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Linear

Score9.2 out of 10

83 Reviews and Ratings

What is Linear?

Linear is a purpose-built issue tracking and project management system designed for software engineering teams. It prioritizes high-performance synchronization and keyboard-driven workflows to streamline the product development lifecycle from initial triage to feature release.

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Categories & Use Cases

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Linear Reviews

What users are saying about Linear.
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Pros

  • Seamless integrations with development and communication tools
  • Clear project visibility and organization
  • Streamlined issue creation and tracking

Cons

  • Challenges with search functionality
  • User interface and experience can be difficult for new or non-technical users
  • Occasional bugs and irrelevant alerts in notification management

Linear is the modern Jira

Incentivized
Braxton BraggView profile
Product Manager in Product Management at Revel.xyz (11-50 employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I previously used Linear as a project management tool (Kanban Board) primarily for working with my engineering team at a small startup (approximately 15 people) in the web3 and AI spaces. This was a fully remote and globally distributed team, so coordination between our management in the United States and developers in Israel, Poland, and South Africa was critical to our success. Linear was very much used as a Jira substitute which we appreciated for its lightweight approach compared to the legacy, sometimes bloated tool.

Pros

  • Project management
  • Kanban
  • Tasks and subtasks

Cons

  • No form builders to help serve external stakeholders
  • Not particularly friendly for non-technical teams or partners
  • Permissions are not as robust as Jira's

Return on Investment

  • Developer velocity
  • Reduced manual communication hours (Slack, email, etc.)

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Atlassian Jira, Asana and Trello

The only product management software I'll ever use again

Incentivized
Casey HingtgenView profile
COO in Corporate at Whale (1-10 employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Linear helps us manage product development work and ops tasks so we stay organized across the company. We use it to manage all software development, organizing work into initiatives, projects, and tasks. For operations, we send new tasks into a backlog queue that’s prioritized and addressed by our ops team.

Pros

  • Organization
  • Integrations
  • Design

Cons

  • Viewing projects and issue together
  • Connect to helpscout without helpscout plus plan
  • Easier to open new views so multiple can be open at the same time

Return on Investment

  • Keeps us focused on the highest impact work
  • Allows us to address bugs quickly
  • Easy to share priorities with investors

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Clickable

Other Software Used

Slack

Linear from a support perspective.

Incentivized
Verified User
Manager in Customer Service (51-200 employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Our company uses Linear as a system of record for all engineering functions. Product uses it for product planning, engineering uses it for bug reports and development, and other teams use it as an interface to work with product and engineering. My team is customer support, so my employees create and track bugs in Linear to provide updates to clients.

Pros

  • Linear agent.
  • Quick glance at current status of tickets.
  • Allow customization to view only the relevant tickets and information for each user.

Cons

  • The biggest is search. Despite the Linear agent being great, general search rarely pulls the ticket I'm looking for.
  • Organization - new users find it hard to navigate teams, boards, and inboxes.
  • Forms need a save/autosave feature, so all data isn't lost if you need to switch screens or collect additional information.

Return on Investment

  • Provide more insightful updates to customers on bugs.
  • Create a space to collect and monitor feature requests.
  • Let our whole company see the product roadmap.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Atlassian Jira

Other Software Used

HubSpot CRM, Slack

Linear Easy to Use and Great Functionality.

Incentivized
Verified User
Analyst (501-1000 employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Linear as a centralized task management and project org tool to track work across multiple clients and initiatives. I primarily use it to organize tasks by client, priority, assignee, and project. It provides visibility into ownership, helps coordinate work across team members, and ensures important deliverables are prioritized and completed on time.

Pros

  • Coordination
  • Priority Management.
  • Version Control.
  • Monitor Progress.

Cons

  • I'd like more flexible filtering and dashboard customization.
  • Additional customization for notifications and recurring tasks would help reduce noise.
  • Better reporting and workload visualization.

Return on Investment

  • Improved visibility into work across clients by providing a centralized view of tasks, priorities, and ownership.
  • Increased team efficiency by replacing scattered personal task lists with a shared workflow.
  • Helped prioritize high-impact work by organizing tasks by clients, priority and assignee.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

monday.com and Atlassian Jira

Other Software Used

Databricks Data Intelligence Platform, dbt, GitHub

Great Tool For Engineering Project Management

Incentivized
Verified User
Manager in Product Management (51-200 employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Linear to document our engineering work and to plan out engineering projects. It helps us solve the problems of capacity planning, project planning, and keeping track of progress towards project goals. We plan for multiple cycles ahead to keep work organized and prioritized effectively among competing team priorities.

Pros

  • Prioritization
  • Ease of use
  • Project creation + planning

Cons

  • Visualizing timelines across projects
  • Having more functionality for generic project planning as well -- too engineering focused to be useful, so we have to use other tools for non-engineering planning.

Return on Investment

  • Capacity planning so we use resources effectively
  • Project planning to make sure we hit targets.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Atlassian Jira, Smartsheet and Asana

Other Software Used

Lucid Visual Collaboration Suite

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