2019, a Wednesday evening. Four browser tabs open: Redmine for tickets, a plugin for time tracking, a spreadsheet for capacity planning, and a separate tool for invoicing. One project, four systems. I knew what each tool was telling me. I didn't know whether the project was profitable.

Redmine was one of our biggest inspirations. And that's exactly why we built something of our own.

Redmine as a ticket system — and why that's not enough

Redmine is underrated. Anyone who dismisses it as a dusty ticket system has never configured it properly. The plugin system is radically open, custom fields cover everything, and your data stays on your server, in your database. At a time when SaaS vendors raise prices by 20–30% every year, that's no small argument.

Over 8,000 companies run Redmine in production. Enlyft puts its market share at roughly 6% in project portfolio management. For an open-source project with zero marketing budget: remarkable.

But that's also the problem. Redmine is, at its core, a ticket system — an excellent one, but a ticket system nonetheless. Time tracking? Plugin. Resource planning? Plugin. Invoicing? External tool. Capacity overview? Spreadsheet.

For dev teams tracking bugs and planning features, that works. But agencies and IT service providers don't live off tickets. They live off client projects that need to be profitable. And that's where the Redmine ticket system becomes a problem: the one piece of information you need most — "Is this project making money?" — doesn't exist in any of the plugins. You'd have to export time data, multiply by hourly rates, compare against budget, and paste the result into a spreadsheet. Every month. For every project.

Nobody does that. So you fly blind — and wonder about the margins at the end of the quarter.

Redmine vs. Jira — and why neither fits the service business

In practice, Redmine and Jira represent two poles: open source vs. enterprise. Flexible vs. standardized. Self-hosted vs. cloud.

Since Atlassian ended Jira Server support in February 2024, thousands of teams face a decision. Jira Data Center — the on-premise option — is winding down: no new features after March 2026, full end-of-life by 2029. At starting prices of $51,000 per year for 500 users and a 30% price increase in early 2025, that's getting hard to justify for many service firms.

Redmine stays on the table as an alternative. But the real point is this: both tools — Redmine and Jira — are project management and ticketing tools. They show you which tasks are open. They don't show you whether your team is fully utilized next week, whether the client was invoiced correctly, or whether the project that's "going well" is actually costing you margin.

For IT service providers, that's the blind spot.

The current Jira migration wave affects Redmine teams indirectly too. Companies that used Jira on-premise and are now looking for alternatives often land on Redmine — only to discover the same limitations. Open source solves the hosting problem. It doesn't solve the visibility problem.

What service businesses actually need: PSA, not just PM

There's a software category that addresses exactly this blind spot: PSA software — Professional Services Automation. The global PSA market reached over $13 billion in 2024 and is growing at nearly 15% annually (Grand View Research, 2024). This is not a niche topic.

PSA means: project management, time tracking, resource planning, and billing in one system. Not four tools held together by plugins, Zapier, and good intentions — but a single data layer where hours, budgets, and utilization come together.

In practice: a project manager opens a dashboard in the morning and sees not just open tickets, but also that developer A is only 40% booked next week, that project B will exceed its budgeted hours in three days, and that client C hasn't received an invoice in six weeks. That's PSA. Everything else is project management with blinders on.

Internationally, there are established PSA players. In the DACH region? Surprisingly few. Most agencies and IT service providers search for "project management" and end up with tools that cover exactly half of what they need.

Leadtime started as a Redmine alternative — and became a PSA platform for service businesses. Projects, time, utilization, billing: one interface, one data layer. Not because we're smarter than the Redmine team, but because we felt the gaps that a pure ticket system can't close.

Easy Redmine, Redmine, Leadtime — an honest comparison

If you're searching for a Redmine alternative, you'll quickly find Easy Redmine — a commercial layer on top of the Redmine core. The obvious question: upgrade or start fresh?

Easy Redmine stays true to the Redmine ecosystem: same core, better interface, more plugins out of the box. That's a valid approach — especially for teams that don't want to give up their existing Redmine instance and its data.

Leadtime takes a different path. No Redmine fork, no plugin stack, but an independent system with PSA DNA. Time tracking, billing, and resource planning aren't extensions — they're part of the architecture.

The difference doesn't show in the feature list — it shows in the workday. Example: Friday afternoon, month-end close. With Redmine, you export time data, open a spreadsheet, calculate rates against budgets manually. With Leadtime, you open the project dashboard — margins, tracked vs. budgeted hours, open invoice items. Everything there, in real time, no export needed.

Easy Redmine gets you halfway there: better UI, built-in time tracking. But billing and resource planning are still missing. If you need PSA, a Redmine upgrade won't get you there.

Project management for service businesses — why context matters

Agencies and IT service providers are not product companies. The daily reality is client projects with shifting teams, time & material next to fixed price, and the question that always arrives too late at the end of the month: are we actually making money on this client?

Generic PM tools and ticket systems don't answer that question. They're built for product teams planning sprints and grooming backlogs. Project management for service businesses needs a different lens — one that connects projects, people, and money.

We built Leadtime for exactly this. Not as a theoretical concept, but because we couldn't answer that question ourselves for years — first with spreadsheets, then with Redmine, then with half a dozen tools in parallel. At some point it was clear: the answer isn't a better plugin. The answer is a different system.

From Redmine to Leadtime — the migration path

Switching systems is never trivial. Projects are running, data lives in the old instance, the team has built habits around existing workflows. Coming from Redmine, you don't want a revolution — you want a transition that works.

That's why we offer a guided migration path: data import from Redmine, mapping of existing workflows, and a team that walks you through the switch. Not because the process is particularly complex, but because we know what it feels like to leave behind a Redmine instance you've grown over years.

The honest recommendation: if you use Redmine purely as a ticket system and you're happy with it, you don't need Leadtime. But if you've noticed that the spreadsheet next to Redmine keeps gaining columns every quarter — take a look at what an integrated PSA solution does to your day.

We built Leadtime because we loved Redmine — but eventually needed more than a ticket system with plugins. If that sounds familiar: leadtime.de shows what happens when you cross Redmine DNA with PSA thinking.