Redmine is a project management web application written using the Ruby on Rails framework. It is cross-platform and cross-database, and free to download and use as an open source project available on the GNU 2.0 license.
$0
per month
SmartDraw
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
SmartDraw is a diagramming and flow chart building tool from SmartDraw Software in San Diego, California.
$131.40
per year (for a single user on an individual plan)
YouTrack
Score 7.5 out of 10
N/A
YouTrack is a project management tool for agile teams. YouTrack allows one to track projects and tasks, use agile boards, plan sprints and releases, keep a knowledge base, work with reports and dashboards, and create workflows that follow business processes.
YouTrack is more cost effective than all the commercial options. It's way more powerful and easier to use than the Open Source ones. It's a good middle ground and it does everything we need. Our software projects are of moderate complexity and YouTrack handles them well. …
Redmine is a perfect solution for businesses that are looking for a FREE and open source solution for project management. It is great for teams that are managing numerous tasks or projects at one time. Redmine is easy to set up and is fairly self-explanatory for anyone who is semi tech-savvy.
I believe SmartDraw is a great tool for small- to mid-sized organizations for simplifying the production and management of org charts. We've also had the PMO experiment with the use of some of their flow charts as well. If an organization has an HCM with the capability of producing (good!) org charts, that is likely the best option... but many that I have used in my 30-year HR career don't. So there is definitely a need for SmartDraw in the market!
We use it for both support and project management alike. It's not as bloated or indeed as expensive as Jira, so unless you have particularly complex requirements, YouTrack fits the bill in pretty much the same use cases as Jira does.
The interface is also a good deal nicer on the eye and less clunky than a lot of the Open Source (eg. Redmine) and enterprise (eg. Remedy).
It does have a customisable workflow for things like ticket age alerts. We don't make a great deal of use of this and had found that it can take a little fiddling if you want something very bespoke but it is clearly quite powerful.
The design and user-interface are a little outdated. It looks like a product that was designed ten years ago and doesn't have a polished look and feel like newer apps have.
It's not particularly designed to support agile-based project management methodologies such as Scrum.
Redmine is a great product to have in an organization. It's extremely flexible, costs much less to maintain than other alternatives, and as a tool, it is relatively fast to get experienced with. The primary advantages of working with Redmine are: flexible platform, API, open-source and highly configurable, stability.
I rated 8 because its simple to use and easy to create network topologies quickly. I liked the drag and drop option which makes designing the network topology and flow chart easier. In general its does what it needs to.
It is very intuitive. Its not hard to pick up learn. I learned it pretty quickly at the first startup I cofounded and love to use it when working on my other ideas.
Redmine is free, easy to use and it's everything you could want in a free project management program. The fact that it has wiki integration and that it can track on such a granular level is amazing. Assigning tasks to other users, such as our development team, is fantastic and ensures we are always up-to-date on where we are what - on what projects.
They are always very helpful, we get computers every two years and I have to call them to move the license from one computer to another and they do it with a smile in their voice!
Jira is a great project management tool for software product life cycle management for an agile environment based on agile methodologies. Jira is an intuitive and modernized user interface design compared with Redmine but Redmine is a lightweight and affordable project management and task tracking solution with its essential features and functionalities.
We have used Corel Draw and Adobe Acrobat. Both of those tools were good when they came out but the abilities of SmartDraw far outweigh both those tools. Corel Draw was also more complex to operate and do tasks, as was Adobe Acrobat in which some basic tasks took additional steps to complete.
YouTrack is more cost effective than all the commercial options. It's way more powerful and easier to use than the Open Source ones. It's a good middle ground and it does everything we need. Our software projects are of moderate complexity and YouTrack handles them well. Likewise, when it comes to external users, we've had good feedback from clients. Many of these clients are non-technical and have expressed their relief at not having to use something like Jira which is often quite impregnable for such users.
Customers receive updates on all progress made for their issues -- this results in an informed customer who is being given transparency on all steps of our process.
Customers have responded well from being able to not have to track down emails and instead come to a central place for requests.
SmartDraw has provided good return for our internal purposes. Using it to understand an organization's structure and inner workings has been valuable. On the client side, creating steps and businesses processes has also been a big plus. It has helped decrease confusing reporting structures and has provided a detailed map for individuals to understand where they fit within their organization.
Unfortunately, SmartDraw has been somewhat inefficient with some of the more complex projects on our plate and has really deterred certain employees from even wanting to use it.
