>>But there is no competing product (suite) that offers comparable functionality.
But not everyone needs 'comparable' functionality - an awful lot of people use just some features and not others - because of the awful UI and terrible user experience, these people are ripe to be picked off by a competitor (existing or future). I agree, if a mega-corp is completely in bed with JIRA, its harder to switch, but for a company not making any money (Atlassian), having their small and medium sized customers peeled off bit-by-bit for better products is going to hurt.
The alterntive for companies with many departments is usually using a variety of tools that all need to be in sync. Jira can be the one point that handles all workflows for all projects.
Latest versions of YouTrack come with a knowledge base and pretty flexible workflows support. I'm curious why YouTrack never seems to be listed as a Jira+Confluence competitor, given the similar target markets.
even within one group I've seen some teams use gitlab issues rather than jira. It made a little extra work for someone I'm sure, but it worked fine. I think there are plenty of tools that do what a developer needs. Jira also does what the manager needs. If there were some good alternative for them, I think we'd see jiras hold slip.
Lockin is still an issue at smaller businesses. The boss doesn't care if it works well just as long as it work well enough. Trying to make arguments for better software based on ui/ux goes no where the higher ups just don't feel the pain of us plebs that have to use it.
But not everyone needs 'comparable' functionality - an awful lot of people use just some features and not others - because of the awful UI and terrible user experience, these people are ripe to be picked off by a competitor (existing or future). I agree, if a mega-corp is completely in bed with JIRA, its harder to switch, but for a company not making any money (Atlassian), having their small and medium sized customers peeled off bit-by-bit for better products is going to hurt.