8 Jira al­tern­at­ive solutions at a glance

Jira is one of the most popular solutions for managing and planning projects. The tool can be extended at any time with over 3,000 add-ons. It is also com­pat­ible with hundreds of other third-party developer tools. But what are the al­tern­at­ives to Jira?

What are the Jira al­tern­at­ives?

In­form­a­tion per­tain­ing to prices and features from July 2023

Are Jira al­tern­at­ives worth it?

Jira can quickly become very costly if more than ten users require access. For highly scalable projects, you need to use the re­l­at­ively expensive En­ter­prise edition, which offers a cor­res­pond­ing per­form­ance-oriented option. Often further costs are incurred for various ex­ten­sions, which can then put you over budget.

Searching for a free al­tern­at­ive to Jira can be worth­while for smaller companies because it’s unlikely that you will be able to make use of all the functions that Jira offers. Some of the Jira al­tern­at­ives listed here are from the open source sector. We’ve also included paid programs as well. We’ll cover the various Jira al­tern­at­ives in more detail below.

Open­Pro­ject

Open­Pro­ject GmbH, in co­oper­a­tion with the Open­Pro­ject Found­a­tion (OPF), has been re­spons­ible for the project man­age­ment tool Open­Pro­ject since 2012. The German company was able to optimise and develop the free al­tern­at­ive to Jira (in the Community edition) by working together with a broad community. The community edition, which is available for the Linux dis­tri­bu­tions CentOS, Debian, Ubuntu, and openSUSE, can be down­loaded from the website and installed on a server. Al­tern­at­ively, Open­Pro­ject GmbH also offers variants with ad­di­tion­al functions and pro­fes­sion­al support in the form of the fee-based En­ter­prise Cloud (hosting included) and En­ter­prise on premises.

The clear user interface of this Jira al­tern­at­ive means that all kinds of projects can be managed sim­ul­tan­eously. Thanks to the modular structure of the open-source ap­plic­a­tion, you can select which functions are required for your project. The default in­stall­a­tion of Open­Pro­ject includes the following modules:

• Time and cost recording
• Team planner
• GitHub
• Wiki
• Forums
• Calendar

It’s not just its func­tion­al range that puts Open­Pro­ject on the same level as fee-based al­tern­at­ives like Jira. In just a few steps, you can create user profiles or entire user groups and assign them specific roles and rights. You can either access the pre­defined types or develop your own system. The same applies to in­di­vidu­al work steps as well as the complete workflow. When con­fig­ur­ing the system, it is also possible to define basic settings such as the maximum file size, the preferred protocol (HTTP, HTTPS) or login para­met­ers (password length, allowed char­ac­ters, automatic blocking with incorrect password input, etc.).

Ad­vant­ages and dis­ad­vant­ages of Open­Pro­ject

Redmine

A free al­tern­at­ive to Jira is the open-source tool, Redmine, released for the first time in 2006 under the GPLv2 license. It is written in Ruby and is based on the Ruby on Rails framework, meaning it is in­de­pend­ent of the platform or database used. To use the project man­age­ment program, all you need is a suitable hosting en­vir­on­ment, a current Ruby version and a database, for example MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, Post­gr­eSQL or SQLite.

Although using the original software is free and you only have to pay for the hosting, Redmine is a com­pre­hens­ive tool for planning and de­vel­op­ing projects. You can specify the in­di­vidu­al tasks and progress down to the smallest detail for different projects at the same time. The open-source tool also includes the following features:

• Flexible ticket system, which can be adapted to the desired workflow (sep­ar­ately for each user role)
• Auto­mat­ic­ally or manually create Gantt charts and calendars (for example, based on the tickets created)
• Wiki and forum in the sim­pli­fied markup language Textile (per project)
• Has its own re­pos­it­ory as well as access to various version man­age­ment systems such as CVS, SVN, Mercurial, Barzaar and Git
• News and no­ti­fic­a­tion system

These standard features make Redmine a first-class Jira al­tern­at­ive for smaller projects. Using plugins from its own plugin directory, you can extend the func­tion­al radius of the software, allowing you to carry out more complex de­vel­op­ment processes.

