Atlassian Jira vs. Pivotal Tracker

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Atlassian Jira
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
Atlassian Jira is a project management tool, featuring an interactive timeline for mapping work items, dependencies, and releases, Scrum boards for agile teams, and out-of-the-box reports and dashboards.
$9
per month per user
Pivotal Tracker
Score 7.3 out of 10
N/A
Pivotal Tracker is a project management program primarily for software developers. It is built from the ground up to facilitate the agile development cycle, and is optimized for structuring projects in sprints, or “stories.” The solution is now owned and supported by VMware, and is part of the Pivotal / Tanzu product line up.N/A
Pricing
Atlassian JiraPivotal Tracker
Editions & Modules
Standard
$9
per month per user
Premium
$17
per month per user
Enterprise
Contact Sales
per year
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Atlassian JiraPivotal Tracker
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsHigher volume teams may qualify buyers for a discount.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Atlassian JiraPivotal Tracker
Considered Both Products
Atlassian Jira
Chose Atlassian Jira
Jira [Software] [has] lot of [similar features to Pivotal Tracker].
Many apps are easily integrated with Jira [Software].
Jira [Software] is highly customizable and one can easily attach any other api in it.
Chose Atlassian Jira
Pivotal Tracker is a really great product that takes a different approach to project management and display. But Jira just wins out with the customization and more modern look. If you need something a little less flashy then Pivotal Tracker might be for you. But if you want a …
Chose Atlassian Jira
Redmine was used at the very beginning when we were a really small team.
Pivotal Tracker was next, and although it has a better UX features, it lacks the ability to manage big projects in parallel (at least back in the days).
Jira is far more flexible for adjustments to our …
Chose Atlassian Jira
Jira is the "default" do-everything software project management platform. It literally does everything, but consequently does nothing particularly well. That said, it is robust enough to compete with enterprise heavyweights like Rally, and (usually) easy and light enough to …
Chose Atlassian Jira
Integration with 3rd party plugins works really well and improves the feature set of JIRA itself. We combine JIRA together with BigBrassBand's git module and bug reports from Usersnap, which help greatly, because of the attached screenshot.
Team Foundation Server was very hard …
Pivotal Tracker
Chose Pivotal Tracker
Jira is very user friendly. It's ideal for people new to the software development lifecycle and the tracking of the work. They have simply nailed the intuitiveness. Pivotal Tracker might be the better long-term tool because of the flexibility that comes with it. But as …
Chose Pivotal Tracker
It's not necessarily a matter of better vs. worse when it comes to all of these different tools. They all serve a different purpose to different sized teams. I found Pivotal Tracker and monday.com to be a matter of preference while serving a similar purpose. Good for smaller …
Chose Pivotal Tracker
Pivotal Tracker keeps users 'close' to the software project(s) by allowing users to understand, in plain words, the tasks and expectations of each software release, whereas other tools are either way too close to the source code or require an extensive amount of maintenance. …
Chose Pivotal Tracker
JIRA allows teams to tailor the application workflow to meet their needs, while "opinionated" Pivotal Tracker enforces a consistent workflow approach on all team members. While I, personally, may prefer to have a system configured to my particular habits and desires as a …
Chose Pivotal Tracker
We selected Pivotal Tracker because it is highly opinionated about the process. It worked quite well for what we were expecting from it. Other software we tried were much more flexible, so we could implement our own process there.
Chose Pivotal Tracker
Pivotal Tracker, Asana and Trello all have free versions making them ideal for smaller companies to try out. All of them blast Kannan boards and issue tracking capabilities. While Trello and Asana are great products in themselves, Pivotal Tracker edges them out with its wealth …
Chose Pivotal Tracker
I've used JIRA ages ago, and it was still a young product in its initial iterations. The UI was a clunky and was missing a lot of ease with drag and drop for individual stories, uploads, etc. Management of users was useable, but not as ideal as it could be.
