Welcome to post #1 of my new blog. 

In the coming days I intend to post a series of comparisions of issue tracking systems.   In each post I'll compare BugTracker.NET head-to-head with one other bug/issue tracking system. 

Disclosure: Some issue tracking vendors pay me to advertise on my website. 

I'll focus on why you might choose The Other over  BugTracker.NET or vice versa.  I haven't spent that much time exploring other systems in many years, so these reviews will give me a chance to step back from my work and see what I can steal learn from other systems.   It's interesting to me to see how different developers solved - or skipped - the same problem, and that's part of what I'll write about.

I'll start off with the systems that are built using the same technologies that BugTracker.NET is built on: IIS, SQL Server, and ASP.NET (or old fashioned ASP), and a web-based inteface.    This group includes Countersoft Gemini, FogBugz, SourceGear Dragnet, and maybe Axosoft OnTime, which has both a desktop and web interface.

After I get through these, then I'll look at some that run on an apache/mySql platform, especially Mantis and Trac, both free and open source.  Of course, just like you, I'm attracted to the trackers that are free or at least pretty cheap.