Launch HN: Kitemaker (YC W21) – Fast alternative to Jira, built for remote teams
177 comments
Are there plans for self-hosted versions? That's pretty much the "if I will use it or not" question for me. Atlassian's killing of their self-hosted solutions for smaller companies is just really a shame.
We've been waiting on this a bit to see if there's much demand for this and so far the answer has been "not much" but we're open to the idea. So the answer is "not right now".
Good news I don't think it would be super tough for us since we're built using pretty boring tech (i.e. not a lot of dependencies on a particular cloud vendor), don't have a bajillion microservices, etc.
Good news I don't think it would be super tough for us since we're built using pretty boring tech (i.e. not a lot of dependencies on a particular cloud vendor), don't have a bajillion microservices, etc.
Late to the game but another vote from me.
If you haven't seen a lot of demand for a self-hosted version, you might have beem asking the wrong people. Non-cloud advocates and companies with regulatory on-prem requirements tend to not be the loudest in the room for a myriad of reasons.
It's also unpopular and thus a waste of time to argue for self-hosted solutions in a room (or world) full of cloud-first evangelists with dollar-signs in their eyes.
It's just the fashion right now and fashions rarely care about being practical or affordable or safe for the average person, let alone any edge cases.
Why I am saying this: I want to strongly encourage you (and any software vendor really) to build and offer an affordable self-hosted version of your software. The demand is there, believe me, and if word spreads that your solution is a viable on-prem solution, interested parties will come out of the woodwork, you can be sure of that.
On-prem users tend to think more long-term because they (have to) invest more manpower, organizational knowledge and hardware into an on-prem deployment. So they tend to be less fickle and flighty than cloud customers and think long and hard before selecting a solution. However, as a result they tend to be loyal long-term customers and and such can be worth a dozen or more cloud-based customers. Might be worth considering.
Personally, we've planned to move away from Jira before 2022 exactly because of Atlassian's decisions to in effect kill its on-prem versions (by pricing them out of range for everyone but large enterprises customers with money to burn). So I can guarantee that Kitemaker will get a fair consideration (I just saved your page) if it offers an attractively priced on-prem edition before 2022 :-)
Good luck with your product, I do agree that it looks very slick and I will continue to watch with interest.
If you haven't seen a lot of demand for a self-hosted version, you might have beem asking the wrong people. Non-cloud advocates and companies with regulatory on-prem requirements tend to not be the loudest in the room for a myriad of reasons.
It's also unpopular and thus a waste of time to argue for self-hosted solutions in a room (or world) full of cloud-first evangelists with dollar-signs in their eyes.
It's just the fashion right now and fashions rarely care about being practical or affordable or safe for the average person, let alone any edge cases.
Why I am saying this: I want to strongly encourage you (and any software vendor really) to build and offer an affordable self-hosted version of your software. The demand is there, believe me, and if word spreads that your solution is a viable on-prem solution, interested parties will come out of the woodwork, you can be sure of that.
On-prem users tend to think more long-term because they (have to) invest more manpower, organizational knowledge and hardware into an on-prem deployment. So they tend to be less fickle and flighty than cloud customers and think long and hard before selecting a solution. However, as a result they tend to be loyal long-term customers and and such can be worth a dozen or more cloud-based customers. Might be worth considering.
Personally, we've planned to move away from Jira before 2022 exactly because of Atlassian's decisions to in effect kill its on-prem versions (by pricing them out of range for everyone but large enterprises customers with money to burn). So I can guarantee that Kitemaker will get a fair consideration (I just saved your page) if it offers an attractively priced on-prem edition before 2022 :-)
Good luck with your product, I do agree that it looks very slick and I will continue to watch with interest.
Thank you so much for this insightful comment. You (and the many others commenting) have given us a lot to think about in terms of on prem!
Just chiming in with a "me too". For my organization it's self-hosted or bust. We're looking to replace JIRA with something else right now.
Talk to companies in the defense and health/medical sectors.
They often have regulatory, privacy, or security issues that require on-prem solutions. Even if one can get some sort of certification regarding those issues for a cloud solution, it may not be universal and can make things much more difficult to confirm that the cloud solution meets their regulatory, privacy, or security requirements.
They often have regulatory, privacy, or security issues that require on-prem solutions. Even if one can get some sort of certification regarding those issues for a cloud solution, it may not be universal and can make things much more difficult to confirm that the cloud solution meets their regulatory, privacy, or security requirements.
I have not looked at kitemaker yet, but we are in the same situation. On premise Jira will have to be replaced by something else. Cloud is not option due to privacy/security/compliance reasons.
I wonder why. Putting confidential data in the hands of some cloud vendor doesn't seem to be an option for any company I know in my country (which is why Jira will die out here).
My hunch is it's somewhat related to the companies who have been using us thus far (other startups, mainly) and also that people are pretty used to it since many of our competitors don't offer a self hosted option.
That being said, maybe it's an interesting way for us to stand out from the crowd.
That being said, maybe it's an interesting way for us to stand out from the crowd.
Extra vote for this, my company prefers to keep the data inhouse whenever possible
If we were to use it (which would need gitlab/mattermost integration as mentioned before), we'd very much depend on having a self hosted option.
GitLab is our next planned integration and one of our current paying customers is using mattermost so it's something we're strongly considering.
And this HN launch has given us a lot to think about in terms of self hosting!
And this HN launch has given us a lot to think about in terms of self hosting!
Just to balance out the crowd of self hosting fans, I work with compliance requirements and have no issues with managed services. Sign the right agreements and then it's not my problem to manage auditing and compliance requirements. I'm paying you to make it your problem. Self hosting just makes it my problem.
Regulated industry here, we can't use it if we can't self-host it.
How do you self-host? In a VM? Container? Do you prefer to host data on your own sql database? Or would you prefer an embedded sqlite or pgsql server?
Can I ask a probably naive question - is self-hosting the main requirement? Or are there other certifications that are required in addition to ensure, for example, that it doesn't phone home with your data? Or is all of that covered by the fact that you self-host and are in control of outbound traffic?
Not the person you're replying to, but in my case it must be self-hosted and be able to function while completely offline (and therefore no phoning home).
Adding myself to the list. Also worth considering that this would be a requirement for basically any government entity.
It's a damn shame the ticketing / collaboration world is still moving to the cloud. 100% don't want my company's data on someone else's server. I also 100% don't want to have to use Remedy ever again
Then what will I do with my Remedy programming knowledge?! (I don't cry it back) Funny thing is that when we changed from Remedy to another system we continued to use the Remedy name for the new system to avoid confusions by the end users. Actually we called it RemedyHD. :)
Remedy, I'm suddenly triggered :)
It must be 22 years since I had the misfortune of using that horror show.
It must be 22 years since I had the misfortune of using that horror show.
Youtrack has self hosted, free for less than 10 users so pretty easy to evaluate, and a migration path from Jira
Yeah, I've tried Youtrack and as much as I love most of Jetbrains' products, Youtrack just wasn't as good imo.
It's strictly better than Jira, so if you're migrating away from Atlassian why wouldn't you?
That’s your opinion, in our opinion after evaluating it we didn’t feel as such. Not all tools work for every team.
Just set up an account. Looks slick.
