Best Bug Tracking Tools Shortlist
Here are the top 10 bug tracking tools I’d like to highlight out of the 26 I cover in this article:
The best bug tracking tools are vital for any QA team's success. They enable software testers and developers to identify and fix bugs before they reach users, ensuring the best possible customer experience.
Bug tracking tools offer a centralized location to record bugs, prioritize severity, and schedule resolution within a test management period. With a single view of all defects, QA teams can track bug trends and reference this information to improve the quality of future products.
With so many different bug trackers on the market, it can be difficult to know which one is right for you. This article will provide an overview of the best bug tracking tools available today. I'll cover features, pricing, and usability to help you decide what suits your needs best.
What are Bug Tracking Tools?
Bug tracking software is a tool used by software development teams to identify, track, and manage bugs and issues in their software. It provides a systematic approach to bug management, allowing developers to prioritize and resolve issues efficiently.
Bug tracking software typically includes features such as bug reporting, issue tracking, collaboration, metrics and reporting, and integration with other tools in the software development process. It helps to improve collaboration, speed up bug resolution, enhance quality assurance, increase transparency, and provide better reporting.
Overviews of The Best Bug Tracking Tool Solutions
Here’s a brief description of each bug tracking app to showcase their best use cases, some noteworthy features, and screenshots to give a snapshot of the user interface.
New Relic
Best bug tracking within a complete observability platform
New Relic is an all-in-one observability platform that allows you to track the health of your entire stack. You get security, issues, and error tracking all in the same place, and you can monitor your software across multiple operating systems.
Health insights are provided at every stage of development and every part of your stack in the platform's dashboard. It also gives you code-level insights to find the root cause of errors, anomalies, and bugs. Key transactions are tracked, browsing is monitored, and the system can also perform synthetic checks in APM.
Tracking your entire stack in one place allows you to spot interrelated issues and dependencies. This means you can have a broader context around errors, and take a more holistic approach to managing them.
The software integrates with over 500 apps including AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, Jenkins, CircleCI, Travis CI, and Slack. It also has an API you can use to build custom integrations.
Pricing starts at $49/user/month, and a free version is available with feature limitations.
BugHerd
Best bug tracking software for streamlining website testing and development
BugHerd is a bug tracking tool that enables users to identify bugs and pin feedback directly to web pages. Whether an expert tester or a non-technical stakeholder, users can easily mark up web page elements with a simple point-and-click. Feedback is sent directly to Kanban-style task boards where developers can quickly act on bugs.
Visual feedback is the central feature of BugHerd. Users can pinpoint the exact location of bugs with the software’s drawing and tagging tools. QA and UAT feedback includes a screenshot or video, annotation, and metadata.
BugHerd supports integrations with Slack, GitHub, and WordPress. With the help of integration platforms like Zapier and Integromat, you can connect BugHerd to thousands of other tools.
Subscriptions start at $39 per month. Businesses can try BugHerd free for 14 days.
GitHub
Best free, lightweight bug tracking software
GitHub Issues is a bug tracking system available in all GitHub source code repositories. In addition to issue management, development teams can use GitHub to host discussions, process internal customer support requests, and submit documentation feedback. The tool’s template builder is a valuable feature for QA teams to set up standard forms for bug reporting and product feature requests.
QA teams can also share contributing guidelines that communicate their bug reporting workflow to stakeholders. You can easily share contributing guidelines by creating a document called CONTRIBUTING.md in the root of your GitHub repository. When a reporter creates a new issue, the system will deploy a pop-up message that directs them to the workflow document.
GitHub integrates with desktop graphical user interface (GUI) tools, including Atom and GitKraken, and project management systems.
A free basic plan is available for individuals and businesses. Paid plans start at $4/user/month to access advanced features.
zipBoard
Best bug tracking software for digital product teams
zipBoard is an easy-to-use bug tracking tool that helps you produce visual bug reports, collect user feedback, and measure how well you’re responding to bug reports over time. It's great for digital product agencies and software development teams, but it can be used on a variety of digital products—for example, you can use it in eLearning to get feedback from users taking your courses.
zipBoard’s core feature is the visual bug reporting feature, which helps capture bugs with screenshots and contextual information, such as on which browser or device the bug was found. This feature also supports video feedback and gives users the ability to annotate with additional context. There's a user feedback (user testing) feature to allow users to flag problems, plus features to help you manage the work—track performance and time, and view bugs in Kanban or list views.
Pricing is available upon request, and they offer a 15-day free trial.
aqua ALM
Best bug tracking software with scalable test coverage
Aqua ALM provides smart defect and bug tracking software that’s specifically tailored for all QA requirements. It is designed to improve data retention, minimize redundant actions, enhance visibility through a centralized testing hub and ensure quick and efficient resolution of uncovered defects and reported bugs. This bug tracking tool can benefit all user types, including project managers, developers, testers and even upper management.
