Linear alternatives for service businesses: fast tickets, next to the customer

Short answer: Linear is a fast, focused issue tracker that product and engineering teams love for its triage, cycles and keyboard-first design. If you are comparing Linear alternatives because your tickets are as much about customers and jobs as about code, Alori Tickets works the same way, with teams, triage, cycles and shortcuts, in the same all-in-one app as your customers, conversations, jobs and invoices. The Linear import keeps your keys and numbers.

Who Linear fits well

Linear is a strong fit when:

• A product and engineering team ships software in cycles and wants a fast, opinionated tool.
• You plan with initiatives, roadmaps, project updates and documents.
• You rely on its integrations with GitHub, Slack and your other dev tools.
• Your customers and sales live in a separate CRM, and that works for you.

For software teams, Linear is built for the job.

Why service owners look for alternatives

A service business that also builds things, like an IT services firm, an agency or a trade company with its own software, has two kinds of tickets: the dev work and the customer's requests. When they live in Linear:

• The customer is in another tool. The issue links to a CRM record at best, and the texts, calls and emails are elsewhere.
• Answering the customer means switching apps. Someone writes the update again in an email.
• The field team stays out. Per-user pricing keeps technicians and office staff off the tracker.
• Two places to triage. Requests come in through the inbox, then get copied into Linear by hand.

Side by side

What Alori replaces, and what it does not

For a service business, Alori replaces the tracker and the copying between it and the inbox:

• Tickets by team, each with its prefix, its steps from Triage to Done, cycles and sizes. Views for Mine, Triage, Cycle, Open and Closed, as a list or a board.
• Tickets from customers. File one from a customer's page or their conversation, with the customer filled in. When it moves to in progress, done or closed, the customer gets an email in that conversation.
• Sub-tickets and links: blocks, related and duplicate, with comments, @mentions and the full history.
• GitHub. Name DEV-7 in a pull request's branch, title or description, and it shows on the ticket and moves it.
• The work around it: customers, jobs, invoices, tasks and Docs for your notes, in the same app.
• Automations in plain words when a ticket is filed or moves, and Ask Alori to file, assign or comment.

What it does not replace: Linear's initiatives, roadmaps, project updates, saved team views, templates, its automations and its large integration catalog. Your display choices in Alori stay on your computer rather than as shared views. If you are a product company whose tracker serves the engineering team first, Linear stays the better fit. Coming from Jira instead? See the Jira alternative.

How to switch

1. Describe your business. Alori builds the app, and you add Tickets to it.
2. Connect Linear. In Import data, click Import on Linear, then Connect Linear and Allow. Private teams you aren't in can't be read.
3. Pick who's who and import. Next to each Linear person, pick the Alori teammate who takes over. Click Import everything: teams keep their keys, statuses, triage and cycles, issues keep their numbers, comments and history, and Linear Customers become companies. Nobody is emailed.
4. Keep Linear until you switch. Import again brings only what changed, and Undo import takes out what the import brought. Plans are on pricing, with a free plan and no card needed.