Open source project management system comparisons
Estimated reading time: 11 minutes
Open source project management software is gaining in quick popularity as commercial-only alternatives often make startups, consultants, and enterprises pay top dollar to hit the road and scale. Yet more and more open-source solutions now facilitate the same functionality (and more) as the commercial alternatives. Unlike the commercial industry, open source projects also come with ever-contributing developer communities that live and breathe these products — often rolling out lots of value-added features and perks.
Pioneering startups and entrepreneurial-minded teams opt for open-source solutions for a number of reasons, but they all share one thing: to manage projects cost-efficiently, without a headache, and in a feature-rich way.
With that said, here comes the comparison guide on Leantime vs OpenProject vs Taiga – a group of flourishing open-source project management tools with intuitive workflows, a FOSS-based model, and tons of premium features.
The core goal of this blog post is to navigate you through the project management systems hailed to simplify the way you handle your project-related activities. Keep reading the post to find out:
Table of contents
Leantime vs OpenProject vs Taiga At a Glance
As 8 in 10 IT leaders prefer doing business with open-source software vendors to traditional commercial-only providers (RedHat Report 2022), the non-proprietary software market is taking entrepreneurial communities by storm. Without sounding too glib, 55% of startups and enterprise-level vendors value open-source products for their high-security standards and well-tested code for in-house applications.
What’s more, 39% of tech companies pick non-proprietary systems as they allow for better cost control while still scaling in-house operations in a feature-rich manner (Goodfirms).
With that said, we hand-picked 3 top-in-the-market open-source project management solutions Leantime vs OpenProject vs Taiga, to compare them by the core criteria that impact the way you manage projects.
Prior to digging into the full-featured overview, here is a brief feature outline of each productivity tool.
Leantime.io
Pricing: Self-Hosted (Free) / You Choose: $14.99 per project + unlimited users or $7 per user + unlimited projects / Enterprise & On Prem installations
G2 Rating: 4.5
Released: 2019
Designed for the never-wanted-to-be-a-project-manager but more than capable for those in more stablished project management processes, Leantime has quickly become a quick go-to project management software with its open-source and hybrid project management principles. Released back in 2019, the product has transformed the way professional do-ers treat complex project management tools.
Being made for the non-project manager, the system is built for get in and go. No longer requiring special education to start managing your team’s tasks, sprints, backlogs, or time right away. Roll up your sleeves with intuitive idea boards for mapping out your light-bulb moments, the Project Value Canvas for strategy discovery, Gantt charts for milestone management, time tracking for streamlined time management, and the Project Blueprint — an all-inclusive dashboard to access empathy boards, SWOT, and goal management in one place.
The platform balances lean, agile, and design-thinking principles to enable entrepreneurial-minded teams to reap the benefits of full life cycle project management without the fluff.
Leantime goes the extra mile with security and data privacy as it facilitates healthcare providers and startups with the ability to be HIPAA compliant. Ensuring your product-sharing processes and milestones are in safe keeping. Jump into SSL-based data encryption, self-hosted secure installation, LDAP/SSO integrations (SSO coming soon), user-based permission access.
When it comes to installation, it can’t get much easier to set it up and get running with Leantime. Just get the latest release package, carry out an empty MySQL database, point the domain to /public directory, fill in credentials, and get to managing your projects.
The features don’t stop there. The list for the open source project management system include:
- Role Management
- Calendar Integration
- White Labeling
- Multiple Task Views
- Time Tracking
- Project Dashboard
- Retrospectives
- Status Updates and Discussions
- Branded Subdomain
- Idea Management
- Reports with Export & Print
- Goal Management
- SWOT, Empathy map, Project Value Canvas+
- Gantt & Milestones
- Many others.
Here’s a described experienced using Leantime.io:
“It has all the features that most bigger, more expensive platforms have. I love being able to see what is going on in my organization right away.”
