Issue tracking software

Effectively tracking, managing, and resolving issues from customers, employees, and business partners is critical for business continuity and success. Without a proper system, issues can be overlooked, leading to unresolved problems and frustration for everyone involved.

Issue tracking software helps prevent these frustrations by enabling your business to monitor the status of each issue, prioritize tasks, assign responsibilities, and ensure timely resolution. Doing so can improve both the customer experience (CX) and employee experience (EX). In this guide, we detail 10 issue tracking software, including key features to look for so you can make the best choice for your business.

More in this guide:

• What is issue tracking software?
• How issue tracking software works
• Issue tracking system vs. bug tracking software: What’s the difference?
• The 10 best issue tracking software
• Benefits of issue management software
• Issue tracking example
• How to choose the right issue tracking system
• Frequently asked questions
• Use a simple issue tracking software to enhance efficiency

Issue tracking software is a tool that helps service teams document, prioritize, assign, and monitor the progress of issues from initial reports to resolution. It’s commonly used in customer support and IT to streamline workflows and enhance productivity.

Issue tracking software provides a centralized platform where all reported issues, bugs, and tasks can be logged, tracked, and managed. Here's an overview of how it typically functions:

1. Issue reporting: Users report issues through various channels such as email, Slack, WhatsApp, or a customer self-service portal.
2. Categorization, prioritization, and assignment: The software uses information provided in the ticket—such as issue type or severity—to prioritize and assign it to the appropriate agent. This ensures that teams focus on the most critical problems first. Workflow automation and omnichannel routing may route issues to the right personnel automatically.
3. Tracking and monitoring: As you work on issues, their status is updated in the system. Common statuses include "open," "in progress," "resolved," and "closed." This ensures transparency and allows team members to monitor progress. Also, team members can collaborate on resolving issues by adding comments, sharing files, and updating the issue details.
4. Resolution and closure: Once you resolve an issue, it is closed within the system. The resolution details are documented for future reference, ensuring similar issues can be addressed more efficiently. The software can automatically send follow-up messages to confirm the resolution and gather feedback about the interaction.
5. Reporting and analytics: Outside of in-progress issues, reports track support key performance indicators (KPIs), such as the number of issues, time to resolution, and common problem areas. This data helps organizations identify trends, improve processes, and make informed decisions.

AI-powered tools can significantly enhance this process by automating workflows, providing valuable insights, and assisting service teams in resolving issues more quickly and effectively.

Bug tracking software helps software development teams resolve bugs and other software issues. It assists these teams when they conduct sprints—or work periods—by helping to track technical errors or defects in software code. These tools can often be tied to problem management software to help IT teams with product issues or glitches.

Issue tracking software has a wider focus. It can help with bug tracking and assist with project management and customer service issues. Often, issue tracking capabilities are included in help desk software or service desk software.

In short, bug tracking is part of the wider issue tracking umbrella, but issue tracking focuses on all issues—not just those related to bugs or the dev team.

Let’s take a look at what different issue tracking tools are available, including an overview of each product, key features, pricing, and free trial information.

• Zendesk: Best for CX issue tracking and resolution
• Jira: Best for software development
• Zoho BugTracker: Best for automated bug tracking
• Redmine: Best for Ruby on Rails users
• YouTrack: Best for JetBrains users
• Asana: Best for project visualization
• Monday.com: Best for project management
• ClickUp: Best for sprint management
• Bugzilla: Best for free-to-use software development
• Notion: Best for workspace management

1. Zendesk

Best for: CX issue tracking and resolution

Zendesk offers AI-powered issue tracking software that is fast to set up, easy to use, and highly scalable. Our software can handle any use case, whether resolving customer, employee, or business partner issues.

Zendesk AI is pre-trained on over 18 billion real service interactions, requiring no technical expertise to implement, allowing you to get started immediately. Seamlessly integrated throughout the solution, our AI streamlines the issue resolution process. AI-powered workflow automation tools ensure issues are directed to the right agent or department every time. Our intelligent agent copilot assists service teams in real time, offering proactive suggestions for resolving each issue, resulting in faster, higher-quality, and more consistent resolutions.