I'm on slow internet at the moment, and between when I entered my username and the box asking me to set up my organization, a popup flashed saying "that user name is taken" (disappeared 1/2 sec later).
Might want to check your business logic throughout for effects of slow internet. Because sometimes a remote team member can be more remote than you expected.
I'm on slow internet at the moment, and between when I entered my username and the box asking me to set up my organization, a popup flashed saying "that user name is taken" (disappeared 1/2 sec later).
Might want to check your business logic throughout for effects of slow internet. Because sometimes a remote team member can be more remote than you expected.
Thanks for reporting this! We'll take a look.
And thanks for trying it out. We really appreciate it.
And thanks for trying it out. We really appreciate it.
I am not on a slow connection, but the popup showed up for a fraction of a second for me as well.
I always wonder why Jetbrains YouTrack never gets much mention, it's a really versatile system. Though the real area where it shines is where you have multiple projects to manage and teams of people who are spread across multiple projects.
If it's anything like TeamCity, their CI solution, then it has extremely confusing UI with thousands of options everywhere, and little possibility of controlling all that complexity outside of it's GUI.
You track is a little bit like that, I use teamcity to do builds of firmware, and I find it more confusing than youtrack. YouTrack is highly configurable which is a bit off putting at first, but, really, you should customize it for your situation, but quite often people want the out of box experience to be "perfect". But my experience of those systems is you quickly find you can't match it to your process and becomes limiting. But if your needs are simple, then YouTrack isn't necessarily what you want
Also worth noting not so long ago they introduced a simplified mode. Not sure how good it is for an out of the box experience.
Also worth noting not so long ago they introduced a simplified mode. Not sure how good it is for an out of the box experience.
I tried YouTrack a while back and it was super buggy, e.g. I would make a bunch of changes then navigate to another page and come back and they would all be gone. I just couldn’t trust it to not lose my work.
Because it has no app marketplace and targeted at tech people, not management. And management usually wins when they want everyone in one system. Also running both trackers is not an option b/c of the integration, licensing and support costs with little benefit for the management.
You're selling yourself as a fast alternative to Jira. There's already an established company doing that (https://clubhouse.io/). They also offer a free plan for teams of up to 10 users. You're obviously in business to make money, so good that you're focused on selling your product, but why would someone pay for Kitemaker rather than use Clubhouse for free? Edit: Yes, Kitemaker has a free plan, but it looks quite limited for real usage.
Comparing Kitemaker to Clubhouse write may may get a bit further. I found Kitemaker after I realized the tight relationship between epics and documentation, and was stunned at how difficult it was to find a PM tool focused on fusing them. Clubhouse write seemed to be headed that direction, but was in beta forever and details were sparse. I began researching on my own to see if it would be worth building myself, stumbled upon Kitemaker (impressive) and ultimately used Notion instead (which is so-so for the purpose).
A bit tangential, but I was surprised at how similar Kitemakers offering _sounded_ to Linear (https://linear.app/).
A bit tangential, but I was surprised at how similar Kitemakers offering _sounded_ to Linear (https://linear.app/).
> after I realized the tight relationship between epics and documentation
Could you elaborate a bit on that? I'm curious what you discovered in that regard.
Could you elaborate a bit on that? I'm curious what you discovered in that regard.
Not the parent poster but: Imagine you have an elaborate user flow diagram for a complex workflow. Every state/page a user could find themselves in, the outbound transitions perfectly match all cases of what someone might want to do. Now, these transitions end up quickly becoming stories: "A user in state X should be able to do Y."
And you can bundle those together like "A user should be able to cancel and return to the project screen from any step of the wizard." Alternately, you can separate things by teams like "An API exists to cancel the reservation in progress, releasing the underlying inventory" vs. "A user can cancel the reservation in progress using the API" vs. "Factor out cancel buttons into a UI abstraction" if you want people to be able to pick those up and show progress independently.
But fundamentally all this stems from an underlying plan, that flow chart from which all these stories flow. That plan is the epic. But that plan can't just be a frozen flow chart; it needs to be a living central repository of documentation, ideas, and mockups.
Ideally, you have few enough of these epics that you can maintain things in the tools they're meant to be in: a Clubhouse epic, for instance, could simply link to the top-level Notion table of contents for the planning process for that epic.
But if you're pulled in a billion different directions and have a massive feature surface, having this all in one place, alongside the chat related to that feature, with live references to the ongoing action items, would be incredible. Whether Kitemaker solves it or someone else, there's amazing work still ahead here.
And you can bundle those together like "A user should be able to cancel and return to the project screen from any step of the wizard." Alternately, you can separate things by teams like "An API exists to cancel the reservation in progress, releasing the underlying inventory" vs. "A user can cancel the reservation in progress using the API" vs. "Factor out cancel buttons into a UI abstraction" if you want people to be able to pick those up and show progress independently.
But fundamentally all this stems from an underlying plan, that flow chart from which all these stories flow. That plan is the epic. But that plan can't just be a frozen flow chart; it needs to be a living central repository of documentation, ideas, and mockups.
Ideally, you have few enough of these epics that you can maintain things in the tools they're meant to be in: a Clubhouse epic, for instance, could simply link to the top-level Notion table of contents for the planning process for that epic.
But if you're pulled in a billion different directions and have a massive feature surface, having this all in one place, alongside the chat related to that feature, with live references to the ongoing action items, would be incredible. Whether Kitemaker solves it or someone else, there's amazing work still ahead here.
Basically everything btown said but just to add my own POV -- we do this whole PRD - eng spec - implementation dance, and then comes maintenance, oops we missed a few things, or didn't think about this. All those things end up in separate tools and very rarely make it easy to keep it all together, esp. without a great PM. Having a better way to link documents to actionable (tickets) and back, along with conversations that happen along the way, would be incredibly powerful.
There's no shortcut for organization and I doubt a tool will ever solve it all, but I think the combination of wiki+task manager+interactive chat is utterly begging for a (good) unified tool that makes it easy to document, chat, and work tickets in the same place. I imagine the end result wouldn't be automatic quality documentation, but more like an automated blog of what stuff your company is shipping. People wanting to catch up (for context, new teamates, etc) can kind of peruse recently completed features and pick up a ton of context, or search specific ones and build a good understanding of how it was implemented (and why). It seems it would lend itself naturally to a culture of documented, intentional communication, rather than the splattering of slack messages and random tickets I see so commonly. If anyone has interest in working on this, happy to join up. Its high on my list of "want to" side projects.
There's no shortcut for organization and I doubt a tool will ever solve it all, but I think the combination of wiki+task manager+interactive chat is utterly begging for a (good) unified tool that makes it easy to document, chat, and work tickets in the same place. I imagine the end result wouldn't be automatic quality documentation, but more like an automated blog of what stuff your company is shipping. People wanting to catch up (for context, new teamates, etc) can kind of peruse recently completed features and pick up a ton of context, or search specific ones and build a good understanding of how it was implemented (and why). It seems it would lend itself naturally to a culture of documented, intentional communication, rather than the splattering of slack messages and random tickets I see so commonly. If anyone has interest in working on this, happy to join up. Its high on my list of "want to" side projects.
Great question! Our pricing is definitely something we think about a lot, so feedback like this is super helpful. The free plan usually gives a small team more than a month to try it out since teams tend to larger (and thus fewer) work items than they might in another tool.
