Since Atlassian announced End of Life Date for Jira Server version, companies rush to find an open-source Jira alternative. For teams that stays till the end, the cost of renewals can rise by hundreds of thousands of dollars per month.
What is Jira?
Jira originated as a bug tracker, that helped IT, teams, to track issues, errors and accidents. Over the years it grew into one of the most popular task and project management software in the world, used by over 30 million users. Jira is by far the most popular project management tool for software development teams to release or maintain any software projects.
The tool comes with a wide list of extensions and integrations from other Atlassian products or third-party add-ons that provide various teams with the flexibility of solutions.
Jira Server End of Life Date Announcement
Atlassian announced February 2, 2021, as the date when they will stop selling server licenses and increase Jira pricing for server renewals and upgrades.
What’s coming next is an End of Life for Jira server products. This means they will end support for all server products in February 2024.
Existing customers are nevertheless forced to transition to JIRA Cloud version if they want to keep on using the software. Another option is to upgrade their Server licences to a Data Center license, which, however, is going, to be almost double in costs.
So there’s not much of choice really. Sure, smaller teams can transition into Jira Cloud for the time being. But there’s a massive share of Jira customers who cannot and will not move to the DataCenter or Jira Cloud version.
Large organisations, enterprises, governmental agencies, all of them due to their security and data protection policies cannot use shared cloud services.
If you are like them, you’re unsure whether to choose the Cloud version or use the opportunity to transition into other project management tool, we’re here t help. In our previous post, we explored the six most significant reasons to move from Jira to Redmine.
With updated Jira pricing for Cloud and Data Center licenses, the group of customers who will look for Jira alternative will grow in upcoming days.
Top 5 Jira Alternatives
What are the best Jira alternatives for project management? There’s a plentiful commercial option available on the market today with all features and for all team sizes. However, there’s no “one size fits all” tool that would be a good fit for everyone. Each team and company have different needs and various experience.
Thus, if you are looking for a commercial tool, a good starting point is our review of over 15 most popular online project management tools. If your team is looking for an open-sourced Jira alternatives that come with professional support, take a closer look at options #1 and #4.
1. Redmine
Redmine project management software is the best known open-source tool for managing projects in every sector. It fires over 2 million users worldwide, with increasing popularity among software development teams that chooses Redmine. Thanks to its customisation, abundance of features and engaged community, it’s being picked by various critical industries, such as healthcare industry.
Redmine project management tool is a swiss-knife among other issue trackers, making it versatile and customisable for all team needs. Hence, Redmine is by far the most popular Jira alternative. It offers an equally robust structure of tasks, projects, customisation and communication options.
As each of the tool, it has fields that can be a push-back to new users. The default user interface is outdated, and this issue tracker lacks professional “always on duty” support. Some features are missing in the default package, such as Helpdesk or Agile project management features, although they can be added as in Jira — with add-ons.
Redmine Server Version vs. Isolated Cloud Server
Redmine, as come for number one alternative to Jira server version is available as self-hosted server version and a Redmine hosting. For a detailed comparison between a self-serviced server version and a hosted version, head up to our blog, where we did self-hosted Redmine vs Redmine cloud hosting comparison.
The server version provides security and stability, however mirroring your current Jira settings can be hard for beginners.
On the rescue comes Redmine expert that provides support and development, such as RedmineUP or Easy Redmine. These companies offer the set of plugins to extend features of Redmine, and on top of that a full range of services, such as:
- Installation and configuration
- Migration from Jira
- Redmine maintenance and upgrades
If your resources are scarce, you can still enjoy Redmine with and a self-hosted-like environment. On contrast to Jira, RedmineUP Cloud assign you a personal success manager, and a team of experts to care about your instance.
Key Advantages of RedmineUP Cloud as Jira alternative:
- It’s ready to and quick to use. You can start your project in a few click. It’s free to start, and if you decide to stay, you pay as you go.
- Cost-effective solution and huge savings compared with Jira pricing. And there’s no need to invest in new infrastructure or developers.
- Ensures extended security according to strictest security standards and data privacy regulations, such as GDPR.
- Provide responsive, quick, and helpful support from experts backed by SLA.
- Provides a personal account manager, what’s a critical feature for Enterprises. The personal account manager assists the team on the test, Jira migration, account set-up and configuration and stays for good. The manager is providing support, assistance as well as helping to apply proven best use cases from customers in the sector. The personal manager has experience as an Agile coach and business consultant to satisfy even the most unique business needs.
