Best Project Management Software

Best Project Management Software

So what actually is project management? A “project” is defined by the Project Management Institute as a temporary, unique undertaking that has “specific set of operations designed to accomplish a singular goal,” and often involves diverse groups working together.

monday.com

Best for building custom workflows across teams

monday.com sports a bright interface where it is easy to distinguish project data very quickly.

However, continue reading because, even if it is the overall best project management software, it might not be the best for your particular project management requirements.

monday.com is a project management software utilized by diverse organizations such as Hulu, BBC Studios, Aerolineas Argentinas, Coca-Cola, L’Oréal Paris, Adobe, and Deezer.

Personnel management, project management, time tracking, communication and reporting are just some of the possibilities Monday.com offers for project management.

Users can upload and attach files to cards, write comments, nominate colleagues and perform a variety of other actions.

For example, there is also a decent dashboard available for project reporting that can pull data from many maps, allowing more accurate progress monitoring.

And while, unlike other programs, Monday.com does not offer comprehensive project accounting and invoicing tools, you can use it to track hours worked, deadlines met, and invoices sent out by your company.

monday.com Work OS is an open platform that brings teams together with custom-built solutions to break communication barriers, move projects forward, and align everyone involved.

Overall, it’s a highly customizable tool that lets you work in whatever methodology—Kanban or otherwise—that fits your project and team. You’ll also find some useful workflow tools for automating parts of your process. Read our in-depth monday.com review for a complete overview of the tool, as well as a short video tutorial of basic features.

monday.com’s integrations include project management apps like Slack, Google Drive, Gmail, Google Calendar, Jira, GitHub, Trello, Dropbox, Typeform, and many more, accessible via Zapier.

monday.com costs from $8/user/month and comes with a free 14-day trial. They offer a free plan for up to 2 users.

Monday.com pros and cons:

PROS

• Huge focus on collaboration
• Long list of supported integrations
• Easy to customize a workflow or board
• Helpful visual/color coding customization

CONS

• Complex pricing rubric
• Gantt charts locked to mid-level plan
• May be too robust for small teams

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Start with Monday.com by creating your personal workflow. With this workflow you can visualize and highlight elements like time management, text or locations. You can share and work with this tool with your whole team and save time by only recording the important documents and conversations.

Pricing: Monday.com offers different paid plans, depending on the size of the company and the number of users. Starting from Basic €17 (2 users/month) to Pro €39 (2 users/month). They also offer an Enterprise package (pricing available upon request).

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Monday is a simple project management tool that helps teams visually organize tasks and projects. Projects are managed via one central board, which serves as the hub for each project and reflects changes made on a task-by-task basis. Boards are also customizable — you can add new columns to see data on hours spent, status, and location.

This project management software also has views including workload view, where you can see pending tasks by individual, timeline, where you can plan work out by due date, and charts, where you can review team efforts and outcomes.

Cost: Pricing starts at $39/month for the first five users billed annually.

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monday.com is a stellar resource for planning out projects, delegating tasks to team members and staying on course to hit important deadlines. Manage everything from budgets to milestones. The best part is that monday.com provides many of its resources, including the ability to create unlimited boards and docs, absolutely free.

While individuals could get a lot done with just monday.com’s free tier, some teams may require additional resources. Luckily, its premium project management software is available in a series of affordable subscription plans. Through these tiers, it’s easy to appreciate that it’s a highly scalable resource for small teams and large organizations alike.

Overall, monday.com is a great resource, no matter the budget. However, some users have found that its interface and automation can come with a steep learning curve. The unavailability of some features without upgrades, including better quality customer service, can also be points of contention. Still, there are far more reasons to try it out than there are to pass on this excellent project management software.

Who should use it:

monday.com’s free tier works best for individuals and pairs, while its upgraded service plans fit small businesses and larger enterprises alike.

