Redmine was one of our biggest inspirations. And yet we built something of our own.

That sounds ungrateful. It isn't. Redmine showed me what issue tracking can look like when you take it seriously. Flexible, open, no vendor lock-in. Over 11,000 companies worldwide use it — according to Enlyft, Redmine holds roughly 6% market share in project management software. For an open-source tool that never had a marketing budget: remarkable.

But at some point I was sitting in front of my own Redmine instance one evening, thinking: Why do I need a plugin for time tracking, a second tool for invoicing, and a spreadsheet for capacity planning? That was 2019. Today, Leadtime is the answer to that exact question.

What Redmine got right (and still does)

Redmine is underrated. Anyone who dismisses it as "just an old ticket system" has never actually used it.

The plugin system is radically open. Custom fields for everything. Workflows you build yourself. And the best part: no vendor telling you how to run your projects. For teams that know exactly what they need and have the technical chops to set it up — there's very little that beats it.

There's more: your data belongs to you. Actually belongs to you. On your server, in your database. At a time when SaaS vendors raise prices by 20-30% annually, that's an argument worth taking seriously.

Over 500,000 downloads and an active community spanning nearly two decades — Redmine has earned its respect.

Where Redmine hits its limits — an honest look

We didn't read about these limits in a blog post. We felt them.

The UI dates back to an era when web apps were still laid out with HTML tables. That's not an exaggeration — the basic interface structure hasn't meaningfully changed since 2006. For developers, no big deal. For a project manager who wants a quick overview of team utilization first thing in the morning: a barrier.

The maintenance burden weighs heavier. Self-hosting Redmine means you need someone who can handle Ruby on Rails, the database, and the server. According to industry analyses — including research from Forrester — system administrators spend 20-30% of their working time on maintenance and updates for self-hosted software. In a 15-person agency, that translates to your senior developer spending one day per week keeping infrastructure running instead of working on client projects.

What's often overlooked: the total cost of ownership for self-hosted software can run up to 50% higher than comparable SaaS products, according to Gartner and Forrester — once you honestly factor in server costs, security patches, backups, and the internal time investment. Most people don't.

And then the workflow gaps. Redmine handles project management and issue tracking. Full stop. Time tracking? Plugin. Resource planning? Third tool. Generating invoices from time data? Fourth tool. The integration between these worlds falls on you. It's reminiscent of the early days of Linux servers in enterprise: technically superior, but the overhead of operations and integration ate up the cost advantage. In project management software, we're watching the same shift — from open source to managed SaaS.

Easy Redmine and the "plugin stack" approach

There's a way to upgrade Redmine without switching entirely. Easy Redmine is the most well-known commercial distribution — over 1,000 customers across 80 countries use it. The idea: take the Redmine core and enhance it with professional plugins for time tracking, CRM, and resource planning.

The approach has its appeal. You stay in the Redmine ecosystem, keep your data and workflows. Costs run between €2,999 and €4,188 per year for 100 users, depending on the package.

But it remains a plugin stack on a core built in a different era. Like a timber-frame house where you install a modern kitchen: it works, but the underlying structure still defines what's possible. The foundation — Rails monolith, legacy UI architecture, no native API-first strategy — can't be recast through plugins.

For teams that primarily need issue tracking and want to keep their Redmine knowledge, this may be enough. For an agency that needs time tracking, controlling, and invoicing in one system, probably not.

What a real Redmine alternative needs to deliver

When you're evaluating a Redmine alternative, ask yourself one question: what exactly does Redmine solve for you today — and what are the five tools around it solving?

Most agencies and IT service providers we know need: project management with time tracking in one system. Capacity planning that shows who's available next week — not who was busy last month. Controlling that automatically calculates whether a project is making or burning money. And invoicing that turns logged hours into invoices without someone spending three hours in Excel.

Something that often gets lost in the conversation: the demand for a modern interface isn't a luxury. A project manager who wants to see team utilization in five minutes doesn't need a system that looks like a database frontend from 2006. That doesn't mean substance matters less — but UX determines whether a tool actually gets used daily or becomes a chore people avoid.

The open-source project management market is projected to reach $3.2 billion by 2031. The demand is real. But the question isn't "open source or not?" — it's whether a single tool can cover the entire workflow.

If you honestly write down which tools you're running in parallel today, that's often the best foundation for the decision.

Inspired by Redmine, built for agencies

I don't say this lightly: Leadtime exists because Redmine wasn't enough.

Not because Redmine is bad. But because as the founder of an IT agency, I experienced every day how much time gets lost between systems. Create a ticket in Redmine, log time in the plugin, calculate profitability in Excel, write the invoice in accounting software. Four systems, four data silos, zero real-time visibility.

What we kept from Redmine: the respect for structured issue tracking. Custom fields. The idea that a system adapts to your team, not the other way around.

What we built from scratch: everything else. Time tracking that flows directly into invoices. Capacity planning that shows who'll be overloaded two weeks from now. A controlling dashboard that calculates contribution margins per project in real time. Not as a plugin stack, but as one system designed for this from day one.

At $29 per user on an annual plan. No server setup. No Ruby admin.

Leadtime vs. Redmine — Feature comparison

Honesty matters here: if you need maximum customizability and self-hosting, Redmine remains the right choice. Leadtime is built for teams that want a ready-made system connecting IT project management, time tracking, and controlling — without the tinkering.

Switching without the pain — Leadtime's migration service

The biggest hurdle when moving from Redmine isn't the software. It's the data.

Years of projects, tickets, time entries — nobody wants to lose that. And nobody wants to spend three weeks exporting and transforming CSVs.

That's why we offer a dedicated migration service. No self-service import where you're on your own. A guided move: we take your Redmine data — projects, tickets, time entries, custom fields — and transfer them to Leadtime. Your team doesn't start from zero; it starts where it left off.

In concrete terms: we export the Redmine database, map your custom fields to Leadtime fields, and import the histories so your existing project reporting continues seamlessly. No cold start, no data loss, no three-month parallel operation.

This typically takes one week. Not three months.

When switching makes sense

If your team is happy with Redmine and maintenance isn't an issue — stay with it. Seriously. You don't replace a working system on principle.

But if you notice you're spending more time stitching tools together than on actual project management. If you don't know which project is making money and which is burning it. If your best developer is maintaining servers instead of writing code — then it's worth looking at a Redmine alternative that covers the entire agency workflow in one system.

We built Leadtime because we were standing at exactly that point. Not because we think Redmine is bad — but because we needed something that thinks beyond a ticket system.

Try it free — and if you're coming from Redmine, our migration team will help with the move.