Alternatives to Discord logo

Alternatives to Discord

Slack, Skype, Zoom, Gitter, and Google Hangouts are the most popular alternatives and competitors to Discord.
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What is Discord and what are its top alternatives?

Discord is a popular communication platform that allows users to chat via text, voice, or video in real-time. It is primarily used by gamers but has found popularity among various communities for its ease of use and feature-rich environment. Key features of Discord include creating servers for different topics, voice channels for efficient communication, customizable roles and permissions, integration with third-party apps, and a sleek user interface. However, some limitations of Discord include occasional server outages, lack of end-to-end encryption, and potential security concerns due to privacy issues.

  1. Slack: Slack is a popular alternative to Discord that offers channels for communication, direct messaging, file sharing, and integration with third-party apps. It is widely used by businesses for team collaboration. Pros include advanced search functionality, integrated video calls, and file storage. Cons compared to Discord include pricing for additional features and restrictions on free plans.
  2. Microsoft Teams: Microsoft Teams is a comprehensive collaboration platform that combines chat, video conferencing, file storage, and app integration. It is part of the Microsoft 365 suite and is widely used in corporate environments. Pros include seamless integration with other Microsoft tools, security features, and extensive customization options. Cons compared to Discord include a steeper learning curve and limited options for customizing roles and permissions.
  3. Telegram: Telegram is a messaging app that offers secure and private communication through end-to-end encryption. It supports group chats, channels, file sharing, and voice calls. Pros include strong security features, cross-platform availability, and no ads. Cons compared to Discord include less focus on voice communication, limited integrations with third-party apps, and smaller user base in comparison.
  4. Zoom: Zoom is a video conferencing platform that allows users to host virtual meetings, webinars, and online events. It offers features such as screen sharing, breakout rooms, and virtual backgrounds. Pros include high-quality video and audio, easy user interface, and recording capabilities. Cons compared to Discord include a primary focus on video calls, limited text chat functionality, and a separate platform for social interactions.
  5. Riot.im: Riot.im is an open-source collaboration app that offers secure messaging, voice/video calls, and file sharing. It is built on the Matrix open standard for decentralized communication. Pros include end-to-end encryption, decentralized architecture, and extensive customization options. Cons compared to Discord include a smaller user base, fewer integrations with third-party apps, and potential complexity for new users.
  6. Mumble: Mumble is a low-latency voice chat software designed for gamers and online communities. It offers positional audio, in-game overlay, and customizable user permissions. Pros include high audio quality, low resource usage, and open-source code. Cons compared to Discord include a steeper learning curve, limited text chat features, and fewer server management options.
  7. Wire: Wire is a secure messaging app that offers end-to-end encryption for text, voice, and video communication. It focuses on privacy and data security, making it a good choice for sensitive conversations. Pros include strong security features, cross-platform availability, and collaboration tools. Cons compared to Discord include fewer customization options, limited integrations with third-party apps, and pricing for advanced features.
  8. Tox: Tox is a decentralized and secure messaging platform that prioritizes user privacy and data protection. It offers text chat, voice calls, video calls, and file sharing in a peer-to-peer network. Pros include end-to-end encryption, decentralized architecture, and no ads or tracking. Cons compared to Discord include a smaller user base, limited features for group communication, and potential complexity for new users.
  9. Jitsi Meet: Jitsi Meet is an open-source video conferencing platform that allows users to host virtual meetings with no account registration required. It offers features such as screen sharing, chat, and recording. Pros include easy setup, no cost for basic features, and strong security measures. Cons compared to Discord include a focus on video calls, limited text chat functionality, and fewer customization options.
  10. Rocket.Chat: Rocket.Chat is an open-source communication platform that offers text chat, video conferencing, and file sharing for teams and communities. It can be self-hosted or used in the cloud. Pros include extensive customization options, integrations with third-party apps, and scalability. Cons compared to Discord include potential complexity for setup, limited user-friendly interface, and fewer built-in features.

Top Alternatives to Discord

  • Slack
    Slack

    Imagine all your team communication in one place, instantly searchable, available wherever you go. That’s Slack. All your messages. All your files. And everything from Twitter, Dropbox, Google Docs, Asana, Trello, GitHub and dozens of other services. All together. ...