We definitely think it’s a huge market and it’s undeniable that products like clubhouse will keep having success. But for us, we’ve set out to build something that changes how teams think about these types of tools. That’s why we’re pushing to get the whole team engaged and really make use of the document-like aspect of Kitemaker (which teams tend to use a bit differently than stories in clubhouse). It’s early days still, but initial feedback has been really positive and quite a few teams are paying us already.
We definitely think it’s a huge market and it’s undeniable that products like clubhouse will keep having success. But for us, we’ve set out to build something that changes how teams think about these types of tools. That’s why we’re pushing to get the whole team engaged and really make use of the document-like aspect of Kitemaker (which teams tend to use a bit differently than stories in clubhouse). It’s early days still, but initial feedback has been really positive and quite a few teams are paying us already.
One suggestion in that case - many apps have comparisons on their landing page. Clubhouse has "vs Trello" and "vs Jira" on theirs. I found your discussion here on HN to be much more informative than your website. You might consider adding more information for the prospective customer wondering why to give you their money and data rather than going with the competition.
That's actually a great suggestion. We'll add that!
There's like 80 alternatives and none of them are as useful as JIRA. Notion, Asana, TFS, LeanKit, Pivotal, agile central, version one, wrike
IMHO they are probably all way more efficient for developers and team leads (Jira has the worst UX I’ve ever worked with) but managers who barely use it will complain it lacks some features.
I tried clubhouse.io after seeing your note, and a few minutes into the demo (which was impressive) the site died (which was less impressive).
And now "Unable to log in. We were unable to parse the server response. This could be a networking issue, so please try again later."
Trying Kitemaker now and hoping the HN hug of death isn't approaching. First impressions: I appreciate the keyboard-shortcut-first UI.
And now "Unable to log in. We were unable to parse the server response. This could be a networking issue, so please try again later."
Trying Kitemaker now and hoping the HN hug of death isn't approaching. First impressions: I appreciate the keyboard-shortcut-first UI.
Clubhouse seems to be having some issues today. That's rare, and I suspect you were unusually unlucky. I've used it for 3-4 years at two different companies, and never experienced any downtime before.
Google "alternatives to Jira" and there are hundreds of articles with titles like "33 Best Jira Alternatives". It's a massively crowded market.
I thought clubhouse was that audio chat thing, but it seems they don't own an actual domain name for their company.
I thought clubhouse was that audio chat thing, but it seems they don't own an actual domain name for their company.
It is crowded but most aren't actually different in the way people need (ex: Asana). I think its still worthwhile to compare to Jira, because for many teams JIRA is either all they know or the de facto standard. Clubhouse is a better JIRA for many teams (simplified, good at multi-team project management) but Kitemaker is (IMHO) targeting more of a simplified JIRA + Confluence, which is (again, IMHO) ripe for exploration.
> I thought clubhouse was that audio chat thing
It is, but project management Clubhouse [0] has been around far longer than audio chat Clubhouse.
[0] https://clubhouse.io/
It is, but project management Clubhouse [0] has been around far longer than audio chat Clubhouse.
[0] https://clubhouse.io/
It is also that and there was quite the rumble on Twitter a while back where the CEO of Clubhouse the issue tracker was getting hatred targeted at the CEO of Clubhouse the audio chat thing.
There are plenty of companies doing that though. ClickUp is the best one I’ve tried to this point, but I’m interested to explore Kitemaker.
ClickUp is astonishingly good. Our whole team (devs, sales, CEO, everyone) absolutely loves it.
I have had two truly delightful, joyous SaaS experiences in the last few years: ClickUp and Retool.
I have had two truly delightful, joyous SaaS experiences in the last few years: ClickUp and Retool.
ClickUp is so good it feels like an endgame for this kind of products
I have been building web software for 20 years and honestly don't understand how they could built something so complex (under the hood), flexible, configurable, and still fast.
For example, you can flip major features on and off without even a hiccup (like Sprints or Subtasks). I just can't begin to imagine the architecture behind that capability.
For example, you can flip major features on and off without even a hiccup (like Sprints or Subtasks). I just can't begin to imagine the architecture behind that capability.
Yeah, honestly it feels like it’s something that shouldn’t exist. They just put together features that make sense and just should be there naturally and you don’t have to come up with some crazy schemes to use it or learn 20 PM patterns or get into the heads of their designers. It seems as simple as a Todo list that you’d use for convenience but has everything you would need for crazy PM work.
It’s the first PM app I am actually recommending to people, and we tried so many. Every single one has been just a “lesser evil”.
I am in no way affiliated with ClickUp. I just hope they don’t overmonetize or something like that.
It’s the first PM app I am actually recommending to people, and we tried so many. Every single one has been just a “lesser evil”.
I am in no way affiliated with ClickUp. I just hope they don’t overmonetize or something like that.
Clubhouse use letsencrypt (not professional for a business to do that, seriously), and why do they have a picture that pretends to be a clickable video. Not a good start.
Congrats on the launch!
Some feedback from a potential customer:
The first thing I read on your homepage is: "A faster and more engaging way to empower your team."
This means absolutely nothing to me - I have no idea what your product does. Something like "Faster issue tracking for remote teams." would be better.
Hope this helps!
Some feedback from a potential customer:
The first thing I read on your homepage is: "A faster and more engaging way to empower your team."
This means absolutely nothing to me - I have no idea what your product does. Something like "Faster issue tracking for remote teams." would be better.
Hope this helps!
I've seen 2 different opinions from people when it comes to the copy. 1st is to tell what value you provide to your customers (Mario analogy https://twitter.com/GorvGoyl/status/1334116488349827072). or 2nd is to tell what exactly your product does (your audience will figure out value on their own).
>1st is to tell what value you provide to your customers (Mario analogy https://twitter.com/GorvGoyl/status/1334116488349827072)
Their example is a product that is so universally well known that everyone will know what it does. So they do in fact explain what the product does in a single word right at the top: "Colgate". They don't need more. You do.
Their example is a product that is so universally well known that everyone will know what it does. So they do in fact explain what the product does in a single word right at the top: "Colgate". They don't need more. You do.
this makes sense for household brands (slack, gmail etc) but what about the other businesses. So, I quickly checked landing pages (on phone) of some successful Saas products like asana, figma, basecamp, trello, notion and they all seem to provide value first (above the fold) and immediately after it they provide a screenshot of what their tool looks like. Good learning.
Interesting, thinking about it the audience is what matters. Someone landing on your webpage is already primed with what the product is. For example monday.com talks about value first. However the Google Search copy mentions what it does, the TV commercial mentions what it does, etc. So if you're on monday.com then you already know what the product does. Even if you heard it by word of mouth, you'd have been told context around what it is.
"A faster and more engaging way to empower your team" does not tell you the equivalent of "shoot awesome fireballs", it contains a lot less info.
A bit of A/B testing could help figure this out?
It might differ based on the target audience. Enterprise messaging can be quite different than SMB, or even for VCs
Thanks very much for the feedback. It's always a bit of a struggle with landing page copy and positioning. But super useful to hear when something doesn't resonate.
