Self-Hosting Jira for Small Teams Part 1: Installing Jira

By Joshua Render on August 1, 2018 • ( 2 Comments )

Hosting your own instance of Jira, using your own equipment, is fairly easy and can be a lot cheaper. You don’t need a special server, or even need to mess with specific server software. You can put it on your laptop or desktop PC if you want, which is ideal for a single user looking to learn Jira or use it for a task list software.

Now, If you are intending to have multiple users, you may have to set it up so that people can access it from other computers. You may want to install it on a computer that no one else uses in their day to day activities. It doesn’t need anything special, just Internet access and probably Windows 10 (7, 8, 2012, and 2016 I believe are all supported as well) – but Mac OS and some Linux versions are also supported.

For teams that consist of 10 or fewer people, you can self-host Jira and Confluence for a one-time payment of $10 each. Of course, as a business, you have to consider the cost of maintaining the computer equipment, but more than likely you already have tech support on the payroll and adding Jira support probably wouldn’t add a lot of extra work for them.

You get a free 30-day trial to evaluate the software. If you want to check out the prices, navigate to the Jira Prices page.

Unless you have $12,000 on hand and a need for 500 users or more, keep it to the Server option. Anything above 10 users on the Server option jumps to at least $2,000.

Downloading and Installing Jira

The first thing you want to do is navigate a web browser to Jira download Page. You should see a screen like the below, where you will choose your operating system.

For these instructions, I worked with Windows 64-bit. Most newer computers run windows 64 bit. If you are unsure, I have instructions prepared for you to figure it out: Windows 10: Finding System Information.

Click on the download button and choose a location to save the file. Once the file has completed its download, click it to open it up. You may be prompted by Windows to verify that you want the application to make changes to your system, select “Yes” if you want to continue with the install.

Click “Next” on the screen below.

You probably want to use the default “Express Install” option if you have no experience installing Jira. If you do have experience, why are you reading this? Click “Next” on the screen below.

This next screen is just going to tell you where it is installing it. Click the “Install” button.

The installer will run…

…and when it is complete you will be presented with the below screen. It would be easier if “Start Jira Software Now” was selected. I recommend you make sure it is checked, then click “Next.”

What it is doing is starting up a custom web server for Jira to use. If you didn’t listen to my warning about making sure the checkbox is checked, or you want to start and stop that web server, just run a search for Jira on your computer.