Jira Data Center is ending. We know what that means for you.

To the Engineering leaders, admins, and program managers who have run critical work on Jira Data Center for years, you didn’t choose this timeline. Atlassian did. You built roadmaps, SLAs, and compliance on software you could run on your own infra.

Enter Plane—the only viable alternative to Jira Data Center for teams that must self-host or air-gap without giving up control, compliance, or speed.

Our goal with this letter is straightforward—to present a fact-check, show you how Plane is the only viable alternative to JDC, and offer the easiest switch for all teams.
What we know so far

• New Jira Data Center sales end
  March 30, 2026.
• Last expansions for existing DC customers
  March 30, 2028.
• End of life, read-only
  March 28, 2029.
• Atlassian stop-gap
• Early access to Government Cloud for FedRAMP Moderate only • No support so far for FedRAMP High, U.S. Department of Defense Impact Level 5
• Isolated Cloud for single-tenant requirements available only in 2026

With roughly 99% of 300,000+ customers already on the Cloud and all new customers choosing it, Atlassian's signal is very my-way-or-the-highway.

What this means for regulated industries

TL;DR? Start looking for a viable alternative quick and prep plan to move hundreds of thousands of issues, several hundred projects, at least 500 team members, and tens of thousands of workflows and automations.

Data Center customers in government, defense, pharma, and financial services chose JDC squarely because the public Cloud couldn't and wouldn't ever comply with the strict regulations these companies must comply with. FedRAMP is just one of them. There are hundreds across countries and regions.

That's just the beginning. The biggest challenge is moving deep JDC integrations for identity, change control, and governance, specifically designed for sealed networks and validated environments, to multi-tenant set-ups. Anyone who's gone through the first forced move from Jira Server to Jira Data Center knows the despair of such a move.

Finally, moving from JDC to the Atlassian Cloud raises TCO by 28% on average. Credit this to the massive Atlassian Marketplace rife with apps that charge anywhere from $3 to $16 a pop for unlocking essential functionality that should have been available out of the box anyway. Add company-native products like Atlassian Guard and Jira Align, and that 28% number starts to look more like 50%.

Where Plane stands and what you can hold us to

Before anything else, Plane is Projects + Wiki + AI on one unified interface that works for the entire company. It is available as a hosted solution on our Cloud and as two different self-hosted variants called editions.

Plane is at full parity across all three, so no one kind of deployment feels like a second-class citizen. The core experience is consistent across our hosted Cloud and your self-hosted instances. Only governance controls differ between the two where necessary. This is incredibly hard to sustain, especially against the backdrop of AI. That we have abstracted away the engineering complexity to bring Plane Intelligence to our self-hosted editions speaks to our commitment to that parity.

Our business is designed to be balanced. It's a 50-50 revenue split between Cloud and self-hosted. We intend to keep it that way.

"Security and compliance are not marketing pillars for us; they are operating constraints we design for. Self-hosted Plane runs entirely within your network boundary; the air-gapped edition defaults to zero egress."

Self-hosting Plane

Self-hosting Plane is intentionally simple: you can be up and running in under three minutes on your own infrastructure. From there, you harden, integrate, and operate it like any other first-class internal system.

Two ways to deploy (same product, different networks)

• Connected (Self-Hosted): Run via Docker Compose or Helm/Kubernetes on your network, aligning with your organization’s standard outbound policies and proxies. For zero-egress or sealed networks, choose Air-Gapped.
• Air-Gapped (Fully Offline): Install from a single ~6 GB package with installer.sh that includes all images/assets. No external pulls and zero egress by default—built for sealed environments.

“While others may just be starting to think about compliance-ready, on-premise solutions — Plane has been battle-tested for over two years with Defence, Aerospace, Finance, and Healthcare customers. We’re years ahead.”

Your first hour with self-hosting

• Provision & install: Launch the 3-minute CLI wizard (Compose/Helm), set domain/admin/storage, and land on a working workspace.
• Wire identity: Connect SAML/OIDC (Okta, Entra ID, Keycloak), map groups/roles.
• Harden basics: Terminate TLS at your ingress; register in CMDB.
• Import a project: Bring issues/comments/attachments; validate statuses and “done” criteria.

Operating as a critical app

• Upgrades & patches: Self-Hosted updates bi-weekly (~14-month stability tracks). Air-Gapped updates quarterly. We ship signed images, SBOMs, and offline CVE patches (for air-gapped).
• Backups & DR: Standard Postgres + filestore backups, plus printable runbooks.
• Observability: Export metrics/logs to Prometheus/ELK/Grafana
• Licensing: Cloud/Self-Hosted auto-activate post-purchase. Air-Gapped uses offline license files. Plan-agnostic keys (same key for Pro/Business/Enterprise).

Sizing & footprint

Designed to run lean and scale linearly. Typical pilot starts at ~4 GB RAM / 2 vCPUs with a compact image set (<2 GB). Scale by users/projects—not by jumping billing tiers or over-provisioning.
Self-hosted quickstart • Airgapped install • Security and Compliance
A pragmatic migration path

1. Assess (2–4 weeks)
   Start by taking stock: who’s using what, which projects and workflows matter, and where custom fields, automations, and integrations live. Flag anything that might block you. Policy, tech, or process.
2. Map (2–6 weeks)
   Translate Jira entities into Plane: projects, work types, statuses, and fields. Agree on “done looks like this” acceptance checks, then spin up a non-prod pilot so real users can kick the tires.
3. Move data (1–4 weeks)
   Bring issues, comments, and attachments across. Double-check counts and links so nothing goes missing (we offer white-glove onboarding for > 100 seats), and get a sign-off from your stakeholders.
4. Cut over (1–2 weeks)
   Pick a freeze window, switch SSO, update redirects, and run quick smoke tests plus a few role-based scenarios. Keep comms tight so teams know exactly when to switch.
5. Stabilize (ongoing)
   Retire the old instance, light up dashboards and reports, and run a short post-migration audit. Capture lessons learned, close out tickets, and move on with confidence.

We will be publishing a public parity matrix and clearly labeling any cloud-only capabilities. We have prioritized signed images, SBOMs, and rapid security fixes, including offline bundles for air-gapped sites. And we have architecture diagrams, threat models, backup/DR procedures, and audit workflows current, versioned, and available for you. Shoot an email over to selfhost@plane.so to request.

“Plane is built on a rock-solid open source foundation — not just as a principle, but as a strength that ensures trust, transparency, and long-term resilience.”

Your next steps

Don’t let March 2029 turn into an operational risk. Run an assessment, spin up a pilot, and pressure-test SSO, audit, backups, and change control—on your infrastructure, under your policies, on your timeline.

Self-hosting isn’t a relic. With Plane, it’s stable, modern, and accountable. We’ll meet you where you operate—with software that treats self-hosting as a first-class choice.

Self-hosted quickstart • Airgapped install • Security and Compliance