Completely agree, now I have to manually make backups on our ftp and manually search for attachments so they are not lost. Basic feature, nothing Premium about that.

This option for TRASH looks like restoring the deleted files from Recycle bin. This is not an archival option. 

I agree that this is a feature that should be native to Jira Cloud Standard. It's something simple and extremely relevant.

I hope Atlassian will come back and rethink this possibility.

This should be part of the standard Jira Cloud service. Being able to archive a project is a basic function of project management. This is ridiculous.

Why is this basic feature ties to 'Premium' plan? This should be part of Jira standard plan. 

I just voted for "Ability to archive projects in Standard Plan". Keep them votes coming here:

https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JSWCLOUD-20833?error=login_required&error_description=Login+required&state=ee326a2a-72ce-4814-8131-650364c1bbf2

@BrendanMcKinney Let's hope the ~680 other people that have upvoted the current issue will also do so for the one you linked ( https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JSWCLOUD-20833?error=login_required&error_description=Login+required&state=ee326a2a-72ce-4814-8131-650364c1bbf2 )...

It is way, way beyond a "little" absurd. I find it dumbfounding. 

Whole heartedly agree with Burt here. I ask that everyone following this vote on his issue https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JSWCLOUD-20833?error=login_required&error_description=Login+required&state=ee326a2a-72ce-4814-8131-650364c1bbf2

JSWCLOUD-20833

I created a ticket to get it in standard plan. Please vote it up.

This is a little absurd that the ability to archive is not in the standard plan. So I need to pay double a month just to be able to manage my projects in a natural way? What a money grab. Terrible decision to only allow archive at the premium level. Makes other solutions look a lot better.

agree. I'm paying for it as it would be more expensive to migrate to a different product....  and it is buggy. The boards of archived projects are still visible.... 

Completely disastrous. As a customer, this is not a feature that would motivate me to pay a premium.  The fact that the brilliant minds who work in marketing think that it is, shows that they don't really understand their customers. Am I wrong?

No ability to archive projects in standard plan, but they are going to increase A LOT the prices for next renewals.

Just received this email:

"We are making changes to our pricing on October 6, 2020" 

And the link to it:

https://www.atlassian.com/licensing/future-pricing/cloud-pricing/faqs

Taking this into account, for next year's renewal we will have to pay $28,500 for the 401-500 users tier when this year we paid $23,250. It makes an increase of $5,250 for the same license. 

But looking for past invoices, the the price increase is absolutely incredible (for Jira Software 401-500 tier):

2017: $7,500

2018: $15,500

2019: $17,250

2020: $23,250

2021: $28,500

Really?? $21,000 price increase in 4 years?? And no project archiving ability?? This is why Atlassian users are looking for other alternatives different to Atlassian.

What a shame...

Please make this a feature of the Standard Plan. Every other project management software contains archiving projects as basic functionality. It is already usefull for a smaller team with 4 people which have made around 50 projects over the last 3 years, and are now left with a big confusing list of old legacy projects.

This is a great feature unless you use your project data for any kind of historic reporting (billing, audit, accountability, productivity, etc.)  See my new recommendation here if you agree, we need a flag to include archived when wanted:

https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRACLOUD-74992?error=login_required&error_description=Login+required&state=b3bfb76a-aa23-40ce-a041-48b6dc83dc7a

A feature as basic as archiving should definitely be a standard feature.  

Would like to see this added under the Standard Plan at the very minimum. Archiving should not be a top-tier feature for this type of software in my opinion. Thanks for the consideration.

Hard to believe this has been made a premium feature. Really. This should be generally available. Absolutely ridiculous to make such basic functionality subject to more expensive licencing. That deliberately excludes smaller users. Very disappointing.

Watch your NPS score drop after this move. Clearly a basic feature.

This is not a premium feature, it's a basic feature. Basic licenses are not temporary or short-term. Do you expect our dashboard to overflow with completed projects after years of trusting and working with JIRA? Even this is not a feature, it's a bug not having it.

Thank you!!! Finally! While we would have been upset had we been on standard still, we made the decision a month or two ago to switch to premium for other features. Glad this is finally here though and that I was still following this issue.

Doesn't work for Classic service desk projects??

Tagging projects, archiving projects, fold projects must be a core feature even for free accounts... It's like you buy a PC, go home and discovers that you cannot create directories or use the USB port...

It's simply crazy... 

I would like to say I'm shocked, but the general slide of Jira from a cool, exciting, useful tool into "it's all about the benjamins" seems to be unrelenting. What a shame. Seriously, what a shame. 

Im seriously amazed at the fact that you've made this a PREMIUM FEATURE. in my eyes, this SHOULD BE A DEFAULT FEATURE of Jira Cloud.

not impressed guys.....SERIOUSLY NOT IMPRESSED, keeping in mind how much we pay for Jira licenses.... this could actually swing the tide into ... moving away from Jira or finding a alternative.

Amazing. With everyone that has commented about this feature over the last several years, you continue to make it a premium feature. How very Microsoft of you. Have people pay for solving a persistent bug.

It would be nice to hear some justification from Atlassian of making this a premium feature when people have been saying it's essential for 17 years! 

At least Dick Turpin wore a mask... 

Are you kidding us all? This is not a premium feature, it's more like an unresolved bug that nobody had time to fix on your side. I am writing this comment to let others know that there are more people really annoyed by this announcement. 

Great job on making the essential functionality exclusive for Premium users 

Does this feature also include automation possibilities?

Thanks!

Also looking forward to seeing this issue deployed. For reference, here is the workaround again that your support people currently ask customers to go through:

 As a workaround, follow below the necessary information about hiding projects in Jira Cloud, for more information you can consult this documentation.