Ad­vant­ages and dis­ad­vant­ages of Redmine

ClickUp

About half a year after its founding, the San Diego-based company ClickUp released its Jira al­tern­at­ive of the same name in September 2017. The software is available as a web ap­plic­a­tion and as amobile and desktop app for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android and iOS. The high number of features makes ClickUp a good choice for any type of project man­age­ment, but it can also quickly overwhelm in­ex­per­i­enced users. However, if you allow enough time to get familiar with it, you will find all the necessary tools to optimally manage your team’s work, including extensive and cus­tom­is­able boards, calendars, work­spaces, and lists.

With ClickUp, you can manage any number of work­spaces. It’s up to you how many users you integrate into a space and how many tasks are listed and processed in all plans. Finally, over 1,000 available in­teg­ra­tions from third-party programs such as Zapier or Google Drive ensure an optimal workflow.

Here’s an overview of further features that this im­press­ive al­tern­at­ive to Jira offers:

• KanBan boards
• Unlimited cloud storage (free version: 100 MB)
• In-app video recording
• Email client in­teg­ra­tion
• Two-factor au­then­tic­a­tion

ClickUp can basically be used as a free al­tern­at­ive to Jira because no payments are required for the basic edition. All you need is a ClickUp account, which you can get by re­gis­ter­ing with a valid email address. However, the version has some key lim­it­a­tions in terms of app in­teg­ra­tion, security, and available features that makes pur­chas­ing a paid plan essential for larger projects.

Ad­vant­ages and dis­ad­vant­ages of ClickUp

Zammad

open-source Jira al­tern­at­ive Zammad has been on the market since 2016. The project man­age­ment solution from Germany is aimed in par­tic­u­lar at companies that want to better set up their support. You can host and set up the software yourself to get your own ticket system up and running for free. Al­tern­at­ively, Zammad offers paid plans that include hosting. With paid plans, the ap­plic­a­tion runs on Zammad’s servers, so you don’t have to worry about per­form­ance, updates and backups.

Zammad makes team col­lab­or­a­tion more effective with several smart features. Combining or splitting tickets is as easy as opening and editing several tasks at the same time, and you can do so without having to switch between different browser windows. The tool also scores points with the following features:

• Mul­ti­lin­gual knowledge bases
• Text modules and shortcuts for recurring tasks and processes
• Time recording
• Automatic duplicate detection to prevent duplicate tickets/tasks

Thanks to various in­teg­ra­tions, you can link Zammad with various third-party tools. Among others, you can integrate the popular calendar iCal, the office suite Microsoft 365 or the developer platform GitHub. With the help of SMS in­teg­ra­tion, you can even use the mobile messaging service for project man­age­ment and to send push no­ti­fic­a­tions via SMS to employees or to your customers.

Ad­vant­ages and dis­ad­vant­ages of Zammad

Sprintly

After its founding in 2011, Sprintly, a company based in Portland, released its web-based solution for project planning. In contrast to Jira, Sprintly is only available as a web app. The great strength of the tool is its clear dashboard, which provides a detailed overview of in­di­vidu­al projects as well as the entire portfolio of projects that a company is managing. Thanks to the first-class search and filter engine including auto-com­ple­tion, the user’s own task area can be isolated within a very short time.

Just like with Jira, the func­tion­al­ity of Sprintly can be extended by in­teg­rat­ing third-party ap­plic­a­tions and add-ons. The in­teg­ra­tion platform, Zapier, and the online service GitHub are supported among others. Other benefits include the following features:

• Activity logs and pro­ductiv­ity analyses in real time
• API for in­teg­rat­ing external services and ad metrics
• Sim­pli­fied keyword shortcuts
• Tickets can be created via email

Sprintly is a fee-based al­tern­at­ive to Jira, being offered in various price classes from ‘Startup’ to ‘En­ter­prise’. Depending on the plan you choose, up to 75 sub­scribers have full access to all functions and features. Re­gard­less of your sub­scrip­tion, you can manage an unlimited number of projects at the same time.