- Possibility to run your instance on a dedicated, isolated server, that guarantees a maximum security level.
With savings for even $20000/month and a free trial, RedmineUP Cloud is a Jira Alternative worth considering.
2. MantisBT
Mantis offers a set of essential features that can be more than enough for some teams. The tool allows categorising issues, set relations between them, as well as group them into projects and sub-projects.
Pros of using Mantis for tasks tracking are its support for projects with different access level per project and a roadmap. Admins appreciate good Source Control Integration (GIT, SVN and HG), authentication with an option for LDAP Integration and Active Directory Integration and support for many platforms and databases.
With time tracking and anonymous access, it might be enough for teams that need to keep a list of issues that are easy to access and manage. There is a possibility to extend the functionality with the add-ons.
However, the documentation is abysmal — both for the installation of the system and its features and add-ons are really poor. And speaking about the support, Mantis doesn’t support SLA. It will be hard to use Mantis for allocating resources, tracking costs or planning project.
3. Bugzilla
Bugzilla is a bug tracking tool developed by Mozilla Foundation, the same team that released a Mozilla Firefox web browser. It is used primarily by other developers of open-source software, such as LibreOffice or various Linux developers: Linux kernel, FreeBSD, KDE, Apache or Red Hat.
Among advantages of Bugzilla for tasks management it’s worth mentioning the most prominent ones are advanced search capabilities, extended email notifications options, and for admins — adequate security level including Multiple Authentication Methods, database sanity check and wide some customisations for projects (installations), custom fields and workflows.
However, Bugzilla is the oldest software on the Jira alternative list and the least functional for teams other than IT and Web/Software Development. It doesn’t have a communication space that would allow building a knowledge base or forum. It also lacks essential project management features— grouping issues under one category, with assigned milestones, roles, budget and so on.
You can consider Bugzilla as a Jira alternative for any code or tracking incidents, where the team needs to collaboration to solve them.
4. Trac
Trac is an open-source project management and issue tracking software. It’s used by some well-known teams, such as WordPress, WebKit or Django Software Foundation. Trac is similar in Redmine, in the way it integrates wiki, links issues, integrates with version control and roadmap, or with other features for project management.
Being a lightweight project management Trac is excellent in planning simple projects, tracking simple tasks, dependencies and answering simple project questions such as what was the use of resources or what’s the current state and progress on the project. There’s also an option to add third-party plugins, to add some missing features, the same as with Jira or Redmine. It’s also not too hard to work with, as its interface despite being present on the market for over 16 years it’s still clear to navigate.
So for small teams and organisations, that have the resources to install and migrate the files and mirror their current project and tasks structure, Trac can be a good Jira alternative. For others, it will be hard to navigate the Jira migration process.
5. Taiga
Closing the list is Taiga — a strong Jira competitor, designed for Agile project management and armed with an eye-friendly interface. The tool was created a Madrid-based software company Kaleidos, back in 2014 and gained initial traction in first two years of its life thanks to sleek interface and support for Agile project management, in Scrum, Kanban and Scrumban methodology.
For the cons, it’s the first one on the list behind RedmineUP Cloud, with a long list of Agile-native features. WIP points, backlog management, Agile charts and Agile boards. It enables bigger teams to plan and keep track of the projects, and for the people who want to focus on work would be easy to configure.
Taiga is basically an open-source project, but for bigger teams, you’d need to pay. And the biggest cons of Taiga is limited customisation for advanced features and lack of server-hosted version. Also, it might be too basic for enterprise and bigger software development teams or companies from sectors other than IT, such as Healthcare, Real Estate, Manufacturing.
Wrapping up the search for Jira alternatives
As Jira Cloud is striking up, the end of life for Jira Server is coming closer every day. Will Asana and other project management tools be next to cut-out the self-hosted server versions? We will see.
Undoublty, Cloud-based project management tools are a booster for many teams around the world, including, such well-known brands as Netflix or Spotify.
The open-source project management tools have one key advantage over commercial tools — that is the community of users. Because of its users who are there to help and share, it’s easier to solve the problems together or find inspiration without paying thousands of dollars for problem analysis.
Open-source community members care about the tools as much as for the open idea behind the software. And that’s what brings more value in long perspective than any commercial alternative can offer.
That's why Redmine and other tools are here to take off space for Jira and take off for success. Give it a try to convince yourself that you can do much more with less.
