards required for certain regulated industries.
  • SAML single sign-on requires Atlassian Access at an additional cost.
  • Atlassian products are standalone rather than integrated into one platform, forcing developers into context-switching instead of staying focused on shipping code.

Why GitHub is worth evaluating

GitHub presents a unified, integrated platform that handles development workflows in one place. In contrast to Atlassian's independently released and managed products — each requiring separate subscription updates that can consume days of IT time — GitHub Enterprise Cloud is available as a single SaaS deployment. It supports organizations with thousands of developers, includes resilience and disaster recovery as standard, and offers flexible configuration options. Compliance with a broad set of country-specific regulations makes it suitable for global development teams in ways a US-only data residency model is not.

Planning the migration to GitHub

Migrating from Bitbucket Server brings along several components beyond just code: collaboration history, CI/CD pipelines, and third-party or custom integrations.

Code and collaboration history

If pull request history is not important, a standard clone-and-push process gets repositories moved with minimal effort. For teams that want to preserve pull requests, comments, and reviews, GitHub Enterprise Importer offers a free, self-serve migration path from Bitbucket Server to GitHub Enterprise Cloud. Teams adopting GitHub Enterprise Server should contact GitHub's Expert Services team, which has specialized tooling for that type of migration.

CI/CD workflows

The feasibility of keeping existing CI/CD configurations depends on which tool is in use. Bamboo Server will not work with GitHub and requires a replacement; GitHub Actions is the native option, and GitHub Actions Importer can automate rewriting existing pipelines. Teams using CircleCI, Travis CI, or Jenkins can likely keep those tools, since all are compatible with GitHub. GitHub Actions Importer also supports translating configurations from those tools into Actions workflows.

Integrations

Public third-party integrations are often available from the GitHub Marketplace. Teams that use Bitbucket Server with Jira, for example, can use Atlassian's own Jira-GitHub integration. Custom integrations built on the Bitbucket API need to be audited, and any that are still needed will require rework against the GitHub API.