> Well its not a cheap product

Jira is pretty cheap actually compared to Asana etc.

Free up to 10 users, $14.5/month up to 20,000.

https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/pricing

Massive pile of garbage is more like it. As a developer, the only thing slowing me down from getting work done was waiting on JIRA and being told to use the crap they call Confluence to document things.

What do you recommend instead?

JIRA & Confluence seem to be the best of a bad bunch. I do miss the self-hosted option.

Honestly, Azure DevOps is a solid replacement. The integration is really good and the "Boards" software really feels like they're eating their own dog food. Their Wiki software is Markdown stored in a Git repo (unlike Confluence's mess). It's fast, permissions are relatively intuitive and fast, etc.

It's worth a look if you're evaluating.

JetBrains Space is another alternative, but I have no experience with it.

Treat it like a software problem, start with the simplest thing that'll work and then introduce more complexity or features when you need them. Chances are you'll start with GH issues or a shared doc in a productivity suite and where ever you land, it won't be JIRA.

Confluence search has a lot of issues. Its almost impossible to search for documentation or anything there. Even Slack search is leagues better and can be used as a documentation/ help tool.

README.md

Trello was good, although it's quickly being run into the ground.

Mediawiki is a pain to maintain but nothing else comes close.

It's not great but it's not that bad. A business has to have documentation and has to have a standardized workflows around doc. Jira/Confluence is not what I would choose but it works OK.