Jira was the default for agile teams for a long time, and for good reason. But for a small team, it often feels like more tool than the work needs. Before you can track a single task you are setting up schemes, workflows and permissions, and the bill grows with every person you add.
We build Roomie, so we are biased. But we also run our own work on it every day, and this is how it handles the job Jira usually does.
Where Jira gets heavy for small teams
Jira is good software. These are the things we hear most from small teams who move away from it:
- Setup takes a while. A new project means schemes, workflows and permissions before anyone can start.
- JQL is one more thing to learn. It is powerful, but most people just want to filter the board.
- The cost adds up. Jira Standard is about $7.91 per user per month, and many teams also pay for Slack, Zoom and email on top.
- The work and the conversation live apart. A bug is discussed in chat, then someone copies it into Jira by hand, and the context stays behind.
What Roomie does instead
A project exists as soon as you name it
You create a project and start adding tickets. Boards and lists are two views of the same work, with the same filters, so switching between them does not mean setting things up again.
Sprints with a goal, and releases
A sprint has a written goal, dates and a progress bar, so "are we going to make it" is easy to answer. Releases group what shipped, and you can write the release note from the done column. The project sidebar shows the current sprint, the backlog and upcoming releases.
Your own ticket types and workflow
Bug, story, change request, or whatever your client contract calls them. Ticket types, workflow stages and custom fields are set per project. A ticket can have subtasks with their own status and assignee, and tickets can be linked as related or blocking, so a blocked ticket shows on the board instead of being hidden in a comment.
A message becomes a ticket
This is the part we use most. A bug comes up in chat or arrives by email. You turn that message into a ticket on the right board, and the ticket keeps a link back to the conversation it came from. When the status changes, the room is told. You can also ask an AI teammate to file it for you.
Bring your backlog with you
You can import tasks from a spreadsheet. Roomie gives you an Excel template per project, shows a preview with any errors marked, and then imports.
What it costs
Roomie is free for up to 3 users. After that it is $2 per user per month (NPR 250 in Nepal), and that one price covers the whole workspace: tasks, chat, email on your own domain, wiki, video huddles and customer support. There are no feature tiers.
For comparison, a team of ten on Jira Standard pays about $79 a month for task tracking alone, before chat, meetings or email. The same ten people on Roomie pay $20 a month for all of it.
Where Jira is still the better choice
To be fair about it:
- Very large or complex setups. Jira has deep workflow rules and a huge marketplace of apps. If you depend on those, stay.
- Teams that already know JQL well and have built reporting around it.
- Companies that need Atlassian's enterprise features and the admin tooling that comes with them.
If that is not you, and you mainly want boards, sprints and tickets that stay connected to the conversations they came from, Roomie is worth trying.
Moving over
- Create a workspace. It is free for up to 3 people.
- Create a project and set up your ticket types.
- Import your backlog from Excel using the template.
- Invite your team.
- Run your next sprint in Roomie and see how it feels.
If you get stuck moving over, write to us and we will help.
