Ask HN: Looking for an Alternative to Jira

#1

Post by philpem » Tue, Aug 27, 2019, 8:18 AM UTC

I've been using Jira on a Starter licence since I was in university. Over time I've found that it's become steadily more bloated, heavy and costly. Several key features which were previously built-in are now plugins with a fairly high aggregate cost.

I've been out of the open-source bug-tracker loop for way too long. Are there any good alternatives to JIRA?

Essentially I need a bugtracker which can handle multiple projects and separate the bugs out on that basis. Custom workflow support would be good, but not essential (as nerdy as it sounds, I sometimes use JIRA as a digital to-do list).

Re: Ask HN: Looking for an Alternative to Jira

#2

Post by cnorthwood » Tue, Aug 27, 2019, 8:50 AM UTC

You can get reasonably far with Trello, if all you're doing is item tracking. If you're trying to do anything more than a free-for-all workflow, or wanting to do reporting, it's less good.

Re: Ask HN: Looking for an Alternative to Jira

#3

Post by Spidler » Tue, Aug 27, 2019, 8:54 AM UTC

A few years ago we migrated from Jira to Gitlab. To use their project-planning features (Epics, etc) they take a massive preḿium if you're not interested in the other features.

Still, the basics are sound, and even without epics and a few of the other neat but expensive features, it goes pretty far.

Re: Ask HN: Looking for an Alternative to Jira

#4

Post by sorich87 » Tue, Aug 27, 2019, 8:56 AM UTC

Did you try the "New Jira"[1]? It has been pretty decent for us.

[1] https://www.atlassian.com/blog/jira-software/the-new-jira-be...

Re: Ask HN: Looking for an Alternative to Jira

#5

Post by tanenbaum » Tue, Aug 27, 2019, 8:57 AM UTC

I've used Phabricator (https://github.com/phacility/phabricator) for years. It's a bit rough around the edges, but it's robust, straightforward and well maintained.

Re: Ask HN: Looking for an Alternative to Jira

#6

Post by trm42 » Tue, Aug 27, 2019, 8:57 AM UTC

Ended up evaluating bunch of different Saas services last year and the best I found for the team and our use cases was Wrike. The UI was quite slick and didn't come between the developer and the task too much. Had quite good reporting and support for project hierarchies etc. Wasn't the most expensive but wasn't the cheapest.

Currently using Jira with "next-gen" project. It's slicker (but still slower to use than Wrike) to use and admin but lacks lots of useful features and is buggy. This morning our project lost epics for few hours without any explanation. Fffuun!

But yep, almost everything is better than Jira if you have the possibility to switch.

Re: Ask HN: Looking for an Alternative to Jira

#7

Post by ss_y2n » Tue, Aug 27, 2019, 8:58 AM UTC

Checkout gitlab. They have issue tracker and wiki along with everything else DevOps.

You can also have a look at https://clubhouse.io

Re: Ask HN: Looking for an Alternative to Jira

#8

Post by dudado » Tue, Aug 27, 2019, 8:59 AM UTC

Some free alternatives: 1) Trello (already mentioned) 2) Remember The Milk (free for 2 people) 3) Todoist 4) PivotalTracker

Re: Ask HN: Looking for an Alternative to Jira

#9

Post by jessicalondon » Tue, Aug 27, 2019, 9:00 AM UTC

cnorthwood wrote: post #2

You can get reasonably far with Trello, if all you're doing is item tracking. If you're trying to do anything more than a free-for-all workflow, or wanting to do reporting, it's less good.

+1 on Trello. I'm a Scrum Master and we use it in our current team (~10 devs). I miss the reporting JIRA has tbh, but we get along just fine using workarounds (estimating in cards, etc).

Good luck!

Re: Ask HN: Looking for an Alternative to Jira

#10

Post by void_ita » Tue, Aug 27, 2019, 9:02 AM UTC

We've settled down with YouTrack (by JetBrains). It doesn't look pretty buy it's designed by (and for) people that uses it. Its command management is AWESOME. It's also quite cost effective compared to other solutions. Couldn't find a more productive tool that that one if you want to have something more organized than trello (eg. timetracking and customizable fields)