  • Skype
    Skype

    Skype’s text, voice and video make it simple to share experiences with the people that matter to you, wherever they are. ...

  • Zoom
    Zoom

    Zoom unifies cloud video conferencing, simple online meetings, and cross platform group chat into one easy-to-use platform. Our solution offers the best video, audio, and screen-sharing experience across Zoom Rooms, Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, and H.323/SIP room systems. ...

  • Gitter
    Gitter

    Free chat rooms for your public repositories. A bit like IRC only smarter. Chats for private repositories as well as organisations. ...

  • Google Hangouts
    Google Hangouts

    Message contacts, start free video or voice calls, and hop on a conversation with one person or a group. ...

  • WhatsApp
    WhatsApp

    It is a cross-platform mobile messaging app for iPhone, BlackBerry, Android, Windows Phone and Nokia. It allows users to send text messages and voice messages, make voice and video calls, and share images, documents, user locations, and other media. ...

  • Telegram
    Telegram

    Users can send messages and exchange photos, videos, stickers, audio and files of any type. It provides instant messaging, simple, fast, secure and synced across all your devices. ...

  • Jira
    Jira

    Jira's secret sauce is the way it simplifies the complexities of software development into manageable units of work. Jira comes out-of-the-box with everything agile teams need to ship value to customers faster. ...

Discord alternatives & related posts

Slack logo

Slack

119.4K
95.9K
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Bring all your communication together in one place
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+ 1
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PROS OF SLACK
  • 1.2K
    Easy to integrate with
  • 876
    Excellent interface on multiple platforms
  • 849
    Free
  • 694
    Mobile friendly
  • 690
    People really enjoy using it
  • 331
    Great integrations
  • 315
    Flexible notification preferences
  • 198
    Unlimited users
  • 184
    Strong search and data archiving
  • 155
    Multi domain switching support
  • 82
    Easy to use
  • 40
    Beautiful
  • 27
    Hubot support
  • 22
    Unread/read control
  • 21
    Slackbot
  • 19
    Permalink for each messages
  • 17
    Text snippet with highlighting
  • 15
    Quote message easily
  • 14
    Per-room notification
  • 13
    Awesome integration support
  • 12
    Star for each message / attached files
  • 12
    IRC gateway
  • 11
    Good communication within a team
  • 11
    Dropbox Integration
  • 10
    Slick, search is great
  • 10
    Jira Integration
  • 9
    New Relic Integration
  • 8
    Great communication tool
  • 8
    Combine All Services Quickly
  • 8
    Asana Integration
  • 7
    This tool understands developers
  • 7
    XMPP gateway
  • 7
    Google Drive Integration
  • 7
    Awesomeness
  • 6
    Replaces email
  • 6
    Twitter Integration
  • 6
    Google Docs Integration
  • 6
    BitBucket integration
  • 5
    Jenkins Integration
  • 5
    GREAT Customer Support / Quick Response to Feedback
  • 5
    Guest and Restricted user control
  • 4
    Clean UI
  • 4
    Excellent multi platform internal communication tool
  • 4
    GitHub integration
  • 4
    Mention list view
  • 4
    Gathers all my communications in one place
  • 3
    Perfect implementation of chat + integrations
  • 3
    Easy
  • 3
    Easy to add a reaction
  • 3
    Timely while non intrusive
  • 3
    Great on-boarding
  • 3
    Threaded chat
  • 3
    Visual Studio Integration
  • 3
    Easy to start working with
  • 3
    Android app
  • 2
    Simplicity
  • 2
    Message Actions
  • 2
    It's basically an improved (although closed) IRC
  • 2
    So much better than email
  • 2
    Eases collaboration for geographically dispersed teams
  • 2
    Great interface
  • 2
    Great Channel Customization
  • 2
    Markdown
  • 2
    Intuitive, easy to use, great integrations
  • 1
    Great Support Team
  • 1
    Watch
  • 1
    Multi work-space support
  • 1
    Flexible and Accessible
  • 1
    Better User Experience
  • 1
    Archive Importing
  • 1
    Travis CI integration
  • 1
    It's the coolest IM ever
  • 1
    Community
  • 1
    Great API
  • 1
    Easy remote communication
  • 1
    Get less busy
  • 1
    API
  • 1
    Zapier integration
  • 1
    Targetprocess integration
  • 1
    Finally with terrible "threading"—I miss Flowdock
  • 1
    Complete with plenty of Electron BLOAT
  • 1
    I was 666 star :D
  • 1
    Dev communication Made Easy
  • 1
    Integrates with just about everything
  • 1
    Very customizable
  • 0
    Platforms
  • 0
    Easy to useL
CONS OF SLACK
  • 13
    Can be distracting depending on how you use it
  • 6
    Requires some management for large teams
  • 6
    Limit messages history
  • 5
    Too expensive
  • 5
    You don't really own your messages
  • 4
    Too many notifications by default