If your page resonates, there's probably something wrong with your monitor. If you want engineers to be interested in your product, stick with concise and accurate descriptions, stay away from vague and meaningless business buzzwords and buzzphrases.
That's fair enough. The language that's there originally came from the fact that we see many teams where engineers are left out of the loop when it comes to the early stages of planning initiatives/features. One of the benefits teams have told us they get from Kitemaker is getting the whole team involved earlier, rather than PMs doing too much of the planning themselves and then just splitting tasks out to engineers.
But we'll revisit it!
But we'll revisit it!
Thanks for the response! Take my opinion with a grain of salt, I'm quite curmudgeonly when it comes to marketing speak. I just know that, if I were looking for a product like yours, I would move on with my search as soon as I encountered more vacuous language than descriptive language; then would probably come back to it when I encountered the same problem with every other product page.
Just had a quick look at this, and I think a lot of accessibility wins could be made with relatively little work here. This is another thing most of the competition gets wrong, so if you guys are open to it i'd love to work with you to get that at a better state for, for example, screenreader users and people dependent on dictation software.
This would be amazing! Please reach out to [email protected]
Using it for the product development for I think 2 weeks now.
At the beginning its a little unintuitive because you have to remember all the shortcuts to be faster than for example notion.
But now, two weeks later I am way faster than before.
At the beginning its a little unintuitive because you have to remember all the shortcuts to be faster than for example notion.
But now, two weeks later I am way faster than before.
Thanks so much for using it. We really appreciate it.
There's a little toggle down in the profile menu in the bottom left (or do cmd+k -> hotkey hints) if you want Kitemaker to give you more hints to help you learn the hotkeys. Basically it bugs you whenever you use the mouse!
There's a little toggle down in the profile menu in the bottom left (or do cmd+k -> hotkey hints) if you want Kitemaker to give you more hints to help you learn the hotkeys. Basically it bugs you whenever you use the mouse!
I know the answer is probably not, however do you have plans for things like hipaa compliance? I’m struggling to find a great IM solution that is - perhaps self hosted as others have asked?
This was my question and suggestion to the Kitemaker team. My team wanted to use Clubhouse.io but they weren't HIPAA compliant and wouldn't sign a BAA with us. Apparently, there are very few apps in this space that will do so.
If Kitemaker wants a hook into a pool of customers, healthcare might be a good place to start. There are tons of small healthcare companies that really need HIPAA compliant tools and being HIPAA compliant is like a bright shining beacon in the night. It's SOOOOOOO much easier to get management to spend money on someone that will sign a BAA.
If Kitemaker wants a hook into a pool of customers, healthcare might be a good place to start. There are tons of small healthcare companies that really need HIPAA compliant tools and being HIPAA compliant is like a bright shining beacon in the night. It's SOOOOOOO much easier to get management to spend money on someone that will sign a BAA.
No immediate plans, sorry. But we're definitely going to have a chat about self hosting since there seems to be some demand there.
Kitemaker is super cool. I've had the pleasure of talking with Sigurd for the past year and it's always amazing to me the progress they demonstrate. Especially the editor is super cool and the UI slick.
Waiting for the GitLab integration eagerly :) Congrats on the launch and getting to YC - much deserved!
Waiting for the GitLab integration eagerly :) Congrats on the launch and getting to YC - much deserved!
GitLab is our next planned integration so hopefully you won't need to wait much longer!
As to whether or not this is a Jira alternative the key points are:
* made for managers, not engineers
* app marketplace
* self-hosting
Thanks for the feedback!
An app marketplace is something we absolutely aspire to. Our API is a modest start in that direction.
Self-hosting is very interesting and something we hadn't thought much about but all the feedback here on HN has really gotten us thinking. Also interesting in light of the fact that Jira is pulling back from its own on prem offerings.
Regarding being for managers vs. engineers, we're very much determined to be for the whole team. As managers ourselves we want to be 100% extra careful to not make yet another tool that the team thinks is "for us managers". We've never gotten much value from such tools ourselves.
An app marketplace is something we absolutely aspire to. Our API is a modest start in that direction.
Self-hosting is very interesting and something we hadn't thought much about but all the feedback here on HN has really gotten us thinking. Also interesting in light of the fact that Jira is pulling back from its own on prem offerings.
Regarding being for managers vs. engineers, we're very much determined to be for the whole team. As managers ourselves we want to be 100% extra careful to not make yet another tool that the team thinks is "for us managers". We've never gotten much value from such tools ourselves.
Having such a product would be great but being realistic I doubt it would cover the cases I was talking about. Please see my long response to another comment in the thread. What do you think? Thanks
That‘s a bit dismissive. I know plenty of teams using Jira without needing this, and they‘re all unhappy with Jira anyway.
Then they'd better stop torturing themselves because they don't need Jira. It's kind of product you use only when you have no other choice or maybe when it's the only tool you know how to use.
I'm not sure everyone would agree with you that "made for managers, not engineers" is a positive in the Jira column. I'd really like, as an engineer, to be able to use work tracking software that helped me and my manager do our jobs effectively.
It's neither positive nor negative. That is it depends on one's point of view.
We're talking about company wide project management where engineers are on the bottom. Engineer's workflow is usually quite simple and limited to assigned issues. They'll never be happy with Jira UI as it's indeed, um, crappy but something like a CLI app using standard REST API with zsh completion may be enough to make most of them happy. Engineers mostly don't use Structure, BigPicture, filters, reports, they don't make complex workflows etc. Oh, maybe the kanban board.
And that's exactly the problem with Jira. It's unsexy, the REST API lacks important functionality (like adding a new option to select list custom field, but one can write custom endpoints in Groovy using ScriptRunner and Java API), it's relatively slow, the code base is old, some issues are never going to be fixed etc. But it has the app ecosystem and the community which is really what makes it, sort of, best in class as apps cover most users' cases. The question usually is 'what app can do this?'
I think providing a viable alternative is quite a challenge as that means building an active community and ecosystem. Plus, imagine a company invested quite much into building their processes on Jira with some set of apps. They have scripted custom fields, workflow post-functions, custom events, event listeners, timesheets, planned vs actual reports, time to market reports, SLAs, Structure, custom REST endpoints, behaviors and other ScriptRunner stuff. An alternative would have to somehow provide all that either out-of-box or via extensions, plus a feasible migration path. What benefits would justify such migration?
It seems that Atlassian know that and therefore reshape their business accordingly by raising the prices to cut away the small fish and move such customers to the cloud. They may loose many of them b/c there are better tools for simpler needs but it's really difficult to beat Atlassian on the on-premise cover all solutions market. They've been there for quite a long time.
We're talking about company wide project management where engineers are on the bottom. Engineer's workflow is usually quite simple and limited to assigned issues. They'll never be happy with Jira UI as it's indeed, um, crappy but something like a CLI app using standard REST API with zsh completion may be enough to make most of them happy. Engineers mostly don't use Structure, BigPicture, filters, reports, they don't make complex workflows etc. Oh, maybe the kanban board.
And that's exactly the problem with Jira. It's unsexy, the REST API lacks important functionality (like adding a new option to select list custom field, but one can write custom endpoints in Groovy using ScriptRunner and Java API), it's relatively slow, the code base is old, some issues are never going to be fixed etc. But it has the app ecosystem and the community which is really what makes it, sort of, best in class as apps cover most users' cases. The question usually is 'what app can do this?'
