A GitHub Pages alternative for private sites

Can GitHub Pages be private?

Only on one plan. As of October 2026, GitHub's documentation says: "To publish a GitHub Pages site privately, your organization must use GitHub Enterprise Cloud" (GitHub Docs).

On every other plan, a Pages site is public. That includes a site built from a private repository: the repository is private, and the HTML it produces is not. This catches people out, because the private repository makes it feel as though the site must be too.

If your organization is already on Enterprise Cloud, private Pages is the simplest answer and you should use it. The rest of this page is for everyone else.

What are the alternatives?

A static host with a password

Build the site the way you do now and deploy it to a host that can put a password in front of it, or to your own server with basic auth. You keep your generator, theme and build.

The limits are the limits of a shared password: everyone uses the same one, you cannot remove one person without telling everyone else a new one, and you cannot see who read what. Fine for a staging site; weak for docs with commercial content. The password protection page compares the options in more detail.

An access proxy

Cloudflare Access and similar tools sit in front of a site and make visitors sign in with an identity provider first. Each person signs in as themselves, and you can remove one without affecting the others.

This needs the domain on that provider, rules written and maintained in a separate system, and someone who owns them. It suits a company that already runs one. For a small team it is a lot to set up for a docs folder.

A docs host that reads the repository

The third option drops the build. A service reads the markdown straight from the repository, renders it, and decides on each request whether the reader may see it. DocuGate works this way.

How does DocuGate compare to GitHub Pages?

	GitHub Pages	DocuGate
Source	A branch or a build output	A folder of .md files on a branch
Build step	Jekyll or an Actions workflow	None; folders become the sidebar
Private site	GitHub Enterprise Cloud only	Pro, $5 a month
Who can read a private site	Members with repository access	Repo access, or a named allowlist
Readers without GitHub	No	Yes, by email allowlist and Google sign-in
Editing	Commit in the repository	Edit in the browser; commits to the branch as you
Custom domain	Yes	Enterprise, in build
Themes and custom layouts	Full control	DocuGate's reader, with an accent colour and density

The honest trade: GitHub Pages gives you full control over how the site looks, and a custom domain on any plan. DocuGate gives you a fixed reader layout, and access control on a $5 plan instead of an enterprise contract.

How does access work in DocuGate?

Each space is Public, Repo access or Allowlist.

Repo access behaves the way people expect private Pages to behave. The server fetches each page with the reader's own GitHub token, so whoever GitHub lets open the repository can read the docs and nobody else can. There is no separate permission list. See access control.

Allowlist goes further than Pages can. You name the readers by GitHub login or email address, and they do not need access to the repository. A client or contractor allowlisted by email can sign in with Google without a GitHub account. That makes it possible to share docs from a private repository without sharing the code.

How do I move from Pages to DocuGate?

If your Pages site is built from markdown, most of it carries over unchanged.

1. Find the folder your markdown lives in, often docs.
2. Check that each page starts with a # heading; that becomes its title.
3. Make sure the folder has an index.md or README.md for the landing page.
4. Sign up with GitHub, open Dashboard → New space, and pick the repository, branch and folder.
5. Choose Repo access or Allowlist.
6. If you want a fixed sidebar order, add docugate.json with a sidebar list. Otherwise the folder structure is used as it is.

Jekyll layouts, Liquid tags and theme files do not carry over, because there is no build. Plain markdown, tables and code blocks do. Read connecting a repository for the full rules.

Public repositories are free on Starter. Private repositories need Pro: $5 a month, $50 a year or $2 a week. See pricing.

Try it

Point a space at the folder your Pages site builds from and set it to Repo access.