Update 2019: we now use PrivateBin a lot. It is a self-hosted, minimalist, open source online pastebin where the server has zero knowledge of pasted data.
Pastebin has been a valuable tool for years – to the extent that pastebin it has entered the common lexicon of sysadmins, network engineers and developers.
There are, however, a few notable alternatives:
- GitHub Gists – what’s particularly cool about these is that each Gist (which is just pasted text) is also a fully fledged Git repository with versioning and the ability for fork. There’s also syntax highlighting and a nice UI. If you’re a GitHub user, your own Gists are also linked to your account.
- p.ip.fi – this scores big points for its pure simplicity. You’d argue that a pastebin doesn’t really need a complex UI and p.ip.fi is laudable in its complete lack of a UI. Just paste and hit Ctrl-S and you’re done. Very nice. (Credit to Nick for pointing this out).
- sprunge.us – this is a command line pastebin which should appeal directly to sysadmins and network engineers. (Credit to dnolan for leading me to this one). This is best demonstrated via an epic traceroute:
$ traceroute -m 60 216.81.59.173 | curl -F 'sprunge=<-' http://sprunge.us http://sprunge.us/THie
Check out the result at http://sprunge.us/THie.