Plane
The open source project tracker for teams tired of Jira
Alternative toJiraLinear
Plane tracks issues, sprints and projects in a clean interface that sits between Jira and Linear. The Community edition is AGPL-3.0 and self hostable with Docker, and paid plans add features on the hosted cloud and on your own server.
Best for when
- your team finds Jira too slow and too complex for what it needs
- you want issues and sprint data on your own server
- you like Linear's style but want something you can self host
Watch out for
- some features you might expect, such as certain importers and advanced workflows, are in paid plans
- it is a multi container stack to keep updated and backed up
- there is no plugin marketplace on the scale of Jira's
Issues, cycles and docs in one place
Plane covers what most software teams use Jira for: issues with states, priorities and assignees, cycles for sprints, modules for grouping larger pieces of work, and list, board, calendar and spreadsheet views. It also has pages for specs and notes that link to the issues they describe.
The draw for many teams is speed and simplicity. Jira can be configured to do almost anything, which is also why it often feels slow and crowded. Plane has fewer knobs, loads quickly, and its keyboard driven feel is closer to Linear, without the closed SaaS.
The limits of the free edition
The Community edition is generous for a small team, but several features are kept for the paid Pro and Business plans, and that list changes between releases. Advanced workflows, some importers and finer permissions are typical examples, so compare the editions page with what your team actually uses in Jira.
Self hosting runs as several containers: the web app, the API, workers, PostgreSQL, Redis and object storage for attachments. That is fine on a small server, but it is yours to update and back up. Teams leaving Jira also lose its marketplace of plugins and its tight link with Confluence and Bitbucket.
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