Aqua ALM’s bug tracking software is equipped with features like scalable test coverage, which means QA specialists, testers and developers can use the tool effectively for testing products regardless of size or scale. Its smooth bug reporting function allows anyone to easily report bugs that might discover while testing the product with just a few clicks. They can add screenshots and detailed reproduction steps to the bug report. Automated testing options are available, which when implemented correctly can help ensure a more robust automated QA process.
The bug tracking software is equipped with reporting functionality that allows you to generate detailed reports on going testing activities. It enables both low-level and high-level overviews, including a few visualizations. As for the pricing, the bug tracking tool is included in the Aqua Cloud plan, which starts at €39 per user/month. The package supports more than 10 integrations with other applications such as Jira, PowerShell, SoapUI, etc.
LogRocket
Best for tracking bugs affecting front-end software development
LogRocket specializes in tracking defects that occur on the front-end. QA teams can review stack traces, Javascript errors, and console logs alongside session replays to pinpoint the root cause of defects and understand how they affect end-users. LogRocket reports quantify various aspects of customer engagement, like conversions and event interactions, enabling you to prioritize issues hindering product usage.
The platform’s front-end performance monitoring features track CPU and memory usage, page load times, and network speeds. Monitoring can take place at the individual user level or holistically. LogRocket also offers custom metrics that you can tailor to your product’s specific KPIs.
Integrations with Airbrake, Bugsnag, Google Analytics, and other product support and analytics tools are supported.
Pricing varies based on the number of monthly sessions your website receives. Paid subscriptions start at $99/month. Businesses can also start with a free 14-day trial.
BugHost
Best bug tracking software with auditing
BugHost is an easy-to-use bug tracking and project management company that operates globally, servicing thousands of companies in all major industrial sectors. This fully-featured bug software is designed for organizations of all sizes, ranging from SMBs to large-scale enterprises. Its online bug system features workflow management amongst other functionality like issue tracking, ticket management, backlog, and release management.
BugHost is equipped with an audit trail feature capable of marking project-wide defects instantaneously, along with providing reports on assigned bugs.BugHost provides real-time visibility with its dashboard for a comprehensive overview of both past and ongoing projects. Report and export features are available to extract data in CSV and XML formats. Pre-defined reports are also available with customizable search functionality. However, the end-to-end solution it offers is only compatible with the Windows operating system.
BugHost offers a 30-day free trial. It has five pricing plans, namely, Startup ($29 per month), Team ($59 per month), Syndicate ($99 per month), Corporate ($159 per month), and Enterprise (starting from $229 per month).
Katalon TestOps
Best bug tracking software with out-of-box CI/CD pipeline reports
Katalon TestOps is a cloud-based test planning, management, and execution tool with robust analytics capabilities. TestOps enables teams to minimize manual processes in test deployment, tool integration, and maintenance, making debugging and product delivery more efficient. Features like automatic load balancing and parallel execution help eliminate redundancies in test execution, leaving more time to fine-tune product quality.
Development teams can make informed product decisions based on AI-powered test reports and data visualizations. Real-time data tracking helps QA testers quickly detect bugs and provide instant feedback on code and test scripts. To maintain complete control of the CI/CD pipeline, stakeholders can receive custom email alerts based on predefined data thresholds.
TestOps easily integrates with testing frameworks like Mocha and JUnit with no coding required. QA teams can also sync with test environments like CircleCI and Kubernetes.
TestOps is free for up to 2,000 test executions per month. Paid subscriptions start at $102/month with a free trial available.
Bugzilla
Best open source bug tracking software
World leaders in technology, including Mozilla, trust Bugzilla to provide defect tracking, security, and workflow management for highly complex software environments. Installation isn’t complicated and can be performed on various operating systems, including Windows, Mac, and Linux. Administrators can also implement access controls for different departments within an organization.
Bugzilla is able to offer a large number of features and remain free of cost for all users. Its bug search capabilities range from a basic Google-like search to a more advanced system able to run time-based searches and other precise queries. Users can receive bug lists in multiple formats when searching, including CSV for importing into spreadsheets and printable reports containing each bug’s information.
Bugzilla integrates with Bonsai, CVS, Subversion, and Tinderbox.
Bird Eats Bug
Best Chrome browser extension for bug tracking
Bird Eats Bug makes it easy for software development teams to screen record defects with minimal effort from a Chrome browser. The tool is a self-serve codeless solution perfect for non-technical stakeholders. Once you spot a bug, hit record and the system will capture technical information in the background.
QA testers can auto-include supporting information like steps to reproduce bugs and technical logs in all defect reports. Equipped with this information, developers can get to the root of issues and debug faster.
