Redmine Review | PCMag

Redmine is a unique, free, open-source application in the project management space, and to be frank, it's not for everyone. While many of the best project management apps are online and cloud-based, making them easy for any business owner or project lead to set up and use, Redmine isn't so simple. It requires that you install and maintain it, so you need someone on staff who can do that. You can set it up any way you want, provided someone on your team knows how to work with an application written using the Ruby on Rails framework. Additionally, its feature set makes it more appropriate for tracking issues and bugs than managing projects of all stripes. Redmine is an excellent platform for that use, especially because you can customize it to your needs.

If your team is not so technically minded, however, you'd be better off investing in a project management app that works out of the box. Our top pick for beginners is GanttPro. For small teams on a budget and growing teams, we recommend Zoho Projects. For small- to mid-sized teams handling client work, we recommend Teamwork. All three are Editors' Choice winners.

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Redmine Is Free

Redmine is open-source and 100 percent free. A community of volunteers maintains the project, which was started in the mid-2000s. There are plug-ins for Redmine, which you can use to add specific features and services, but there are no paid options for it. If the plug-ins aren't enough, you can purchase entire third-party apps that add on to Redmine's capabilities and improve its interface. For example, an app called Easy Redmine makes Redmine slicker looking and includes its own plug-ins that you can buy, such as tools for resource management, finance management, and agile workflows.

While you'll never pay a bill to use Redmine, you will expend resources to install, customize, update, and otherwise maintain the app. Additionally, because you aren't paying a company for a service, there's no dedicated line of support to help you if something goes wrong. With other project management apps, the highest tiers of service usually come with a dedicated point of contact in the company's support team or some other support benefits, such as training. You don't get any of that with Redmine.

A community of Redmine users exists to discuss the software online freely and openly, but that's a far cry from being able to send a specific support question to a group of people who are being paid to help you.

You can get a feel for the app by going to the online demo version of Redmine. There, you can create an account and set up demo projects to play with and see what features come included. The demo version is what we used to test the service.

Redmine isn't the only project management app that's free. You can get a free account with Zoho Projects, Teamwork (two Editors' Choice winners), Wrike, TeamGantt, and others. These free accounts all come with some kind of restrictions, however, such as limiting the number of projects you can manage or disabling more advanced features.

If you're willing to pay for a project management app, how much you'll spend depends on the size of your team and what tier of service you need. Small businesses can get away with paying less than $10 per person per month. Large teams that need a high-end product should plan to pay $45 per person per month or more for the most sophisticated project management tool. In between those two ends of the spectrum lies a wide middle ground of project management apps that often come with at least one special or unique feature, such as a billing and invoicing (Paymo), an included proofing process (ProofHub), or the ability to create automations (Smartsheets). Those apps typically cost in the range of $20–$30 per person per month.

Getting Started With Redmine

Most project management apps are online and cloud-based. In other words, you go to a website and create an account, then you invite your teammates to join you via a special URL. It's the same as using any other web-based account.

Redmine doesn't work that way. Instead, you first install it—and it's not as simple as downloading an app from an app store or website and double-clicking it. There's a five-page document with instructions for setting up Redmine. To understand the instructions, you need to have some familiarity with Debian, MySQL, Apache, and Linux. If you're feeling queasy from those last few words, Redmine is not for you.

If you're still with me, then you should know that Redmine is written using the Ruby on Rails framework. It's a web-based, cross-platform, and cross-database application. As of this writing, you can set it up in 49 different languages, including different dialects of English and Spanish.

Though Redmine is a web-based app, how you choose to make it accessible to your team is up to you. You can install it on an intranet, for example, making it only available to people who are on the same network where the app lives. Or you can set it up to make it accessible from any web browser, anywhere.

If the team that will be using Redmine consists entirely of programmers, they'll probably be fine following the documentation. Still, because it's community supported, Redmine's instructions have some gaps. For example, as of this writing, a five-step Getting Started guide says “TBD” for steps three, four, and five, and it's been that way for more than a year. Be prepared to roll with the punches.

