When comparing JIRA vs Kantree, the Slant community recommends Kantree for most people. In the question“What is the best task management software for small teams?” Kantree is ranked 9th while JIRA is ranked 14th. The most important reason people chose Kantree is:
Kanban board to drag and drop cards across columns. Select which group type to show as columns: status, milestones, labels, teams, etc (you can create your own dimensions) Set rules to your group (such like auto-assign card to user when dropping a card)
Specs
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Pros
Pro Lots of integrations and plugins
It integrates well with a lot of other tools, including other products from the Atlassian suite. Plus there are a ton of plugins, including charting tools, screen capture, etc.
Pro Backed by a trustable company
Jira is developed and maintained by Atlassian, which is not an unknown venture, especially for developers. Atlassian has a great number of other products used by million of users worldwide, including BitBucket, HipChat, Confluence and Stash.
Each of these products have hundreds of thousands of users who use them daily and this has allowed Atlassian to garner a lot of goodwill from the dev community.
Pro Very cheap for small teams
Pro Supports version-focused work-flows
JIRA is not a plain long list of tickets, but can be configured to be version-focused, so planning and understanding the progress in a software project becomes clear.
Pro Great reporting tools
Jira offers amazingly powerful reporting tools like activity stream, different graphs of opened and closed issues over time etc...
Pro Dynamic kanban view
Kanban board to drag and drop cards across columns.
Select which group type to show as columns: status, milestones, labels, teams, etc (you can create your own dimensions)
Set rules to your group (such like auto-assign card to user when dropping a card)
Pro Infinite hierarchy
Cards can have checklists. Items in the checklist are actual cards, which can be organized in their own board.
Projects is like a tree of card, with unlimited sub-level boards. Perfect to manage complex project with hierarchy. You can choose different settings and user permissions at every level.
Pro Custom card groups
Group your card in unlimited dimensions.
You can use the built-in groups (lists, labels, milestones), adapt them or create your own.
This allows you to manage a projects in other dimensions (by versions, teams, offices, categories, releases, etc).
Visualize your project in kanban and table view, by the group types of your choice.
Drag and drop cards quickly between groups.
Track progress by group types (ideal for managing iterations).
Pro Self-hosted option
Kantree can be installed on your server #privacy
Pro Card models
Use or create card model to best represent your work, for each of your project.
Dozens of types of attributes available, including text, yes/no values, map, file attachments, due date, etc
Perfect to manage projects of different kinds, with multiple card types - like ideas, sales contact, customer feedback, bug report, feature request, bill/order.
Pro Notification (email and in-app)
Pro Slack integration
Pro Github integration
Pro Charts and analytics
Pro Work in progress limits
Set soft limit to group, so that your teams don't get overloaded and lose focus
Pro Mobile
Adaptative design that is optimize for touch-based interface and adapt the UI to small screen (mobile and tablet)
Pro Table view
Manage your cards in table, by groups.
All the cards are displayed as rows, with their attributes in columns.
Group cards by any group type: milestones, status, team, label, epic, release...
Drag and drop cards across groups.
Pick the attributes to include in the table
Pro Card links
Create linked card to mirror a card in another projects / organization.
Create links with the attributes of the target card, or with its own attributes (to manage a card in multiple boards)
Create custom card relationship: blocked by, same as, etc.
Kantree also support infinite card hierarchy
Pro File attachment
Drag and drop multiple files to your cards at once.
Preview files in a gallery, by card or for the entire project
Cons
Con New releases often change the GUI largely
Sometimes the usage becomes worse, e.g. when creating a new ticket, you need to click the notification to keep it on the display.
Con Locks you inside its own ecosystem
If you use Jira you are pretty much locked inside their ecosystem. For example, if you want to add a tool to your project management stack (like a wiki) more often than not you will have to buy one of Atlassian's tools.
Con Client application support
No free client applications; IDE connector development was discontinued. Users are effectively locked into using web interface which requires context-switching.