Chose Pivotal Tracker

We selected Pivotal Tracker because of its simple, elegant workflow. This is the ideal; it's where we want to be. So we continue to improve, and as we get better, we get more out of the software.

The other software products we evaluated were too complex, and we found that …

Chose Pivotal Tracker
We were using JIRA and found it lacking in their UI and some of their services, especially communication. PT communicates much easier with simple links to tasks for execution and QA review.

Basecamp is just really a super note taking and asset depot. I would not consider true …
Chose Pivotal Tracker
Compared to other task management tools, Pivotal Tracker has the best blend of functionality and cost. When you need something simpler than JIRA, and not solely focused on code or UI related tasks like BugHerd, and have a more direct approach to completing tasks than Trello - I …
Chose Pivotal Tracker
I used to be a huge JIRA fan, until I realized how much time I was spending fixing complicated custom workflows and statuses. I spend almost no time administering Pivotal Tracking. And it turns out, those complicated, custom workflows weren't helping us anyway.
Chose Pivotal Tracker
Overall I have found that I prefer using Pivotal over all the competitors I've tried. There are certain aspects of the other products which I do like but as a whole Pivotal does a better job. My one request is that I feel it is very much a web app and the other products have …
Chose Pivotal Tracker
Rally is too complicated - there are far too many fields that all have the same meaning. It's a better agile tool in my opinion since it it was designed purely as an agile tool, but since the CA technologies acquisition, the tool has become more complicated and there are far …
Chose Pivotal Tracker
I have also used Trello and JIRA. A small company with only a couple of projects may be best suited with Trello due to its cost and simplicity, whereas JIRA may be better suited for a large company that can afford a dedicated JIRA manager, due to its complex configurations and …
Chose Pivotal Tracker
JIRA is very complex, while tracker is more straightforward to use. Tracker requires less micromanagement and upkeep.
Asana is pretty but not useful for product and engineering build. It is more geared towards design projects.
Chose Pivotal Tracker
For teams less than a dozen or so, JIRA is total overkill. PT is just the right amount of complexity for our company.
Chose Pivotal Tracker
I have also used JIRA. I found Pivotal Tracker easy to use and it provided a quick snapshot of all that was happening in a particular project like what was being worked on, backlog etc. The status appearing right next to the story is a very nice feature. The ability to set …
Chose Pivotal Tracker
Pivotal Tracker is a one page dashboard where Rally, one has to go to different pages to see everything in more detail or makes edits. In Rally I feel everything is stored away and the dashboard is not as easy to find to figure out the acceleration of group. Rally is used at my …
Chose Pivotal Tracker
Pivotal Tracker is the easiest to use of all of these tools. We embraced the simplicity and ease of this tool over all of the others.

