Mainline

Mainline vs Jira

Does your team practice CI and CD? YES Is WIP limited to one story per person? YES Do you break work into thin, testable slices? YES Do you separate deploy from release? YES Do you estimate with story points? NO NO NO NO NO YES Lift your game, or use Jira. atlassian.com Sounds like you've earned better tooling.

Jira is a configurable workflow engine: it will model whatever process you have, including the ones that harm you. Mainline is one process built in - trunk-based development, continuous integration, continuous delivery - with no configuration mode where it becomes a Jira clone.

Mainline Jira
Primary unit of work User story on a story map Ticket in a workflow
Estimation model Lead-time distributions from your team's actual history Story points, t-shirt sizes, custom fields
Backlog None. A backlog is a landfill. First-class concept
People per story As many as are working on it. Solo, pair, or ensemble. One assignee. You cannot put a second person on a card.
What "done" means Released to users Configurable, usually a workflow column
Deploy / release lifecycle Deploy and release are separate events. A story cannot be released until it has been deployed. No native distinction. Can be modelled via custom workflow columns.
Who can see what Every view is the same view, including the manager's Per-role permissions, manager-specific reports
Per-developer metrics None. Surveillance is not a feature. Available via Atlassian Analytics and third-party add-ons
WIP enforcement One active story per person - enforced, not suggested Suggested via WIP limits in board settings
Pricing model Flat. Free for one person. $99 / 8 people. $179 / 16 people. Per seat. $7-$15 / user / month, gates above 10 users.
What happens if your team grows past the price band Start a second Mainline Per-seat cost grows with headcount
Data export Full JSON export including complete event history Atlassian migration tools - project-by-project, configuration is not fully portable
Audit trail / event log History cannot be edited, by anyone. Every view is computed from the log, and even AI reads are in it. Change history at the application layer. Comments and descriptions stay editable after the fact.
Worldview encoded in the data model Continuous flow with paired delivery - the practices DORA associates with elite performers Configurable; wraps around whatever dysfunction and broken process your team operates in

When to choose Mainline

Your team is 2 to 16 engineers, practices trunk-based development and continuous delivery (or wants to), and has better things to do than size tickets.

When to choose Jira

You need a tool that wraps around broken processes so nobody has to admit they're broken. Then Jira is the right answer.

We also have comparisons against Linear, Asana, and Miro. If you'd like to see Mainline compared to a tool we haven't covered, email us.

Or see Mainline running in the demo -- no signup, read-only.

Free for one person. Team trials run 14 days, no card.

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