ProofHub is a project management tool that has gained in popularity relatively recently whereas Jira has been widely known for a while now. But both task management tools have plenty to offer managers who are in charge of project management and their teams. 

So, which of these would suit your purposes better? Take a look at our comparison between Jira and ProofHub to know the answer.

Jira

Just about anyone who has worked in a software development project would be familiar with terms like agile and scrum. Agile project management is arguably the most common project management protocol used in the current age for developing software products, and scrums form an integral part of the same.

Given this scenario, it is only desirable that a project management system should support agility. This is precisely what Jira does with its array of agile tools.

Support for agility, views and bug tracking

For instance, you get both scrum boards and Kanban boards in this project management system. These tools make it easy to visualize the progress of tasks so that you could see which ones are going as per the schedule and which ones are lagging. Based on this insight, you could take appropriate actions to hasten a task that has fallen behind.

To further support agile project management, the project management system also supports agile sprints. For those unfamiliar with sprints, they are short iterations of actions which form part of a larger process. You could view them as building blocks for processes in agile project management.

The project management tool also provides you with multiple project views including user stories and story points. This is more crucial a feature than some may imagine. The crux of a good project run is collaboration. This naturally means that more than one person would be involved in a project at the same time. Depending on their roles, the different personnel involved in the project would need to view the project’s progress using different ‘views’ if they are to learn about the project details that are relevant to them.

 The convenience that working in digital ecosystems brings is indisputable. However, along with conveniences comes a fair share of problems. For instance, bugs in the system.

Before it became the tasks management tool that it is today, Jira was designed as a system to track software bugs in digital projects. Even though the tool has evolved over a time of period, this functionality of tracking and recording bugs still forms a core part of the software. The tasks management tool makes it very easy to view the bugs that it has recorded- listing all of them in a single space in the backlog.

Though teams typically aim for a zero-bug environment, that ideal remains something of a holy grail. Also, project managers need to contend with the limited number of people in a team. This means when bugs are reported, they would need to decide who among the team members should be assigned to resolve them.

Having all the reported bugs listed in one place would help in prioritizing the most critical bugs so that team members could be allotted to resolve them in an optimal manner.

Reporting, customization and versatility

Reporting is yet another arena in which the tasks management tool is of immense help to project managers and team leaders. The tool can bring you more than a dozen reports.

 Different types of projects make different types of reports ideal. A large number of reporting formats becomes crucial in this context. They help project managers and team leaders gain the necessary insights into the performance of their teams. Even better, they could get these insights in real-time even as a project is in progress.

The types of reports you get in this tasks management tool include sprint reports, version reports, burndown charts, burnup charts and more. Many of these reports are well suited for agile project management since the reports are formatted to match the requirements of agile projects.

A high level of customization is something that we all demand from technology products, especially those in the software realm. From being able to add the films of our choice to the watchlist on a movie streaming platform to bringing all banking products we use under the same tab in a bank’s app, this demand manifests in different ways.

Such a demand is to be expected in the field of project management tools as well. The makers of Jeera seem to have anticipated it. The tasks management tool allows for a high level of customization.

For instance, you could create visual depictions of processes according to your requirements using the custom workflows feature. But it’s not just the workflows that could be customized in the tasks management tool. Other elements like scrum boards and reports could also be customized.

Further, software developers could develop custom filters in Jira by using the Jira Query language. Another related point is that the tool could be integrated with over 3,000 third-party apps. This enables another level of customization, whereby you could make the software function precisely the way you want to with these integrations. 

You may have got the impression that Jira is well suited for software development teams. While that is correct, it doesn’t mean that Jira cannot be used by other departments in an organization for their project management requirements.

On the contrary, Jira is among the most flexible task management tools. For instance, marketing departments could easily use the tool to plan product launches and other complex events. The Human Resources department could also use it to optimize its hiring process. These are only two use cases the tasks management tool supports. From agile project management to information technology service management, a whole gamut of uses could be fulfilled with this project management tool.

This offers you a significant cost advantage. Instead of having to invest in different project management tools for multiple departments, you could satisfy the requirements of all departments using a single tasks management tool.

Security

The benefits of adopting Jira as the project management system of choice for your organization wouldn’t be complete without mentioning the security element that the tool brings. As more and more of our life and work are being shifted online, the idea of data security couldn’t be overlooked. In this regard, Jira is compliant with all the major security protocols including SOC 2, SOC 3, ISO/IEC 27018 and more.

There are a few relatively minor issues that you may have to contend with if you choose Jira as your project management tool. Perhaps the most important is that the tool doesn’t have the easiest interface to use. Those who are used to working on interfaces that require technical adeptness wouldn’t find a problem here either. However, for the rest, it’s a different story- especially during the initial stages of using the tool.