Rally Software Development looks old but is very powerful. VersionOne looks incredibly good and is very powerful. Both are extremely expensive. …
Features
Atlassian JiraPivotal Tracker
Project Management
Comparison of Project Management features of Product A and Product B
Atlassian Jira
7.8
34 Ratings
1% above category average
Pivotal Tracker
-
Ratings
Task Management8.833 Ratings00 Ratings
Resource Management7.732 Ratings00 Ratings
Gantt Charts7.224 Ratings00 Ratings
Scheduling7.831 Ratings00 Ratings
Workflow Automation8.132 Ratings00 Ratings
Team Collaboration8.533 Ratings00 Ratings
Support for Agile Methodology8.934 Ratings00 Ratings
Support for Waterfall Methodology7.928 Ratings00 Ratings
Document Management6.928 Ratings00 Ratings
Email integration8.030 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile Access7.125 Ratings00 Ratings
Timesheet Tracking7.625 Ratings00 Ratings
Change request and Case Management7.925 Ratings00 Ratings
Budget and Expense Management6.918 Ratings00 Ratings
Professional Services Automation
Comparison of Professional Services Automation features of Product A and Product B
Atlassian Jira
7.4
19 Ratings
4% below category average
Pivotal Tracker
-
Ratings
Quotes/estimates7.416 Ratings00 Ratings
Invoicing7.712 Ratings00 Ratings
Project & financial reporting7.217 Ratings00 Ratings
Integration with accounting software7.415 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Atlassian JiraPivotal Tracker
Small Businesses
Stackby
Stackby
Score 9.0 out of 10
GitLab
GitLab
Score 8.6 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
InEight
InEight
Score 9.5 out of 10
Planview AgilePlace
Planview AgilePlace
Score 9.1 out of 10
Enterprises
InEight
InEight
Score 9.5 out of 10
Planview AgilePlace
Planview AgilePlace
Score 9.1 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Atlassian JiraPivotal Tracker
Likelihood to Recommend
8.3
(219 ratings)
8.0
(32 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.0
(36 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
7.8
(60 ratings)
6.0
(1 ratings)
Availability
8.0
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
8.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.0
(24 ratings)
8.0
(9 ratings)
In-Person Training
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
8.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Configurability
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
8.0
(9 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Atlassian JiraPivotal Tracker
Likelihood to Recommend
Atlassian
Jira facilitates software development, bug tracking, and sprints. It's ideal for structured workflows, issue management, and customer communication. However, more straightforward tools might be more efficient for highly creative, unstructured tasks or tiny, agile teams with quick visual overviews. Jira's complexity can be overkill for basic task lists.
Read full review
VMware by Broadcom
The UI of the Pivotal tracker is really beautiful and amazing, which looks trivial, but we have it open all the time, so it's nice for us. In Pivotal tracker for me its very Easy to create tasks or stories anytime without facing any problems. Pivotal tracker provides us a ton of features to track the tasks and manage a team and the projects. Pivotal tracker allows for a entire team to be on the same page of the tool in regards to where is the project right now, right status of every task, what is being worked on and by whom.
Read full review
Pros
Atlassian
  • Integration of tools like Bitbucket, Github, etc., has made it easier to track the code changes, pull requests, and branches linked to the respective ticket.
  • The detailed tracking system in JIRA has helped the teams prioritize and understand the project tasks and issues.
  • JIRA's project tracking board helps you keep track of the project, its flow, and expectations in a structured format.
Read full review
VMware by Broadcom
  • It's great for tracking milestones and reporting team velocity per sprint.
  • Maintaining a prioritized backlog that is sharable with different members of your team is relatively simple.
  • There's a free version of the product for up to 3 collaborators working on 2 projects and the starting price for larger packages is relatively low.
Read full review
Cons
Atlassian
  • The interface is not intuitive to learn for new users
  • JQL is similarly challenging for newbies
  • It's possible to accidentally move issues from one sprint to another without realizing your mistake
  • Certain issue attributes aren't available in certain view (e.g. story points from the epic overview)
Read full review
VMware by Broadcom
  • In-story task management is still a weak point. The ability to @mention users in tasks and mark tasks as 'in-progress' would go a long way.
  • Epics do not span projects. This becomes troublesome when scaling Pivotal Tracker's agile methodology to multiple teams.
  • Splitting stories is often confusing for team members as there is no concept of a 'parent' story with child stories that have split off of it. There are only two levels: Epic & Story.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Atlassian
This is because Jira Software generates a huge profit for an affordable price. Having a tool that makes team management transparent and effective is very valuable.
In addition, the renewal of Jira Software and all Atlassian tools is predictable and clear, as the prices are published on the Atlassian website and there is no pyramid of intermediaries.
Read full review
VMware by Broadcom
I love the simplicity, non-configurability, and price/performance of this tool. Hands down my favorite project management tool for agile.