related Slack posts

Lucas Litton
Founder & CEO at Macombey · | 24 upvotes · 307.7K views

Sentry has been essential to our development approach. Nobody likes errors or apps that crash. We use Sentry heavily during Node.js and React development. Our developers are able to see error reports, crashes, user's browsers, and more, all in one place. Sentry also seamlessly integrates with Asana, Slack, and GitHub.

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Jakub Olan
Node.js Software Engineer · | 17 upvotes · 429.4K views

Last time we shared there information about our decision about using YouTrack over Jira actually we found much better solution that our team have loved. Linear is a minimalistic issue tracker that integrates well with Sentry, GitHub, Slack and Figma which are our basic tools. I would like to recommend checking out Linear as a potential alternative to "heavy" issue trackers, maybe at enterprises that may not work but when we're a startup that works awesome!

See more
Skype logo

Skype

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Voice calls, instant messaging, file transfer, and video conferencing
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PROS OF SKYPE
  • 258
    Free, widespread
  • 147
    Desktop and mobile apps
  • 110
    Because i have to :(
  • 57
    Low cost international calling
  • 56
    Good for international calls
  • 10
    Best call quality anywhere, generally
  • 5
    Beautiful emojis
  • 4
    Chat bots
  • 2
    Translator
  • 2
    Skype for business integration with Outlook
  • 1
    United kingdom
  • 1
    Not the Best, but get the job done
CONS OF SKYPE
  • 5
    Really high CPU utilization during video/screenshare
  • 3
    Not always reliable
  • 3
    Outdated UI
  • 3
    Birthday notifications are annoying
  • 3
    The worst indicator noises of any app ever
  • 2
    Finding/adding people isn't easy

related Skype posts

Dmitry Mukhin

Uploadcare is mostly remote team and we're using video conferencing all the time both for internal team meetings and for external sales, support, interview, etc. calls. I think we've tried every solution there is on the market before we've decided to stop with Zoom.

Tools just plainly don't work (Skype), are painful to install for external participants (Webex and other "enterprise" solutions) can't properly handle 10+ participants calls (Google Hangouts Chat).

Zoom just works. It has all required features and even handles bad connections very graciously. One of the best tool decisions we've ever made :)

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Mark Nelissen

I use Slack because it offers the best experience, even on the free tier (which we're still using). As a comparison, I have had in depth experience with HipChat, Stride, Skype, Google Chat (the new service), Google Hangouts (the old service). For self hosted, Mattermost is open source and claims to support most Slack integrations, but I have not extensively investigated this claim.