Pros & Cons

• Great free tier available
• Lots of integrations available, even at freeware level
• Create unlimited boards
• Hundreds of free templates
• Great collaboration resources
• Highly scalable subscription tiers
• Kanban-friendly
• 24/7 customer phone service

• Possible learning curve to overcome with interface and automation
• Mobile app can lag
• You might have to upgrade considerably to get the best customer service

Pricing & Plans

Free & Basic

The most basic freeware tier, aimed at individuals and pairs, also includes:

• Over 200 free templates
• iOS and Android apps
• Boards with up to 20 columns

monday.com’s free tier offers access to a fantastic variety of third-party integrations such as Zoom, Excel, Twilio, Zendesk and WooCommerce. If the free tier doesn’t encompass everything you need, the Basic plan is $10 monthly per seat and increases the storage capacity in addition to enabling dashboards.

It also mentions that the Basic tier includes prioritized customer support. Indeed, customer service access improves the more you upgrade, which might not be to the liking of purchasers who expect good customer service regardless of the tier.

Standard

monday.com’s Standard plan costs $12 monthly per seat (or person). The price at this level flattens out to $36 per month once you purchase three seats. Thanks to an 18% annual discount, you can instead pay a flat fee of $30 per month.

The Standard plan includes everything in the Basic tier while also providing the features below:

• No limit to viewers (in read-only mode)
• The ability to add an unlimited number of items to boards
• Timeline, Gantt and calendar view options
• Access to more than 250 integrations and automation tools every month
• A dashboard that combines up to five boards

The Standard tier also provides guest access to aid with collaboration efforts without having to hand over complete access to your account.

Pro

With the Pro subscription plan, each seat costs $20 per month. Should you purchase three seats, you can pay a flat rate of $60 per month, which drops to $48 with the annual contract. If you upgrade to Pro, you’ll get everything at the Standard and Basic tiers plus:

• Upwards of 25,000 integrations and automation tools each month
• The ability to create private boards and docs
• Formula and dependency columns
• Time tracking capabilities
• The option to visualize data through charts and graphs
• A dashboard that combines up to ten boards

The Pro level is an outstanding resource for larger teams and collaborative efforts with a need to access a host of resources.

Enterprise

Enterprise represents monday.com’s highest tier, and you’ll need to contact sales to work out a specific price. Should your organization choose this subscription plan, you can expect the features of the three other levels and also:

• Up to 250,000 automations and integrations per month
• Enterprise-grade security features
• Highly advanced analytics and reporting tools
• Multilevel permissions
• Custom onboarding
• A dashboard combining as many as 50 boards
• Premium customer support

Asana

Has an emphasis on teams and tracking

Asana is a project management solution you may have heard of – even if you haven’t used the service in the past. While it offers a ton of handy features to boost productivity, there’s a bigger emphasis placed on tracking.

The app lets you create to-do lists and reminders so you always meet deadlines, plus you can add due dates, colleagues, instructions to tasks, and comment on items. You can even share images from other apps (like Google Drive) directly to Asana. And more importantly, you can actually track everything you and your colleagues work on in a bid to ensure the project is running smoothly and to schedule.

If you’re concerned with who is working on certain projects, then you can bring up a list of teams and individuals, and there’s also a search functionality so you can find completed tasks easily.

Asana offers a free Basic tier, with limited functionality and dashboards. Step up to the Premium, Business, or Enterprise tiers and you unlock additional features, as well as administration and management options.

Pros

+Handy tracking functions+Cloud-based+Team-oriented

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Asana helps teams orchestrate their work, from daily tasks to strategic initiatives. With Asana, teams are more confident, move faster, and accomplish more with less, no matter where they are located. More than 107,000 paying organizations and millions of organizations across 190 countries rely on Asana to manage everything from company objectives to digital transformation to product launches and marketing campaigns. Get started in minutes to try Asana.

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In order to keep work organised, the Asana project management software offers Tasks, projects, conversations and dashboards. Many satisfied users say that the catchiest feature this tool has to offer is the ability to add customer fields and track only what is important to you. The software also offers Team Pages where ideas and conversations are shared for all to see as well as a ‘Smart Box’ where team members receive only important project updates rather than all messages back and forth. It can be integrated with a large number of other systems including Google Drive, DropBox, Github, MailChimp and more.