I think providing a viable alternative is quite a challenge as that means building an active community and ecosystem. Plus, imagine a company invested quite much into building their processes on Jira with some set of apps. They have scripted custom fields, workflow post-functions, custom events, event listeners, timesheets, planned vs actual reports, time to market reports, SLAs, Structure, custom REST endpoints, behaviors and other ScriptRunner stuff. An alternative would have to somehow provide all that either out-of-box or via extensions, plus a feasible migration path. What benefits would justify such migration?
It seems that Atlassian know that and therefore reshape their business accordingly by raising the prices to cut away the small fish and move such customers to the cloud. They may loose many of them b/c there are better tools for simpler needs but it's really difficult to beat Atlassian on the on-premise cover all solutions market. They've been there for quite a long time.
I think you probably have a valid point that many companies have invested a lot in customizing and tweaking their Jira installs and then built a lot of value on top of that customized and tweaked Jira installation, and convincing those companies could be a real challenge.
But we've also talked to many, many teams that use a relatively vanilla install of Jira just because it's what people are used to doing ("no one ever got fired for picking Jira"). In quite a number of cases, we've convinced these teams to switch to Kitemaker. As we mature the product, improve our developer offering and build out our ecosystem, we're confident we'll convince even more.
But we've also talked to many, many teams that use a relatively vanilla install of Jira just because it's what people are used to doing ("no one ever got fired for picking Jira"). In quite a number of cases, we've convinced these teams to switch to Kitemaker. As we mature the product, improve our developer offering and build out our ecosystem, we're confident we'll convince even more.
At my workplace:
Jira is all over, sometimes customized and tweaked, but we could be convinced to switch. Jira licensing has become a big problem.
For security reasons, we have dozens of little disconnected networks. Each one needs a separate server with a separate license, purchased separately. All software updates have to come via physical media, typically a DVD-R. That's way too many enterprise licenses to purchase.
It's like that with all types of software. If we want Ubuntu updates, we mirror the entire Ubuntu repository onto physical media and then carry that into the room. The physical media is then destroyed, even if it is a hard drive. You're not getting info out of that room.
Usually we want to deploy on a plain Ubuntu box. Sometimes we might use VMWare.
Network speeds are normally fast, but sometimes a whole-network VPN (not browser based, not on a workstation) connects sites that are 1000 miles apart. Be sure to always test your software with high network latency.
Jira is all over, sometimes customized and tweaked, but we could be convinced to switch. Jira licensing has become a big problem.
For security reasons, we have dozens of little disconnected networks. Each one needs a separate server with a separate license, purchased separately. All software updates have to come via physical media, typically a DVD-R. That's way too many enterprise licenses to purchase.
It's like that with all types of software. If we want Ubuntu updates, we mirror the entire Ubuntu repository onto physical media and then carry that into the room. The physical media is then destroyed, even if it is a hard drive. You're not getting info out of that room.
Usually we want to deploy on a plain Ubuntu box. Sometimes we might use VMWare.
Network speeds are normally fast, but sometimes a whole-network VPN (not browser based, not on a workstation) connects sites that are 1000 miles apart. Be sure to always test your software with high network latency.
Exactly! That’s one of the main goals we have with Kitemaker.
I’ve switched my team over to Linear (https://linear.app), which is definitely a “faster Jira alternative built for remote teams” as well.
I’m sure you’re aware of Linear, how do you differentiate yourself? I’d be really interested to know. Huge congrats on the launch!
I’m sure you’re aware of Linear, how do you differentiate yourself? I’d be really interested to know. Huge congrats on the launch!
Thanks!
We're very aware of them, tried to capture it a bit here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26542607
We're very aware of them, tried to capture it a bit here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26542607
This looks interesting (as does linear, which many have brought up).
For kitemaker - you probably want a "pricing" on your menu - on mobile it wasn't obvious there was any pricing available (and we'll not be using a gratis service for something as essential as this).
Is kitemaker (or linear) intended to also be customer facing? We'd love to switch out zendesk for bugtracking/support tickets, and improve our process vis-à-vis github/gitlab issues in one fell swoop... Is that part of the plan, or is it more of an internal process tool?
For kitemaker - you probably want a "pricing" on your menu - on mobile it wasn't obvious there was any pricing available (and we'll not be using a gratis service for something as essential as this).
Is kitemaker (or linear) intended to also be customer facing? We'd love to switch out zendesk for bugtracking/support tickets, and improve our process vis-à-vis github/gitlab issues in one fell swoop... Is that part of the plan, or is it more of an internal process tool?
Thanks for the tip on the pricing! We'll add it to our menu.
At the moment we're quite focused on teams' internal development process and we're a very small team (though we'll be growing a bit soon). That being said, we're having a lot of discussions with teams on how we can make it even more useful. One area that comes up a lot is capturing user feedback/feature requests/etc. Another is support tickets. Let's see what comes next!
At the moment we're quite focused on teams' internal development process and we're a very small team (though we'll be growing a bit soon). That being said, we're having a lot of discussions with teams on how we can make it even more useful. One area that comes up a lot is capturing user feedback/feature requests/etc. Another is support tickets. Let's see what comes next!
May I ask why you want to switch out of zendesk ? I'm reluctant to use it where I am (we have so many badly integrated third party software already...) but some people are pushing a lot for it.
We have modest needs from a ticketing system, no desire for customer chat - just email to ticket workflow. Zendesk works, but is a bit oversized for our ticketing needs (and slightly overpriced, perhaps - but not by an order of magnitude, so to speak).
We have a lot of history in our zendesk - and some of our customers are acquainted with the workflow.
I would probably not introduce zendesk as a new tool, but I do not have a clear recommendation on what should replace it.
At a previous work place we were quite happy with Trac - and I was a bit disappointed ttha Apache Bloodhound seemingly died off (it was in many ways an opinionated Trac setup/distribution).
On the other hand, if the other choice was a monstrosity like jira, I'd probably prefer zendesk.
I do think it's important to realise that support ticket (sub)systems are not issue trackers/scrum tooling - and vice-versa. Not all tickets are issues, and many issues are not tickets.
But if the two sub systems have some easy integration, that can still be beneficial. Just don't fool yourself into thinking that it can (should!) all be automated. Good support ticket handling provides real value both for customers and the development team.
[ed: maybe fogbugz warrant consideration?]
We have a lot of history in our zendesk - and some of our customers are acquainted with the workflow.
I would probably not introduce zendesk as a new tool, but I do not have a clear recommendation on what should replace it.
At a previous work place we were quite happy with Trac - and I was a bit disappointed ttha Apache Bloodhound seemingly died off (it was in many ways an opinionated Trac setup/distribution).
On the other hand, if the other choice was a monstrosity like jira, I'd probably prefer zendesk.
I do think it's important to realise that support ticket (sub)systems are not issue trackers/scrum tooling - and vice-versa. Not all tickets are issues, and many issues are not tickets.
But if the two sub systems have some easy integration, that can still be beneficial. Just don't fool yourself into thinking that it can (should!) all be automated. Good support ticket handling provides real value both for customers and the development team.
[ed: maybe fogbugz warrant consideration?]
Thanks a lot for your answer!