Bird Eats Bug supports integrations with various tools, including Jira, Slack, GitHub, and Linear.
Paid plans start at $40/month for five users when billed annually, and custom pricing is available upon request.
The Best Bug Tracking Software In 2023 Summary
Tool | Free Option | Price | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | New Relic Best bug tracking within a complete observability platform | Free version available | From $49/user/month | Visit Website |
2 | BugHerd Best bug tracking software for streamlining website testing and development | 14-day free trial | From $39/month | Visit Website |
3 | GitHub Best free, lightweight bug tracking software | Free plan available | Starts from $3.67/user/month | Visit Website |
4 | zipBoard Best bug tracking software for digital product teams | 15-day free trial | Pricing available upon request | Visit Website |
5 | aqua ALM Best bug tracking software with scalable test coverage | 30-day free trial | From $38/month | Visit Website |
6 | LogRocket Best for tracking bugs affecting front-end software development | 14-day free trial | $99/month | Visit Website |
7 | BugHost Best bug tracking software with auditing | 30-day free trial | $29/month | Visit Website |
8 | Katalon TestOps Best bug tracking software with out-of-box CI/CD pipeline reports | Free plan + free trial available | $102/month | Visit Website |
9 | Bugzilla Best open source bug tracking software | Not available | Free to use | Visit Website |
10 | Bird Eats Bug Best Chrome browser extension for bug tracking | No free trial available | $40/month for five users, billed annually | Visit Website |
Other Bug Tracking Software
Here are a few more bug tracking tools that didn’t make the top list.
- The Bug Genie
Best enterprise-level bug tracking & project management
- ClickUp
Best bug tracking software for customizability
- monday.com
Best bug tracking templates & tracking
- QA Wolf
Best bug tracking outsourcing option
- Jira Software
Best bug tracking software for Agile development
- Noibu
Best for its intelligent error collection
- Kualitee
Best bug tracking software for ease-of-use
- Backlog
Issue tracker with a sleek user interface that makes implementation and daily bug tracking straightforward
- Airbrake
Bug reporting solution for small to mid-sized teams
- Redmine
Open-source project management software tool with cross-platform and cross-database support for its bugs tracking tool
- Userback
Delivers bug reports with detailed client-side errors and log information captured in real-time
- Mantis Bug Tracker
open source bug tracking solution Built on PHP and supports Linux, Windows, and macOS
- Marker.io
Visual defect tracking tool that allows users to identify, annotate, and report bugs with just a few clicks
- SpiraTeam
End-to-end bugs tracking tool that manages the entire software testing lifecycle
- Mantis
Free and open-source bug tracking tool with additional generic issue tracking and project management configurations
- Zoho Bug Tracker
Submit, track, and fix bugs with the help of automation and numerous software customizations
- Trac
Wiki and issue tracking system offering minimalist approach to software project managemen
How I Selected the Best Bug Tracking Tools
If you're wondering how I selected the best bug tracking tools, here's where I'll break it all down for you. First of all, I started with bug tracking tools that have high user reviews and satisfaction ratings. Then, using my experience in QA, I discerned what key criteria were most important for bug tracking tools and compared how each of them stacked up against the rest.
I empathize with how long it takes to source the right software for a job. I do this work so that you don't have to. I've been using and reviewing QA software for years so you can trust me to do the heavy lifting and compile all the facts you need to make your final decision.
Selection Criteria
After careful consideration, I've determined that these are the most important criteria when selecting the best bug tracking tools. Here's a brief list outlining the whats and whys of my selection.
User Interface (UI)
The best bug tracking tools offer a clean, user-friendly interface that enables users to navigate comfortably. High-quality UI reduces the time it takes to onboard new users and track issues affecting your product.
Usability
The QA process involves stakeholders with different levels of technical skill. Good usability helps everyone involved in software development collaborate within a bug tracking system easily.
Integrations
An effective bug tracking system integrates with your existing software ecosystem. The platforms included on this list can integrate with widely used project management apps, testing frameworks, and CI/CD tools.
Pricing
The range of functionality offered by a bug tracking tool should reflect its cost. Ensure your software is worth the expense.
People Also Ask
I wanted to get a jump on a few common questions that are top of mind as I write this article. Here are the most frequently asked questions related to bug tracking tools to help get you started.
What is a bug in software?
What are the benefits of bug tracking tools?
What are key features of bug tracking tools?
What other bug and issue management resources do you need to have?
Don't Let the Bugs Fester
Effective bug tracking software helps development teams build better products, which leads to more satisfied customers. With the top ten list, you can find a tool that fits your team's skill level and workflow needs.
Dive into more defect tracking tools on our website and sign up for The QA Lead newsletter to stay up to date on the latest software testing tools and practices.
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