Project Management

10 Best Issue and Bug Tracking Apps

Aug 10, 2015

Check out the ten best bug tracking apps that will help you find and solve issues with ease.

Karen McCandlessAnalyst

What we'll cover

Who wouldn’t love to have the ability to simply put their foot down on the bugs that periodically crop up within their lines of code? Sadly, you can’t use “brute force” in issue-tracking, as efficient issue-tracking calls for a streamlined, precise approach. With that in mind, we’ve put together this list of the best issue and bug tracking apps to help you do just that.

Let’s roll up our sleeves and take a look at the most effective issue-tracking apps around.

Best for incentivizing bug tracking

JIRA JIRA is a complete project management solution that helps you plan, track, and follow teams with ease. One of the more alluring aspects of using JIRA is its strong focus on issue-tracking, and a neat feature is that it allows you to add incentives to help motivate your team to seek speedy, effective resolutions to bugs that crop up. The only downside to JIRA: no native mobile apps.

Best for integrations

Zoho BugTracker

Zoho is known for its wide range of cloud apps for business, which share resources, and streamline customer service and other management tasks. You can practically run your entire business on Zoho. In terms of issue tracking, Zoho BugTracker presents the pertinent information in an intuitive dashboard layout, which includes Kanban View for project management.

Zoho BugTracker’s features include customizable and automated responses to bugs, the ability to add bugs by email, configurable classification of bug severity, and integration with GitHub social coding software.

Best for quality assurance

SpiraTest

If your business needs to test its apps to troubleshoot problems, you will want to give quality assurance and testing solution SpiraTest a closer look. This app makes it equally as simple to track manual tests as it does automated ones, allowing you to nail down all the mission-critical issues that spring up. If you need an issue-tracking app geared at testing and you can live without a native mobile app, SpiraTest is the bug buster for you.

Best for mobile apps

FogBugz

Apart from being made by a sustainable company wholly owned by its employees which has envy-inducing offices in New York, FogBuz’s focus is on organization. Not only does it aid you track your issues and bugs, but its powerful search engine helps you to find those cases quickly and easily.

It searches cases, wiki articles and customer correspondence. Other features include the ability to capture bugs through your browser and via email, by using the FogBugz feature screenshot tool, or automatically via BugzScout API. And it has mobile apps for not just iPhone and Android, but also Windows Phone and Blackberry.

Best for software development

Pivotal Tracker

Sometimes all the meetings, admin, and emails can get in the way of actually developing software, which is where Pivotal Tracker comes in. This agile project management tool simplifies the way you can report bugs in your software, while also allowing you to break down your workflow and processes into easy-to-manage steps.

As all communication on each development project stays in one place, you don’t have to go chasing down emails, meeting notes or reports on bugs and issues to keep track with what is going on. The bottom line is you can focus on the job at hand: coding and developing your software.

Best bug tracking browser add-on

Usersnap

Usersnap is all about browser-based tracking, with an add-on that works for all browsers (both desktop and mobile). It allows for the reporting of bugs simply by clicking on the feedback button on the site. From this, you can then produce annotated screenshots showing these bugs and send it to the relevant person, instead of having to compose an email or fill in a form. It’s a much quicker and more user friendly way of reporting bugs, and allows for easier tracking of these bugs as well.

Best for enterprises

Elementool Issue Tracking

Elementool has more than just a catchy name and a list of customers that are the envy of many business (Motorola, Wendy’s, BP, and Best Buy to name a few). This cloud-based issue tracking app allows you to assign and prioritize issues, attach files to them, and generate reports. If any changes or updates are made to an issue, your automated workflow will reflect this on the welcome screen.

Best for multimedia capture of bugs

Bontq

Bontq is another project management and issue tracking app in one, with its defining features being that allows you to record videos and capture screenshots of any bugs you find, and then attach these to your cases. As well as reporting bugs, you can also submit feature requests.

Best for exception handling

Airbrake

Airbrake prides itself on the speed it can handle app exceptions - in three minutes according to its website - and fix bugs (in seconds, it says) with its detailed stack traces. It also excels with its ability to intelligently organize these exceptions on its built-in dashboard, which includes tracking, logging, and detection of duplicated. Speedy and clever - what more could you ask for?

Best for simplicity

Bugherd

Another point-and-click bug reporting cloud app, which allows users to add notes about the issue to the website straight from the browser. BugHerd then turns these into full bug reports with all the info you need to fix the problem. Its visual and quick-to-set-up reporting system and simple-to-use tools, make it a really easy option for issue tracking and bug reporting.

If none of these apps are up your street, you can find bug tracking alternatives on GetApp, as well as issue-tracking app comparisons.

About the author

Karen McCandless

Analyst