Overview
What is FogBugz?
A software project management system used to plan, track and release great software with this lightweight and customizable system that integrates into any project management workflow. FogBugz is designed for software development teams and includes all the project management tools…
A great fit for software development teams
Fogbugz - Great for all users and a large amount of projects
We used Fogbugz to manage books that our company was converting from paper to digital versions. For us, Fogbugz was a way to track not …
FogBugz
Fogbugz is simple, flexible and easy to maintain. Great for SMB's, not great for large organizations.
Pricing
3 Years
$62
2 years
$64
1 Year
$68
Entry-level set up fee?
- No setup fee
Offerings
- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Product Details
- About
- Integrations
- Competitors
- Tech Details
What is FogBugz?
Users can:
- Track projects from start to finish - With tasks and subtasks for each case with required details and track them to ensure timely closure and accountability.
- Log and track bugs and issues - Maintains the entire project backlog. Teams receive notifications as the bugs move through the workflow.
- Delivery estimates - FogBugz is powered by Evidence-Based Scheduling (EBS). EBS is a statistical algorithm that produces ship date probability distributions based on historical timesheet data.
- Customized case flows - The workflows in FogBugz are used to plan at the project, sprint, epic, user story and task levels.
- Search- Search for docs, wikis, articles, code, issues, bugs and discussions in one unified view to quickly find cases based on an array of case fields.
- Integrations - FogBugz integrates with Slack, Twitter, GitHub, Google Drive and Trello.
FogBugz Video
FogBugz Integrations
FogBugz Competitors
FogBugz Technical Details
Deployment Types | Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based |
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Operating Systems | Unspecified |
Mobile Application | No |
Comparisons
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Reviews and Ratings
(6)Community Insights
- Business Problems Solved
- Pros
- Cons
- Recommendations
Fogbugz is a versatile software that offers several key use cases based on user experiences. Many users have reported finding it easy to install and maintain the self-hosted version of Fogbugz on their server. It serves as a great ticketing system, facilitating communication between Customer Service and Development teams. Fogbugz allows teams to easily track, manage, and organize their work, making collaboration between teams seamless. Users appreciate the simplicity of setting up and using Fogbugz, as well as its reliability. Additionally, the software is effective for documenting projects, bug tracking, issue tracking, and timesheet tracking. With Fogbugz, tracking work items becomes easy, ensuring that nothing is missed and enhancing collaboration between teams. Users can also easily lookup old issues and reference how they were solved. The software is valuable for tracking product updates, bug fixes, and requests across the organization, as well as assisting with prioritization and resource allocation. It efficiently tracks the records of defects logged release-wise, providing easy access and cost-effectiveness. Furthermore, it enables app support teams to better work together and address people's feedback. For web development processes, Fogbugz helps in organizing projects effectively by communicating feature changes and bugs to developers. It saves time and simplifies bug and project tracking for mid-sized teams. The ability to log and track bugs through a development cycle is a main benefit of this tool, along with the ability to add sub-cases to each issue. For small teams, Fogbugz is more effective than email for bug tracking, keeping current issues organized better than email. Teams find it beneficial when everyone uses it in the team since it can be used both as a task management tool and in combination with Fogbugz. Moreover, businesses that require proper source control and push/pull management consider FogBugz essential in their operations. The internal central code repository called Kiln is used to host various business application code bases and relies on webhooks to post commits to software development PM tools. Kiln's code review system is utilized for handling reviews, both for smaller and larger changes. It effectively manages internal and client code, ensuring proper source control. FogBugz is also used as a lightweight task management system for moving and tracking jobs between departments. It is selected for its simplicity, flexibility, and ease of management, accommodating varying experience levels of task management literacy. Additionally, Fogbugz serves as a comprehensive issue tracking tool for the Software Development Team while creating cases that require Dev's attention. For the Software Development Team, Fogbugz is primarily used for issue tracking, source control, and wiki. The Support Team creates cases in Fogbugz for the Development team to look into. The entire company utilizes the internal wiki feature of Fogbugz for internal documentation, while a public wiki is used to post information for customers. Day-to-day users appreciate the straightforward case entry, organization, and search functionalities of FogBugz. It offers integrated source control, code reviews, issue tracking, and bug reports. Not only does Fogbugz track bugs and software improvements, but it also serves as a tool for tracking projects and assignments within the team. Additionally, it functions as a lightweight task management system for moving and tracking jobs between departments. This simplicity, flexibility, and ease of management make it suitable for accommodating varying levels of task management literacy within an organization. Overall, users have had positive experiences with the product's features and find it valuable in improving productivity and collaboration across teams.
