Free Tool: JetBrains YouTrack
YouTrack is JetBrains' Web-based issue-tracking system. The latest version supports customizable workflows (using the free workflow editor) and better support for mobile devices, among other goodies. For developers who hate taking their hands off the keyboard, YouTrack supports both a command language and a search language that allow you to bypass the UI and just do what you want. YouTrack doesn't integrate with Visual Studio, but you can submit issues from e-mail (and also get notifications through Jabber, the open source instant messaging standard).
This is a full-featured issue tracker and (the best part) the only limitation on the free version is that you can't have more than 10 users.
If you're already using some other tool to track your "issues", YouTrack will import existing data from a variety of sources, including several of the popular issue-tracking tools. If you don't want to support YouTrack locally, JetBrains also has a hosted version (you can try it out for free until the Fall of 2011). Based on my experience, though, installation is a snap, so why bother?
Posted by Peter Vogel on 09/06/2011