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Linear

Score9.3 out of 10

75 Reviews and Ratings

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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

  • Centralized information and workflow management
  • Robust and seamless integration capabilities
  • Efficient task and ticket tracking

Cons

  • Inefficient search functionality for locating specific information
  • Lack of robust and granular integrations with external tools
  • Limited contextual sharing and control over external system interactions

Linear is the modern Jira

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

Simple Fast and Reliable for QA and Bug Tracking

Incentivized
Verified User
Employee in Quality Assurance (11-50 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Linear to manage sprint tasks, bug tracking, and feature testing. As a QA Engineer I use daily to report bugs, verify fixes and track issues progress. it keeps whole product team and development team aligned and improves visibility of work which help us to deliver the sprint work on time.

Pros

  • Creating issue and tracking it is very simple.
  • Search and filters are very quick
  • Developers can link gitlab for issues so we can check the MR status over there.
  • Easy to copy multiple issues ticket id or URL.

Cons

  • Sometimes the other notifications regarding an issue are irrelevant to me but still i receive it and if I unsubscribe the issue then I wont get any notification
  • Managing too many tickets is difficult from different teams
  • Need some sort of dashboard to track QA Progress, tracking bug trends

Return on Investment

  • improved collaboration between QA and Developers by keeping bug report, task discussion all at one place
  • Faster bug verification and release cycle because all work being tracked at single place.
  • Better visibility for sprint progress and outstanding issues.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Atlassian Jira

Other Software Used

Slack, ChatGPT, Firebase

I love Linear.

Incentivized
Verified User
C-Level Executive in Engineering (1-10 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use it to organize our product development into initiatives, projects, and issues. This is critical because there are many features, and we want to assign them to people on the dev team. It also helps us plan out the product roadmap and set target dates.

Pros

  • Organize issues.
  • Be a better version of Github.
  • Do a product roadmap.
  • See what needs to be done from a calendar point of view.

Cons

  • Notifications sometimes are buggy.
  • Being able to find the most important information quicker.
  • more prominent calendar view.

Return on Investment

  • Allows us to collaborate faster.
  • Allows us to work harder.
  • More organized as a team.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Atlassian Jira

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