Let’s all admit that getting projects out the door is hard.

For agencies with smart clients and high standards, Sifter is the issue tracking software that helps you stay on top of your project punch lists and makes your clients happy.

"Look No Further Than Sifter" “Sifter has served us well over the years. If you're part of a small team looking for an issue tracker that's quick to set up, does its job well and gets out of the way, look no further than Sifter.” Brandon Kelly, CEO at Craft CMS

Managing Project Punch Lists Is Hard

Finishing projects – shipping them out and getting them off your plate – can sometimes seem likes it takes forever.

Especially that last five percent.

You can be so close to nailing your milestone date, but then you receive another email from your client…

That kind of email.

This email only has those two magic words: “See Below.”

Below is a long chain of replies and forwards with yet another round of feedback.

You, your project manager and your team have to sift through this email chain, crossing your fingers and hoping you didn’t miss the number of to-dos buried within.

God forbid you missed the item that refers to the pet-project that the main stakeholder wants to see executed.

After sorting through the to-dos, now you have another hurdle: delegating the punch list items to your team.

Who’s going to grab which issue? Was it already fixed? Did someone already tell the client?

Is email the only option for this?

Surely, using email must be easier than software.

Software seems too heavy, too unwieldy and too complicated to ask a client to use.

After all, you’re trying to be an agency that has “easy” client relationships.

You want to be simple to work with.

Without a Reliable System, Your Issues Run into Issues

But if you don’t have a reliable system to track your project’s issues, your agency runs into issues.

  • More time is spent than you planned.
  • Thinking this project would be over by now, you’re burning through hours you planned on billing to other projects.
  • Time is wasted on miscommunication.
  • Your team dreads using software for tracking issues.
  • Fewer requests are put on the punch list.
  • More issues are lost or forgotten.
  • More issues slip through to production.
  • Clients are frustrated because they already gave you their feedback.
  • You hope your team doesn’t look incompetent to your client.
  • That would cost you goodwill and pressure when you send that final bill.

These are the hidden costs of issue management.

Sticking to email to manage issues invites disaster, but we’ve all seemed to accept it.

Asking your project manager use another app to create and delegate tasks still puts the burden on them to be a middle-man.

Asking your clients to use a complicated software system creates an unfamiliar, unnecessary barrier, too complicated. All the features in the world don’t matter if clients can’t—or won’t—use the app.

Issue tracking doesn’t have to be overwhelming.

In most cases, we force the complexity on ourselves when we don’t have to.

Use Simple Issue Tracking

What if your team embraced issue tracking software instead of dreading it?

What if you could skip the most common project questions or make the answers stupid-easy to find?

We all ask the same questions:

  • Didn’t you get my email?
  • Who do I tell about this problem?
  • Did you fix that?
  • Who’s working on that?
  • How much work is left?
  • What did we decide?
  • Why did we decide that?
  • Who decided that?
  • What’s next?

What if your team always had the answers?

You could…

  • Save time and money
  • Reduce miscommunication
  • Streamline feedback and fixing
  • Keep track of more issues
  • Increase team accountability
  • Fix issues the first time
  • Know how much work is left
  • Get non-technical team members involved
  • Make your team happier
  • Make your clients happier

All these things contribute to better projects.

Then your team can spend less time fighting fires and more time improving your websites, designs, or other creative work.

Plus, better work means happier clients. (And conveniently enough, a happier team too.)

“Sifter is the uncomplicated way for production teams to keep track of project issues and turn out higher-quality work, faster.”

Sifter is simple.

In fact, Sifter is the simplest issue tracking software for small agencies.

Sifter helps small teams keep track of client feedback and project issues, but the difference is your clients and your project team won’t mind using it because it’s so simple.

After years of trying to use advanced software, we discovered that simplicity – and the client participation because of that simplicity – were more valuable than any set of features.

We designed this software so that your team would want to use it and your clients wouldn’t have any problems with it.

We set out to focus on the human problems of issue tracking so that teams could enjoy the process of improving their deliverables.

Finding and fixing issues doesn’t have to be misery-inducing work.

Sifter helps make it easier.



