Jira is for sure one of the most powerful work management platforms out there. But when it comes to tracking tasks and projects, there are other alternatives available as well.
Since people were curious about what alternatives to Jira there were, we decided to investigate. We asked a few consultants and we scoured online forums for the answers. In the end, this turned into a list, described in this blog post.
It’d be best to mention that we are no experts on these trackers. So, we can’t generate a complete and in-depth view of all the alternatives there are. But we tried out best to provide a quick overview of each platform. So feel free to reach out to us if you’re already an expert!
The Jira alternatives we collected will compete on price, functionality, and presentation. Of course, there are a lot of factors to consider when weighing up your best options. But, we’ll make an attempt to cover the ones mentioned most frequently. As well as why they could offer an alternative solution to Jira.
So, what are the best Jira alternatives?
A Quick Overview of Popular Jira Alternatives
This table summarizes the key attributes of the products that we’re going to look at.
Comparing the Best Alternatives to Jira
1. Digital.ai
What is it?
Digital.ai is specifically geared to making backlog management simple for agile/DevOps teams. It’s also highly scalable. Meaning that it’s ideal for enterprise businesses.
What are the pros and cons compared to Jira?
The platform makes it easy to track progress and to get performance updates.
Due to the wide range of features and functionality, though, it can take some time to learn.
Additionally, it lacks the level of workflow customization that is possible with Jira or access to an equivalent to the Atlassian Marketplace and the thousands of apps that it offers.
2. Microsoft Azure DevOps
What is it?
This relatively young product (picking up where Microsoft VSO left off) provides tools to support software development teams, providing work tracking with Kanban boards, unlimited private Git repos, and CI/CD that works “with any language, platform, and cloud.”
What are the pros and cons compared to Jira?
As far as features go, Jira and Azure DevOps are reasonably evenly matched.
But the younger platform has significantly fewer product integrations. And, of course, lacks the benefits of the Atlassian Marketplace. What’s more, it comes with fewer workflow options and is generally seen as being less intuitive than Jira.
3. Backlog
What is it?
Backlog is a free Jira alternative for simple, straightforward issue management. Track project progress, organize tasks and visualize work remaining with Gantt charts.
What are the pros and cons compared to Jira?
Backlog is a lightweight issue tracker that has everything you need to manage projects as a small team. Plus, it’s easy for clients and non-technical team members to use.
Backlog is fully integrated with Git and SVN so you can review code, add issues, and track projects all in one place.
Backlog is completely free for small teams of up to 10 users. Manage your entire project and track issues for $0.Yes, it’s free forever!
4. Rally
What is it?
Rally is an agile project tracking tool that comes with strong portfolio management features and enables teams to carry out QA functions.
What are the pros and cons compared to Jira?
Though Rally provides plenty of portfolio options, it’s generally seen as being weaker when it comes to delivering for agile than its competitors.
Touting Jira’s comparative strengths, Atlassian points to its industry-leading workflow engine, the strength of its agile support and the deep developer tool integrations that it has on offer. And while Rally may meet some use cases, it’s only really suitable for larger teams.
5. Trello
What is it?
Another Jira alternative is Trello, which is an easy-to-use task management tool that allows you to move cards between lists on kanban boards. It’s also owned by Atlassian, so it has integrations across the Atlassian ecosystem.
What are the pros and cons compared to Jira?
If you have fairly basic needs, then Trello may be ideal for you.
It’s a simple, intuitive system that comes with a clean and easy-to-learn interface.
However, it only has a fraction of the features and options for customization that make Jira unique. That means that if you’re concerned with issues like budgets and dependencies then it likely isn’t up to the task.
6. Clickup
What is it?
ClickUp is a powerful and completely customizable project management platform designed to help agile teams and individual users alike keep track of their work in a single place.
What are the pros and cons compared to Jira?
ClickUp offers a collaborative and feature-rich experience that scales with your workload to fit a wide variety of use cases, making it one of the best Jira alternatives on the market.
While many of Jira’s features come at an additional cost, every ClickUp user has access to multiple views, task assignees, automations, Docs, assigned comments, and native chat—even on its free plan.
ClickUp’s intuitive UI is quick to set up and grasp at a basic level and has over 1,000 integrations to further streamline your workflow.
7. GitHub
What is it?
GitHub is the world’s leading software development platform, enabling version control using Git. And as of 2018, it’s part of the Microsoft family.
What are the pros and cons compared to Jira?
In short, GitHub isn’t intended for task management: it doesn’t come with workflows, dashboards, or customizable reporting.
That means that while you can certainly track issues and store code with GitHub you’ll likely need another tool to manage the projects that you’re working on. Fortunately, we’ve built a Jira integration for GitHub, using our synchronization solution, Exalate. Which allows you to directly connect the two platforms.
8. Notion
What is it?
Notion brings together task tracking tools with a wiki system and an editing platform for notes, spreadsheets, and databases.
In short, it aims to replace the functionality of Google Docs, Confluence, and Trello in a single product – providing an all-in-one workspace.
What are the pros and cons compared to Jira?
Notion’s creators have set themselves a tough task, but they’re generally seen as having done a great job. Notion is a highly visual, versatile, and easy-to-use product that works across devices and platforms.
By combining an effective project management system with document storage and a knowledge base, Notion can potentially cater to all a team’s needs in a single product.
That said, some functionality isn’t necessarily intuitive and it can sometimes be difficult to find and organize information.
9. Redmine
What is it?
