Jira is a strong tool for software teams. For an agency it's often too much and too little at once: a lot of configuration, and nothing for the hours, the clients and the invoices that client work runs on.

Notulous keeps what an agency uses from Jira and adds what it misses.

What you keep

  • Issues with types, priorities, assignees, subtasks, files, comments and links between issues.
  • Boards with columns for your statuses, swimlanes, filters, and one board across all your projects.
  • Releases to plan issues into, and a timeline per project.
  • Code: branches, commits and pull requests from GitHub or Bitbucket show on the issue whose code they name, like NOT-12 in feature/NOT-12-estimates.
  • Slack posts for new issues and status changes, per project if you like.

What you get on top

  • Time tracking on every issue: a timer, a weekly timesheet and reports.
  • Clients: your clients follow their projects, add requests and comment, without taking a paid seat.
  • Rates and invoices: hourly rates per project and per role, budgets in hours, and an export of the billable hours with the amounts.
  • Email to issues: mail to a mailbox becomes an issue, for your service desk.
  • Hosting in the EU: every workspace has its own database, hosted in Germany.

What it costs

Jira Standard costs about €106 a month for 15 people. Notulous Team, with the issues, boards and time tracking, costs €105 for 15 people, and Studio, with clients, rates and invoicing, €195. That's less than Jira and Harvest together (about €226), and never more than €249 or €449 a month, however many people you add.

Moving from Jira

Export the issues from Jira as a CSV file (Filters › Export › CSV, all fields), then import it on the Projects page and map the people and statuses. The issues keep their numbers: CORE-123 becomes NOT-123 in a project called NOT. Comments, logged work and links between issues come along, and Jira's sub-tasks stay issues of their own, with their own comments and time. You can import again later: what's there is updated, the rest is added.

When Jira is the better choice

If you're a large software team that relies on custom fields, workflow schemes, Jira's marketplace apps or its service desk for thousands of tickets, stay with Jira. Notulous is for studios and agencies of 5 to 50 people who want their work, their hours and their clients in one place.

Start your free trial for 14 days, or ask for a founding workspace and we'll move your Jira projects for you.