If you’re looking for a dead simple hosted bug tracking solution, you should check out 16bugs. Sure, there about a million other bug tracking choices out there, but many of them are either too bloated or too complex for most projects. In fact, I’ve experienced bug tracking systems that take more time to figure out how to enter a bug in correctly than it was to fix the actual bug.

16bugs takes the direct opposite philosophy to bug tracking, as Michele Finotto explains on the 16bugs blog:

Another thing I would like to improve greatly is usability, especially on the administration side.
So I’m asking you, instead of what I should add, what I should remove.

It’s very easy to get into all those feature requests and ending up with a bloated and unusable application.
Instead, I want this app to be as usable as possible.

And indeed, the interface for tracking and submitting bugs is simple to use. After adding a company and details about a project, you’re all ready to enter in bugs. The bug entry gives you options for the version of the software, who the bug is assigned to, the priority, the status, and a description and title. These are all the basics for getting you up and running tracking your bugs with no fuss.

After submitting bugs, you can view them, comment on them, and close them out–all the basics of a bug tracking system. There’s really nothing more to 16bugs at the moment, but, as Michele mentioned, they will be adding features as requested by users.

Pricing starts at free, for up to 1MB of uploads and 1 project, to $25 per month for 10 projects and 200MB of upload space. The number of projects provided for each package is reasonable. But, I’m sure they could up the ante on the space (hey, hard drives are cheap nowadays, right? I can get a Google account with greater than 2GB for free).

I’ve started tinkering around with 16bugs for BuzzShout. Since I’m the lone programmer on the project, 16bugs works fine in my workflow. If, however, you need some headier project management, you might be better off looking at other more sophisticated bug tracking software.

The key advantage that 16bugs has right now is how lightweight their system is: there’s no installation, no server headaches, and not much administrative overhead. It’s also encouraging that they are expanding their feature set organically in response to user needs. When they do get more of their features online, it would be a good site to check out for your more complex bug tracking needs.

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