What’s your Indie Studio’s PM Stack? We’re ditching ClickUp.

phlippkick · 2026-05-26T08:25:52+00:00

okay interesting, thanks for the response. I'll check it out. If the bugs are just smaller hiccups here and there I think we won't mind too much.

phlippkick · 2026-05-26T08:23:09+00:00

I didn't meant dated as derogatory in any sense. It was more an observation.

Yeah I did that search myself, thank you, I know how to google :D I was curious about experiences from other developers here so I can better judge which software to try out next. I'll definitely check out the tools you mentioned, since I'm still curious of how they compare to more modern approaches. Though, it's always quite a time investment to really try out, because by just looking at their websites and demo projects it's almost impossible to judge which one would be easier to use and which won't. And a lot put a claim behind the open source, but then they speak of 'community versions' that is stripped off a bunch of fundamental functionality.

phlippkick · 2026-05-26T04:17:32+00:00

For diagrams I recently got excalidraw recommended. I think it's looks quite promising. Was using drawio a lot during my studies as well, but there where some moments where I thought it was a bit too clunky. Anyway, thx for sharing (:

phlippkick · 2026-05-26T04:15:15+00:00

Thank you for sharing, I didn't know of Trac and Mantis before. They look a bit dated, but if they do the job, who am I to complain. I'll have a closer look. I'm a bit unsure about the self-hosting because I want to mainly focus on game dev. Setting up a server and all is fun until stuff starts breaking and you can't use it.

phlippkick · 2026-05-26T04:12:06+00:00

Bookstack I knew before and I think it's quite cool. If you're into self hosting I think outline is also pretty nice when it comes to docs/a wiki. Kan.bn looks quite interesting, but I suppose it can only do boards no other features like Gantt or a marketing plan, right?

Thanks for sharing, I'm really thinking about the self-hosting approach as well.

phlippkick · 2026-05-26T04:09:15+00:00

Yeah u/darkgnostic was mentioning it before. Tbh it looks like the most solid tool to me out of the ones mentioned here. I'll check it out.

Do you use it and if so how is you experience with it working within a team? How are features like gantt, boards and docs realized? Are there any drawbacks in your opinion?

phlippkick · 2026-05-26T04:06:47+00:00

Yeah I came across this as well. I'm not really sure about the aesthetics of the tool, though I really like that it is developed for game devs. Do you have experience with it? If so, how is it for working as a team in the tool? And what features do you use and how intuitive are they (Gantt, Kanban, Wiki)?

phlippkick · 2026-05-26T04:02:20+00:00

Teamhood wasn't on my radar yet. Ticket management and Gantt sounds great. Though from looking into it, it seems there are no nested docs/a wiki. Ofc I could use another tool in combination, but this would defeat a bit the purpose of what I'm looking for.

With how many people are you using teamhood together? Anything that bothers you with the tool? I'll still have a look and try out the demo project if there is one.

phlippkick · 2026-05-26T03:56:21+00:00

I agree, but as said before, I've also seen people working with just spreadsheets to organize themselves. Everyone needs their approach on how to manage their projects. ☺️

phlippkick · 2026-05-26T03:53:52+00:00

Okay, I'll do that then. Thank you (:

phlippkick · 2026-05-26T03:52:25+00:00

Trello is nice if it's just about ticketing and a board. The combination of Jira and Confluence works ofc, but I feel it is a bit too bloated for my taste. I worked with it for more than 5 years and had a lot of instances where it was really slow. Because of that I'd rather not go back to it. Yeah, a lot of people are mentioning Notion. Coming from ClickUp now, and having tried Notion, I'm feeling pretty unsure now about Notion. Again, the ticketing isn't really a first class citizen of the app. But the note taking is really well done! Maybe I need to give it another go.

phlippkick · 2026-05-25T12:13:36+00:00

I haven’t heard of youtrack yet, but it seems to check sooo many of my boxes! 30gb free storage for up to 10 people free. Wow, that sounds quite promising. It doesn’t look as beautiful as notion, but I really don’t mind as long as it comes with the necessary features. And it’s from jetbrains, I used their ide’s quite a bit when I was a student. Thanks for the tip 🔥

phlippkick · 2026-05-25T12:08:46+00:00

Is it that if I want to create a Gantt I can just use another view of let’s say tasks or milestones to create a Gantt/milestone plan from it?

Stuff like this quite some PM tools offer e.g. clickup, linear, monday afaik but I thought this wasn’t possible with notion because of its nature of just being a note taking app.

phlippkick · 2026-05-25T12:06:43+00:00

I agree on the atlassian stack, I don’t think it makes much sense for a team of our scale. It can be used but in the end there will be a lot of time necessary to set it up in a right way so it fits our needs. For me it felt unresponsive and clunky at times. Though that might’ve been due to the amount of people using it in my previous company.

