No idea why you would think github is a minefield. > Last I checked they made you perform a bunch of scary crypto stuff on your local machine before they'd le

No idea why you would think github is a minefield. > Last I checked they made you perform a bunch of scary crypto stuff on your local machine before they'd let you in. Generating an SSH key is 'scary crypto stuff' ? One would hope anyone using git, and really any developer would have already done this many times before. > I gave up at that step, as it would have required downloading and installing a bunch of random software to pull off. You mean install a single program, git, which is sort of a perquisite for using, well, git? The windows installer includes the programs needed to create an ssh key and macos / almost any *nix distro will already have them installed. I think its pretty clear that elastic.io is targeted at developers and I can't possibly imagine a developer having any issue signing up for github, installing git and generating an ssh key. If such developers exist they are likely very new to development and thus probably aren't a good match for a beta signup anyway.