Phabricator is (IMHO) in a class of its own as a code review tool but the tasks stuff is nothing to write home about.
If you folks end up doing an integration my group would be excited to give it a try.
Good luck with the venture!
If you folks end up doing an integration my group would be excited to give it a try.
Good luck with the venture!
> Phabricator is (IMHO) in a class of its own as a code review
Yeah I'm gonna have to heavily disagree with this. Arc is hot garbage, by default decimates your local history, treats everything as mutable. Phabricator leaves so so much to be desired, I could rant for days. Gerrit is a much nicer review tool. Even Review Board is better.
Yeah I'm gonna have to heavily disagree with this. Arc is hot garbage, by default decimates your local history, treats everything as mutable. Phabricator leaves so so much to be desired, I could rant for days. Gerrit is a much nicer review tool. Even Review Board is better.
I agree that open-source Arcanist is the weak link, but it’s mostly down to commands like ‘arc diff’ and ‘arc land’ having the wrong default flags. It’s an unforced error and hurts adoption, but the right incantations aren’t hard to alias.
I’d be very interested in how Gerrit is better than Phabricator on the review side, I’ve used it a bit and formed the opposite opinion, but because I’m a Phabricator power user and a Gerrit novice it’s likely I formed a biased opinion.
I’d be very interested in how Gerrit is better than Phabricator on the review side, I’ve used it a bit and formed the opposite opinion, but because I’m a Phabricator power user and a Gerrit novice it’s likely I formed a biased opinion.
Very cool! We tried Phabricator years and years ago but haven't had much experience since then. GitLab is next on our list, but then we'll see what comes after that. We've gotten a few BitBucket requests.
Any idea how popular Phabricator is these days?
Any idea how popular Phabricator is these days?
Not terribly too popular, but used by a few large companies still. We evaluated it for use at a non-profit I help run/volunteer with, but the task system was too subpar for our liking. Wikimedia uses it pretty heavily, though.
Phabricator is used by a few big names like FB and Uber, and at startups that splintered off from those places, so a good number of teams but nowhere in the GitHub PR range.
It’s pretty opinionated around things like fewer bigger repos, rebase-by-default, trunk-only: basically the stuff that big shops use (because anything else is an NP-hard pain in the ass, literally, once you’re dealing with feature flags or A/B testing or bandits or any of the stuff that you need if you’ve got a consumer-facing product with a lot of users).
It’s pretty opinionated around things like fewer bigger repos, rebase-by-default, trunk-only: basically the stuff that big shops use (because anything else is an NP-hard pain in the ass, literally, once you’re dealing with feature flags or A/B testing or bandits or any of the stuff that you need if you’ve got a consumer-facing product with a lot of users).
You still have lots of challenges ahead, convergence is the biggest one (imo). Good job so far, Good Luck.
Thanks! Yes, still early days, but trying our best to build something that will help many teams work better together :)
sorry if obvious: if you're going to compare with Jira, then my first question is "but does it scale?"
Everybody hates Jira, but it scales to 100,000+ issues across dozens of teams. Even tiny teams (heh, any team that's live and/or has a PM) quickly generate 1000s of issues and JQL is *godlike* in sifting through this stuff. Engineers tell me about Trello and I say, "great place to start" knowing they'll come to the dark side soon enough.
thoughts?
Everybody hates Jira, but it scales to 100,000+ issues across dozens of teams. Even tiny teams (heh, any team that's live and/or has a PM) quickly generate 1000s of issues and JQL is *godlike* in sifting through this stuff. Engineers tell me about Trello and I say, "great place to start" knowing they'll come to the dark side soon enough.
thoughts?
"Everybody hates Jira" - that's not fair.. there's a lot of people that haven't used it yet.
Jira scales...poorly. It’s slow and it’s easy to misconfigure into a state that essentially requires a restart or creating a new project/team/similar.
You might also be the first person I’ve seen use “godlike” to describe any feature of Jira.
Basically you and I clearly have much different experiences with that tool.
You might also be the first person I’ve seen use “godlike” to describe any feature of Jira.
Basically you and I clearly have much different experiences with that tool.
That's a great question. Most of the companies using us today are small. They range from a single dev team to a small handful of dev teams. We're now starting to work with companies "one step up" from there that are coming with requirements about how to connect things across teams. Early days for this work, but we're trying to be really careful to keep this a tool that teams want to collaborate in and not a tool only a product manager would use.
We definitely have come close to the scale you're discussing but I look forward to finding out! That said, we have had a number of smaller companies drop Jira for Kitemaker.
We definitely have come close to the scale you're discussing but I look forward to finding out! That said, we have had a number of smaller companies drop Jira for Kitemaker.
Jira seems not to scale to 1 user in 1 department (which is actually a regression from the way it was a few years ago), so I don't think this is the right question to ask.
Congratulations on the launch.
How does this compare with https://linear.app?
How does this compare with https://linear.app?
We think Linear's a beautifully designed app that does Jira better than Jira for some teams.
That being said, we're trying to be a bit different. Teams using us tend not to split things down into micro tasks, but instead leverage the document-like structure of our work items to bring the whole team into a single workspace, thinking about and working on features/initiatives together. I think we also think about integrations a bit differently, but I don't have a ton of experience with Linear's integrations.
We're also a bit more crazy about hotkeys I think. Seriously, we're pretty obsessed ;-)
That being said, we're trying to be a bit different. Teams using us tend not to split things down into micro tasks, but instead leverage the document-like structure of our work items to bring the whole team into a single workspace, thinking about and working on features/initiatives together. I think we also think about integrations a bit differently, but I don't have a ton of experience with Linear's integrations.
We're also a bit more crazy about hotkeys I think. Seriously, we're pretty obsessed ;-)
For one it doesn't lag when I scroll through their landing page unlike linear.app
2015 MacBook Pro with Firefox
2015 MacBook Pro with Firefox
CEO of Linear here. Happy to answer questions.
We have quite bunch of startups and larger growth companies using us, anything from 3 to 500 engineers, with 100 or 20,000 issues. Linear is modeled around our experiences building software at Coinbase, Uber, Airbnb etc, from early to late stage and what we see is a modern way to develop software.
We have support for roadmaps, projects, cycles (sprints), custom views, multiple teams, backlogs, list/kanban, and robust search and filtering. Lot more about the features here: https://docs.linear.app/
Linear is also offline first app so all the interactions are instant, which especially key for keyboard shortcuts.
We have quite bunch of startups and larger growth companies using us, anything from 3 to 500 engineers, with 100 or 20,000 issues. Linear is modeled around our experiences building software at Coinbase, Uber, Airbnb etc, from early to late stage and what we see is a modern way to develop software.
We have support for roadmaps, projects, cycles (sprints), custom views, multiple teams, backlogs, list/kanban, and robust search and filtering. Lot more about the features here: https://docs.linear.app/
Linear is also offline first app so all the interactions are instant, which especially key for keyboard shortcuts.
Have been using Kitemaker for a few months now, and it is really lovely.
I don't use it as I would a regular issue tracker. I tend to make bigger work items and then let the item evolve as a kind of document.
I start by articulating what needs doing. Then it evolves into a problem statement and a plan. And finally I document choices and write a bit about how something was done.
This way I end up with something that is actually useful later.