Create a new permission scheme, and leave all of the permissions empty:

Go to Jira settings > Issues.
Click Permission Schemes > Add Permission Scheme.
Associate the new permission scheme with the project that you wish to hide (see the section Associating a Permission Scheme with a Project ):

Choose the Jira icon > Projects. Select the relevant project.
Open the Project Summary administration page for that project. (See Configuring projects.)
In the Permissions section, click the name of the current scheme.
Click the Actions dropdown menu and choose Use a different scheme.
On the 'Associate Permission Scheme to Project' page, which lists all available permission schemes, select the permission scheme you want to associate with the project.
Click the Associate button to associate the project with the permission scheme.
Note: As an admin, you will still be able to see hidden projects. People without admin permissions will not be able to see hidden projects.

@ritesh - we have already started our Premium trial. How can I find out when this feature will roll out to my instance?

Looking forward to seeing this feature deployed.

Why is it only certain categories of projects that are not able to be closed or archived? Can I change the category of something I've already created?

Very important feature. Really disappointed to find this isn't available.

Wow. I am stunned that archiving a project is not a standard feature. The permissions "workaround" is not just bad UX, it is absurd. Add my voice to the clamoring hoard.

gotcha! I wasn't aware that Atlassian was considering this to be a premium feature.

In my humble opinion, a premium would be something in the category of AI-based search. Paying extra for basic administration seems disconnected from reality. 

If prioritization of features is based on frequency of use, I understand why this is at the bottom of the list. However, this should not be the only criteria to decide what is implemented.

In Jira cloud there is a systematic absence of infrequent but really useful features.  This all translates to a bottleneck in productivity.

I would obviously use the workaround for one project.  My point was about the business model of finally delivering a feature that most users would expect out of the box, after 10 years, and then asking us to pay more for it.  And not just pay more for that feature, but also buy other features that I don't need.

I'm not disagreeing about the need for actual archiving functionality; we have several hundred projects and would definitely like to have the ability. My reply was very specifically in response to someone complaining about having to pay a lot of money to archive a single project once a year. In that case, while (as I said) permission lockdown isn't ideal, it is a functional workaround if you aren't able to pay for the premium features.

I totally agree. Especially when you have to have administrator privileges and have about 150 projects out of 500 ended or closed but need to keep them available for statistics, search and worklogs, etc.

Changing the permission scheme is not an option. 

I don't think that changing permissions is a great user experience and that you can use that instead of having an archive a project feature. It is a workaround? to a very limited extent.

Consider for example how great it would be if you archived a project and then issues in that project would not be included in filters. This means that you would not have "aeternal assignments" showing up in your metrics. 

Some could say, well why don't you "bulk unassign" or "bulk something"  but if you think about it, you should not change the status of issues in an archived project. You may want to keep the snapshot of how things were for auditing purposes or in case the project was active again in the future.

👋 Hi! it would be great to have this feature. 

@Brian Oconnell - not saying it's ideal, but if you only need to "archive" one project once a year, you don't really need a true archive; there are other ways to manage things, like changing the permission scheme to hide the project.

Just to confirm, when the archive feature does become available, you want me to pay $7000 more each year to archive one project one time?  But thank the heavens we got the "New Issue View" for free. I know users had been clamoring for that for a decade or more.  Or maybe I'm thinking of something else.

@ritesh, Thank you for the update.

It would be useful to hear something about Atlassian's criteria for deciding whether something is a Premium feature. Is the idea that if there are enough basic features in the Premium level, Cloud customers will have to upgrade? I don't know about other Cloud users, but my company isn't going to upgrade any time soon, because your pricing model is so broken for the way we use your products. There is a core of users who are in Jira every single day. Probably half our users need access but only once a week, or maybe once a month. Charging the same amount for both types of users doesn't reflect the value to our company or the costs to Atlassian. If we could buy Premium-level access for a subset of our users, maybe we would do that. But while we can't, you'll have to keep listening to our complaints about the lack of some basic functionality, like archiving.

So, AGAIN, Premium only.

Can't help but notice this forum is not in Jira Cloud, does not use the new UI, and is not "Premium". Are you not an "enterprise" level installation? Why are YOU not in Cloud??

surely they have other priorities... 

@Jeremy 

Thank you Jeremy!! It is  not only common sense, but also according to scrum a MUST. And Atlassian Systems use the scrum Framework as a basic selling argument. Customer feedback must be part of any increments developed by the teams. It is one of the main ingredients of agil development. Is it not all about delivering value to the customer? This missing little feature shows how low the customer is valued by Atlassian. Look at this discussion, unbelievable how the are not reacting to our urgent needs.  https://www.scrum.org/resources/blog/six-ingredients-agile-organizational-design

I might also point out Atlassian's Company Values, specifically this one seems relevant: 

Don’t #@!% the customer

Customers are our lifeblood. Without happy customers, we’re doomed. So considering the customer perspective - collectively, not just a handful - comes first.

https://www.atlassian.com/company/values

@Julius we are actively looking at Azure DevOps and Freshworks FreshAgile offering. Bother are cheaper and appear to offer the same base functionality as Jira with many of the missing features included. The ironic thing is, all these other providers include all the things Atlassian are now going to offer as 'premium' features in their standard offering.

We looked at Jira Server but really cant be bothered with the hassle, and the 50 or 100 user gap in licensing model really sucks compared to other offerings now days eg. per user per month (same applies for Jira Cloud too actually) particularly paying for a plugin for every user when only a handful require it eg. test suites. 

The possibility to archive a project when the project is closed is needed.

Also agree. I was shocked to find out that this was considered a 'premium' feature. 

I totally agree with @Jeremy West. It looks like the only way to get a basic feature from the software that we all pay good money for is to find some other software. Let's share here what other platforms you consider and maybe these folks will change their mind fast enough to keep at least some of us.