For a few years now, GitHub has been running a program that gives students around the world free access to GitHub Pro and various free and discounted services from other partners as part of its GitHub Education program. In total, more than 1.5 million students have now signed up for the program, with about 750,000 being currently active. With the new school year about to start, the company today announced that it is doubling the number of partners in the Student Developer Pack program by adding an additional 21 companies to the list.
The new partners cover a wide range of developer tools and services. They range from web design tools like Bootstrap Studio, which actually quietly joined the program over the summer, to the domain registrar .TECH, SSH client Terminus, ConfigCat for feature flag and configuration management and Icons8 for making applications look better.
“Our philosophy when it comes to the pack is that it is about preparing students for all the premier tools they are going to encounter in the workplace,” said Scott Sanicki, the senior program manager for the GitHub Student Developer Pack. That means there can be partners with competing products, too, but as Sanicki noted, GitHub hasn’t seen any pushback from existing partners so far, including Microsoft.
Indeed, over the summer, GitHub’s new owner, Microsoft also added its Azure cloud computing services to the Student Pack. That’s no surprise, but it’s worth noting that AWS, DigitalOcean and Heroku were already part of the pack and offered students free and discounted cloud computing resources. They remain in the program and, as Sanicki told me, it’s part of the company’s promise to remain open, even after having been acquired by Microsoft.
“[GitHub CEO Nat Friedman] was asked directly at the time of the acquisition whether we were going to sunset the student developer pack and he committed that we were continuing the pack and, in fact, make it stronger and that’s what we’ve attempted to continue to do,” Sanicki said. “We’ve seen support from Microsoft, from leadership, to give us the resources that we need to not only dream bigger with what we want to do with the pack and GitHub Education but to actually now attempt to accomplish it.”
Sanicki expects that the team will continue to add new partners over the course of the next few months. To sign up and see if you qualify for the program, head over here.
Below, you can find a list of all the new partners and what they are offering.
- .TECH domains — A powerful domain extension to convey that you belong to the technology industry. One .TECH domain free for 1 year: https://get.tech/github-
student-developer-pack - Better Code Hub — Better Code Hub provides a definition of done for code quality and actionable refactoring feedback for every push and pull request. A free upgrade to an Individual license to analyse your personal private repos: https://bettercodehub.com/
github-student-developer-pack - Bootstrap Studio — Bootstrap Studio is a powerful desktop app for creating responsive websites using the Bootstrap framework. A free license for Bootstrap Studio while you are a student: https://bootstrapstudio.io/
student-pack - ConfigCat — Feature flag service with unlimited team size, awesome SDK documentation and super easy integration with your application. 1,000 feature flags, ∞ users for free: https://configcat.com/student
- Cryptolens — License and sell your software securely. Ten licenses and any number of end-users for free for students: https://app.cryptolens.io/
user/githubstudent - Frontend Masters — Advance your skills with in-depth JavaScript, Node.js and front-end engineering courses. Free six-months access to all courses and workshops: https://frontendmasters.com/
welcome/github-student- developers/ - Gitpod — An online IDE for GitHub that provides a complete dev environment with a single click. Free personal plan subscription for six months for students: https://www.gitpod.io/github-
student-developer-pack/ - Icons8 — Design resources: icons, UI illustrations, photos and software to class up your projects. Three-month All Access subscription with icons, photos, illustrations and music: https://icons8.com/github-
students - LogDNA — Log management platform that offers aggregation, monitoring and analysis of server and application logs at any volume, from any source. $100 of credit every month for 1 year: www.logdna.com/github-students
- Name.com — Domain names, web hosting and websites. Unicorns and rainbows come standard with our customer support. One free domain name and free Advanced Security (SSL, privacy protection, and more): https://www.name.com/partner/
github-students - Netwise — Turnkey data center services for the hosting of critical IT infrastructure systems. Free single unit server co-location package free for 12 months: https://www.netwise.co.uk/
students/ - Next.tech — Learn tech skills and build software directly from your browser with real, online computing environments. 10,000 minutes of compute time for students: https://next.tech/github-
students - Phrase — A cloud-based translation management system built to accelerate the development of multilingual digital products. Phrase Lite Plan free for up to 12 months for students: https://www.phraseapp.com/lp/
github-student-package/ - PomoDone — With PomoDone, hack and track your time and boost your productivity by applying Pomodoro technique to your workflow — eliminate distraction, sharpen focus and prevent burnout. PomoDone Lite plan free for two -years: https://pomodoneapp.com/
pomodoro-app-for-students.html - PushBots — The easiest way to engage your mobile and web app users via push notifications. Free Premium account for six months: https://pushbots.com/for/
education - SQL Smash — Productivity plugin for SQL Server Management Studio for writing maintainable SQL scripts and faster navigation. Free standard license for students: https://student.sqlsmash.com
- SymfonyCasts — Master Symfony and PHP with video tutorials and code challenges. Free three-month subscription for students ($75 value): https://symfonycasts.com/
github-student - Termius — SSH client that works on desktop and mobile. Termius securely syncs data across all your devices. Free access to the Premium plan (normally $99/year) while you’re a student: https://termius.com/education
- Transloadit — A versatile uploading and encoding API to automate any file conversion. The Startup plan is free, including 10GB of encoding credit (valued at $49/month): https://transloadit.com/
github-students/ - Working Copy — Powerful Git client for iPhone and iPad. All Pro features for free while you are a student: https://workingcopy.app/
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