Downsides of Jira?
Jira is a popular tool for project management due to its many collaboration benefits. It supports all devices, and offers flexible deployment and customization options. Nevertheless, over time, the users have identified the following drawbacks:
- Expensive price tag: It can cost up to $12,000 per year for larger teams
- Plug-in hell: You can do virtually anything with Jira, but it will cost you in terms of money you pay for various plugins, time it takes to configure and maintain the add-ons and the technical skills required to accomplish the same
- Isn’t supported anymore: As of Feb 2024, Atlassian will stop supporting Jira Server, forcing everyone currently using the platform to migrate over to a new tool (more on that in the next point), likely Jira Data Center, which has a minimum of 500 team members — imagine the price tag!
- Complex migration: Time-consuming when migrating from other systems, and to the other Jira platforms
- Outdated interface: Customization options are cumbersome, software is clunky and using it on a daily basis can be frustrating, and mobile experience is subpar with cumbersome navigation
- Suited mostly for development teams: Built with developers in mind, Jira’s functionality and usefulness for other teams involved in the application lifecycle management (testers, designers, and business analysts, etc.) leaves you wanting more
10 Best Jira Alternatives & Replacements
There is no one-size-fits-all solution that will cater to everyone’s unique business requirements. So, it is both natural and prudent to explore alternatives to Jira, while keeping in mind your preferred project management methodology, your team’s communication style, and the essential features you need vs. the ones that are nice to have.
#1. SpiraTeam
SpiraTeam by Inflectra is the top-of-the-market project management platform for agile teams of all sizes. Methodology agnostic, SpiraTeam is an all-in-one, intuitive, and powerful alternative to Atlassian’s Jira. With built-in requirements traceability and test cases, tasks, and code management, SpiraTeam is the one tool that manages all aspects of your software development, program management, and QA cycles. SpiraTeam helps teams collaborate and coordinate work through modules for document management, customizable workflows, global scheduling, email and in-app notifications, and IM/real-time chat.
Other features that set SpiraTeam apart from Jira include:
- Requirements management and traceability
- Portfolio management for complex projects and large teams
- Release, task, and test management/QA
- Filtering and sorting - users can drill down to view requirements, releases, tasks by person, priority, release, keywords
- Different views, including list view, Kanban boards
- In-line, markdown and Rich Text document editing
- Executive dashboards complete with Gantt charts and role-specific views
- Baselining, audit trails, document version control
- Concurrent licensing model with unlimited projects, members, and teams
- Seamless integration with over 60 tools on the market, including Jira and Visual Studio
SpiraTeam is available on-premise or as SaaS.
Pricing: A generous 30-day free trial, with a sliding pricing scale from $12 per user/month to $42 per user/month
#2. Assembla
With Assembla, plan and deliver multiple projects combining Scrum, Gantt, Kanban, Waterfall, and SAFe methodologies. Assembla has a wide range of functionality in its core, like code deployment and Git hosting.
It provides robust collaboration features along with:
- Project portfolio management
- Task and milestones management
- Time tracking
- Bug tracking and ticket views
- Subversion, Git & Perforce Hosting
- Cardwalls and taskboards
Pricing: Starts at $12 per user/month (maximum of 5 users)
#3. YouTrack
YouTrack is an agile-oriented project management tool and issue-tracking system from the creators of IntelliJ IDEA/JetBrains. This intelligent and easy-to-use tracker helps users manage their daily tasks and bugs, plan sprints and releases, support customer’s requests, and collaborate on projects. The platform supports Scrum and Kanban and is flexible and customizable and allows teams to follow their own processes and ways of working together.
Other key features of YouTrack are:
- Quick and easy search for issues
- Seamless workflow creation
- Batch editing
- Configurable agile boards
- Reporting, including Gantt charts
- Project dashboards
- Time tracking
- Markdown and emoji-reactions
Available as cloud-hosted or standalone
Pricing: Free 10-user plan, with a sliding price scale after that starting at $4.40 per user/month
#4. Nifty
Nifty is an agile project management solution that simplifies project delivery and helps users visualize all their working processes, while ensuring team members are on the same page. Users can create, assign, and track milestone-connected tasks and store files and feedback in a centralized location. Customizable fields help teams plan sprints and track progress and budget.
Other features that set this platform apart from Jira include:
- Lifecycle management
- Portfolio and resource management
- Project overviews
- Dashboards and file sharing
- Activity, status, and time tracking
Nifty runs on Mac, Windows, and сloud-version
- Pricing: Paid plans starting from $9 per user/month (Basic plan, only self-serve support), up to $25 per user/month (Business plan)
#5. VersionOne
Agility is an agile project management solution for agile, enterprise scrum, and kanban. It supports a variety of software development models and team collaboration types. This platform provides insight into the project progress with over 50 agile metrics and enables greater productivity. It gives users a bird’s eye view of the product development elements such as product planning, sprint tracking, and planning, release reports, etc.