Another potential problem is the relatively lesser number of collaboration tools that the tasks management platform provides. Apart from Kanban and Scrum boards, you may be hard-pressed to find many other collaboration tools on the platform.

Some may say this is a non-problem as Jira allows integration with third-party collaboration tools like Slack. But that still doesn’t mean it wouldn’t have been better to have such tools inside the platform itself.

ProofHub

Contrasting sharply with Jira, ProofHub’s interface is simple enough that even users who are not technically proficient can easily use it. To enhance the quality of the layout, you could cluster together groups based on a parameter of your choice. In addition to a cleaner interface, this brings more data security to the project management software.

Ease of use, calendar integrations and compatibility

The idea of ease of use is reflected in other features that the project management tool brings you as well.

For instance, you can receive email alerts immediately when any changes are made on tasks which are relevant to you. This is true for when a project crosses a major milestone or if there is any status update you ought to know of. This frees you from having to log into the platform frequently for updates. Rather, the updates would come directly to your email inbox.

You could, of course, choose to get only those notifications that are relevant to you, so that your inbox wouldn’t be flooded with messages that are of no use to you.

ProofHub calendar can be used in conjunction with other apps, as the tasks management tool supports integration with multiple third-party programs. These include iCal and Google Calendar. This is yet another instance in which the creators of ProofHub seem to have understood the importance of ease of using the platform.

The provision allows you to directly sync any existing meeting schedules into the platform with very little effort.

In addition to this, the tasks management tool also lets you import files from Basecamp and Basecamp Classic. The files could be anything from projects to tasks and discussions.

ProofHub works flawlessly regardless of the operating system in your device- be it Android, iOS or Windows. You could continue a task you have begun on one device on another, at any given point in time, according to your convenience.

The project management system is optimized for mobile, so you could easily get even complex tasks done on the mobile application. This couldn’t be said about all the project management tools that are available today. A cluttered interface, slow response time and hard-to-access menu bar are only some of the problems that make for a subpar mobile application experience with many project management tools.

The ability to work across devices and operating systems is a boon in an age when such versatility is very much in demand. However, except for mobile optimization, such compatibility is rather common across project management platforms that are available in the market these days.

But that’s not to say the platform doesn’t have features that are not easily available in other project management platforms. Proofing and time tracking are two such examples. There are also steady boards and workflows which could be used to help improve the productivity of your team members. These latter features help bring clarity regarding the flow of tasks in the project- giving you a fair picture of which tasks are proceeding as planned and which are not.

This in turn helps you make meaningful interventions to ensure tasks are completed on time.

Customer support, collaboration support and automation

Another not-too-common feature which makes ProofHub special is its customer support. Even otherwise useful product management systems sometimes get weighed down by the issue of shoddy customer support. Not so ProofHub. The project management system comes loaded with an ample number of use cases and video tutorials. These would help solve many of your doubts regarding the functionalities. The FAQs section makes it even easier to find a solution to problems you have been facing.

If you can’t find a solution in any of the resources in the platform; ProofHub has an active presence on all major social media platforms where you can have your queries resolved.

ProofHub provides excellent support for collaboration. For instance, all users could access up-to-date information from a central repository, provided they are granted access permission. You could track the status of the project in real-time as well as the progress of individual tasks.

ProofHub also enables a fair bit of automation. For instance, you could set certain tasks to recur so that they would be repeated in the workflow at the appropriate times without your intervention every time. Like Jira, ProofHub also supports agile project development. For example, with Kanban boards, you could easily track the progress of tasks in agile projects.

Sometimes, you may need to exert granular control over how the project is managed. In that regard, if you need to assign people to certain stages alone in a specific workflow, it is possible in ProofHub.

We talked about ProofHub supporting collaboration before. Allied to that are the many ways in which the platform enables communication.

You could comment, use the @mention tool to draw someone’s attention to a message and proof designs, all using the in-built communication tools.

This streamlines many processes and eliminates the need to switch to third-party tools whenever you need to connect with your team members. You could even forgo logging into ProofHub and still add your comments to ongoing discussions through email. Images could be used in the chats by a simple drag-and-drop method.

Should you choose Jira or ProofHub?

Both ProofHub and Jira offer tools that support project management- be they agile or not. Both platforms are comparable in their robustness. The largest differentiating point is the interface. ProofHub’s interface makes it easier to master the tool, so you could easily have even a large team new to the platform becoming familiar with it in no time. If the interface is a matter of concern for you, you should opt for ProofHub.

Is there anything important missing in Jira and ProofHub?

The ability to accurately track the time someone spends on a task is a crucial feature that’s missing in both project management tools. This in turn limits their ability to help you accurately estimate the project delivery time.

This is one of the areas in which the project management system, I’m Productive excels. Not only does I’m Productive have the aforementioned feature, it even comes with an AI that helps you accurately predict the project delivery time with the click of a button!

Head over to their website to learn more.