Intuitive and Easy to Use: Users have consistently praised the software for its intuitive and user-friendly interface. Many users have mentioned that the software is easy to learn and navigate, making it suitable for both experienced software teams and small businesses with minimal functions.
Effective Communication and Collaboration: The software has been commended for its ability to facilitate communication and collaboration within organizations. Reviewers have highlighted how the software makes the process of requesting help across different departments organized and seamless, resulting in improved teamwork and efficiency.
Flexible Customization Options: Users appreciate the flexibility of the software, particularly in terms of customization options. The incredible search system, platform flexibility, and built-in functionality for item, date, and data tracing are highly valued by reviewers. Additionally, users find it beneficial that they can add suitable fields, integrations, and extensions to enhance usability and performance.
Integration with CRM: Several users have expressed dissatisfaction with the lack of integration between the software and their CRM systems, stating that they would prefer an all-in-one solution for tracking customers throughout their lifecycle.
Customer Support Issues: A number of users have had negative experiences with customer support, including being invoiced for a free account they hadn't used in 10 years and struggling to cancel it. They have also found it difficult to file support tickets.
Lack of Graphical Reports: Some users have mentioned that reports cannot be generated in the form of graphs or statistics, limiting their ability to visualize data effectively.
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Users recommend giving the system a try to explore its overall functions and highlight its simplicity in setting up and using. They mention that it helps organize processes and workflows, saving valuable time. However, they caution that some features may be overwhelming. Users appreciate the system's professionalism and potential for long-term partnership.
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For companies in need of a focused ticket tracking solution, users recommend FogBugz. It allows product and engineering teams to concentrate on their respective tasks while providing visibility to other teams. Users also suggest exploring alternatives like Trello and Kiln.
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Users recommend Kiln for team collaboration and source control. They appreciate its ease of use, web interface, and branch visualization functionality. They mention that very small companies can try the free account. Additionally, they commend the fantastic uptime of the service.
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Lastly, users prefer the hosted version of Kiln over the on-premise version. They note that the hosted version is updated more frequently with newer features compared to the on-premise option.
Reviews
(1-4 of 4)A great fit for software development teams
- Evidence Based Estimates for scheduling (This alleviates issues that arise due to people who estimate time poorly)
- Made from the developer perspective, versus others that are by C-Suite who are so far removed from the actual development process they just contribute to the disconnect or inaccuracy of the system
- Direction/Ambition/Transparency of DevFactory after their purchase of FogBugz/Kiln is refreshing
- Workflow capability is very limited to the original implementation, could use a refresh and extension of the capabilities
- UI/UX needs improvement. This was in the works prior to purchase by DevFactory, and has taken a back seat to backend improvements that rightfully needed to be fixed first.
- Pricing model doesn't fit our usage very well, so we're paying for full-featured users for everyone even though the majority of Users only need to submit Cases and modify the Wikis, and our small percentage of Users are in Dev and need all features.
- Saves time by quickly allowing Developers to make the necessary notes without getting bogged down in bloated UIs
- Has allowed us to look back easily and see the exact code changes made for the exact Case to aid in decisions for current changes, increasing the certainty of the decided path, without regression
There is also an outstanding issue since 2004 that JIRA refuses to implement despite wide user support, the merging of tickets. You can see the open ticket with the JIRA team here: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRACLOUD-3592
Fogbugz - Great for all users and a large amount of projects
We used Fogbugz to manage books that our company was converting from paper to digital versions. For us, Fogbugz was a way to track not just bugs or software improvements, but projects and assignments that the team at large was working on. I oversaw a queue of book projects for five other workers, as well as running my own queue of fogbugz tasks and subtasks.