Ad­vant­ages and dis­ad­vant­ages of Sprintly

Stack­field

German-based Stack­field GmbH has launched a Jira al­tern­at­ive called Stack­field, which places emphasis on security and data pro­tec­tion. For example, the servers that the web-based project man­age­ment solution is hosted on are located ex­clus­ively in German ISO-27001-certified data centres. All data rooms are encrypted using a com­bin­a­tion of AES and RSA al­gorithms (AES-256 and RSA-2048).

With Stack­field, you can also manage several projects sim­ul­tan­eously with Jira. You can do this by creating team profiles and al­loc­at­ing specific roles and rights for par­ti­cip­at­ing users (ad­min­is­trat­or, member, guest) and data rooms. The con­fig­ur­a­tion doesn’t take long thanks to the intuitive user interface that can be cus­tom­ised at any time. You also have access to the following features:

• Group chat for ex­chan­ging messages and files in real-time
• In­di­vidu­al com­pli­ance and rights man­age­ment
• Chro­no­lo­gic­al, fil­ter­able activity logs
• Audio and video telephony

With its ver­sat­il­ity and com­pre­hens­ive security struc­tures, Stack­field is un­doubtedly one of the best al­tern­at­ives to Jira when it comes to managing sensitive projects. In this way, you benefit from the op­por­tun­it­ies provided in the areas of product de­vel­op­ment and research as well as in the PR sector or in corporate con­sult­ing.

Ad­vant­ages and dis­ad­vant­ages of Stack­field

Kanbanize

The Kanban platform Kanbanize is a great Jira al­tern­at­ive es­pe­cially when it comes to software and product de­vel­op­ment and project and IT service man­age­ment. The Bulgarian de­vel­op­ment company Busi­ness­map Ltd. has been active in the industry since 2008. You can choose between the cross-platform web ap­plic­a­tion or the native apps for iOS and Android.

The price for the fee-based al­tern­at­ive to Jira depends on how many rules (between 0 and 90) you need for the auto­ma­tion of your workflows and how many users (from 15 to 500+) should be able to access the Kanbanize projects created. How exactly you activate the in­di­vidu­al work­spaces for in­di­vidu­al users later is entirely up to you thanks to extensive user and role man­age­ment. Here you can also in­di­vidu­ally determine whether a par­ti­cipant is required to use two-factor au­then­tic­a­tion or not. Apart from the great options for user man­age­ment, Kanbanize is char­ac­ter­ised by the following features:

• Business rule system for maximum degree of auto­ma­tion
• Adaptable, trackable workflows
• Email in­teg­ra­tion
• Time recording

To provide the best possible platform for managing diverse projects, the Kanbanize team offers the pos­sib­il­ity to integrate third-party tools. This allows you to connect the Jira al­tern­at­ive with Zapier, Google Drive, GitLab, and Bitbucket as well as other tools. By default, all data is stored on servers in the U.S. However, upon request, you can have your account and all project data trans­ferred to European data centres.

Ad­vant­ages and dis­ad­vant­ages of Kanbanize

Hive

After more than a year of de­vel­op­ment, the New York-based company Hive released its software solution for ef­fi­ciently managing projects in October 2016. You can choose between a Gantt chart, a calendar view, a Kanban board or work in tables the classic way. But you don’t have to commit to just one because it is possible to switch between the different views at any time.

Hive also provides various tools for optimal co­ordin­a­tion of in­form­a­tion, data and processes. Cus­tom­is­able forms, group chats, and a direct messaging feature help teams com­mu­nic­ate. Here are more features included in the fee-based Jira al­tern­at­ive (14-day trial):

• Shareable forms
• Time recording
• In-app calendar
• Cloud storage in­teg­ra­tion

As is typical for the industry, Hive also offers the pos­sib­il­ity to expand the func­tion­al­ity of the project man­age­ment platform. It’s possible to integrate over 1,000 suitable tools such as Google Drive, Sales­force, GitHub, and iCal. Those who have the necessary know-how can also access and expand the Jira al­tern­at­ive them­selves via the REST API provided by the developer.

Ad­vant­ages and dis­ad­vant­ages of Hive