Opensource Project Management Software for Freelancers

DominionZA

DominionZA

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Hey peeps.

I am on a cost cutting drive. Currently I use www.codespaces.com and it is brilliant software. I am looking for an Opensource Project Management solution that I can host myself (.Net or PHP) and turning to the community as the options out there are MANY. Time is not on my side to try them all.

Preferably software development oriented.

What it needs to do (no particular order) ...
1. Client access at the project level.
2. Private tasks (hidden from client).
3. At least 10 users.
4. Email notifications and ability to post on the task by responding to the email.
5. Milestones
6. Tasks with custom categories (bug, issue, etc)
7. Dashboard with overview of all projects
8. Must be able to attach documents directly to a task.
9. Tasks must be assigned an ordinal Id and is auto incremented. At the project level.

Bonus (nice to haves)
1. SVN integration
2. Android app (big bonus)
3. Modern web 2 UI
4. Gantt charts
5. Forum
6. Shoutbox

I also don't really mind commercial software as long as it does not exceed about R2,500.

Any suggestions?
 
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Check here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_project-management_software) and go slowly through comparison reviews.

We use SugerCRM with a custom built Project Management Module and Client Module (which is not included in the community edition). We have done the same with vTiger and integrated osTicket and Elastix. I cannot really help with dedicated project development software, but the wiki link and current reviews should send you in the right direction. Also check the activity behind the open-source environments, the lively ones tend to listen to the community should you need something specific.
 
Fulcrum29 said:
Check here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_project-management_software) and go slowly through comparison reviews.

We use SugerCRM with a custom built Project Management Module and Client Module (which is not included in the community edition). We have done the same with vTiger and integrated osTicket and Elastix. I cannot really help with dedicated project development software, but the wiki link and current reviews should send you in the right direction. Also check the activity behind the open-source environments, the lively ones tend to listen to the community should you need something specific.
Click to expand...

Thanks. I have been through that list though.
I have been going through options for 2 days now and getting tired. Rather looking for input from the locals as to what they reckon is the best vs the www.

Pretty much hoping someone is using something the meets my requirements and I can stop searching :p
 
I had a quick search, cannot find something to accommodate all your requirements…
You can check these two:

 
We use Trac http://trac.edgewall.org/ . It meets most of you requirements except that it is Python. It does however run happily on windows with its own little webserver. There are also loads of plugins.
 
Fulcrum29 said:
I had a quick search, cannot find something to accommodate all your requirements…
You can check these two:

Click to expand...

Qdpm looks pretty neat. Going to upload to my WebAfrica account and do some testing. Thanks.

dade said:
We use Trac http://trac.edgewall.org/ . It meets most of you requirements except that it is Python. It does however run happily on windows with its own little webserver. There are also loads of plugins.
Click to expand...

I looked at this one a bit earlier this evening. My WebAfrica account only has .NET and PHP on my account so I am limited to these two techs unfortunately ):
 
The Bug Genie has SVN/Git/Others integration, and is(for me at least) the prettiest one(web 2.0). It's feature list is magnificent for an OSS project.

QDPM is also quite good, but very limited. Note though, they have a commercial version that has some features like SVN integration.

My favourite has already been mentioned though: trac. If your host doesn't - want to - support python and you don't want to fork out extra, there's always Heroku which provides free-ish hosting.
 
nand said:
The Bug Genie has SVN/Git/Others integration, and is(for me at least) the prettiest one(web 2.0). It's feature list is magnificent for an OSS project.

QDPM is also quite good, but very limited. Note though, they have a commercial version that has some features like SVN integration.

My favourite has already been mentioned though: trac. If your host doesn't - want to - support python and you don't want to fork out extra, there's always Heroku which provides free-ish hosting.
Click to expand...

Qdpm is a bit buggy still. I have it up and running. Part of the install was to provide the admin email and password - which I did - mine.
After logging in I only had access to Users and Configuration (Project Types, status, etc..). No-where could I create a new project, task or ticket.
So I created another user - again myself - and assigned the role Manager. Funny enough it let me use the SAME email and password as the admin account. Hmmm... It did however not work. I kept logging in as Admin.
So I used an alternate email addy for my Manager account and now I had access to managing projects and stuff.

Frustrating beginning.

Going to check out Bug Genie. Looks freaking awesome. Thanks.

Also going to investigate a way to get Trac running. May have to host it myself using DynDNS for clients to get access. Going to interfere with my SABnzbd though - lol.
 
Oh my... What a process.

I was up until 4AM playing around with different PM tools. Then from when I woke up until now - and still busy.

ProjectPier came closest to what I am after - but cannot attach documents directly to tasks. Immediate fail.
Also cannot hold a discussion on a task.

Collabtive a close second but it seems to not work correctly and cannot see any obvious means to add comments to tasks.

So I turned to online hosted solutions. Before CodeSpaces, I used www.manymoon.com. They relaunched as www.do.com and along with that some nice apps for Android and iPhone. I gave this one a try and it works well. The free version also meets my needs pretty well. Just missing the option to tag tasks as bug/feature request/etc..

www.clockingit.com is completely free and almost has what I need, but damned ugly interface and no mobile access.

www.wrike.com is nice all round. It pretty much has everything including an Android app. Only limitation on the free version is you cannot reassign tasks and you cannot reschedule. You also don't get the productivity dashboard without premium.
This could be an issue.

www.freedcamp is looking promising too. Also completely free. To get software development specific functionality you have to subscribe to an add-on. Sigh... Will see if I can live with the free version. An hour or so testing should help determine this.

As things stand, it looks like I may be going with www.do.com. The integration with GApps is a winner too. Will see how Freedcamp turns out.

EDIT: One app I am quite excited about is www.trello.com. It is a glorified to-do list but can work as a basic PM tool (all I am after really). The Android app is really sexy too. It is a competitor to Asana and Wrike. So many options...
 
www.freedcamp.com is a little basic. It does the job, but not quite there.
Nice Web 2 interface but lacks task tags (bug, change request, etc...). Also no dashboard. Basically a glorified to-do list (like Trello).

Seems it is down to two hosted solutions.
www.trackingit.com and www.do.com.

TrackingIT more feature rich than Do, and geared towards software developers. Do has an awesome Android app though and a nice Web 2 interface.
 
Really difficult to find a product that supports everything

We used to use commercial wrike, and it was great for high level project management. But for granular tasks and specifically bug tracking it fell quite short

Personally I now run my team/projects on a combination of mantis, gantter and a whiteboard.
 
Mike Smit said:
EDIT: One app I am quite excited about is www.trello.com. It is a glorified to-do list but can work as a basic PM tool (all I am after really). The Android app is really sexy too. It is a competitor to Asana and Wrike. So many options...
Click to expand...
It works really well and keeps things simple, which sometimes helps :) Zero config, easy to understand, good price ;) - it's a winner if you can make it work for your situation.
 
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