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Zoom logo

Zoom

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Video Conferencing, Web Conferencing, Webinars, Screen Sharing
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PROS OF ZOOM
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    Web conferencing made easy
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    Remote control option
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    Draw on screen
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    Very reliable
  • 11
    In-meeting chat is pretty good
  • 9
    Free
  • 9
    Pair programming sessions with shared controls
  • 8
    Easy to share meeting links/invites
  • 7
    Good Sound Quality
  • 6
    Cloud recordings for meetings
  • 5
    Great mobile app
  • 4
    Virtual backgrounds
  • 4
    Recording Feature
  • 4
    Other people use it
  • 4
    User Friendly actions
  • 2
    Reactions (emoticons)
  • 2
    Auto reconnecting
  • 2
    Chrome extension is great to easily create meetings
  • 2
    While sharing screen, you can still see your video
  • 2
    Mute all participants at once
  • 2
    When ending the videocall, everybody gets kicked
  • 2
    Different options for blocking chat
  • 1
    Easily share video with audio
  • 1
    /zoom on Slack
  • 1
    Registration form
  • 1
    Meant for business and education
  • 0
    Zoom
CONS OF ZOOM
  • 20
    Limited time if you are a basic member
  • 14
    Limited Storage
  • 11
    Hate how sharing your screen defaults to Full Screen
  • 10
    Quality isn't great (Free)
  • 9
    No cursor highlight on screenshare.
  • 8
    Potential security flaws
  • 7
    Onboarding process for new users is not intuitive
  • 5
    Virtual background quality isn't good
  • 5
    Security
  • 4
    Editing can be improved
  • 4
    Doesn't handle switching audio sources well
  • 4
    The native calendar is buggy
  • 4
    Dashboard can be improved
  • 3
    Pornographic material displayed
  • 3
    Any body can get in it
  • 3
    Not many emojis
  • 3
    Past chat history is not saved
  • 3
    Recording Feature
  • 3
    En In reality,the chat in the meet not is excelent,noo
  • 3
    Zoom lags a lot

related Zoom posts

Yonas Beshawred

Using Screenhero via Slack was getting to be pretty horrible. Video and sound quality was often times pretty bad and worst of all the service just wasn't reliable. We all had high hopes when the acquisition went through but ultimately, the product just didn't live up to expectations. We ended up trying Zoom after I had heard about it from some friends at other companies. We noticed the video/sound quality was better, and more importantly it was super reliable. The Slack integration was awesome (just type /zoom and it starts a call)

You can schedule recurring calls which is helpful. There's a G Suite (Google Calendar) integration which lets you add a Zoom call (w/dial in info + link to web/mobile) with the click of a button.

Meeting recordings (video and audio) are really nice, you get recordings stored in the cloud on the higher tier plans. One of our engineers, Jerome, actually built a cool little Slack integration using the Slack API and Zoom API so that every time a recording is processed, a link gets posted to the "event-recordings" channel. The iOS app is great too!

#WebAndVideoConferencing #videochat

See more

Server side

We decided to use Python for our backend because it is one of the industry standard languages for data analysis and machine learning. It also has a lot of support due to its large user base.

  • Web Server: We chose Flask because we want to keep our machine learning / data analysis and the web server in the same language. Flask is easy to use and we all have experience with it. Postman will be used for creating and testing APIs due to its convenience.

  • Machine Learning: We decided to go with PyTorch for machine learning since it is one of the most popular libraries. It is also known to have an easier learning curve than other popular libraries such as Tensorflow. This is important because our team lacks ML experience and learning the tool as fast as possible would increase productivity.

  • Data Analysis: Some common Python libraries will be used to analyze our data. These include NumPy, Pandas , and matplotlib. These tools combined will help us learn the properties and characteristics of our data. Jupyter notebook will be used to help organize the data analysis process, and improve the code readability.

Client side

  • UI: We decided to use React for the UI because it helps organize the data and variables of the application into components, making it very convenient to maintain our dashboard. Since React is one of the most popular front end frameworks right now, there will be a lot of support for it as well as a lot of potential new hires that are familiar with the framework. CSS 3 and HTML5 will be used for the basic styling and structure of the web app, as they are the most widely used front end languages.

  • State Management: We decided to use Redux to manage the state of the application since it works naturally to React. Our team also already has experience working with Redux which gave it a slight edge over the other state management libraries.

  • Data Visualization: We decided to use the React-based library Victory to visualize the data. They have very user friendly documentation on their official website which we find easy to learn from.

Cache

  • Caching: We decided between Redis and memcached because they are two of the most popular open-source cache engines. We ultimately decided to use Redis to improve our web app performance mainly due to the extra functionalities it provides such as fine-tuning cache contents and durability.

Database

  • Database: We decided to use a NoSQL database over a relational database because of its flexibility from not having a predefined schema. The user behavior analytics has to be flexible since the data we plan to store may change frequently. We decided on MongoDB because it is lightweight and we can easily host the database with MongoDB Atlas . Everyone on our team also has experience working with MongoDB.

