Planio

What Is Planio?

A five-person team in Berlin has been running project management infrastructure for 14,000 paying customers since 2009. That fact alone is worth sitting with. Jan Schulz-Hofen founded Planio as a managed hosting layer on top of Redmine — the open-source project management system built with Ruby on Rails — and has grown it to roughly $7 million in annual revenue without outside funding and without a sales team.

The product is not trying to compete with Jira on features or Monday.com on polish. Planio's proposition is specific: give teams a fully self-contained project management environment (issues, wikis, Git repositories, a help desk, and team chat) hosted on German servers, under ISO 27001 certified infrastructure, at prices that start at €9 per month.

Target users are software development teams, engineering consultancies, and SMEs that need EU data residency either for compliance reasons or as a deliberate policy decision. Planio also attracts teams migrating away from Atlassian's cloud products following Atlassian's deprecation of its self-managed Server tier in 2024, who want a European-hosted alternative rather than Atlassian Cloud.

The open-source foundation matters more than it might seem. Because Planio runs standard Redmine under the hood, your data is exportable at any time in a format any Redmine instance can ingest. That removes one of the most common objections to hosted project management: the question of what happens if you need to leave.

Key Features

Issue and Project Tracking

Redmine's issue tracker is its core strength, and Planio inherits all of it. Issues support custom fields, custom workflows, per-project statuses, subtasks, time logging, and file attachments. Projects can be hierarchical, with sub-projects sharing issue categories and workflows from a parent. The tracker is text-heavy — this is not a visual tool — but it handles genuinely complex triage and workflow state machines that many lighter tools cannot match.

The Agile plugin is bundled with every plan at no additional cost. It adds Scrum sprint boards and Kanban views onto the existing issue tracker. Teams can drag issues across columns and manage sprint backlogs. The implementation is functional, not beautiful — it looks like Redmine because it is Redmine — but it works reliably and does not require a separate subscription.

Git and SVN Repository Hosting

Every Planio plan includes unlimited Git and Subversion repositories linked directly to projects. Commits referencing issue IDs automatically update those issues with a link to the commit, closing the loop between code and task without any webhook configuration. This tight integration between version control and project tracking is one area where Planio genuinely outperforms tools that treat code repos as external integrations.

Repositories are hosted in Germany alongside your project data, which matters for teams that need to ensure source code does not leave EU jurisdiction.

Help Desk

Planio's help desk module converts inbound customer emails into tracked Redmine issues. Support agents respond from within the project interface; customers receive email replies from a configured domain. Common answers can be saved as templates for reuse. Customer-facing status pages are available at higher tiers.

This is not a competitor to Intercom or Zendesk — it is a basic ticket system — but for engineering teams handling internal support or simple customer queries, it removes the need for a separate tool. The fact that support tickets live in the same database as development issues means escalations are a single click.

Team Chat

Planio's chat module runs as a built-in IRC server. Chat logs are saved permanently to project history, searchable alongside issues and wiki pages via Redmine's built-in full-text search. This is a deliberate design choice: conversations that result in decisions are preserved in context with the work they influenced, not lost in a separate Slack workspace.

The chat interface is rudimentary by 2026 standards. It lacks threading, rich media previews, and mobile push notifications. Teams that need modern messaging will still reach for Slack or Matrix. But for teams that have already experienced the problem of important decisions buried in chat history, Planio's approach has genuine merit.

Cloud Storage and File Sync

A WebDAV-based cloud storage module is included on all plans. Team members can mount the project folder as a network drive on Windows, macOS, or Linux and sync files directly to the project. Storage limits apply per plan tier (500 MB on Bronze through 50 GB on Platinum), and files are searchable through the same interface as issues and wiki content.

Pricing

Planio's pricing is straightforward and notably honest about constraints. The free Bronze plan is genuinely functional — 1 project, 2 users, 500 MB storage — not a crippled demo. It is suitable for a solo developer managing a single client project.

Paid plans are priced in euros with monthly billing:

• Silver — €9/month: 5 projects, 6 users, 2 GB storage
• Gold — €29/month: 20 projects, 30 users, 15 GB storage
• Diamond — €59/month: 40 projects, 60 users, 30 GB storage
• Platinum — €99/month: 80 projects, 100 users, 50 GB storage
• Enterprise — custom pricing for dedicated instances

Every paid plan includes unlimited Git and SVN repositories, the Agile plugin, the help desk module, and team chat. There are no per-user fees, which is a meaningful advantage over competitors that charge EUR 7-15 per user per month. A 30-person team on Planio Gold at €29/month pays less per month than three users on Jira Standard.

