Jira alternatives: the best in 2024

There’s a plethora of project management tools software teams can leverage, both purpose-built for development and otherwise. With varying features and technical capabilities; sorting out what works for your team can be tricky. 

For some, Jira is the default project management tool for software teams. But, as much (rather colorful) criticism suggests, it’s not the most user-friendly tool – struggling with ease of configuration, developer onboarding, inadequate GitHub integration, and more. In fact, most organizations have dedicated Jira administrators to manage these headaches. 

With the general consensus being that Jira is too convoluted for fast-moving software teams,  what’s the alternative? Well, it’s looking pretty good. In this article, we’ll cover some of the best project management tools that reflect Jira’s positive traits while reducing or eliminating its headaches.

To better compare tools to Jira, we’re ranking them by 3 key traits: 1) their ability to facilitate agile methodology 2) how seamless the experience is for developers to integrate their tools and workflows 3) how easy it is for both technical and non-technical teams to collaborate. 

Alright, let’s get started! 

The best overall alternative to Jira

Zenhub 

Zenhub is the perfect balance between powerful, agile tools like Sprint Planning, Planning Poker, Roadmaps, Agile Reports, and more and a developer-first approach. In Zenhub, managers get the visibility and scalability they love about Jira – with robust reporting functions and org-wide and team-level roadmap views, without compromising the developer experience.

So why do devs love Zenhub so much? In Zenhub, devs leverage a single GitHub Issue across the whole project management system. This means no more updating GitHub and a separate project management tool, no context switching, and no outdated project information. And, with Zenhub’s browser extension, developers access the whole project management system without ever leaving GitHub. Pretty sweet right?

Zenhub is also a great alternative for those organizations seeking to move from Jira Server, which will be phased out in February 2024. Zenhub’s on-premise solution allows you to locally host Zenhub while accessing all the features you love. This ensures that your team can have full control over your data privacy and security while still benefiting from Zenhub’s exceptional balance of power, usability, and seamless GitHub integration.

Ability to facilitate agile: 5/5

Ease of use for developers: 5/5

Collaboration power: 5/5

The best Jira alternatives for Agile project management

Alright, now that we’ve covered the best overall tool, let’s take a look at some Jira alternatives that scored highest in the agile category. 

Hygger

Hygger provides Kanban boards, roadmaps, and a clean and straightforward user interface. While it’s lacking is in its ability to enable teams through collaboration beyond the board, it has fairly advanced Agile capabilities like automated sprint planning and velocity estimation, earning it a 5/5 for agile.

But most teams leveraging agile are software developers – so how does it fair with integrating with development tools? Hygger doesn’t overtly advertise its GitHub integration, but some digging shows that they do offer some GitHub support to connect pull requests to tasks. Because its developer-centric integrations are limited, we’re giving it a 2/5 on developer experience. 

Ability to facilitate agile: 5/5

Ease of use for developers: 2/5

Collaboration power: 4/5

Pivotal Tracker

Pivotal Tracker is a tool purpose-built for agile – with Kanban boards, user stories, and storypoint estimation, and analytics tools,  Pivotal Tracker gets the basics of agile down. However, they’re missing a few key agile components like sprints, so we’re giving it ⅘. With built-in tools for enhancing project visibility and shared views of team priorities, Pivotal Tracker shines for its collaboration power. Despite this, its not the most intuitive tool for non-technical teams which is why we’re giving it a 4/5. And last but most importantly, developer experience – after all, they’re the ones using the tool – here we’re giving it a ⅗. Yes, there are integrations with developer tools, but their limitations require that developers still context switch between tools and do quite a bit of manual configuration.

Ability to facilitate agile: 4/5

Ease of use for developers: 3/5

Collaboration power: ⅘

Ora

You may not have heard of Ora, but their approach to collaboration is something you’ll want to take note of. In Ora, tasks have dedicated chat channels for easy communication, in-document commenting, and the ability to invite guest users. Ora also contains some agile tools like story points, sprints, and velocity charts, which is why they scored high on agile facilitation. While they integrate with GitHub and other dev tools, integration is a bit clunky as it operates through Zapier, which is why its scored lowest on the “Ease of use for developers” section, but overall Ora is still a fairly lightweight tool. 

