My Love Letter to Redmine

After over a decade in software development, I’ve worked with countless project management tools. I’ve tried almost everything: Bugzilla, Jira, Mantis, OpenProject, Monday (formerly known as Dapulse), Trello, Redmine, and many more.

Redmine was love at first sight. It’s a tool that simply works as expect:

• Want to centralize customer communication? Just set up a mailbox and import emails directly into tickets.
• Need to close tickets via Git commit messages? Simply configure the repository settings.
• Cross-link tickets to mark duplicates? Done.
• Plan feature releases? Easy.
• Communicate with customers directly? It’s possible out-of-the-box, or you can supercharge it with plugins like the Helpdesk Plugin.

Most of the features mentioned above are very simple, and many project trackers support them. But Redmine does them exceptionally well.

If you’re unfamiliar with Redmine and check out its screenshots, there’s a good chance you’ll think, “This looks ugly as fuck — I’d never use it!” But hold on. A project management tool or issue tracker is something you’ll use EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. You need something that works.

Most tools today try to reinvent Excel. Take OpenProject (which is built on Redmine’s framework) or Monday.com: click on an issue title in a list, and it turns into an editable text field. My first thought was: "WTF?!"... Seriously, think about it — how often do you actually rename an issue? Almost never. So why include this “feature”? To me, it’s pure BS and shows how out-of-touch the planners of these tools are with real user needs.

So ask yourself: Do you want a flashy new tool, or one that’s been reliably working for decades?

Of course, no tool is flawless. Redmines calendar, for example, is painfully bad — it’s just a static overview with no drag-and-drop functionality. But here’s the deal: Redmine is open source. If something doesn’t fit for you, build your own solution. I did exactly that with a custom calendar plugin Redmine feels now complete.

If you’re shopping for project management tools, definitely give Redmine a shot. Set it up on your own hardware, avoid subscription costs, and future-proof your workflow. It’s the no-nonsense workhorse that gets the job done.