- Capterra review
Openproject
Pricing: Free / Unlimited ($9/member/mo) / Business ($19/member/month) / Business+ ($29/member/mo)
G2 Rating: 3.6
Released: 2012
Originally developed with its ancestor product ChilliProject since 2010, OpenProject is a free and open–source (FOSS) project management tool promoting data sovereignty and social-based collaboration. With data-conscious organizations as a target audience, the software allows a team to use agile, or hybrid project management practices.
Trusted by Siemens, DB Bahn, AMG, and The Linux Foundation, OpenProject has just surpassed over 20M downloads with 76k commits, 41 releases, 12k pull requests, and under 200 contributors for 10+ years.
Claimed to “empower project teams for the good of society”, the tool has multiple add-ons and features like work breakdown structure, version boards, attribute highlighting, date alerts, team planner, project portfolio, form configuration, multi-select custom fields, placeholder users, and LDAP sync.
What is more, OpenProject actively promotes high data protection to fulfill the needs of the most security-sensitive enterprises holding users’ data privacy very dear. To rise to the occasion, the product’s team has rolled out manifold security-centric perks like LDAP sync, single sign-on, 2-factor authentication, GDPR and German Federal Data Protection Act (BDSG) compliance, AES-256 encryption, and many others.
Amongst the basic functionality, OpenProject furnishes end-users with such features as:
- Project planning and scheduling
- Task management
- Team collaboration
- Product roadmap and release planning
- Agile and Scrum
- Accessibility mode
- Bug tracking
- Time tracking, cost reporting and budgeting
- And others.
Here are real users’ references on the tool::
“The students use OpenProject for their work to network. The theoretical project management techniques are directly put into practice. By using OpenProject, the productivity of the project members was increased significantly..”
- Prof. Dr. Eduard Gerhardt, Coburg University
Taiga
Pricing: Free / Taiga Cloud ($70/mo premium support), Self-Hosted (Free)
G2 Rating: 4.4
Released: 2014
Dating back to 2013, the product’s team attended Kaleidos hackathon, coping with frustrations on how to visualize agile methodologies for both developers and designers. In a while, the team came up with a visually-appealing management tool and that’s how Taiga’s journey started back in 2014.
Taiga is now an open-source project management tool geared towards cross-functional Agile teams under the hood. Backed by $350,000 in funding, the tool achieved manifold certifications and recognitions by Capterra, Goodfirms, Software Advice, OpenSource.com, GetApp, and Crozdesk.
On the functionality front, Taiga is powered by Kanban and Scrum boards for intuitive backlog and sprint planning, bug tracking with issue customization options, various personalized dashboards for reporting capabilities and endless customization features to handle access management, adjust localizations, modify colors, and carry out custom tags and fields.
In total, the open source project management tool facilitates:
- Project planning and backlog management
- Prioritization and sprint planning
- Task management
- Collaboration Tools
- Taiga Gantt charts
- Milestone Tracking and iteration management
- KPI monitoring and progress tracking
- Roadmapping and release planning
- Workflow and team management
- Kanban boards with status tracking
- Dependency tracking
- Negative feedback management
- Request management
- Scrum support.
Here is Taiga’s off the press by end-users:
“Taiga is an excellent tool for managing agile projects. It has everything you need to apply Scrum or Kamban to your project. The interface is simple and beautiful. The features work and help a lot in management.”
- Capterra review.
Head-to-Head Comparison: Who Makes Project Management a Real No-Brainer
Security and Data Privacy
With data privacy in mind, Leantime.io falls over backward, facilitating entrepreneurial-minded teams and enterprises with a high-security grade. Leverage SSL data encryption, self-hosted and secure installation, Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) and Single Sign-On (SSO) capabilities, user-based permission access, and data back-ups.
Moving beyond, the open-source project management system helps US-based healthtech-enabled startups and medical providers stay loose on complying with federal regulatory standards like Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. The platform is fully HIPAA-compliant, helping healthcare product teams seamlessly process their project-related operations and making electronic patient information management a cinch.
OpenProject keeps up with the security and privacy trends delivering LDAP sync, single sign-on, 2-factor authentication, GDPR and German Federal Data Protection Act (BDSG) compliance, and AES-256 encryption as premium features.