The constraint to watch is the user cap on Silver — 6 users for €9 is generous in price but limiting in headcount. Teams that grow past 6 members face a jump to Gold at €29. That transition is still excellent value, but it is worth planning for.

EU Compliance and Privacy

Planio's compliance story is one of its strongest selling points, and it is backed by infrastructure rather than policy documents.

All data is hosted on servers that Planio owns and operates in Frankfurt and Nuremberg, Germany. The company does not use third-party cloud providers for data storage. As a German GmbH, Planio is subject to both GDPR and the German Federal Data Protection Act (BDSG), which enforces stricter requirements on data processing than GDPR alone in several areas.

The infrastructure is ISO 27001 certified. Data Processing Agreements are available to all customers. Because Planio controls its own hardware rather than running on AWS or Azure, there is no sub-processor chain to navigate for data residency questions.

For teams in regulated industries — healthcare, legal, public sector — the combination of German data hosting, ISO 27001 certification, and DPA availability covers most procurement requirements without requiring a custom enterprise contract.

Who It's Best For

Software development teams of 3-30 people that want integrated issue tracking, Git hosting, and a wiki in a single subscription, without paying per-user SaaS fees. The Git-to-issue linkage alone saves meaningful time for teams that currently run Jira and GitHub as separate systems.

European SMEs with data residency requirements that need documented German hosting and a DPA for compliance purposes but do not need the complexity of an enterprise information security programme.

Teams migrating from Atlassian Server following the 2024 end-of-life of self-managed Jira Server. Planio's Redmine-based import tool handles Jira exports directly, and the conceptual model (projects, trackers, issues, workflows) maps closely enough that migrations are manageable.

Bootstrapped product teams where budget discipline matters. At €29/month for 30 users, Planio Gold is one of the cheapest full-featured project management options available — and cheaper than most tools' free tiers become once a team exceeds their user limits.

Planio is not suited to large organisations that need custom SSO, advanced roadmapping tools, or deep integrations with modern SaaS products like Figma, Notion, or Slack. It is also not a good fit for non-technical teams — the Redmine interface is document-heavy and rewards users who understand project management concepts.

The Verdict

Planio is a reliable, deliberately scoped product from a bootstrapped Berlin company that has operated profitably for 16 years. It does not chase feature parity with Jira or aesthetic competition with Linear. What it offers instead is uncommon: a fully self-contained project management environment, hosted on German infrastructure you can verify, at pricing that small teams can afford without negotiating.

The trade-offs are real. The UI is dated, the integration ecosystem is thin, and the per-plan user caps can catch teams by surprise during growth phases. Teams that need modern design or extensive SaaS integrations will find Planio frustrating. Teams that need documented EU data residency, source code hosting, and a help desk under a single monthly invoice will find it hard to beat.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Planio GDPR compliant?

Yes. Planio stores all data exclusively on German servers in Frankfurt and Nuremberg, operates under ISO 27001 certified infrastructure, and offers a Data Processing Agreement (DPA) for customers who need it. As a German company, Planio is subject to GDPR and the stricter German Federal Data Protection Act (BDSG).

Can I self-host Planio or Redmine instead?

Planio is a hosted service and cannot be self-hosted in the traditional sense. However, because it is built on the open-source Redmine platform, your project data is portable. You can migrate to a self-hosted Redmine instance at any time, which avoids vendor lock-in entirely.

How does Planio compare to Jira?

Planio is more affordable and simpler to run, with a genuine free tier, all-in-one pricing for Git hosting and help desk, and data stored in Germany. Jira offers a significantly richer plugin ecosystem, more advanced roadmapping, and tighter integrations with the Atlassian suite, but at considerably higher cost per user and with data hosted on Atlassian's US infrastructure by default.

Does Planio include Git hosting?

Yes. All paid plans include unlimited Git and Subversion (SVN) repositories at no additional charge. This differentiates Planio from pure project management tools that require separate GitHub or GitLab subscriptions.

What happens to my data if I cancel?

Planio provides a full export of your data on request before cancellation. Because the underlying platform is open-source Redmine, you can import that export into any compatible Redmine instance and continue working without data loss.