A Bug Reporting Tool That Doesn’t Charge Per Seat
Modelithe is a low-overhead bug reporting and issue tracking tool with unlimited users on every plan. No per-seat fees. 90-day free trial.
The real cost of per-seat bug reporting tools
Bug reporting tools with per-seat pricing create a counterproductive dynamic: the people most likely to catch bugs — customer support staff, manual testers, non-technical product owners — are often the ones whose access gets cut first when the license budget gets tight.
The result is that bugs go unreported, or they get reported through informal channels (Slack messages, emails, spreadsheet rows) that are impossible to track or prioritise. By the time a bug reaches the development team, the context has been lost twice over.
As we explore in Low-overhead bug tracking, the goal isn’t a more sophisticated process — it’s getting the right information to the right person with as little friction as possible.
What makes a useful bug report
The information a developer needs to reproduce and fix a bug is simple: what were you doing, what did you expect to happen, and what happened instead. Everything else — priority matrices, custom fields, status ceremonies — is overhead that slows the report from being filed to being fixed.
Modelithe is designed around this principle. A Task (the Modelithe equivalent of a bug report) can be created in seconds. It lives within a Goal, so the developer immediately knows which deliverable it affects. It moves through a structured workflow: open → in progress → review → test → done.
That “review” and “test” distinction matters. Many tools collapse verification into a single done state. Modelithe treats them separately, because the person who fixes a bug is rarely the right person to verify the fix.
Modelithe’s bug reporting workflow
1. File a Task against a Goal
Every bug in Modelithe is filed against a Goal — the outcome it’s blocking or degrading. This immediately tells the team whether the bug is critical-path or cosmetic, without a separate triage meeting.
2. Move through Review and Test stages
The Founders Edition includes dedicated Review and Test stages in the workflow. When a developer marks a bug as fixed, it moves to Review (a second developer checks the fix) and then Test (a QA engineer or the original reporter verifies the behaviour). This is the workflow most teams already follow informally — Modelithe makes it explicit.
3. Link to commits automatically
When a developer fixes a bug and pushes to GitHub, Bitbucket, or Gitea, the commit links to the Task automatically. The fixer doesn’t need to copy-paste ticket numbers into commit messages. The reporter can see the fix without asking for an update.
4. Keep everything exportable
Modelithe data is fully exportable. Your bug history, comments, and status transitions leave with you if you ever switch tools. There’s no proprietary format designed to make migration painful.
Who benefits from unlimited-user bug reporting
- QA engineers who need to file, track, and verify dozens of bugs per sprint without worrying about whether they have a seat
- Customer support teams who surface bugs from user feedback — they need read and write access, not view-only tokens
- Product managers who triage incoming bugs and link them to the right Goals without needing a developer to do it for them
- External contractors and freelancers brought in for specific engagements — add them, give them access, remove them when done, no per-seat cost
- Open-source projects — Modelithe is free for open-source, which means community contributors can file and discuss bugs without the project incurring per-reporter costs
Platform support
Modelithe is available on Android, iOS, Linux, macOS, Windows, and in the browser. Bug reports can be filed from any device. Native apps keep everything in sync so the team always sees the current state, not a cached snapshot.
Frequently asked questions
Can non-technical users file bug reports in Modelithe?
Yes. Filing a Task in Modelithe doesn’t require knowledge of the development workflow. Non-technical users can describe what they saw, and developers can add technical context as they investigate.
Does Modelithe support bug severity or priority levels?
Tasks in Modelithe live within Goals, which gives them inherent priority context. Additional prioritisation within a Goal is handled through ordering and scheduling. There are no mandatory custom fields — teams can add the structure they need without imposing it on everyone.
How does Modelithe handle duplicate bug reports?
Modelithe doesn’t have a built-in deduplication engine. In practice, teams using Modelithe tend to file fewer duplicates because Goal-centred filing gives reporters context about what’s already being tracked.
Is there a limit on how many bugs I can track?
No. The Founders Edition has no limit on the number of Tasks, Goals, or Projects.
Bug reporting without the per-seat bill
Join the Modelithe waiting list. 90-day free trial, unlimited users, no credit card required.