  • Sifter is easy to use. Our users love how simple it is to use Sifter. It’s easy to configure, easy to create and track issues, and easy for everyone on their teams to understand and use. It looks sleek and is plenty strong for your team, but it’s not bogged down with hundreds of features you don’t need and don’t want to pay for.
  • Sifter works great with email. Creating and updating issues in Sifter is just as easy with email. Whether it’s adding attachments or setting an assignee or priority, team members barely have to log into Sifter.
  • There’s one home for everything. Every question, issue, bug, idea, or feature request can live together in a single system. Issues and new requests live on equal footing, and nobody ever has to wonder which system to use for a given problem.
  • Track a project’s individual issues. Track the progress of individual items instead of the whole project. All the information and conversation around an issue is kept in one easily-accessible place.
  • Everyone on the team can use it. Sifter keeps options and configuration to a minimum so non-technical team members are comfortable using it.
  • It’s quick and easy to create and update issues. Streamlined forms make it easy for people to quickly add issues. More issues are reported, and less time is wasted filling out irrelevant details for every issue. Sifter even accepts issues from team members through email.
  • The workflow is straightforward. Sifter skips redundant or ambiguous statuses so your team doesn’t need extensive software training, tutorials or documentation to make the right choices. Set an urgent priority to boost an issue over the others.
  • See simple status reports. Sifter ditches extensive custom reporting for simple views into overall project and milestone statuses.
  • Sifter makes communicating easier. Sifter makes it easy for users to communicate and get feedback on issues quickly. Notifications help keep your team on top of issue updates, especially when using the @ symbol to tag people in conversations.
  • Keep moving forward with crystal-clear accountability. Issues in Sifter can only have one assignee. There’s no passing the buck and no assuming someone else is handling it. With Sifter, it’s always easy to know who did what and when.
  • Never pay for more users. Having more people involved in quality assurance helps uncover more issues, but paying extra for someone to help test for a single week doesn’t make sense. With Sifter, you never have to pay extra or upgrade for the one or two team members that will only be involved in the project for a couple of weeks. Every account has unlimited users.


Try Sifter Free for Two Weeks

Join thousands of companies that have trusted Sifter to help them track 2,000,000 bugs and issues since 2008.

You can be up in running in under a minute with no credit card required.

Pay month-to-month.

Change your plan anytime you want.

Cancel anytime.

No commitments.

Remember, if you’re not happy with Sifter, we’ll refund your money.

That takes all the pressure off you, and lets you enjoy simple success.

Also, go ahead and add all the users you want. We won’t charge you anything extra whenever you want to add a user account.

14-day free trial. No commitment. Pay monthly.
Change plans or cancel any time with ease.

What are agencies and project managers saying about Sifter and how it helps them get projects out the door?


“Client Peace of Mind” “With Sifter, it’s incredibly easy to collaborate with clients and keep them informed. That kind of transparency can give clients peace of mind to know the issues they’re tracking are being addressed.” Mark Huot, Development Director at Happy Cog
“The Apple of Issue Tracking” “Sifter is the Apple of the issue tracking world.” Karim Marucchi, CEO at Crowd Favorite
Clients Love Sifter “Our clients love Sifter. Regardless of how you find yourself using it, you’re going to love it. Every client we’ve let in has, and we’ve let hundreds in by now. The focus the team gives Sifter really shows.” Aaron Mentele, Partner at Electric Pulp
“One of the Most Well Thought-Out Apps” “Sifter is one of the most well thought out apps I've ever used.” James Turnley, Project Manager at The New York Times
Beautiful & Simple “Highly recommended. Beautiful product, created very intentionally to be simple and without feature bloat. Excellent for small and medium sized teams.” Ben Paul, Lead Quality Assurance Analyst at Niche
“Way Ahead of What Anyone Else is Doing” “The design, execution, and support for Sifter is way ahead of what anyone else is doing. Without it, many lives would be worse off.” Sean Cullen, EVP at Fluent, Inc
“I Recommend This to My Fellow Project Managers” “I have used Sifter since 2010 in most of my projects. I recommend this to my fellow project manager associates. Best of all is the feedback I get from my designers. It's clear to everyone who “has the ball”, it's simple, and gives an overview. They want this on all their projects.” Ole Petter Hoel, Senior Project Manager at Making Waves
“Sifter is the Glue” “Sifter is the glue that keeps us organized across all our development work, and in our experience, the quality and responsiveness of their support is second only to our own.” Adrian Sevitz, CTO at vzaar
“Contributes to my bottom line and my client's satisfaction” “Sifter is a clean and understandable system for my clients. They are able to add issues and request new features with little to no training on Sifter. Your product directly contributes to my bottom line and my client's satisfaction.” Jonathan Bennett

Try Sifter for free for two weeks. No commitments. Cancel anytime.