Frequently Asked Questions

Some questions about Shortcut are asked frequently. We've answered the most frequent of those frequent questions below.

What is Shortcut?

Shortcut is a project management platform for software development. The tool is used by teams of one all the way up to teams of many more than one (in the thousands).

Is there a free version of Shortcut?

The free version of Shortcut is available for teams of up to 10 people. The Team Plan bills at $10/user per month on the monthly subscription, or $8.50/user per month if pre-paid annually. The Business Plan bills at $16/user per month on the monthly subscription, or $12/user per month if pre-paid annually. You can purchase Shortcut with any major credit card.

What are the Shortcut pricing plans?

Shortcut currently offers four subscription plans:

The Free Plan includes a majority of the features in our Team Plan and all the features a small team needs to build great software.
The Team Plan is an excellent option for customers with multiple teams or squads who need to execute efficiently and collaboratively.
For customers that require better visibility across the entire organization, the Business Plan is a better-suited offering to help them plan, execute, and measure their work.
For customers with large teams with advanced processes that need a fast and easy way to scale, the Enterprise Plan will continue to serve their needs well.

Learn more about our plans on our Pricing Page.

Does Shortcut offer a plan for nonprofits?

Yes! Shortcut is free for qualifying nonprofits. Click here for more information and to apply for our non-profit program.

What can I do in Shortcut during the 14-day trial period?

Anything! The Shortcut Trial is meant to give you an opportunity to truly test Shortcut’s features and to build processes that work for your team. You’ll have full access to Shortcut as a robust tool, including (but definitely not limited to): an Organization with unlimited Workspaces and user management, unlimited Observer users, our API, and outgoing webhooks. Feel free to experiment with using Teams and Projects, Epics and Objectives, Stories, Labels, and Custom Workflows together to create a project management environment unique and useful to your team.

Is Shortcut SOC2 Compliant?

Yes. Shortcut has completed a SOC 2 Type 2 Audit. For a copy of our SOC 2 report please email security@shortcut.com.

Is Shortcut GDPR Compliant?

While there is no 3rd-party verified certification for GDPR compliance, Shortcut is committed to acting in accordance with the GDPR regulations for all of our users - not just those in the EU. We are partnering with our customers to ensure the privacy and security of their and their customer’s data, and have implemented a number of data acquisition, access, and retention policy changes. See this page for additional detail about our GDPR support.

How do I import data from another project management tool to Shortcut?

We can import data directly from Jira and Trello using our automated importer, and you can import data from any other tool using a CSV spreadsheet.

Can I invite an observer to Shortcut?

Observers are available to all Workspaces on the Team, Business, and Enterprise plans.

With the Observer role, users can gain access to your Shortcut in order to view progress on an individual Story or across the Workspace. Observers can view Spaces, follow Stories, and use the various Search bars and filters. However, they cannot move, change, or comment on anything. Observers are also restricted from using the API.

Do you integrate with any help desk tools?

We have a full, two-way integration with Zendesk.

We do have long-term plans to fully integrate with other popular help desk tools such as Help Scout, Intercom, Freshdesk, etc. For the time being you can utilize the "External Tickets" field within a Story found within the Create Story and editing Story dialogues.

Adding a ticket link will automatically populate the help desk's icon and name to lessen confusion as well. This is a great way to link support tickets to your Stories.

Do you plan to offer time tracking integrations?

Building integrations around time tracking tools is something we plan to work on. There are third-party time tracking tools that currently integrate with Shortcut, like Toggl and Clockify, which work via a Chrome or Firefox extension. If you have a favorite time tracker that you think we should integrate with, just let us know.

Do you offer an on-premises/self-hosted version of Shortcut?

We don't offer an on-premises/self-hosted version yet. However, we are tracking interest in this, and we'd love to hear from you if your company has requirements for a self-hosted version.

How do users permissions work in Shortcut?

We are continually trying to strike a balance between flexibility and simplicity in our UI/UX, and from our experience we’ve found that managing user permissions can quickly get complex and confusing. For this reason, permissioning is currently only supported at the Workspaces level. This means anyone within a Workspace can see all the ongoing work (Stories, Epics, Milestones) within that space.

If you'd like to give access to specific information, we recommend creating a new Workspace, adding the information there, and then inviting users to that Workspace as you like. Regardless of what plan you are on, you have unlimited Workspaces with no additional charge!