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I have an associate who is geeked about Jira.  The official product is subscription only for $10 on up.  Seems a little steep for a new startup of 10 users or less.

Are there good, free alternatives?  Or, at least non-subscription options for project management and bug tracking?  I suggested Mingle although technically it's subscription and in "the cloud" so you don't fully own it.  Mingle says it's free for up to 5 users.

Thanks again for any advice!

I found these alternatives.  Never used them except Trello for a half second

** Cloud based project management **

Asana Free for 15 users.
https://asana.com/

Mingle Free for 10 users
https://www.thoughtworks.com/mingle/


** General Collaboration with free tiers **

Trello
https://trello.com/

Todoist
https://todoist.com/


** Free Tracking with some setup **

Bugzilla
https://www.bugzilla.org/

Redmine
https://www.redmine.org/

I would add Trac and Phabricator (depending on the specific needs), too.

hacknplan.com

(http://hacknplan.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/web3.png)

We use Phabricator  (https://www.phacility.com/phabricator/) which is free is you host it yourself.
Works very well for us. We mainly use it for bug tracking, but they have scrum boards, a wiki and other stuff in there too.
We've linked it to our git repository too, so it tracks checkins and we use it for code reviews.

It was a little tricky for me to set it up in a Docker container, I had not done databases before, but now it works really smooth and nice.

JIRA is a fantastic tool, and if you self-host it you can actually buy it for a one time fee of $10 for up to 10 users.  Price jumps up a lot if you need more users though. 

I use HacknPlan. It is just like Trello except focused on game development.

I just pivotal tracker. Quite simple and free for a few users.

I came in here ready to sing the praises of Trello, but that HacknPlan looks intriguing. I'll have to give it a look.

Seriously though, Trello is free, very powerful, and by using labels and different boards and the like you can have a place for your active tasks, backlogs, and bugs with minimal effort. Plus it's so popular that there are tons of extensions and add-ons and the like to slap even more functionality down on it

I know some people don't like it, but to me the best bug-tracking system is still MantisBT. My solution was to get a VPS (Which is always good to have) for 3$ per month and host it there.

After a couple days with HacknPlan I gotta say I think I'm making the switch from Trello

Trello has it beat in terms of easy task creation, but HacknPlan does a much better job categorizing things and helping you sort out your thoughts with models and subcategories

Like a lot of tools it's pretty overkill for solo development, but unlike other tools you can pretty safely ignore the features that are team based.

And a week later I'm back to Trello

HacknPlan is fine, but the slowness absolutely killed me. Plus Trello recently released a Desktop App which has some rad features

Cannot recommend Trello enough

I also like Trello quite a bit, though it took me a little trial and error to figure out the best way for me to organize all my tasks in it. I'm just a solo dev though, so I'm not sure how well it holds up in team environments. Still, can't argue with free.

I would recommend trello all the way; its nice and simple and perfect for a small indie team or solo developer.  We tried out quite a few alternatives in the past, but most were too slow, too complex, or simply less fun to use; trello is fast and fun to work with, which matters =)

I would add a few suggestions that haven't been mentioned yet, just for the sake of completing the list of tools : Favro, TargetProcess, Hansoft.

Trello is a GREAT start for small teams, but is not self-sufficient ; it's good for organising work but certain aspects are missing or lacking (reporting, bug tracking, etc.) to get a fully functional production framework that lets you drive your project efficiently. This can be mitigated slightly by integrating boards with other tools, but it's just not an "all-in-one" solution.

If you're serious about your project and have a small team, JIRA is totally worth the 10$/month entry price ! It covers all you need, and it just works.

I can highly recommend hacknplan as well. Have been using it for a couple of months now, and I use it to keep track of progress as well as managing all tasks I need to do on my project. And I like the interface - Clean and tidy :)

I have so far used the free package, but have not long ago singed up for the free trial of the fill package. I will probably go for the small paid package once the trial has ended.

I can understand why your associate is so into Jira, it's the most popular tool for managing and planning projects today. However, there are definitely other alternatives for Jira: Sprintly, Redmine (this one is free), Stackfield, etc. You can read the full comparison here and decide :) : https://www.1and1.co.uk/digitalguide/websites/web-development/jira-alternatives-five-project-tools-in-short/ (https://www.1and1.co.uk/digitalguide/websites/web-development/jira-alternatives-five-project-tools-in-short/)

I guess this isn't a cool answer, but we find a shared google spread sheet really efficient. You can enforce data validation, change color of cells depending on status, is clean and straight forward, can filter, etc. Now, I probably wouldn't use this method for a large team, but for 1-4 people it rocks. For larger I'd vote for bugzilla.

I hear you. I use Evernote and Google Docs for more design-y things - I don't really "believe" in traditional design docs when you're a small team, but I do like writing what eventually becomes a game bible, and Evernote is great - and free.

But I can't imagine using a spread sheet for project tasks or bugs. For those my mind jumps to sticky notes, and for this Trello is the one of the best