(When I Get A Lot Of Spare Time (hah!) I would really like to make something that'll use the API to extract work-items by certain criteria and autogenerate a sort of "hacker's handbook" for projects so you can share key documentation that both describes how something works, but also the journey there)
I don't use it as I would a regular issue tracker. I tend to make bigger work items and then let the item evolve as a kind of document.
I start by articulating what needs doing. Then it evolves into a problem statement and a plan. And finally I document choices and write a bit about how something was done.
This way I end up with something that is actually useful later.
(When I Get A Lot Of Spare Time (hah!) I would really like to make something that'll use the API to extract work-items by certain criteria and autogenerate a sort of "hacker's handbook" for projects so you can share key documentation that both describes how something works, but also the journey there)
Thanks! Can't wait to see that API project ;-)
Congrats on the launch! My favorite task management tool — We’ve been using it since early days for more than a year and very happy with it, especially with how responsive Sigurd and Kevin have been. It really gets out of the way when making work items and makes it easy to have team discussions around these. Highly recommended !
Our experience with Kitemaker comes from a small team starting a company with a blank canvas to shape our processes.
We've been using Kitemaker for a couple of months now and are loving it. When we started we went with tools we knew from past lives like JIRA and ClickUp but given the freedom of our situation we wanted something better.
I feel like when I go into the tool I am there to focus on the tasks I'm currently doing and what I need to do next. The _lack_ of sprint reporting and fixed time frames is a great feature IMO.
They also put out some thoughtful content (https://medium.com/kitemaker-blog) that we used to help shape our current agile practices. Looking forward to the features ahead!
We've been using Kitemaker for a couple of months now and are loving it. When we started we went with tools we knew from past lives like JIRA and ClickUp but given the freedom of our situation we wanted something better.
I feel like when I go into the tool I am there to focus on the tasks I'm currently doing and what I need to do next. The _lack_ of sprint reporting and fixed time frames is a great feature IMO.
They also put out some thoughtful content (https://medium.com/kitemaker-blog) that we used to help shape our current agile practices. Looking forward to the features ahead!
We just started using Kitemaker for our development team a week ago and it is so much faster!
We were using Notion before and it got slow with more and more tasks and people.
It took us about half an hour to learn all the shortcuts, but that time has been worth it already.
It took us about half an hour to learn all the shortcuts, but that time has been worth it already.
No hierarchy of tasks makes this about as (slightly less, no linking) useful as JIRA for practical purposes. There are a number of tools that do this kind of thing, so I'm struggling to figure the difference between kitemaker and say...Asana or Wrike.
Thanks for the feedback!
What we find is that the document-ish interface of Kitemaker lends itself to people sizing their work items a bit bigger than they would in Jira or GitHub issues, and then breaking them down a bit with todos inside. We have a lot of improvements planned around our todos to make this even nicer.
We also have themes (kinda like epics in Jira) for grouping larger initiatives together.
What we find is that the document-ish interface of Kitemaker lends itself to people sizing their work items a bit bigger than they would in Jira or GitHub issues, and then breaking them down a bit with todos inside. We have a lot of improvements planned around our todos to make this even nicer.
We also have themes (kinda like epics in Jira) for grouping larger initiatives together.
Do you have a demo video or demo I can try before signing up?
Apart from the little video on the landing page, I made a voiced over demo video for our launch on product hunt the other day that shows off a lot of the core stuff: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/kitemaker-2
Thanks! I really like activity feed concept, certainly better than confluence digest emails I get daily.
Thanks very much! We've gotten some requests to "lift" the feed up to each level of the tool summarize what's been going on. Something we've thought about quite a bit but haven't had time to get to just yet.
Maybe you have this but a way to align with a master timeline or set of timelines would be great too. Master timeline would have a bunch of branches like git does.
It would really be handy to have some more videos showing the use of the product. I can't really grasp how it works from the small GIFs on the home page.
Thanks for the feedback! We're always working on making the landing page better, so I think adding some clearer videos is something we'll look into.
We were also thinking of chunking up that gif with clear captions so it's obvious what you should be seeing at each stage.
We were also thinking of chunking up that gif with clear captions so it's obvious what you should be seeing at each stage.
This is exciting! As a person that has begun writing my own JIRA client (frustrated with JIRA Cloud performance compared to JIRA Server and frankly anything else), I welcome this alternative :)
One little nitpick: something about the video on the homepage makes it look weird - very sharp (non-antialiased) while downscaled: https://i.imgur.com/bNWJAIE.png
One little nitpick: something about the video on the homepage makes it look weird - very sharp (non-antialiased) while downscaled: https://i.imgur.com/bNWJAIE.png
First time user. Couple of feedback
1. One thing I liked about this tool was I felt less complex UI. It's like it is simpler as trello. Other tons of PM tools does have complexity which feels me less comfortable using product
2. The loading time for opening app after user has logged in is something that I wasn't used to. The loading screen kept showing until 20-25 secs.
Anyways, a great experience using this product
1. One thing I liked about this tool was I felt less complex UI. It's like it is simpler as trello. Other tons of PM tools does have complexity which feels me less comfortable using product
2. The loading time for opening app after user has logged in is something that I wasn't used to. The loading screen kept showing until 20-25 secs.
Anyways, a great experience using this product
Thanks for the feedback!
And sorry you experienced long loading times. It should definitely not take that long to load so maybe we were getting hugged hard when you tried. Would you mind trying again to see if it's better at all?
And sorry you experienced long loading times. It should definitely not take that long to load so maybe we were getting hugged hard when you tried. Would you mind trying again to see if it's better at all?
Okay. I tested. This time it took relatively less time than the previous one. It got improved in general!
I am curious what technology did you use for drag & drop. Did you implement your own solution or depend on an external library?
We're actually in between drag and drop libs at the moment. We currently use react-beautiful-dnd [0], but it has some major shortcomings and doesn't feel very well maintained. That being said, it's a pretty impressive lib that probably works for a lot of people as-is.
We've got a branch where we've switched to dndkit [1] which I like a lot - really nice API with hooks for everything. However, it has some annoying bugs that mean we can't quite switch yet. That being said it seems like the one that's hanging us up the most is nearly fixed [2].
0: https://github.com/atlassian/react-beautiful-dnd
1: https://dndkit.com/
2: https://github.com/clauderic/dnd-kit/pull/140
We've got a branch where we've switched to dndkit [1] which I like a lot - really nice API with hooks for everything. However, it has some annoying bugs that mean we can't quite switch yet. That being said it seems like the one that's hanging us up the most is nearly fixed [2].
0: https://github.com/atlassian/react-beautiful-dnd
1: https://dndkit.com/
2: https://github.com/clauderic/dnd-kit/pull/140
You have so many layout shifts from just clicking on one element. I imagine, implementing react-beautiful-dnd will give you much better performance results.
My team was looking for something like this. We ended up choosing Gitlab since we were already using their VCS.
These organization products all look so complicated. I can't see the value add here vs Notion/Atlassian/etc. A feature list and example use cases would help.
These organization products all look so complicated. I can't see the value add here vs Notion/Atlassian/etc. A feature list and example use cases would help.
Thanks for the feedback!
We'll definitely add much more of a feature by feature comparison with some of our competitors.
