Jira is a popular application lifecycle management solution (ALM), with a 4.5 out of 5 rating from Software Advice users. It helps businesses build, test and maintain software products. Jira can help speed up a product’s time to market with functionalities such as requirements management, project tracking, bug tracking, release management and collaboration.
That said, not every small business needs an advanced tool like Jira to manage software development projects. For instance, if your development team struggles to prioritize customer issues, a full-suite ALM solution may be unnecessary. You may be better served by specialized bug tracking software, which can help prioritize customer tickets and improve issue resolution rates.
ALM solutions are offered as simple agile solutions, or even comprehensive suites. Small businesses need to carefully compare different solutions to ensure that they don’t waste money by purchasing the wrong tool.
In this report, we list the top five most-recommended Jira alternatives to aid your search for the right ALM solution, identify the features that differentiate these solutions from Jira, and highlight real user reviews.
Let’s get started!
Top 5 Most-Recommended Alternatives to Jira:
CaseCamp
Kanbanize
KanbanTool
Zenkit
Zoho BugTracker
Next Steps
CaseCamp: Gain Visibility Into Project Progress and Team Performance
CaseCamp is a project management solution with features such as Gantt charts for project planning, document management, issue tracking and employee time tracking.
CaseCamp is designed as an agile project management tool that is suitable for software development firms using agile frameworks such as kanban and scrum.
CaseCamp and Jira can track software issues and help teams that need to manage a large inflow of support tickets. They also offer integration capabilities with software versions control systems, such as Github and SVN, making it easy for developers to export and import files to and from these systems.
The core difference lies in how each system is packaged. CaseCamp is a single tool for scheduling tasks, tracking employee time, handling customer tickets and managing documents. On the other hand, Jira offers a range of software modules for project management, document collaboration, software release management and issue tracking. You can buy it as a suite or as separate tools.
Check out the graphic below to understand the key features of CaseCamp that users like and some improvements they would like to see.
Kanbanize: Create Transparent Project Workflows With Kanban Dashboard
Kanbanize is a tool that helps businesses track project progress with the help of visual kanban dashboards. It offers features such as email integrations to automatically turn emails into tasks and time trackers to record the work hours of team members.
Kanbanize is suitable for businesses that already follow a kanban framework to manage software development projects.
Both Jira and Kanbanize offer similar functionalities for project and task tracking. Project managers can effectively prioritize tasks by understanding task dependencies, and can track the time employees spend on tasks to make accurate resource allocation estimates for future projects.
Here’s where they differ: Kanbanize is a visual, lean project management solution that helps software development teams create transparent workflows and improve their productivity. Jira is about effective tracking, whether it’s employees’ daily tasks, the overall speed at which development teams release new product features or the rate at which customer issues are being resolved.
Check out the graphic below, which shows the top reasons users like Kanbanize and some improvements they would like to see:
KanbanTool: Improve Team Productivity With Effective Task Tracking
KanbanTool is a visual task management solution that offers features such as drag-and-drop kanban dashboards to track team tasks, collaboration functionality with task commenting and time sheets to track hours spent on tasks.
KanbanTool is ideal for small software development teams that track projects manually.
KanbanTool and Jira are similar to the extent that both solutions lend themselves to agile project management. The former is for teams practicing kanban and the latter is suitable for scrum teams.
A clear difference between these solutions is the depth of functionality. KanbanTool focuses on task management, with a customizable kanban board that helps teams track progress and understand bottlenecks using cumulative flow diagrams. Meanwhile, Jira can scale up with your business needs, offers modules to track software development projects, manages customer service tickets and tests code before deployment.
Below is a graphic that presents what users like about KanbanTool and some features they feel could be improved:
Zenkit: Boost Team Collaboration With a Customizable Project Tracking Tool
Zenkit includes features such as a customizable task tracking dashboard (offering kanban, calendar, mind maps and list views), file sharing and task notifications to improve team collaboration.
Zenkit is suitable for small software development teams that need an easy-to-use tool for tracking different kinds of data (such as tasks, bugs and customer requests) on a centralized dashboard.
Both Jira and Zenkit help businesses effectively track project progress. They offer collaborative dashboards where teams can view the status of tasks, share project documents and add comments to explain details and update their progress.
Zenkit suits small businesses that want an easy-to-use tool for improving team collaboration and gaining visibility into project progress. On the other hand, Jira is suits users with advanced project reporting requirements such as the ability to map out product roadmaps and track product backlogs.
Explore the graphic below to understand which Zenkit features users like and which they think could be improved:
Zoho BugTracker: Resolve Customer Tickets Faster With Bug Tracking Reports
Zoho BugTracker is a specialized tool for tracking software issues. It offers features such as rule-based classification of issues based on the severity/importance and automatic notifications to the right team member/client about the bug status.
Zoho BugTracker is for small businesses that aren’t looking for full-suite ALM software but a solution that helps them track, prioritize and resolve software issues faster.
Both Zoho BugTracker and Jira are tracking tools that improve the productivity of software development teams. They are designed to help agile teams collaborate and track project status effectively.
The key difference is that Jira is a full-suite ALM system, while Zoho Bug Tracker is a best-of-breed tool. Jira has different modules to track and manage software development projects from initial coding stages through final release. Zoho BugTracker is designed to help teams track software fixes and upgrades after release.
Below is a graphic that lists the top features users like about Zoho BugTracker and some of the improvements they would like to see:
Next Steps
This report lists the top alternatives to Jira for application lifecycle management within a small business. ALM tools suit SMBs that are shifting from a project management mindset to product management mindset.
Before making a purchase, SMBs should carefully analyze how the tool will help them execute their small business application strategy.
To find out more about the Jira alternatives listed in this report, visit their profile pages by clicking the links below:
If you’re currently evaluating ALM solutions, we recommend that you check out our buyer’s guide on ALM tools to better compare different products on features and pricing.
Alternatively, call us at (844) 680-2046 for a free, no-obligation consultation with a software advisor who can help you make the right software choice for your business.