Infrastructure

  • Deployment: We decided to use Heroku over AWS, Azure, Google Cloud because it is free. Although there are advantages to the other cloud services, Heroku makes the most sense to our team because our primary goal is to build an MVP.

Other Tools

  • Communication Slack will be used as the primary source of communication. It provides all the features needed for basic discussions. In terms of more interactive meetings, Zoom will be used for its video calls and screen sharing capabilities.

  • Source Control The project will be stored on GitHub and all code changes will be done though pull requests. This will help us keep the codebase clean and make it easy to revert changes when we need to.

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Gitter logo

Gitter

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256
277
Messaging for people who make software. Integrated with your team, projects and your code.
234
256
+ 1
277
PROS OF GITTER
  • 63
    Github integration
  • 55
    Free
  • 45
    Markdown support
  • 19
    Markdown
  • 17
    Graceful integration
  • 16
    Project-oriented
  • 15
    MARKDOOOOWN
  • 12
    IRC bridge
  • 9
    Integrates with everything
  • 8
    LaTeX
  • 4
    Apps available for most platforms
  • 2
    Cross-repository issue reference
  • 2
    Github login
  • 1
    IRC support
  • 1
    My new fav'rite thing is on it
  • 1
    Very fast work
  • 1
    Very open
  • 1
    Now open source
  • 1
    Open source
  • 1
    Free unlimited archives
  • 1
    Open access (no invitation needed)
  • 1
    Single account for all communities
  • 1
    Free, open & free hosting
CONS OF GITTER
  • 2
    Sends data to US Gov

related Gitter posts

Josh Dzielak
Co-Founder & CTO at Orbit · | 19 upvotes · 432.1K views

Shortly after I joined Algolia as a developer advocate, I knew I wanted to establish a place for the community to congregate and share their projects, questions and advice. There are a ton of platforms out there that can be used to host communities, and they tend to fall into two categories - real-time sync (like chat) and async (like forums). Because the community was already large, I felt that a chat platform like Discord or Gitter might be overwhelming and opted for a forum-like solution instead (which would also create content that's searchable from Google).

I looked at paid, closed-source options like AnswerHub and ForumBee and old-school solutions like phpBB and vBulletin, but none seemed to offer the power, flexibility and developer-friendliness of Discourse. Discourse is open source, written in Rails with Ember.js on the front-end. That made me confident I could modify it to meet our exact needs. Discourse's own forum is very active which made me confident I could get help if I needed it.

It took about a month to get Discourse up-and-running and make authentication tied to algolia.com via the SSO plugin. Adding additional plugins for moderation or look-and-feel customization was fairly straightforward, and I even created a plugin to make the forum content searchable with Algolia. To stay on top of answering questions and moderation, we used the Discourse API to publish new messages into our Slack. All-in-all I would say we were happy with Discourse - the only caveat would be that it's very helpful to have technical knowledge as well as Rails knowledge in order to get the most out of it.

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From a StackShare Community member: “We’re about to start a chat group for our open source project (over 5K stars on GitHub) so we can let our community collaborate more closely. The obvious choice would be Slack (k8s and a ton of major projects use it), but we’ve seen Gitter (webpack uses it) for a lot of open source projects, Discord (Vue.js moved to them), and as of late I’m seeing Spectrum more and more often. Does anyone have experience with these or other alternatives? Is it even worth assessing all these options, or should we just go with Slack? Some things that are important to us: free, all the regular integrations (GitHub, Heroku, etc), mobile & desktop apps, and open source is of course a plus."

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Google Hangouts logo

Google Hangouts

77
57
0
A communication platform
77
57
+ 1
0
PROS OF GOOGLE HANGOUTS
    Be the first to leave a pro
    CONS OF GOOGLE HANGOUTS
      Be the first to leave a con

      related Google Hangouts posts

      I own an Escape Room. Since right now everyone is practicing social distancing, I would like to run my Escape Room games virtually. I would like to allow approx 4 users to log in to play. They can chitchat a few minutes before their game to get to know each other. Then once the game begins, I will introduce myself and give them the plot to their escape game. I will have a wide-angle camera mounted to the wall to show the room, and as the game master, carry a tablet or webcam around as players talk to me and direct me to show them certain items in the room, move in for closeups in certain areas, try lock combinations, etc. I will be their hands while they solve the puzzles. I am not sure if Google Hangouts Google Meet or Zoom is better for this. I did try it yesterday using google hangout meet and it was good, but I think there may have been a wifi issue where it was choppy. Just trying to figure out the best option. Thank you! Catherine

