| Functionality | 6 <p>Linear focuses on delivering exceptional functionality required for planning and building software products. including excellent product planning, cycling planning and issue tracking functionality. However, this means that compared to other PM tools, Linear lacks some common functionality, e.g. timeline/ Gantt view for tasks, adding custom fields, time-tracking, an automations module.</p> | 5 <p>ProofHub does the basics well and that's about it. It offers easy to use task management features like creating subtasks, dependencies, simple but effective timesheets and strong custom and self-serve reporting dashboard. It offers no automation and limited integrations.</p> |
| Ease of Use | 9 <p>Using Linear is a delight. Its keyboard-first design allows you to breeze through workflows with ease—most actions, like creating a new task, are just a single shortcut away (press “C,” and you’re good to go). With its streamlined functionality, finding key information and navigating core workflows feels intuitive. Thanks to its smooth onboarding process, most startup employees can feel comfortable with the platform in just 1-2 hours, even with minimal guidance.</p><p>That said, Linear isn’t the most beginner-friendly tool. For users less familiar with keyboard shortcuts, it can feel a bit daunting at first. Plus, it offers fewer templates and less in-app guidance compared to alternatives like Asana or Monday, which might leave some teams wishing for a little more hand-holding.</p> | 9 <p>ProofHub is very easy to use. We estimate that an average start-up employee would require around 1-2 hours before being proficient at using all key functionalities.</p><p><br></p><p>Processes are intuitive and require few clicks to find. This goes even for the more advanced features like custom reporting.</p> |
| Look and feel | 9 <p>If you like modern, minimalist app designs with a touch of elegance, then you will love Linear. Every Linear page is beautifully laid-out and colour-coded, every interaction & transition is silky smooth, and page loads are lightning fast.</p> | 6 <p>Nice touches of colour and and well-structured UI make ProofHub visually acceptable The home page in particular organised all salient information into an easy-to-read and attractive set of widgets, though it lacks that touch of elegance offered by more modern competitors. </p><p><br></p><p>Loading times are fast ~1 second.</p> |
| Customisability | 4 <p>Linear proudly admits that it is inflexible —and for good reason. They believe overly flexible software lets everyone create their own workflows, which eventually leads to chaos. For instance, you can’t add custom fields in Linear or build your own bespoke workflows. You’re also limited to just two task (or issue) views: board and list. It’s a “less is more” philosophy, designed to keep things simple and focused.</p> | 8 <p>Custom reports, dashboards, widgets on the homepage and fields are the best features here. Custom reports allow you to collect data on based on any custom fields you have assigned to projects and tasks and display such information using bar charts.</p><p>Cosmetically, you can use white-labelling to make your workspace consistent with your branding and aesthetic. Custom domain names are also available.</p><p><br></p><p>There is no customisable automation is available.</p> |
| Ease of Setup | 8 <p>Linear offers a self-serve free trial and lets you purchase directly—no need to deal with sales. If you're familiar with agile methodology, then setting up Linear should be a breeze since it anticipates everything you need, including sprints, Kanban board, and a backlog. You can get started with a project and a few tasks within 10-20 minutes, with full customization taking 1-2 hours.</p> | 7 <p>Offers a self-serve free trial and allows purchase without needing to talk to sales. Getting started and setting up a few tasks and subtasks should take 20-30 minutes, but it lacks a rich library of templates. Full setup should take less than a day.</p> |
| Customer Support | 9 <p>Linear’s support team is easy to reach—you can submit a question directly in the app. When tested, their response time was impressive (under an hour), and the support agent was both knowledgeable and genuinely helpful.</p><p>The Linear team has also been open and responsive to feedback.</p> | 6 <p>ProofHub push their self-serve materials, albeit they are of strong depth and quality - with videos and articles covering almost all queries you could have. However, no personalised in-app chat is available. You must click through their self-serve materials until you arrive at a 'questions and queries section' where you can complete a form and receive an email response. Responses usually take less than 12 hours and are usually helpful.</p> |
| Integratability | 7 <p>Linear might not boast the extensive list of integrations you’ll find with other project management tools, but it likely covers everything a tech startup needs for software development. The integrations it does offer are top-notch—high-quality and thoughtfully crafted. Plus, if you need something more specific, Linear provides an API for building custom integrations.</p> | 5 <p>ProofHub is let down by its lack of integrations with only 14 available and some useful software -like Zapier, Zendesk, Notion and Jira - missing. That being said basic integrations like Quickbooks, email and Slack work well.</p><p><br></p><p>To mitigate this, however, ProofHub offers an API for custom integrations.</p> |
| Ease of Migration | 9 <p>Linear makes it easy to export all your key data—workspace, team members, projects, and tasks—directly into CSV format through a self-serve option. You can also export data via its analytics module or by integrating with Google Sheets. For anything else, Linear’s API has you covered, giving you full control over exporting additional data.</p> | 8 <p>All self-serve and custom reports are available to export to CSV or PDF file with one click.</p> |
