Starting February 15, 2024, Atlassian has announced that it will no longer support their Server (on-premises) products – including Jira. With this change in service, teams using Jira Server on-premises need to move off the product and decide on a new solution.
In this blog, we’ll dive into the specifics of Jira Server end of life, exploring how your team can respond, and explore Jira alternatives. Read along or jump to the section that interests you:
What Is Jira Server End of Life?
Back to topWith Jira Server end of life, Atlassian will no longer support Jira Server on-premises and current users will no longer have access to technical support, security updates, and bug fixes.
How Your Team Can Respond to Jira Server End of Life
Given the security vulnerabilities and end of support, Jira Server users need to migrate to another solution. Below we dive into ways your team can respond to Jira Server end of life.
Upgrade to Data Center or Cloud with Jira
If your team decides to keep Jira as their issue and project tracking tool, Atlassian is offering users the option to migrate to Jira Data Center or Jira Cloud. Here are some factors to consider if your team decides on either of these solutions:
Jira Data Center
Deploying Data Center in a cluster requires load balancer, application nodes, ElasticSearch, etc. These requirements make it more complicated to administer than Jira Server.
Given this reality, your team will need to expend a greater amount of time and resources to use this solution. In addition, Jira Data Center is always more expensive than Jira Server. If your team is fewer than 500 users (especially less than 100 users), it will be an even larger difference as you have to pay for the 500 users while you might just need 50.
Jira Cloud
Though posed as an alternative solution to Jira server, Jira Cloud has a number of key differences. Once moving to Jira Cloud, Atlassian can add features and change functionality without your say, giving you less control of your tool.
Additionally, the plugins available to you may not be the same and even behave differently than Jira Server plugins. Lastly, for organizations in a more regulated industry, there are more considerations to be aware of in moving to the cloud, such as:
- Being mindful of where your data is stored.
- Planning for what would happen if the cloud service became unavailable for any reason.
Look Into Tools Similar to Jira or Free Jira Alternatives
Another option for your team is to research similar tools to Jira or free Jira alternatives. There are plenty of options on the market, so here are some factors to consider when considering different solutions:
- Balance alignment and autonomy: Your solution should allow you to both have visibility into your project’s progress and enable you to collaborate efficiently, while each team member is held accountable for their part of the project.
- Scalability: Your team will also want to work with a tool that scales with your team and project.
- Flexibility: If your team migrates between project methods — such as agile and waterfall — for managing projects, you’ll want to select a solution that is more flexible.
- Boosts efficiency: Ultimately, your team will want a tool that increases your productivity so that your plans can be executed quickly and seamlessly.
Out of the similar tools to Jira on the market, one strong contender to consider is Helix Plan (formerly Hansoft), a tool that provides a single platform for decision-making at the project, program, and portfolio levels.
Back to topWhy Helix Plan is the Best of Tools Similar to Jira
Helix Plan is an enterprise-class planning tool that helps teams work faster, smarter, and with unrivaled efficiency. Easy to use, it empowers everyone — team members, managers, and executives — with the insights they need to ship better products together. These features make it an ideal option for teams looking for a new solution following Jira server end of life.
Diverse and dispersed teams, expanding scale, changing goals, tight schedules — Helix Plan solves the whirlwind of challenges facing organizations today. With both on-premises and cloud deployment options, you can decide on which option works best for your team.
Below, we dive into the top reasons why your team should consider Helix Plan for your project planning needs:
Clean Structure with Actionable Insights
Along with a structure that gives you a clean view of your projects, task types, and views, Helix Plan will keep you informed of progress through real-time dashboards. Make just-in-time decisions based on real-world data and notifications. With Helix Plan, the entire organization can see how their work contributes to big-picture goals.
Accelerates Planning
Helix Plan is 10 to 100x faster than similar tools, providing users unparalleled speed and performance on-premise. You can change attributes and workflows on the fly. Unlike Jira, Helix Plan gives users the ability to work in and update items in batches quickly (i.e. enabling you to easily change estimates for 100+ items). Additionally, the technology Helix Plan uses with a native client and server makes it fast at a large scale, with a backend built specifically for enterprises.
Secure Collaboration at Large Scale
Helix Plan can be structured around the precise needs of your organization. Deploy where you want and set very granular permissions, down to the field and task level. These features, enable you to be fully in control of where your data resides at all times. Helix Plan also scales to thousands of users.
Flexible Real-Time Project Management
With Helix Plan, teams get to use their favorite project management methods. Helix Plan gives users the ability to combine three leading ways of planning – Agile, Kanban, Gantt – in a single view. For example, use Gantt charts for art and sprints for code, while visualizing and optimizing your workflows on Kanban boards.
World Class Product Backlogs
A healthy product backlog is critical to modern planning. Helix Plan lets you structure your way, making it the only backlog tool that can compare with Excel. With Helix Plan, you can refine, prioritize, estimate, and give any other custom attribute to your deliverables.
Expanded API
With Helix Plan's API based on GraphQL, create, update, and edit your projects with enhanced customization. Our expanded API commands enable you to work faster, connect your full tool suite, and set up your tasks in a way that works for you.
📘 Related Resource: Helix Plan API Documentation
Ideal Tool for Game Devs of the Similar Tools to Jira
Unlike Jira, Helix Plan is built from the beginning for Agile planning and specially designed for game developers. Helix Plan is the fastest option when it comes to performance, as planning is its core capability. It has functionality such as pipelines built with game development in mind, providing one place for your game studio’s backlog of ideas, bugs, priorities, and to-dos. By using Helix Plan, teams are enabled to:
- Plan efficiently and rapidly.
- Use pipelines to effectively track progress.
- Adjust epics, stories, and tasks quickly when things change.
Rogue Sun Chose Helix Plan out of the Jira Alternatives
Rogue Sun is an indie game studio in the UK and was using Jira as their project management tool. They had a team of 15 people around the world, and they started having issues with Jira within months of using it. As an Agile and fast-moving studio working on their first big project, they had no time to waste on complex migrations to planning tools they weren’t sure would meet their needs.
Rogue Sun already had Helix Plan free for 5 users, so the entire team’s migration over was fast and simple. They used the switch as an opportunity to become better structured. Since switching to Helix Plan, Rogue Sun has saved days tasking out their sprints, easily propagated their plan to all layers of the organization, and built out custom dashboards to monitor success.
📘 Related Resource: How Rogue Sun Accelerates Game Production with Helix Plan Agile Planning
Get Started with Helix Plan
With Jira server end of life here, you will need a new solution that can deliver results and support your team to meet their deadlines. Learn how Helix Plan lets your team move faster than you thought possible. Helix Plan is free for up to 5 users – making it the best solution of the free Jira alternatives on the market.