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Launch HN: Kitemaker (YC W21) – Fast alternative to Jira, built for remote teams

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Re: Launch HN: Kitemaker (YC W21) – Fast alternative to Jira, built for remote teams

#21

Post by ralala »

kevsim wrote: post #6
Operyl wrote: post #3

Are there plans for self-hosted versions? That's pretty much the "if I will use it or not" question for me. Atlassian's killing of their self-hosted solutions for smaller companies is just really a shame.

We've been waiting on this a bit to see if there's much demand for this and so far the answer has been "not much" but we're open to the idea. So the answer is "not right now". Good news I don't think it would be super tough for us since we're built using pretty boring tech (i.e. not a lot of dependencies on a particular cloud vendor), don't have a bajillion microservices, etc.

I have not looked at kitemaker yet, but we are in the same situation. On premise Jira will have to be replaced by something else. Cloud is not option due to privacy/security/compliance reasons.

Re: Launch HN: Kitemaker (YC W21) – Fast alternative to Jira, built for remote teams

#22

Post by MisterEsite »

Using it for the product development for I think 2 weeks now.

At the beginning its a little unintuitive because you have to remember all the shortcuts to be faster than for example notion.

But now, two weeks later I am way faster than before.

Re: Launch HN: Kitemaker (YC W21) – Fast alternative to Jira, built for remote teams

#23

Post by xyzzy_plugh »

benreesman wrote: post #4

Phabricator is (IMHO) in a class of its own as a code review tool but the tasks stuff is nothing to write home about. If you folks end up doing an integration my group would be excited to give it a try. Good luck with the venture!

> Phabricator is (IMHO) in a class of its own as a code review

Yeah I'm gonna have to heavily disagree with this. Arc is hot garbage, by default decimates your local history, treats everything as mutable. Phabricator leaves so so much to be desired, I could rant for days. Gerrit is a much nicer review tool. Even Review Board is better.

Re: Launch HN: Kitemaker (YC W21) – Fast alternative to Jira, built for remote teams

#24

Post by kevsim »

MisterEsite wrote: post #22

Using it for the product development for I think 2 weeks now. At the beginning its a little unintuitive because you have to remember all the shortcuts to be faster than for example notion. But now, two weeks later I am way faster than before.

Thanks so much for using it. We really appreciate it.

There's a little toggle down in the profile menu in the bottom left (or do cmd+k -> hotkey hints) if you want Kitemaker to give you more hints to help you learn the hotkeys. Basically it bugs you whenever you use the mouse!

Re: Launch HN: Kitemaker (YC W21) – Fast alternative to Jira, built for remote teams

#25

Post by rsweeney21 »

Congrats on the launch!

Some feedback from a potential customer:

The first thing I read on your homepage is: "A faster and more engaging way to empower your team."

This means absolutely nothing to me - I have no idea what your product does. Something like "Faster issue tracking for remote teams." would be better.

Hope this helps!

Re: Launch HN: Kitemaker (YC W21) – Fast alternative to Jira, built for remote teams

#26

Post by kevsim »

rsweeney21 wrote: post #25

Congrats on the launch! Some feedback from a potential customer: The first thing I read on your homepage is: "A faster and more engaging way to empower your team." This means absolutely nothing to me - I have no idea what your product does. Something like "Faster issue tracking for remote teams." would be better. Hope this helps!

Thanks very much for the feedback. It's always a bit of a struggle with landing page copy and positioning. But super useful to hear when something doesn't resonate.

Re: Launch HN: Kitemaker (YC W21) – Fast alternative to Jira, built for remote teams

#27

Post by zersiax »

Just had a quick look at this, and I think a lot of accessibility wins could be made with relatively little work here. This is another thing most of the competition gets wrong, so if you guys are open to it i'd love to work with you to get that at a better state for, for example, screenreader users and people dependent on dictation software.

Re: Launch HN: Kitemaker (YC W21) – Fast alternative to Jira, built for remote teams

#28

Post by solarkraft »

kevsim wrote: post #6
Operyl wrote: post #3

Are there plans for self-hosted versions? That's pretty much the "if I will use it or not" question for me. Atlassian's killing of their self-hosted solutions for smaller companies is just really a shame.

We've been waiting on this a bit to see if there's much demand for this and so far the answer has been "not much" but we're open to the idea. So the answer is "not right now". Good news I don't think it would be super tough for us since we're built using pretty boring tech (i.e. not a lot of dependencies on a particular cloud vendor), don't have a bajillion microservices, etc.

I wonder why. Putting confidential data in the hands of some cloud vendor doesn't seem to be an option for any company I know in my country (which is why Jira will die out here).

Re: Launch HN: Kitemaker (YC W21) – Fast alternative to Jira, built for remote teams

#29

Post by kevsim »

bachmeier wrote: post #16

You're selling yourself as a fast alternative to Jira. There's already an established company doing that ( https://clubhouse.io/ ). They also offer a free plan for teams of up to 10 users. You're obviously in business to make money, so good that you're focused on selling your product, but why would someone pay for Kitemaker rather than use Clubhouse for free? Edit: Yes, Kitemaker has a free plan, but it looks quite l…

Great question! Our pricing is definitely something we think about a lot, so feedback like this is super helpful. The free plan usually gives a small team more than a month to try it out since teams tend to larger (and thus fewer) work items than they might in another tool.

We definitely think it’s a huge market and it’s undeniable that products like clubhouse will keep having success. But for us, we’ve set out to build something that changes how teams think about these types of tools. That’s why we’re pushing to get the whole team engaged and really make use of the document-like aspect of Kitemaker (which teams tend to use a bit differently than stories in clubhouse). It’s early days still, but initial feedback has been really positive and quite a few teams are paying us already.

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