How Are Marketplace Partners Progressing Toward Forge?

[#1]

With Atlassian planning to end support for Connect in December 2026, many enterprise administrators are evaluating their Marketplace apps to understand potential impacts and plan ahead.

I recently completed a Forge readiness assessment for a large enterprise organization with a substantial Marketplace footprint. The goal wasn't to evaluate vendors—it was to identify potential risks, understand migration progress, and help the organization prepare for the transition.

What I Found

The results were encouraging overall. Approximately:

• 17% of Marketplace apps have a Forge version available or a published upgrade path.
• 12% have publicly announced migrations that are in progress or planned.
• 6% are following a legacy/end-of-life transition or are custom/private integrations that require internal validation.
• 33% are Atlassian-owned or managed products that are outside the scope of the Marketplace Connect migration.
• 31% did not have publicly available Forge migration information that I could find.

That doesn't necessarily mean those vendors aren't migrating. It simply means I couldn't locate a public roadmap, migration status, or announcement.

The Community Helped Explain Why

In the internal Champions Slack, I asked Marketplace Partners how their Forge migrations were progressing. The response was encouraging- no one suggested they intended to remain on Connect. Instead, partners shared that they are actively working toward Forge but are facing challenges such as:

• Achieving feature parity with existing Connect apps
• Waiting for Forge platform capabilities or bugs to be resolved
• Supporting customer cloud migrations while simultaneously rebuilding applications

Several partners also mentioned they are working closely with Atlassian to remove blockers before releasing Forge versions. That context helped explain why some Marketplace listings don't yet contain clear migration information.

Vendors Without Public Migration Information

During my review, I was unable to find public Forge migration information for apps from vendors such as:

• Decadis
• Deviniti
• LaunchDarkly
• Lucid Software
• Miro
• miniOrange
• Ricksoft
• Stiltsoft
• AppAnvil (Seibert Group)
• TNG Technology Consulting

There were also a few Marketplace listings where the vendor or migration ownership wasn't immediately clear.

Again, this does not mean these vendors lack a migration plan. It simply means I wasn't able to locate publicly available information after reviewing Marketplace listings, vendor documentation, release notes, and announcements.

If your team is actively migrating to Forge—even if you're still working through feature parity or platform dependencies—consider publishing a short status update. It doesn't need to be a detailed roadmap. Something as simple as:

• We're actively migrating to Forge.
• Feature parity work is underway.
• A beta is planned.
• Additional updates will be shared as milestones are reached.

Those updates can make a meaningful difference for enterprise customers trying to plan responsibly.

Why This Matters

As consultants and administrators, we spend a significant amount of time helping organizations assess risk and plan upgrades. When Forge migration information isn't publicly available, customers are left asking questions such as:

• Should we expect a Forge version?
• Will customer action be required?
• Should we begin evaluating alternatives?
• Are there known feature differences?
• What timeline should we plan around?

Even a brief update can help organizations make informed decisions and reduce uncertainty.

Let's share what we're learning and help make the transition smoother for everyone.

[David Day_ Appcento]

Great analysis!, this data is incredibly helpful for navigating the ecosystem.

Since you are looking closely at individual vendor roadmaps, I have two quick questions regarding risk and timelines:

1. Which app categories have the most vendors likely to miss the migration window entirely, or are quietly choosing to sunset their tools rather than rebuild them on Forge?
2. For the 31% of vendors currently lacking public Forge info, did you get any sense from the community of how many are actually close to a release (e.g., in the next 2–3 months) versus those who are still in the early, multi-month stages of overcoming platform blocks?

Thanks for sharing these insights with the community!

[Dr Valeri Colon _Connect Centric_]

Great questions @David Day_ Appcento!

From this assessment, of the '6% are following a legacy/end-of-life transition or are custom/private integrations that require internal validation' about 3% of the apps are following a legacy/end-of-life path. The most notable example was SmartBear's sunset of Zephyr Squad and its reincarnation Zephyr Essential, which required us to manually relink a LARGE number of test cases back to their Jira issues. 

With roughly five months until Connect support ends, I'm becoming increasingly aware of the lack of public visibility of the 31%—not necessarily because vendors aren't migrating, but because enterprise customers have very little information to plan around.

I've encouraged Atlassian to continue helping Marketplace Partners remove remaining platform blockers—or consider extending the deadline. As I learn more about the vendors in that 31%, I'll let ya'll know. If I don't hear from them here, my next step is to reach out to them directly.

[Josh]

@Dr Valeri Colon _Connect Centric_ thank you for quantifying this situation and sounding an early alarm.

At TEAM this year, the vast majority of vendors I spoke to were working towards Forge migration but the vibes weren't so great. As you mentioned, Atlassian has placed a lot of pressure on them between DC -> Cloud migrations as well as platform limitations, feature parity gaps, and bugs. Quite a few of them lamented how they haven't been able to invest much effort in advancing their product functionality forward but have instead been tied up in architecture and infrastructure changes.

My personal take is slightly less optimistic. With over 30% of vendors that haven't even published migration plans and only five months left to make the change - they're going to put a big squeeze on large customers. Either:

• Accept condensed (likely rushed) testing and verification of new apps
• Quickly abandon ship to other products built on Forge, which is much harder given:
  • Large orgs usually have annual or multi-year contracts in place
  • Internal vetting for new apps / vendors can often take significant time
  • Userbases may already be entrenched in current tooling, so internal change management will be an uphill struggle
• Beg Atlassian to extend the transition timeframe

TLDR: If you support a large org with marketplace apps that haven't migrated to Forge yet - it's time to create contingency plans if you don't have them already and start nudging quiet vendors on their plans.

[Dr Valeri Colon _Connect Centric_]

@Josh I wish I had a good rebuttal, but I tend to agree. I think its telling that included in the 31% without publicly available migration information is some well-known marketplace apps.

Users always have the option to do nothing. Atlassian ending Connect support doesn't necessarily mean enterprises have to replace or remove those apps on day one. The question becomes: what level of risk is acceptable? Over time, security, compatibility, maintenance, and (lack of) support risks grow as the Atlassian ecosystem evolves (and its evolving quickly). If a vendor ultimately discontinues an app or falls behind platform changes, customers may find themselves planning an unanticipated migration under much tighter timelines than they'd prefer.

On December 31, 2026 what would you do:

1. Continue using a Connect app until the vendor publishes a roadmap
2. Begin evaluating Forge alternatives now
3. Wait for additional guidance from Atlassian
4. Or take another approach