Bug Tracking Software

Bug Tracking Software Overview

What is Bug Tracking Software?

Bug Tracking Software is a component of Application Lifecycle Management that records bugs discovered during software development. Alternately known as Defect Tracking, bug tracking software provides a record of bugs that have been discovered and facts known about them. This record of facts includes such useful details like the time the bug was reported, a description of error behavior, and how to reproduce it. Members of the software development team can track bugs, and sometimes app users may as well. System administrators can configure permissions, change bug status, or delete bugs.

In addition, bug-tracking systems may track suggested improvements which are not strictly bugs (e.g. app performance). A backlog of bugs and improvement requests provide useful guidance to product managers planning future releases.

Bug Tracking Software Features & Capabilities:

The advantages of using a bug tracking system are:

Alert system or feed for bug info delivery
Error log management, log summary, search and filter
Custom workflow and fields
Dependency management and work sequencing
Collaboration tools, Kanban board, private messaging
In-page feedback, visual feedback, real-time communication
Task management, assignment, and delegation
Search tool for bug location in the application log
Multi-format bug list / read-out (e.g. .csv, Excel file)
Ticket management, ticket emailing
Duplicate bug report detecting (append report to prior bug)
Time tracking (e.g. predict how long bug will take to fix)
Track effectiveness of testers (find rate per tester)
Track effectiveness of development team in fixing bugs
Triage bugs by app feature, finding problematic or buggiest place
Calculate sprint estimations based on bug density
Build list items for regression testing

Pricing Information

Basic but popular bug tracking software is available free. Free editions may include access to forums or peer assistance for support. Paid editions may include more sophisticated support. Advanced bug tracking tools are available on paid plans, often after a free trial (14 or 30 day). Paid plans support larger teams and higher volume of testing activities and logging. They might include advanced testing and tasking, more storage and archiving, and more security (e.g. identity federation).

77 Ratings

27 Ratings

Loggly is a cloud-based log management service provider. It does not require the use of proprietary software agents to collect log data. The service uses open source technologies, including ElasticSearch, Apache Lucene 4 and Apache Kafka.

53 Ratings

Zoho Project is online project management and planning software that provides project teams with a web-based collaborative environment. Zoho Projects can also include a bug tracking module specifically design to support software development project. It is integrated with other Zoho products inclu...

8 Ratings

SpiraTest allows customers to manage their software testing and quality assurance activities. It provides requirements management, test management and bug-tracking functionality with integrated reporting.

5 Ratings

12 Ratings

BugHerd is a bug tracking and project management platform built for web developers and designers.

11 Ratings

IBM ClearQuest is an application development and production system, for change and defect tracking.

6 Ratings

4 Ratings

Retrace (formerly APM+) is a lightweight agent allowing developers to have an always-on Application Performance Management solution that enables the identification of application performance issues. Retrace gives developers continuous, real-time analysis of application behavior. The vendor says i...

3 Ratings

Assembla, headquartered in Weston, Massachusetts, offers Workspaces, a defect and issue tracking solution.

5 Ratings

9 Ratings

1 Ratings

Instabug provides apps with bug reporting, crash reporting, and in-app user feedback capabilities. The vendor says that with just one line of code, beta testers and users can report bugs and provide mobile and support teams with detailed feedback by just shaking their phones. With each bug report...

1 Ratings

YetiForce is open source CRM software. It is a multichannel system that can be easily tailored to any needs of a company. It is equipped with over 80 user modules and 80 admin tools, however, it can also be integrated with third-party libraries to become an even more powerful solution, according ...

1 Ratings

Bugsnag headquartered in San Francisco offers their application health and error tracking application, for monitoring web application stability, and alerting developers to app issues and error-rate in real-time.