Licensing woes

[John Riley]

Hi all,

I would like to start a discussion on the Jira Cloud licensing. 

We had a question come up at our breakfast on Friday regarding a company getting a Standard, Premium and Enterprise license, and we were discussing how value delivered between each level (e.g. Standard -> Premium) often does not justify the big jump in price.  You can look at the pricing chart and easily see what I mean.

I work with companies who have the same questions, and I also field such requests as "we want to know if this [tool | app | workflow | automation task ] will work for our (small) team without using production data or buying it first".  You can go through the motions to get a free instance up to 10 users, import data and select 10 users, etc. but it's a pain to setup other parameters like permissions, etc.

Are there any good solutions out there to try something with Jira or the Marketplace before I buy or scale to the next level?  or how can I make an informed decision other than # of users?  Often I feel that Atlassian puts its paying customers in a position like similar "groupware" products where we have no choice but to pay for the next (often less valuable) level.

Thanks, John

[Pete Dunham]

Hi John,

Lots of the apps/plug-ins I've used do have a trial period. Same for the Jira, JSM, Confluence premium. Atlassian gives you 30 days free. 

This is the language I just found - which is a bit confusing where they reference new customers:

Yes, new customers will still have a free 7 day trial period. If you're an existing customer you'll enter a free trial period which spans your current billing cycle, plus your next billing cycle. After the evaluation period, the Premium plan will appear on your monthly renewals. If you’re on an annual subscription, your evaluation period will be a fixed 30 days.

https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/premium

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When I install a new app/tool I generally do install in a sandbox instance. I use the same sandbox to vet out and check a few things:

• Can this app be turned off so all my users don't start using it, if we are not keeping it
• A basic check to vet out the functionality - often the app doesn't solve the business need after review.

In general,  I do find most apps have a trial period.

This also might hit on the value of Jira Premium. Jira Premium allows you to clone your production environment - you can then vet plug-ins in the cloned/sandbox. 

I've found the both the Jira and Confluence premium to be worth it.  Jira a bit more. I haven't found JSM premium worth the upgrade price.

Let's discuss more!

Pete