Features and Interface

Redmine can be configured as a traditional project management app, but in its default configuration, it's focused on bug-tracking and issue management. How is that different from project management?

Project management apps are built to accommodate all kinds of projects, from building a rocket to designing a website. They give you tools for choosing a start date and end date for the project, creating milestones your team needs to hit along the way to stay on track, and managing all the tasks that need to get done in between. You could use Redmine to organize and track all the steps needed to build a rocket, but it might not be the most convenient tool for this job.

In building a rocket, for example, you might have dozens of teams who deal with different kinds of information, from architectural drawings to elaborate math equations. Does Redmine have tools for easily sharing and discussing all these different assets? Not really. Certainly you could customize Redmine to have more of the tools you need, but that requires someone on your team who knows how to do it. Customization also takes time.

What Redmine does have in its default configuration are tools designed to help programmers share and discuss code, as well as track bugs and issues, and handle feature requests. The app was built with that software development work in mind.

Redmine's interface doesn't have much personality or flourish, yet another aspect that you could customize. It's sparse and almost entirely text-based, but at least it's tidy.

Issues and Tasks

When you add a new issue or task, you choose whether to classify it as a bug, feature, or support request. You can add to it a subject (it's more like a name or title), description, status, priority, assignee, start date, due date, and estimated amount of time. If there is a parent tasktredm, you can associate it, as well. The parent task must already exist, however.

There's a percent complete field to update as you work on the task. File uploads are supported. You can also add “watchers,” which most other apps call followers. They're people who get updates about the issue even though they aren't assigned to complete it.

While Redmine doesn't include a time-tracking widget to record time on task as you work, it does allow you to enter a raw number indicating how long a task took to complete. You can compile these numbers into a report to bill clients or to get a sense of how long different tasks take, which over time can improve the accuracy of time estimates and project predictions.

Redmine includes different ways to view tasks once they're logged in the system. There's a calendar view, a task list view, and Gantt charts.

Wikis are a big part of Redmine's appeal. You get a wiki space for each project, where team members can add notes about the project, keep documentation, or simply have an ongoing discussion. The app also has spaces for uploading documents and files that are not necessarily attached to a specific issue.

Custom Integrations Only, No Mobile Apps

As with most aspects of Redmine, integrations are only available if you build them. There are none offered out of the box. You can integrate with Zapier, which is a tool that essentially connects apps for you, although setting up the Zapier integration requires an API key. That's not especially hard to do, but it's a few extra steps compared to what you would expect if you were paying for software.

The best project management apps typically offer a few key app integrations that you can set up in a few clicks. These often include storage services, such as Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, and Dropbox for attaching files, as well as popular business apps like Salesforce and Slack. Many project management apps connect to billing and invoicing software, like Xero, QuickBooks, and FreshBooks, making it easy to add up billable hours and shoot off an invoice to clients.

Mobile apps aren't included with Redmine either. If your team needs a project management app with mobile apps, all three of our Editors' Choice picks, Zoho Projects, Teamwork, and LiquidPlanner, have them.

An Open-Source App for Developers

If you're in the market for a project management app that you intend to use for bug tracking and you like working with open-source software, Redmine could be a great fit. You can customize it as much as you want by changing the interface, adding new features, and building integrations with other business tools.

That all takes time and effort, however, and it isn't an ideal tool for teams that don't have someone on staff to administer the app from a technical standpoint. A better approach for businesses who don't have the resources to deal with Redmine would be to pay a few dollars per person per month for a project management app that works exactly as you want it to off the shelf.

For such users, we have three Editors' Choice winners to recommend. One is Zoho Projects, which is wonderful for small teams on a budget as well as teams that are growing rapidly. GanttPro is our top pick for teams that have little to no experience with project management, as it's incredibly easy to use. Teamwork is our pick for small to medium sized organizations that focus primarily on client work, as it includes billing and invoicing tools, as well as other tools for working with clients.