Should I use Connect or Forge

Jira Development Jira Cloud
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Hi, please I am new to development in Jira and I want to know, is it better for me to use Forge or Connect to build apps… are there any major advantages as to what you can do with one or the other aside from the topic of management of infrastructure or handling of authentication

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As always… it depends.

I think it is important to realise that Forge is the preferred platform by Atlassian. Although Connect is officially still supported, it is a public secret that Atlassian will be sunsetting it eventually.

However, Forge is currently far from production ready for any complex app. This is mostly related to the quotas and limitations, but most importantly, there are two specific issues that are important for commercial exploitation of Forge:

  1. Forge does not support data residency. It is currently only available on US east region AWS infrastructure, meaning that all data will travel through US. From a GDPR/privacy perspective, this is an important limitation for commercial exploitation, as many customers will ask questions about this

  2. Atlassian does not provide any warranty with regard to the security, reliability and availability of Forge. You are running on Atlassian infrastructure, but Atlassian will not take responsibility for any data loss / outage. Atlassian also discourages off-site back-ups of customer / end-user data, which is also one of the primary reasons to use Forge / unique selling points of Forge (that end-user data does not leave Atlassian infrastructure).

In addition, it is also very unclear what Atlassian will be charging for Forge. It is currently still free, but eventually it is expected that developers will have to pay for Forge resource usage.

In the end, all limitations of Forge will probably be resolved, but it will take some time. If you want to start monetising on the Atlassian Marketplace, I would recommend using Connect. If this is a simple app, in-house app or if you are a start-up that just wants to get started and think about the legal/commercial aspects later, you might want to chose for Forge.

So basically… it depends.

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wow… thank you so much… I am just a beginner in building atlassian apps so this is really helpful

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Remie, may I ask if it is possible for customers with the Data Center plan to install and pay for an app built and published with Forge? Or does “Forge does not support data residency” mean that only Cloud plan customers can install apps built with Forge? Thank you.

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Hi @Robert_Mian,

Forge is indeed only available for the Atlassian Cloud platform, and not for on-premise Data Center installations.

However, this is not related to Data Residency program, as this applies to the country in which Atlassian stores Cloud data.

There have been vendors, including us, who have been able to create solutions in which it is possible to share 90+% of the code base between Cloud and Data Center, but as far as I know this only applied to those vendors who have built upon Connect.

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Thank you @remie for reply!

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Thanks for this post @VictorAmadi and for that detailed response @remie

I am a little confused right now to switch our current connect app that is just a private app that we use on our instance for customfields and extensive JWT REST API calls - but we do want to expand from just Jira and JSM to Confluence and possibly Bitbucket too…

This is insightful … And oh and how i dis/like “it depends”! :smiley:

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Given that Atlassian has announced the imminent deprecation of Connect, I think the answer has become a bit less complicated. For all immediate purposes, I would strongly recommend using Forge

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Ah, thanks for that. Yeah, i just read this announcement few moments ago - Forge will remain free through 2025 - Work Life by Atlassian

Thanks again