On the contrary, Taiga is way less packed with data privacy and encryption protocols out-of-the-box, providing LDAP account database integration by default.
Ease of Installation
Leantime is built with non-project-manager business folks in mind streamlining the installation process as well. Once you decide to proceed with on-your-own hosting, all you need is to download the latest release package, set up an empty MySQL database, upload the directory to your server, fill in your DB credentials, and finally follow the easy instructions to getting the first user account up and running.
Be sure that your system meets installation requirements with the following tech stack:
- PHP 8.0 and up
- Apache with mod_rewrite, Nginx, IIS (possible with adjustments)
- MySQL 5.7+
- PHP Extensions needed
- Curl (for Integrations), gd, imagick, xml (for 2FA QR code generation), ldap (optional).
Alternatively, you can install via Docker.
OpenProject provides 3 installation options, including DEB/RPM packages, Docker containers, and Univention Corporate Server. On the operating system front, the open-source project management software supports Ubuntu, Debian, CentOS, and Suse Linux Enterprise Server.
Claimed to complete the setup process in 30 min, Taiga allows deploying the full service for a production environment with docker. The tech requirements include docker v17.09.0+ and docker-compose v1.27.0+ while the instructions cover application kickoff, customization, proxy configuration, and subpath/subdomain switch.
Pricing and Fees: Who Wins the Penny-Pinching Battle
Leantime.io Pricing
The open-source productivity platform provides a flexible you choose pricing along with a free to use option and a self-hosted tier. Geared towards entrepreneurial-minded professionals wanting to scale their projects cost-efficiently, Leantime goes the extra mile and puts up a you choose pricing unlike most SaaS-centric systems do.
With unlimited users per project, you gain a competitive edge to clamber up your startup’s product-related operations and move to the next level without being either financially or technically obliged. Just delve into intuitive project management and carry on business without barriers down the road.
Want to leverage Leantime as SaaS-based project management software? No sweat. You can sign up for their hosted project management plans for free and pay when you’re ready to grow. They’ve taken a “you choose” approach with pricing — either pay $14.99 per project with unlimited users or pay $7 per user with unlimited projects. This lets you decide which pricing model is cheapest for your teams.
Need room for customizations and facilitated onboarding, system-to-system migration, telemetry, and premium security and data privacy functionalities? Leantime’s got you covered. Proceed with an Enterprise (custom quote) plan and on-premise installation to get a full control over project management with extended data ownership.
OpenProject Pricing
OpenProject also follows both SaaS-based and on-premises models but still provides user-based pricing. Choose from 5 pricing plans that differ by functionality, support, number of users, and add-ons starting from $7.25/user/mo (Basic), $13.5/user/mo (Professional), $19.5/user/mo (Premium), and a custom quote with >250 users premium features included.
Taiga Pricing
Taiga offers a premium support licensing and facilitates an unlimited number of users and multi-language localization. With 2 cloud (Taiga Cloud Basic and Taiga Cloud with Premium Support) and 1 self-hosted options.
The system makes an extra effort in breaking the limits for both the number of users and public/private projects within all deployment options. On top of that, the platform offers 10GB and 20GB storage capacities per project based on the plan.
The premium fund-purpose licenseis available for $70/mo and $600/year.
In a Nutshell
Open-source project management software takes the proprietary product market by storm enabling professional teams and enterprises to use feature-rich functionalities while not breaking the bank. Top-in-the-market commercial solutions like Monday, Confluence, Trello, and Notion may become out of reach for early-stage startups needing to jump in the waters of managing their projects.
Here we’ve looked at several free open source software (FOSS) project management systems helping entrepreneurial-minded go-getters kick their project management activities off effortlessly. Leantime vs OpenProject vs Taiga are investment-worthy tools meant to get the ball rolling — with some differences to consider upfront.
If you are a never-wanted-to-be-a-project-manager leader wanting to have a system every department can use easily, let Leantime do the heavy lifting. Reap all the benefits of evading complex installation, distractions, and overcomplicated workflows by giving the productivity platform a try for free or get a custom quote for premium features.