Ability to facilitate agile: 4/5

Ease of use for developers: 2/5

Collaboration power: 5/5

Feature-heavy Jira alternatives

Some of these tools, while great for keeping your team agile may not have everything you need. So, lets take a look at some of the more feature-heavy options if your team is interested in all the bells and whistles. 

ClickUp

ClickUp is a new kid on the block. It provides a simple, user-friendly interface with strong automation and customization options – making it ideal for collaborating with non-technical stakeholders and earning it a 5/5 for collaboration. As far as making project management easy for developers, ClickUp scored ⅗ for its GitHub integration, which allows devs to provide status updates from GitHub. While the integration is native, it does has its limitations as not all ClickUp properties and features can be managed from GitHub and vice versa. 

While Click Up is great for collaborating and fairs somewhat well with devs, it falls short when it comes to facilitating Agile. In Click Up, Agile story points aren’t a thing – making all agile reports dependent on task completion. This means reporting is less accurate as there’s no way to gage how much effort each task required/s. Because of this critical missing piece, Clickup scored ⅖ in the agile category. 

Ability to facilitate agile: 2/5

Ease of use for developers: 3/5

Collaboration power: 5/5

VivifyScrum

VivifyScrum delivers a broad suite of powerful features for agile project management. This includes Kanban boards, scrum boards, scrum sprints and more. For this, we give it a 5/5 for agile. But where VivifyScrum shines the most is with invoicing and time tracking – making this tool more ideal for firms and agencies rather than in-house development. 

While this tool may be ideal for agencies, you should note that like Jira, it can be a little heavy for collaborators just trying to get basic project management tasks done. This is why its scored a ⅗ on collaboration and a ⅖ on ease of use for developers. 

Ability to facilitate agile: 5/5

Ease of use for developers: 2/5

Collaboration power: 3/5

Notion.so

Notion is rapidly gaining popularity as an all-in-one workspace for notes, tasks, wikis, and databases. It’s very flexible, allowing teams to structure their work just the way they want which is why it scores high on collaboration with a 5/5. However, when it comes to specifically facilitating Agile, Notion falls a bit short. While it does offer Kanban boards, it lacks more specialized Agile features like sprints and story points, hence scoring a 2/5 for Agile. On the developer side, Notion has an API for software development integrations, but its capabilities are currently limited and require a lot of manual tinkering, giving it a 2/5 for ease of use for developers.

Ability to facilitate agile: 2/5

Ease of use for developers: 2/5

Collaboration power: 5/5

Best alternatives for collaborating with non-software teams

Other teams have needs to, and often require a lot customization to get their workflows just right. In this category, we’ll be looking at alternatives to Jira that are best for collaborating with non-software developers. 

Asana

Asana is one of the most popular tools for non-development teams – but can it fair well against Jira?  While Asana has a Jira integration (they don’t typically position themselves as an agile tool), many agile teams still use Asana. Teams using Asana for agile are typically there for its collaboration benefits, as its ideal for teams operating in other areas of the business – product, marketing, design, etc. For this, we’re giving Asana 5/5 on collaboration. 

While, Asanas high customizability makes it possible for agile teams to make it work (see how here) its more of a workaround rather than a tool purpose-built for agile, missing core agile tools like Spints and agile reporting functionality. Because of this, it earns a ⅖ in the agile category. Finally, in the developer category, we’re giving it a ⅖. Asana, like many other multi-purpose tools, has GitHub integration, but the integrations are quite limited in their capabilities. 

Ability to facilitate agile: 2/5

Ease of use for developers: 2/5

Collaboration power: 5/5

Wrike 

Wrike is similar to ClickUp in its high customizability, as well in some of its drawbacks. To start with its strengths, it can be used across teams as its mostly built for non-technical teams. This enables a lot more visibility with when it comes to project tracking. Because of this it gets 5/5 for collaboration. 