With regards to complexity, we have a principle that we try to hide as much complexity as possible from users until they need it. So rather than big forms with loads of dropdowns or a lot of boxes that need filling in, we try to keep the UI pretty sparse. We tuck things behind buttons or in the cmd+K menu so they're out of they way. Some examples of stuff that's not in the UI til you need it:
* Added team members to work items
* Setting effort/impact of work items
* Adding a backlog to a space
* Etc
These are all things that some teams but not all teams need, so we don't want to give teams the feeling they're doing something wrong just because they're not using them.
We'll definitely add much more of a feature by feature comparison with some of our competitors.
With regards to complexity, we have a principle that we try to hide as much complexity as possible from users until they need it. So rather than big forms with loads of dropdowns or a lot of boxes that need filling in, we try to keep the UI pretty sparse. We tuck things behind buttons or in the cmd+K menu so they're out of they way. Some examples of stuff that's not in the UI til you need it:
* Added team members to work items
* Setting effort/impact of work items
* Adding a backlog to a space
* Etc
These are all things that some teams but not all teams need, so we don't want to give teams the feeling they're doing something wrong just because they're not using them.
How do you justify being more expensive than even Jira Cloud? IMO if you can't beat Jira on pricing while positioning yourself as an alternative to the market leader you've already lost, no matter how technically fancy your product is.
Thanks for the feedback! Pricing is always a challenge and we set the price based on surveying other products in this space. So far our paying customers have had no complaints about the price. But that being said, we'll for sure keep thinking about it as we move forward and grow.
Consider that even before the sun-setting of Atlassians server editions price is one of the main reasons I see for customers wanting to migrate away from Jira (and Confluence for that matter). In 8 years of operation we saw a sixfold increase of the pricing of Confluence, for instance. And that's not considering the further increase caused by us being forced to upgrade to the data center edition to stay on premise.
Will there be gantt charts? I want to know which issues depend on which others
Congrats on the launch.
However, what is it with these sites today. With a default content blocker you hamburger menu does not work on mobile (Safari on iOS with Firefox Content Blocker).
So I can‘t tell, but do you offer an on-premise solution?
However, what is it with these sites today. With a default content blocker you hamburger menu does not work on mobile (Safari on iOS with Firefox Content Blocker).
So I can‘t tell, but do you offer an on-premise solution?
We’ll checkout out our webflow setup to see if there’s anything we can do there to prevent the burger menu from getting messed up. Thanks for the tip.
We don’t offer on prem currently but there’s a discussion a few comment threads up.
We don’t offer on prem currently but there’s a discussion a few comment threads up.
Not sure if your site is slow or my internet, but your Guide section is literally your logo and 8 links, was trying to figure out why it took ~5 sec to load for me (found out it loads 1.5mb+ of data).
Thanks for the feedback. The guide is a bit of an experiment we're trying at the moment to make it super easy for our team to update the content there easily. We may need to rethink it a bit it seems!
Cool app! Just as a quick idea, you might want to make sure you compress your 4.4MB bundle before sending it to a client. Splitting your bundle might help for the initial page load, too.
Thanks! I think splitting the bundle is a great idea but something we haven't had time to dig into yet. We'll also get it compressed ASAP.
Exciting to see alternatives popping up.
I’d be curious to know the feature parity in percentage with Jira features. Jira is for better and worse.. deep and complex to handle a lot of depth and complexity.
I’d be curious to know the feature parity in percentage with Jira features. Jira is for better and worse.. deep and complex to handle a lot of depth and complexity.
Hard to say in terms of % but we’ll be adding some Kitemaker vs X comparisons to our landing page soon!
Awesome product. Fast, smooth, and gets out of your way.
What is 100 active tasks? Is the size of the backlog + working on tasks?
Exactly! 100 work items that haven't either been archived or deleted. For a small team this usually translates to more than a month of trying it out since teams tend to make slightly larger work items than they would issues in some other tools.
one of the best jira alternatives out there. we use them and super happy with how this works and by Kevin and Sigurd responsivness to bugs and improvments.
Gitlab/Mattermost integrations would be nice to see.
GitLab is our next planned integration.
One of our paying customers uses Mattermost so we've started the process of peeking at their API to see what we're up against. Since we've already got Discord/Slack it probably won't be super tough. That being said, there were plenty of gotchas added Discord after we already had slack since their API was different enough to be a bit annoying at times.
One of our paying customers uses Mattermost so we've started the process of peeking at their API to see what we're up against. Since we've already got Discord/Slack it probably won't be super tough. That being said, there were plenty of gotchas added Discord after we already had slack since their API was different enough to be a bit annoying at times.
Hey there, I work at Mattermost and would be happy to help with anything regarding an integration. If you're planning on this I would encourage you to join our community server: https://community.mattermost.com/ and look at our developer docs: https://docs.mattermost.com/guides/developer.html
the_squirrel(1)
We made Kitemaker because in our previous jobs, we were managing distributed teams and we always had a bunch of challenges with the tools we used. It was really hard to find a tool that the whole team was comfortable using. Designers were never happy using GitHub Issues, engineers were never happy using Trello, and no one was happy using Jira. We would often hear grumbles from the team that we used these tools because they were "good for the managers", but as the managers we were completely unhappy with the tools too! We had to bug people just to get them to go into the tool and update things.
Even more of a bummer was the fact that these tools didn't really help us solve the core problems we had working in a distributed team. Things like the fact that discussions often started before anything reached the issue tracker, spread out across a maze of Google docs and slack discussions that often resulted in (at best) a giant mess or (at worst) critical people missing discussions. Or that engineering would have a tough time keeping track of the never ending flow of new designs from our designers. Or PRs that would be created and rot while waiting for someone to review them.
So we built Kitemaker to try and scratch our own itch - to be a tool that can help manage the development process from end to end and connect to all of the other great tools teams use every day. One of our top goals is to make Kitemaker a tool you actually want to use, whether you're a developer, PM or designer. It's flexible without having a lot of fiddly configuration. It's really snappy, you can do everything without lifting your hands off off the keyboard (Superhuman was a big influence for us), and our editor supports markdown and a bunch of different elements (images, Loom videos, Figma designs, code blocks, etc.). The editor is built with SlateJS in case anyone's curious.
Remote teams tend to rely a lot more on written communication, so we made Kitemaker to be a place to gather things that would otherwise be spread across documents and chat threads. Our work items are rich documents where teams can document their plans, break down their work into individual tasks, and have discussions in Slack-like comment threads.
Finally, we wanted to hook into the other tools our teams used every day and connect activities happening in those tools back to the work items in Kitemaker. Our GitHub integration provides the same kind of functionality that you get from using GitHub issues (GitLab is on the way too!). Our Slack and Discord integrations make it easy to link chat conversations to work items so you don't lose things in your chat history, as well as providing access to a lot of Kitemaker's functionality right from your chat app.
We also have a freshly-launched GraphQL API. It's early days but we'd love for people to kick the tires and see how it feels. It has webhook support via Diahooks (that was launched here on HN the other day).
The two of us have been working tirelessly on Kitemaker and we're really excited to share it with all of you. Head over to https://kitemaker.co to sign up and try it out. We're hanging out here all day and would love to hear your feedback, questions and cool ideas!