      See more

      I'm looking for advice on what App to use in conversation and phone calls to someone who lives out of the country. Should I use Google Hangouts, Google Hangouts Chat, or does anyone have any other suggestions? I would greatly appreciate any help you could possibly provide. Thank you

      See more
      WhatsApp logo

      WhatsApp

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      410
      17
      A freeware, cross-platform messaging and Voice over IP service
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      410
      + 1
      17
      PROS OF WHATSAPP
      • 14
        Free
      • 3
        Easy to carry on with contact
      CONS OF WHATSAPP
      • 1
        No privacy
      • 1
        Centralized
      • 1
        Maximum to 8 person video call

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      Telegram  logo

      Telegram

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      626
      51
      A cloud-based instant messaging and voice over IP service
      739
      626
      + 1
      51
      PROS OF TELEGRAM
      • 16
        Lightweight
      • 8
        Free
      • 8
        Unlimited history
      • 8
        Great bot API
      • 4
        Can hide phone number
      • 3
        Media editor
      • 2
        Delete without a trace
      • 2
        Great bot
      CONS OF TELEGRAM
      • 3
        Requires phone number
      • 3
        Notification customisation is limited
      • 2
        No video call

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      Jira logo

      Jira

      61.4K
      48.5K
      1.2K
      The #1 software development tool used by agile teams to plan, track, and release great software.
      61.4K
      48.5K
      + 1
      1.2K
      PROS OF JIRA
      • 310
        Powerful
      • 254
        Flexible
      • 149
        Easy separation of projects
      • 113
        Run in the cloud
      • 105
        Code integration
      • 58
        Easy to use
      • 53
        Run on your own
      • 39
        Great customization
      • 39
        Easy Workflow Configuration
      • 27
        REST API
      • 12
        Great Agile Management tool
      • 7
        Integrates with virtually everything
      • 6
        Confluence
      • 6
        Complicated
      • 3
        Sentry Issues Integration
      • 2
        It's awesome
      CONS OF JIRA
      • 8
        Rather expensive
      • 5
        Large memory requirement
      • 2
        Slow
      • 1
        Cloud or Datacenter only

      related Jira posts

      Johnny Bell

      So I am a huge fan of JIRA like #massive I used it for many many years, and really loved it, used it personally and at work. I would suggest every new workplace that I worked at to switch to JIRA instead of what I was using.

      When I started at #StackShare we were using a Trello #Kanban board and I was so shocked at how easy the workflow was to follow, create new tasks and get tasks QA'd and deployed. What was so great about this was it didn't come with all the complexity of JIRA. Like setting up a project, user rules etc. You are able to hit the ground running with Trello and get tasks started right away without being overwhelmed with the complexity of options in JIRA

      With a few TrelloPowerUps we were easily able to add GitHub integration and storyPoints to our cards and thats all we needed to get a really nice agile workflow going.

      I'm not saying that JIRA is not useful, I can see larger companies being able to use the JIRA features and have the time to go through all the complex setup to get a really good workflow going. But for smaller #Startups that want to hit the ground running Trello for me is the way to go.

      In saying that what I would love Trello to implement is to allow me to create custom fields. Right now we just have a Description field. So I am adding User Stories & How To Test in the Markdown of the Description if I could have these as custom fields then my #Agile workflow would be complete.

      #StackDecisionsLaunch

      See more
      Jakub Olan
      Node.js Software Engineer · | 17 upvotes · 429.4K views

      Last time we shared there information about our decision about using YouTrack over Jira actually we found much better solution that our team have loved. Linear is a minimalistic issue tracker that integrates well with Sentry, GitHub, Slack and Figma which are our basic tools. I would like to recommend checking out Linear as a potential alternative to "heavy" issue trackers, maybe at enterprises that may not work but when we're a startup that works awesome!

      See more