When it comes to managing software engineering projects, Wrike has the benefit of Native GitHub integration, which enables some syncing between GitHub and Wrike. However, not all of Wrikes features are available in GitHub, causing a bit of friction for developers. For this, we give it a ⅗ for developer experience. Finally, Wrike’s ability to facilitate agile is its biggest drawback.

While you can create basic Kanban boards in Write, a lot of key agile principles are missing like story point estimation and agile reports. For this, we’re giving it a ⅖ in the agile category. 

Ability to facilitate agile: 2/5

Ease of use for developers: 3/5

Collaboration power: 5/5

Monday.com

Monday.com is an easy-to-use project management tool that fosters collaboration and efficiency amongst teams of all types. When it comes to collaboration, it shines with a 5/5 score, offering an intuitive interface with visual project tracking, which non-technical teams find particularly helpful.

On the developer side, Monday.com offers integrations with popular coding platforms, including GitHub, but the scope of these integrations is somewhat limited. Because of this, it scores a 3/5 for ease of use for developers.

In terms of facilitating Agile, Monday.com allows for the creation of Kanban boards and provides some Agile project management features. However, like many other multi-purpose tools, it lacks more advanced Agile features such as sprints and story points. For this, it earns a 2/5 for its ability to facilitate Agile.

Ability to facilitate agile: 2/5

Ease of use for developers: 3/5

Collaboration power: 5/5

Best lightweight Jira alternatives

Sure, all the bells and whistles is great, and sometimes customization is king, but other times, teams just need a tool that isn’t going to get in the way (or over complicate things). Here are the best lightweight tools on our list. 

Backlog

Backlog is a super lightweight tool that is a cross between a project and a Git management platform. With Gaant charts and Kanban boards, Backlog has the basics of collaboration down. However, being very software development-focused makes it more challenging to collaborate with non-technical folk. For this, we’re giving it a ⅗ on collaboration.

With simple bug tracking, version control, and the ability to create Git repos in Backlog, it’s a great option for individual developers and small teams, so we’re giving it a ⅘ on the developer experience. Despite its focus on software development, Backlog still struggles a bit when it comes to facilitating agile, missing a lot of key agile tools and principles like story points and reporting, which is why it scored ⅖ in that category. 

Ability to facilitate agile: 2/5

Ease of use for developers: 4/5

Collaboration power: 3/5

DoneDone

DoneDone is an opinionated tool aimed squarely at tracking and resolving bugs and issues, so it’s great for QA teams and dev teams tackling tech debt. It has GitHub integration and connects issue tracking with customer support, creating an easy pipeline for issues to come in and be worked on. For this we give it 5/5 on developer experience. 

Of course, the catch is that for many teams, there’s more to the development process than bugs and issues, particularly for teams working in Agile. Because DoneDone lacks story point estimates, reporting, and other key agile features, it scored lowest in this category. 

Ability to facilitate agile: 1/5

Ease of use for developers: 5/5

Collaboration power: 3/5 

Trello

Trello is best known as being the go-to for simple Kanban boards that allow for easy tracking of tasks across teams. Trello’s strengths lie in its simplicity, making it an excellent tool for collaboration and earning a 5/5 on this front.

Trello allows for the creation of Kanban boards but lacks in-depth agile features such as sprints and story points, limiting its effectiveness for agile development and scoring it a 2/5 in this aspect. As for developers, Trello offers a robust API and integrates with apps like GitHub and Slack. However, it doesn’t offer a seamless experience for technical tasks, resulting in a score of 3/5 for ease of use by developers.

Ability to facilitate agile: 2/5

Ease of use for developers: 3/5

Collaboration power: 5/5

The choice is yours… 

Teams come in all shapes, sizes, and collaboration styles. For software teams, sometimes complex, heavy tools can overcomplicate a workflow, such as in the case with Jira. But when looking for new tools, its important to consider why you’re switching in the first place – to maximize collaboration, improve the developer experience and agile practices. 

Finding a project management tool that works doesn’t have to come at the cost of slowing your team down. We developed Zenhub for fast-moving software teams, to integrate seamlessly with developers workflow, while providing management and other stakeholders with the visibility they need. If you haven’t tried it out yet, get a free trial of Zenhub on us for 14 days.