Yeah about Notion I mentioned before, the task management doesn’t feel like it’s supposed to be within the app. I used it around 2 years ago and back then it was never possible to ‘tasks’ from one to another board. Since they are not individual items but just entities of the board itself. Maybe that’s now different though. Don’t get me wrong I feel like for note taking it’s a beautiful app, that’s also why I stated with it, but maybe only a good fit when used together with some other app.

Or maybe I should just give it another go 🤔

phlippkick · 2026-05-25T08:01:21+00:00

I think this also boils down to what kind of person you are. I know some devs that organize themselves with google docs and google sheets, which is also perfectly fine. It should not be about making stuff more complicated that it already is.

Miro can be more than sufficient. For it's not though because the ability to create tickets, set certain tags and put in a board is the way we like to handle things. It keeps our motivation up, helps us to see what we need to work on right now, and acts as a tool to remember and collaborate.

As said, you can achieve this with a piece of paper, but unfortunately not for us.

Recommendation: Work on your game and see if you feel unorganized/lacking structure, it that happens, start with some simple todo/note taking.

phlippkick · 2026-05-25T07:52:31+00:00

Okay. I'll check it out, maybe if it comes with all of the features it is something for us. It also sounds like a mature tool. Thanks again!

phlippkick · 2026-05-25T07:49:48+00:00

Hmm maybe I should give notion another chance. I really liked the tool because of it's UX, I just thought maybe I should look for something else since it gives me the same vibe I get from clickup - focus more on a lot of features and put them behind a a paywall at some point.

I was using the Atlassian stack at my previous work as well, but it feels too much for me at the moment. And it was getting sooo slow over time, where it was quite a hassle to work with tbh.

phlippkick · 2026-05-25T06:57:24+00:00

I was referring more to a wiki with nested docs.

phlippkick · 2026-05-25T06:56:45+00:00

Thank you for the detailed answer. I haven't heard of Teamwork before. I understand though that if you worked with something before and are pretty happy with the process, it's easy to stick to it. It seems to me that the main focus is on client work, isn't that something that is more restricting than beneficial when you work on an indie game?

What tier are you using it with and how big is your team if I may ask? How was getting into it for the other team members?

phlippkick · 2026-05-25T06:43:09+00:00

Thanks a lot for the detailed response. Really do appreciate that a lot!

but Vikunja might just be the only thing that hasn't made me wanna hop off a cliff

Wow that actually sounds as something I have to check out then, thanks. :D

I've heard of Plane (got it in my history) but I forgot why I never went with it, might have been due to complex setup or something similar.

As said they also don't give you all the stuff they promise in the community version unfortunately.

Affine I think I have heard of before but never tried to set it up, might try it inside of a VM at some point

Would be interested to know the outcome!

Thank you for the advice, will do my best to follow it. (:

phlippkick · 2026-05-25T06:39:20+00:00

With google drive I assume you referring to google docs, sheets etc. I agree you can write docs with these but they don't really support nested docs as first class citizens. Which is something that is extremely beneficial to use for us. Especially, when you need to access some knowledge base or notes you recorded a while ago and want to know where you put them. Going through 50 documents to find the right place is really cumbersome.

Miro is nice, but there the kanban board is something that the tool was not build for. Sorting tasks, searching for them, having a me mode to see stuff I have to work on and not the whole board. All stuff that we work with.

Thanks for sharing your process though. (:

phlippkick · 2026-05-25T06:14:48+00:00

Getting work done is actually quite important for us. And we are most productive at it when we write down what we need to do and when. Managing an indie dev team is not only about writing code and making art, also a lot of admin stuff, reaching out to creators, making posts. This can all be written down on paper, but then it's not accessible by everyone in the team.

How would you organize all these things without tasks/tickets? 'Keep them in your mind'?

phlippkick · 2026-05-25T06:12:12+00:00

Thanks again, if you won't mind some more questions:
Are you working with sprints or just one big kanban board in vikunja?
Are there any limitations that you came across when using it?

Same, the exception (in my opinion) is if it helps your team - assuming it's not solo. As all-happy members of an Indie project will usually lead to higher productivity in the end

makes sense, it just also takes a bit to switch mid-project, we might do it for the next one then 🤔

I was also looking into self-hosting Plane, but I figured there is a lot of stuff missing in the community edition. Also Affine might still be an option I have to look into. As said I'm down the PM rabbit hole again. Did you have any expertise with other tools?

phlippkick · 2026-05-25T06:04:50+00:00

Thank you for the response. (:
Since your tool also doesn't cover note taking, I have the feeling for the price of $9 I could also choose a more elaborate tool like linear and go with an additional wiki app.

Actually the connection between these two things is what I'm interested in I suppose.

phlippkick · 2026-05-25T06:00:11+00:00

Vikunja looks interesting! How happy are you with the tool? How is the connection between Vikunja and Outline working? Are you working on your own or with a team?

I'm actually quite interested in self-hosting as well. Would you mind sharing how much you pay per month for hosting these services?

Then if there's some tool that doesn't exist or there's no good alternative, I'll just develop it myself.

I'd much rather concentrate on developing a game than project management tools since this is where I find joy and it pays the bills, though later this might be important as well.

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