The case and subcase flow in Fogbugz works well if you want to visualize multi-step processes and how the processes are materializing. It was also good for users to self-refer to their tasks each day.
- Tasks, Subtasks, and notes. All three of these areas were critical for our team. Tasks in Fogbugz were a bit easier to see than in more bug based software like Trello or JIRA
- The entire screen is used to view a task or case. Clicking on a task or case will open up and take up the entire screen, aside from the sidebar nav columns. I like to see details and I think Fogbugz does this very well, using up as much digital real estate as possible.
- Flowcharting in Fogbugz with Creately is nice - instead of getting an exterior flowchart software like Lucidchart, Creately works right in Fogbugz.
- Personal dashboards could be a bit more customizable - i.e. if I log in, I'd like to see some of the cases more at the bottom of the screen and notes at the top. This is a minor minor quibble.
- I wish projects and cases within projects could be viewed in another format aside from list view. Perhaps a panel view or a card view would be good. That said, the list view is compact and agile.
FogBugz is also good for tracking unanticipated tasks like bugs, making notes, flowcharts, and categorizing if the problem is a bug, feature request, etc. For us, it was just the best at nailing down those anticipated tasks.
- Overall positive. No bugs or issues using Fogbugz, and it was easy enough for managers to learn and for workers to learn. Very low training time and therefore very low cost.
- It was hard to fudge details or miss work with Fogbugz. It does not let any project slip through the cracks. This is absolutely valuable for our managers and ultimately for clients as well.
- Fogbugz makes sense to laypeople and to developers. It could be considered a compressed solution that could be used by QA teams and Development teams. There would be no need to get Asana for one team and Fogbugz for another - you can use Fogbugz for both.
As a manager, Fogbugz lets me know exactly what my team is doing and where they are in each process given the status columns of a project view. At first, this may seem boring, like a spreadsheet, but it provides a good overview with a minimum amount of clicking around.
FogBugz
- Good for documenting
- Good for attaching things
- Missing keyboard shortcuts
- Missing a good way to link external documenations
Fogbugz is simple, flexible and easy to maintain. Great for SMB's, not great for large organizations.
We selected the tool for it's simplicity, flexibility and ease of management because it would be used company wide accommodating varying experience levels of task management literacy.
- Simplicity: Compared to other tools like Jira and even Bugzilla, Fogbugz minimizes the number of fields. The general workflow and status' of a given task works well for us. (Assigned, Resolved, and Closed).
- Flexibility: The list views are highly customizable. This allows for many ways to display information and create custom lists for teams and departments. It has prebuilt queries, and basic boolean syntax that you can stitch together to build a list.
- Easy to maintain: There are just two types of access rights. Regular and Admin. With some training, administration of the tool is done by project managers and a general user admin. We have a self hosted version, so there is an IT component in our maintenance, but it does not requires much attention.
- The simplicity of a single admin type user is not great because anyone who can create a job or client in the system, can also add and delete users. Content and User administrative rights should be separated.
- There are ways to change the terminology/lexicon within the tool, but we are not able to get it to work even after reaching out to tech support. So we are forced to use the system terminology that doesn't match up to our company making training a bit difficult.
- There is a subscribe function that you can opt into, there should be a way to add subscribers as you create a new task.
Do your jobs jump around alot and often sit idle?
Are there process bottlenecks where better access to job/task transparency will help move a job along better?
Are there common issues related to coverage and you find yourself digging through emails to figure out job status?
- Less downtime of jobs. It is each person's responsibility to check their list to see if they have any pending work.
- When people are out sick or busy, a supervisor can easily shift work from one person to another who many have time to cover work.
- Management has a quick view into seeing what is happening with a job and can use it as a tool to request addiional resources as needed.
- Bugzilla,Workfront,jira