Zendesk AI agents, the industry’s most autonomous bots, can resolve even complex issues independently and provide 24/7 multilingual support. You can set one up in minutes by connecting it to your help center. For those without a knowledge base, our generative AI tools can quickly create help center content.

Our AI capabilities are seamlessly integrated into the omnichannel Agent Workspace, allowing users to submit issues over any channel and enabling service teams to track, manage, and respond to issues from one central location. Within the workspace, agents can access key contexts to personalize resolutions to each user's unique needs. AI can surface similar tickets, suggest macros, and edit the agent’s tone directly within the workspace. Additionally, service teams can collaborate on issue resolutions without leaving their workspace.

AI-powered reporting tools like Zendesk QA automatically review all service resolutions in real time, flagging outliers and escalations and pinpointing areas for improvement to continuously optimize your operations. Our software is also flexible, allowing you to customize it to fit your needs, streamline your data, and automate processes across systems with over 1,700 pre-built apps and integrations.

Features:

• AI-powered intelligent triage and routing
• AI-powered self-service
• Workflows and approvals
• Triggers and automations
• Reporting and analytics
• Unified Agent Workspace with omnichannel support
• No-code configuration tools
• Context and knowledge
• Collaboration tools
• Security and privacy

Pricing: Plans start at $55 per agent/month. 14-day free trial available.

Explore more Zendesk pricing plans.

2. Jira

Best for: Software development

Teams use Jira issue tracking software to plan, track, and manage software development projects. Its reporting and analytics features provide insights into project progress, team performance, and potential bottlenecks. Jira offers different ways to visualize work, including Kanban and scrum boards, backlogs, and timelines.

Users can create and assign issue tickets, track their progress through customizable workflows, and collaborate with teammates through comments and discussions. Users can also plan and track short- and long-term projects using a timeline view.

Features:

• Workflows and approvals
• Triggers and automations
• Reporting and analytics
• Kanban boards
• Scrum boards

Pricing: Plans start at $875 per year for 1–10 agents. A free plan is available.

Learn more: Discover how Jira integrates with Zendesk and how Zendesk vs. Jira compare.

3. Zoho BugTracker

Best for: Automated bug tracking

Zoho BugTracker is an issue tracking software that teams can use to identify, track, and resolve bugs within their projects. Users can record and track bugs based on pre-determined criteria like severity and due date. Zoho BugTracker includes automation features that enable administrators to trigger status updates and email notifications when preset rules are met.

The issue tracking system also includes time-tracking capabilities that let team members log billable and non-billable hours. Additionally, users can communicate with teammates using in-app discussions and activity streams to keep everyone informed.

Features:

• Workflows and approvals
• Triggers and automations
• Reporting and analytics
• Time tracker
• Collaboration tools

Pricing: Plans start at $3 per user/month, billed annually. A free plan is available.

Learn more: Discover how Zoho BugTracker integrates with Zendesk.

4. Redmine

Best for: Ruby on Rails users

Redmine is an open-source project management web application created via the Ruby on Rails framework. Teams can use it to track issues using a calendar, Gantt chart, or timeline view. Managers can set role-based access to projects and make them private or public. Users can log descriptions of problems, set priorities, and attach relevant files.

The software also has forum capabilities, allowing users to communicate with one another using project-based forums. Additionally, Redmine has time-tracking functionality that lets users log hours for specific issues and projects.

Features:

• Workflows
• Discussion forums
• Time tracking
• Project roles
• Email notifications

Pricing: Free

Learn more: Discover how Redmine integrates with Zendesk.

5. YouTrack

Best for: JetBrains users

YouTrack by JetBrains offers cloud- and server-based project management, team collaboration, and issue tracking tools. Users can apply pre-made workflow templates or create their own using a drag-and-drop builder to automate issue life cycles.

Teams can create a knowledge base to store information and share it with customers or among themselves. Users can also tag other team members in articles to involve them in discussions or correct information. The YouTrack bug-tracking tool includes built-in time-tracking features to monitor the time spent on issues, subtasks, and more.

Features:

• Workflows and approvals
• Triggers and automations
• Reporting and analytics
• Time tracking
• Knowledge base

Pricing: Plans start at $3.67 per user/month, billed annually. A free plan is available.