Redmine is an open-source project management tool – and it’s free. It enables teams to track issues across multiple projects and subprojects and comes with features such as Gantt charts and a calendar.
What are the pros and cons compared to Jira?
Redmine is free and it’s praised as being a flexible platform but it only comes with a fraction of Jira’s power.
Jira has visual workflows, a huge range of tools and workflow customization options, and all the integrations that you could want.
10. Bugzilla
What is it?
Bugzilla is a general-purpose bug tracker and testing tool. And Jira’s name (short for Gojira, also known in English as Godzilla) is actually a reference to this early rival.
They’re very different products today, though.
What are the pros and cons compared to Jira?
While Bugzilla helps teams track bugs, patches, and changes in code, it’s by no means a full-featured, scalable project management tool.
For some simple task tracking, it may be acceptable. But Bugzilla doesn’t have the dashboards and customizable workflows that make Jira unique. Hence, if your team has complex requirements then Jira is likely to be a far better fit.
11. PivotalTracker
What is it?
PivotalTracker is an agile project management tool that enables teams to manage their backlog, track performance, and identify the most urgent issues to be addressed.
The product also comes with automated features to help estimate workloads and product delivery dates.
What are the pros and cons compared to Jira?
PivotalTracker has a fair amount in common with Jira.
However, while there’s some room for flexibility and scalability, it comes with a fairly rigid structure. Which is likely to put off experienced Jira users. Equally, the non-traditional approach to timelines is innovative, but may not be for everyone.
12. Mantis Bug Tracker
What is it?
MantisBT is a free, open-source bug tracking system, which is often used for more general task tracking and project management.
What are the pros and cons compared to Jira?
With MantisBT, users can tackle a simple series of tickets.
If you need workflows, customization, and deeper-level project management, though, then you likely need to opt for a tool like Jira. Which comes with considerably more power and versatility.
13. Asana
What is it?
Asana helps teams track, organize and manage their work and comes with an intuitive and easy-to-use layout.
What are the pros and cons compared to Jira?
The Asana basic package is free and there’s no doubt that the platform provides a great, simple approach to tracking tasks. Users can add assignees and attachments to tickets, set goals and due dates, and move between multiple workspaces.
However, while Asana might be more complex than Trello in some respects, it falls far short of Jira, which has a far wider range of options for customization as well as a significantly larger number of integrations.
14. YouTrack
What is it?
YouTrack is an agile-oriented project management tool and issue tracking system that allows tasks to be customized and edited in batches. And it comes with advanced features such as workflow customization.
What are the pros and cons compared to Jira?
YouTrack makes searching for issues fast and simple, and it’s easy to customize. But it lacks many of the options available with Jira.
For example, YouTrack doesn’t enable time tracking in the same way as Jira. And there are fewer options for limiting access within groups or to specific users. This limits YouTrack’s utility for dev teams, while also making it less suitable for other use cases outside engineering.
15. Basecamp
What is it?
Basecamp is a piece of team communication and project management software that aims to centralize messaging and task tracking on a single, simple-to-use platform.
What are the pros and cons compared to Jira?
Basecamp is quick and easy to set up but it lacks many more advanced features such as Gantt charts, task dependencies, and time tracking. Which makes it broadly unsuitable for agile teams.
It does have the unusual pricing structure, however, of being $99/month, all-inclusive, and for unlimited users. So it may be a good option for creative teams.
16. OpenProject
What is it?
As the name suggests, OpenProject is a leading open source project management software. Which can assist with project planning, scheduling, and roadmapping and incorporates features for Kanban, Agile, and Scrum.
What are the pros and cons compared to Jira?
A core benefit of OpenProject is the fact that it’s open-source. So updates and improvements can come from the community.
Its makers also tout the fact that it is relatively easy to learn compared to Jira. That said, Jira comes with far more integrations. Which can be invaluable for larger businesses. And it arguably has a larger development community behind it.
17. Monday
What is it?
Monday is a visual project management system, targeted more towards freelancers (and small-to-medium businesses) than other platforms.
The product sets out to be simple and intuitive. While assisting with collaboration across teams. And its creators envisage use cases from development through to marketing campaigns.
What are the pros and cons compared to Jira?
Monday has a number of features such as to-do lists, reporting, status tracking, and project management. However, it likely doesn’t have the tools that are needed for complex organizational requirements and agile working practices.
Furthermore, it only comes with a handful of integrations, limiting the potential of what is on offer.
18. Teamleader
What is it?
Teamleader combines a project management system with CRM and invoicing tools, to provide a single holistic business management platform.
It sets out to be an easy-to-use solution and reportedly has over 10,000 SME customers.
What are the pros and cons compared to Jira?
Teamleader provides a powerful set of tools that cover a wide range of bases for small businesses.
And as well as integrating billing, project management, and customer support, it can also connect to over 200 apps and tools, making it a particularly nimble platform.
That said, when it comes to project management, it is a far simpler piece of software than Jira. So is likely not the best option for larger businesses or cases that have complex project requirements.
Conclusion
There’s no doubt that there are plenty of options when it comes to task tracking and project management. And there are plenty of Jira alternatives.
For most use cases, though, Jira is extremely competitive. It’s cheap for small teams and highly adaptable. And it comes with a huge range of integrations and apps for users looking to extend and customize the functionality. Whatever an organization’s requirements, Jira offers a huge amount of power and resources. Which makes it a great and flexible tool for most use cases.
If you’re looking for Jira alternatives, however, these are the ones generally recommended.
