FogBugz
All e-mail to support@flyingmeat.com goes through FogBugz which is a huge huge time saver for me. I can turn e-mails into bug reports, file them away, respond, easily see previous e-mails from the reporter, and generally do everything I need to do when I’m wearing my support hat. It’s all easy and does what I need and want it to do.
I’m especially interested in what Gus thinks since he’s also a solo Mac developer. In this case, our solutions couldn’t be more different. I tried FogBugz a few years ago, since it was getting rave reviews, and just couldn’t stand it. (Thanks to Fog Creek for offering a full refund with no questions asked.) At the time, I liked Trac somewhat better for issue tracking, but of course Trac doesn’t handle support e-mails. I can see how something like FogBugz would be useful for a setup involving multiple developers and support people, but for me I see no need for it. I’ve never had a problem with support e-mails falling through the cracks, and my entire e-mail history is easily accessible in EagleFiler. Web-based bug trackers vary from terrible to pretty good—and FogBugz is certainly towards the good end—but I’ve yet to find one that I actually liked using. Part of it is that for this kind of highly interactive work I think it really helps to have a desktop interface. It may also be that I have a certain way that I like to work, and the Web-based trackers that I’ve used are rigid in making me change my style to fit theirs. I’m currently using OmniFocus as my issue tracker and am loving it. It’s also rigid, in a way, but the workflow that it enforces happens to be a close match to what I’ve always tried to achieve with other tools.