6. Asana

Best for: Project visualization

Asana is a project management tool with marketing, operations, IT, and product department features. With it, teams can manage tasks, engage in automation, monitor resource management, and more.

The product’s capabilities focus more on the IT side of issue tracking. Teams can use one of Asana’s bug tracking templates to get started. From there, organizations can customize the template with custom fields so employees and customers can input all the relevant information they need. Beyond that, businesses can monitor issue tracking performance through reporting and analytics dashboards, team project status updates, and project views. The latter allows teams to organize and visualize work as a Kanban board, list, timeline, calendar, or Gantt chart.

Features:

• Workflow automation
• Project views
• Mobile app
• Integrations
• Custom fields

Pricing: Plans start at $10.99 per user/month, billed annually. A free plan is available.

Learn more: Discover how Asana integrates with Zendesk.

7. Monday.com

Best for: Project management

Monday.com is a work management platform that helps teams visualize workflows for project management, marketing, sales, IT, and operations use cases. Its subproduct, Monday Dev, offers issue tracking.

With Monday Dev, internal teams can manage the product development process from initial strategy to launch. During sprints, managers can create new entries for known bugs, assign them to team members, and monitor progress as the issue gets resolved. Beyond that, the wider monday.com platform offers dashboards and reporting to monitor KPIs and bug tracking, workflow automation to reduce repetitive tasks, and AI features that can help teams summarize and improve project management tasks.

Features:

• Analytics dashboard
• Workflow automation
• AI summarization
• Integrations
• Timeline and Gantt chart views

Pricing: Plans start at $9 per seat/month, billed annually. A free plan is available.

Learn more: Discover how monday.com integrates with Zendesk.

8. ClickUp

Best for: Sprint management

ClickUp is a project management and productivity tool with features for marketing, sales, HR, and project management teams. For issue and bug tracking applications, it has automations for sprint management and sprint points so managers can monitor workflows during product development.

The tool has an issue tracker template that teams can use to add to their workflow. Organizations can customize the statuses, views, fields, and project management interface to best fit their team. With it, managers can create assignments for individual issues, assign work to team members, monitor progress, and set deadlines.

Features:

• Issue tracker templates
• Sprint management
• Time tracking
• Agile reporting and Kanban boards
• Collaborative docs

Pricing: Plans start at $7 per user/month, billed annually. A free plan is available.

Learn more: Discover how ClickUp integrates with Zendesk.

9. Bugzilla

Best for: Free-to-use software development

Bugzilla is a product that helps teams plan, organize, and release software. It is a free-to-use, open-platform software with issue tracking, reporting, and workflow management features.

Bug lists give teams a unified view of all known issues, which users can format in HTML, Atom, iCalendar, CSV, and XML. Reporting features help businesses manage bugs over time, while duplicate bug detection can alert team members if they are trying to document an already established bug. Managers can create custom workflows to help teams stay on track and run sanity checks that check for database inconsistencies.

Features:

• Reporting
• Time tracking
• Sanity checks
• Custom workflows
• Bug lists in multiple formats

Pricing: Free.

10. Notion

Best for: Workspace management

Notion is a workspace management tool that helps teams collaborate on projects and documents. Its features allow businesses to create internal knowledge bases, manage projects, and organize employee calendars.

Notion’s issue tracking starts on the Tasks page. From here, businesses can create project management workflows, monitor team progress, and track issues like product bugs or customer service inquiries. Managers can modify the interface to take an Agile or Kanban approach and customize the process to assign tasks and implement deadlines.

Features:

• Workflow automations
• Charts and dashboards
• Agile project management
• Custom project views
• To-do lists

Pricing: Plans start at $10 per seat/month, billed annually. A free plan is available.

Learn more: Discover how Notion integrates with Zendesk.

Issue management software can bring several benefits to your organization. Read on to discover some of the most important.

Increased productivity

Issue tracking software enhances productivity by expediting the resolution process in several ways:

1. AI-powered automation: Intelligent bots, such as Zendesk AI agents, can autonomously answer questions and resolve complex issues in multiple languages around the clock. This automation ensures faster ticket resolutions, even during peak times.
2. Self-service support: Tools like self-service portals and AI-powered knowledge bases empower users to resolve their own issues, freeing up your issue tracking teams to focus on more complex tasks.
3. Intelligent ticket routing: AI can tag and direct issues to the appropriate teams based on intent, sentiment, and language, reducing your team's manual workload and ensuring that issues are addressed by the right people promptly.