Other features that set this platform apart from Jira include:
- Unlimited projects, members, and teams
- Kanban boards with task assignment functionality
- Release forecasting and iteration tracking
- Sprint member capacity planning
- Timesheets and approvals
- Burndown charts and velocity reports
- End to end visibility
- Team collaboration
With many features at users’ fingertips, the learning curve for teams can be steep.
Pricing: $29 per user/month (Enterprise plan) or $39 per user/month (Ultimate plan)
#6. Zoho Project
Zoho Projects is a project management software that helps agile teams plan their work to ensure on-time project delivery. The software improves project planning and helps frees up users’ time for more productive use. It has an easy-to-use and clean interface and is packed with collaboration features such as scheduled and recurring tasks, task lists, and milestones.
Other features that set Zoho Projects apart from Jira include:
- Built-in bug tracking
- Task and test scheduling
- Workflows
- Data visualization with graphs and charts
- Activity and time tracking
- Reporting
It is available in the cloud, on-premise, and on-demand.
Pricing: $5 per user/month (Premium plan) or $10 per user/month (Enterprise plan)
#7. Targetprocess
Targetprocess is designed to help users manage Agile projects by visualizing complex processes. It helps managers visualize timelines, dependencies, project data, and more while improving transparency and visibility across the board to facilitate planning, collaboration, and tracking. TargetProcess easily adapts to your management approach.
Other features that set this platform apart from Jira include:
- Boards and backlog story map view
- Custom views, cards, reports, and dashboards
- Custom reports and visualization of project data
- High-level tracking across the entire portfolio
- QA, bug tracking, test case management
- Integrations for both SaaS and on-premise
Pricing: Not advertised, contact Targetprocess
#8. Active Collab
Active Collab is an easy-to-use project management solution for small businesses. It provides a big picture of all projects, allows users to create an efficient work schedule, and save time through its powerful collaboration features. The tool supports document management, priority and task control, access control, time tracking, invoicing, project cost estimation, reporting, ticketing functionality. The software has an intuitive interface, is an iOS app, and has a outstanding support team behind it.
Other features that set this platform apart from Jira include:
- Task dependencies
- Time tracking and calendar integration
- Gantt charts and advanced reporting
- Kanban boards
- Customizable templates
The only thing users report is that the tool lacks integration with Git or another version of the control system.
Pricing: Starts at $11 per user/month (Plus plan, limited to 3 members) up to $14 per user/month (Pro+Get Paid plan)
#9. PivotalTracker
Pivotal Tracker is an agile-only project management software that helps teams deliver more frequently and consistently. It provides a shared view of team priorities, fosters collaboration, and helps analyze teams’ progress. The platform enables users to select among features, bugs, and chores to balance the need for building new features, decreasing the technical debt, and keeping the software bug-free.
Other features that set this platform apart from Jira include:
- Story points and backlog lists
- Task prioritization
- Iteration tracking
- Work estimation and prioritization
- Automated consistency tracker
- Workspaces
- Dashboard reporting for time and trends
Pricing: Ranges from free (limited to 5 members) to $6.50 per user/month (Standard plan)
#10. ClickUp
ClickUp’s project management tool has a heavy emphasis on team collaboration, reduction of workload, and productivity maximization. It comes with machine learning capabilities for predicting task assignments, assignment locations, and determining the accuracy of time estimates. It allows users to assign tasks to teammates, assign comments, get notified about changes, and make adjustments to the dashboard view.
Other features that set this platform apart from Jira include:
- Real-time collaboration detection (viewing, commenting, and editing)
- Threaded comments
- Multitask toolbar to make changes to multiple tasks in one go.
- Open tasks as tabs
- Project overview
- Progress and goal tracking
Pricing: Ranges from free to $19 per user/month (Business Plus plan)
Additional Jira Alternatives
There are many other tools that can be used as alternatives to Jira. Some of the ones that didn’t make our list include:
- Basecamp
- Binfire
- Bitrix24
- Shortcut
- Codegiant
- DoneDone
- GanttPRO
- Hive
- Hygger
- Kanbanize
- Planview AgilePlace
- LiquidPlanner
- ProofHub
- Quire
- smartQ
- Smartsheet
- Teamdeck
- Teamwork
- Workzone
- Wrike
Replace Jira with Spira
While there are a lot of options on the market, SpiraTeam is the most comprehensive, intuitive, and effective alternative to Jira. We’ve created a tool specifically for users migrating from Jira to SpiraTeam to simplify the process and make your life easier. And because of our sliding scale for pricing, you’re able to get exactly what you need from a tool — instead of having to choose from two or three default options that are either too much or too little for your team. This customization extends to SpiraTeam’s functionality as well, with adaptable reporting, tracking, permissions, and more. Even better, our exceptional customer support means that you don’t have to worry about being left on your own with self-serve forums like some other tools.
Ready to get started? Try a free 30-day trial of SpiraTeam below!