Read full review
Usability
Atlassian
The interface is simple and easy to use if you have some experience with it. Configuration is also logical most of the time. However, less experienced users tend to find themselves lost in some tasks - usually complex project configuration- but sometimes simple things, such as seeing why a user can't move issues in a workflow. Jira configuration requires a good amount of experience - and even experienced users often resort to documentation. It's a tool that's easy to use if you know what you're doing and where to find the proper documentation, but novice users tend to find it challenging.
Read full review
VMware by Broadcom
It works good enough. I didn't have many problems with that. The user interface is a bit confusing though. The team took some time to understand where some configurations were.
Read full review
Reliability and Availability
Atlassian
Did not face any issues and whenever they plan maintanance they update all of us very well in advance also so in that view we are good with the product stability.
Read full review
VMware by Broadcom
No answers on this topic
Performance
Atlassian
Performance is really good though it holds lot of data it loads quickly especially search operation also get the results very quickly as needed hence its good
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VMware by Broadcom
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Atlassian
I have not had a chance to contact JIRA's customer support. It does offer extensive documentation, although it often feels too technical for me. There is also a JIRA training app that lets you take little lessons and quizzes on different areas (e.g., JIRA basics, agile). I did find it a helpful way to teach myself.
Read full review
VMware by Broadcom
We've never had to request support in the 5 years I have been using it. A solid solution! Everything I have had questions about is on the website. New features are in their newsletter with more details on their website. Often I am using the new features within a few minutes of reading the article.
Read full review
In-Person Training
Atlassian
Had received training from our own internal user so it was good and also very easy to understand topics and many tasks in the UI are self explanatory and we can do by our own
Read full review
VMware by Broadcom
No answers on this topic
Online Training
Atlassian
One of their strong points i stheir documentation. Almost all of the basic set up needed within JIRA is available online through atlassian and its easy to find and very precise. The more critical issues need to be addressed as well and hence the rating of 8 instead of a 9.
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VMware by Broadcom
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Atlassian
Take your time implementing Jira. Make sure you understand how you want to handle your projects and workflows. Investing more time in the implementation can pay off in a long run. It basically took us 5 days to define and implement correctly, but that meant smooth sailing later on.
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VMware by Broadcom
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Atlassian
monday.com cannot be integrated with CI/CD tools, whereas Atlassian Jira integrates with CI/CD tools seamlessly. Atlassian Jira has strong Agile and Scrum support. Coming to monday.com, it has basic agile functionality. But Atlassian Jira has a complex UI, and monday.com has an intuitive, drag-and-drop interface. Overall, Atlassian Jira provides features like Agile project management, DevOps integration, and customizable workflows.
Read full review
VMware by Broadcom
We have had employees in the past look at Drupal, and other open source project management tools to assist in our needs. Unfortunately each solution took too much time to implement, design and configure that we could not stop the work we were doing for clients to complete a full set up of a project tracker. Thankfully Pivotal is a predefined solution with no configuration needed. Simply input your projects, design your Stories with Tasks and begin your tracking.
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Contract Terms and Pricing Model
Atlassian
Product is rellay good but pricing part I am not aware
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VMware by Broadcom
No answers on this topic
Scalability
Atlassian
Atlassian Jira is highly stable and good with its performance and its has all the required scalability features as business needs
Read full review
VMware by Broadcom
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Atlassian
  • Atlassian Jira's robust workflow automation has boosted team efficiency, shortening delivery cycles and driving a positive ROI through improved project management.
  • Its advanced reporting and integration capabilities have enabled data-driven decisions, aligning operations with key business objectives.
  • However, the steep learning curve can delay adoption, potentially hindering short-term ROI.
Read full review
VMware by Broadcom
  • Time is money with development and a lot of things can fall through the cracks. Having a good system for making sure you're building the most relevant product for customers is really important so it was well worth it for us.
  • The process we used worked for us and it helped us streamline our development which reduced a lot of things falling through the cracks and headaches. I'm sure there are other products that can do the same job just as effectively but Pivotal Tracker worked well for us.
Read full review
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