Overall, the right issue management software can boost agent productivity and deliver more effective service to end users.

Better collaboration

Issue tracking software fosters collaboration by centralizing communication and creating a shared understanding of tasks. Team members know which support tickets have been assigned to whom and their progress, so nothing falls through the cracks.

Communication tools also make it easier for teams to work together on tasks by discussing issues and sharing files. This transparency promotes teamwork, encourages collective problem-solving, and ultimately leads to more efficient and successful project completion.

Faster gap and inefficiency detection

Customer service quality assurance (QA) tools significantly improve efficiency by automating the QA process and providing in-depth analysis of service interactions. These tools can automatically score 100 percent of service interactions, ensuring consistent evaluation standards. Doing so helps identify patterns and trends in service quality, highlighting areas that consistently perform well and those needing improvement.

AI-powered reporting generates actionable suggestions based on this analysis, offering concrete steps to enhance service delivery. This allows teams to quickly address issues, implement best practices, and continuously refine their processes, improving operational efficiency.

Automated workflows

Automated workflows in issue tracking software offer teams numerous benefits by streamlining and standardizing the issue resolution process. By automating repetitive tasks like issue routing, notification triggers, and status updates, teams free up valuable time for focusing on complex problem-solving.

With workflow automation software like Zendesk, you can create object triggers that extend your workflows past tickets to automate actions that affect products, contracts, and more. This not only improves productivity but also minimizes human error and ensures consistency.

Now that we’ve covered a few issue tracking software options and the benefits they can bring your organization, let’s dive into a brief example:

1. Issue reporting: A customer started a ticket with a business’ AI agent reporting that they couldn’t complete a purchase and received an error message.
2. Categorization, prioritization, and assignment: The AI agent determined the issue required human agent intervention. The bot gathered all the necessary information on the customer’s problem and automatically assigned it to the appropriate support agent. It then transferred the ticket to the agent with the full context of the situation.
3. Tracking and monitoring: The agent reviewed the ticket and investigated the issue while keeping the customer updated. Internally, the support team collaborated with other departments through direct messages or side conversations, added relevant notes, and updated the ticket where needed.
4. Resolution and closure: After investigating the issue, the support team determined that there was a temporary glitch in the payment processing system. They resolved the issue and contacted the customer to inform them they had fixed it. They also apologized for any inconvenience. The ticket was then closed, and the solution was documented in the ticketing system for future reference.

The above example was from the perspective of a customer service team, but a similar framework would apply to internal teams fixing a product glitch.

When choosing issue tracking software, keep the following considerations in mind:

• Prioritize AI and automation: Enhance efficiency by automating responses to common issues, optimizing resolution workflows, and empowering your service team with real-time insights and suggestions. Not all AI tools are created equal; choose solutions specifically designed for issue resolution to start reaping the benefits of AI from day one.
• Look for a low total cost of ownership (TCO): While free help desk ticketing systems and free trouble ticket software exist, they often lack essential features needed as your business grows, leading to potential switching costs. Be mindful of hidden fees, such as endless add-ons or technical requirements for setup and maintenance. For instance, with Zendesk, you can get started without needing a team of developers, saving you time and money.
• Assess the system’s time to value (TTV) and adaptability: The quicker you can deploy your issue tracker, the sooner it can add value to your company. Opting for an out-of-the-box solution like Zendesk, which is quick to set up and easy to customize, enables your team to get started rapidly and make necessary adjustments on the fly, keeping pace with your business needs.
• Make sure it’s easy to use yet scalable: The shorter the system's learning curve, the faster users of all skill levels can adopt it into their processes. This also contributes to its scalability by allowing your team to accomplish more without adding more agents as the volume of requests grows.
• Prioritize security: Protect sensitive company and customer information by ensuring you control user access and encrypt data to maintain confidentiality.

Selecting an issue tracking system that checks these boxes can make managing issues from both customers and employees easier.