You’re probably aware that there are a lot of issue tracking tools available for handling bug tracking, help desk ticketing and user feedback. But which one is right for you? Well, we’ve gotten together to talk about the best free issue tracking tools available and how they can help you optimise and grow your business.
There are many things that need to be tracked in a project that you may not come up with upon first thought. There are also various types of software that do an excellent job for this task. So how do you choose the best issue tracking tools free for your needs?
SalesForce
If you use SalesForce, you should consider using their issue tracking system. However, what it will cost you depends on what you’re using. I reached out to Salesforce via their live chat and was thoroughly unimpressed with the help I got. I was told that how much the issue tracking component costs “depends.” When I asked what it depends on, I got this:
“Sorry Cathy, if you’re not evaluating for your company, I cannot help you. This is not a help or support line. Thanks for coming in, please check out the Salesforce Success Community for general research questions.”
Stand-Out Features
- Integrates easily with the overall Salesforce customer service cloud
- Plenty of customer support—including a 24/7 live rep—and customer training
- Checks off all of the boxes, from issue auditing and recurring issues management to simple task management
Cons
- After the free trial expires, the price for customer service cloud accelerates quickly to $135/year/user. Though my calculations tell me this adds up to a paltry amount per month, it would still be nice to have the option to bill monthly.
Overview
There’s an old saying in football—you have to “follow through” every tackle, otherwise it might be missed. As much as you’d like to tackle your customers sometimes, it helps to have a lighter touch. But SalesForce realizes that you also have to follow through each sale and provide issue tracking and support if you’re going to establish a worthy brand. If only there was a way to get rid of that annual billing, this might merit consideration for the top spot.
FreshService
FreshService is aimed at the “IT support” crowd, which is another way of saying that it takes on the enormous challenge of making IT support somehow fun and interesting. It’s a Herculean task, to be sure. And for it, FreshService has an average rating of four out of five stars among our reviewers.
Stand-Out Features
- Our reviewers found FreshService to be highly customizable, which helps smaller businesses run issue tracking with greater ease
- Fast and easy to use, FreshService offers very little in the way of downtime, which keeps your issue tracking flexible
- 24/7 live support with a rep includes access to thorough customer support
Cons
- Reporting options are a little on the simple side and don’t offer full functionality
- The licensing model is confusing and could stand for simplification
Overview
IT Support ain’t easy, but it’s necessary. FreshService is one of the best options to choose when IT support is a must-have in your business but you don’t want to inflexible issue tracking software.
TeamSupport
For raw value, we don’t know if there’s a better choice; hundreds of reviews with a 4.5/5 rating at Capterra don’t lie.
Stand-Out Features
- Comprehensive: assignment management, scheduling, task management, issue auditing—this vendor has it all
- Highly organized and “lightweight,” according to some users who like a low-maintenance dashboard as well as plenty of options
- Auto-responses are easy to implement and employ
Cons
- System downtime has been an issue for some users
- The email client is inconsistent, suffers from the downtime issues mentioned above, which slows down any “TeamSupport” you had intended
Overview
Though the customer service doesn’t feature a live 24/7 rep, the team at TeamSupport has handled their downtime issues well. That means that the rest of the positives here—including comprehensive and easy-to-use issue tracking features—still stand out and make TeamSupport as viable an option as anything on this list. It’s a little pricier than some when you upgrade out of the free trial, but in this case it seems that you get what you pay for.
Atlassian Jira Software
Price: Free; paid plans starting at $7/ user average/ month
Atlassian Jira Software is a bug and issue tracking tool with several use cases for customer service teams. It’s meant for internal bug tracking, so when team members find bugs and issues while testing products, they can report them to product development.
Any employee can create and submit an issue, and issues can also be imported from a variety of sources, such as Excel or CSV, or from other issue tracking software like Bugzilla or Redmine.
Tool Highlight: Best for bug tracking on your internal teams throughout your entire development process.
Zoho BugTracker
Price: Free; paid plans starting at $3/ user/ month
Zoho’s BugTracker and Issue Management tool helps your team log and track reports based on priority. Reps can set notifications for when new issues are submitted and when updates are made.
The software is also customizable in two ways: you can personalize the interface to meet your team’s needs as well as create custom workflows in the support case to meet customer needs.
Tool Highlight: Best for recording bugs and then tracking them based on your desired criteria.
Planio
Based on Redmine, Planio is great for people who love lots of customization—but not as stellar if you’re a user who simply wants to set up and go.
Stand-Out Features
- High marks for effective and thorough customer support
- Customization is perfect for users who like to dig in and create their own experience
- Affordable pricing plans available beyond the free trial
Cons
- Plain text email notifications will require an additional layer of email encryption if you want full security. Planio’s solution, OpenPGP, is available but it will require additional work
Overview
Like JIRA, Planio checks off just about all of the boxes on my invisible mental checklist, which sounds a lot less credible than it is—but it includes everything from issue auditing to a broad knowledge base, and Planio has it all. And no, I’m not going to reveal the high-quality content of my secret mental checklist. Forget I said anything. Move along.
Freshdesk
Freshdesk is customer support software to streamline customer conversations in one place; it is also useful to automate repetitive work and to collaborate with other teams to resolve the issue faster. Through using Freshdesk, the team can work together and resolve issues and customer problems faster. The user can discuss specific parts of tickets with experts from across organization with Freshconnect feature and share ownership of tickets with other teams through shared ownership feature of Freshwork.
Freshdesk Issue Tracking Features : Assignment Management, Dashboard, Escalation Management, Issue Auditing, Knowledge Base, Task Management
Conclusion:
Issue tracking is a perfect way to manage any to-do list, from those as simple as a shopping list for your trip to the grocery store, or as complex as a web project or total home renovation. In fact, issue tracking can also be used in non-IT fields as well. Considering that issue tracking has such a flexible purpose, it should be of no surprise that there are many different kinds of issue tracking tools available online.