Pricing: Asana offers a basic version which is free, however business can also sign up for premium ($9.99/month) or an enterprise package which offers more control and support (pricing upon request).

Free for basic, premium for $13.49 per user per month, $30.49 per user for the business plan

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Asana is a user-friendly project management tool that can easily manage small and larger projects, which is why it’s part of our list of best project management softwares. The software is designed around tasks and subtasks arranged into different sections that can be assigned to either an individual or teams. 

For each task, the project manager and the rest of the team can communicate and provide feedback in the same place, keeping collaboration for each project at a central, easy to access location.

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Asana is another popular software system that offers small teams the ability to ease into project management for free, providing a chance to upgrade as the group expands and more complex features become necessary. The free tier lets you collaborate with as many as 15 team members.

Without any financial obligations, Asana gives you access to unlimited activity logs, messages, projects and tasks. You also gain limitless file storage space for files up to 100 MB in size. Other no-cost features include:

• Assign due dates
• Project overview
• Calendar, list and board views
• More than 100 free integrations

Asana’s free plan is an excellent resource for small teams on a fixed budget or anyone looking for a reliable way to get used to project management without any financial obligations. Should you decide to upgrade, there are just two paid tiers, plus an Enterprise plan.

Some customers complained about issues with customer service and difficulty canceling. Others found that they didn’t have as much use for a premium Asana account. It’s essential to be active with your 30-day trial and know as quickly as possible if the paid version of Asana is best for you. That way, you can cancel promptly and avoid any unwanted charges.

Plenty of individuals and companies continue to get a great deal out of Asana, which is why we recommend checking out the free version and perhaps giving the premium tiers a try.

Who should use it:

Asana is great for small teams and those who are relatively new to project management.

Pros & Cons

• Free version that’s easy to use with a lot of features
• A lot of integrations are available
• Unlimited storage space

• Complaints about customer service
• Some mentioned difficulty with cancellations

Plans & Pricing

Premium

You can purchase the Premium tier for as little as $10.99 per user per month if you go with the annual plan. Otherwise, the price is $13.49 monthly per user. With this upgrade, you and your team will have access to everything in the freeware, plus resources such as:

• Unlimited dashboards
• Reporting across unlimited projects
• A timeline feature
• Custom fields
• Advanced search
• And more

Asana provides these tools to help you create project plans with confidence while carefully monitoring the process from beginning to end and staying on top of every objective.

Business

You can get the Business subscription for the equivalent of $24.99 monthly per user with an annual discount or pay $30.49 per person at a month-to-month rate.

Asana recommends the Business plan for teams that need to work across various initiatives. It offers advanced integrations with Adobe Creative Cloud, Salesforce, Tableau and more. You also get:

• Portfolios
• Approvals
• Proofing
• A custom rules builder
• And other advanced features

Asana does offer an Enterprise level. It includes everything in the lower tiers, in addition to a branded workspace. To find out more about features and pricing, you’ll need to directly contact the Asana sales team.

Trello

Over the last few years, Trello has emerged as one of the most popular project management applications. It lets you organize all of your work-based and personal projects through a computer, tablet or smartphone. Trello is notably used by the likes of Fender, Google and Kickstarter.  

You’re able to set up boards to organize everything you’re working on, delegate tasks among colleagues, get customized workflows, add to-do lists within task cards, attach files and comment on items. The idea is that you manage all aspects of a project within the app, regardless of whether it’s team-based or assigned to an individual.

Both Windows and Mac desktops are supported, with mobile apps available on Android and iOS devices; there’s even a version that’s been optimized specifically for the iPad Pro. The latter sports a larger canvas and a variety of handy email shortcuts to speed up projects. It’s free to download to give it a spin, and can be used on the free tier, although there is a limit on the size of file attachments.

Upgrade to Business Class and you get additional features, including one-day email support, and integration with other services such as from Google and Slack, as well as higher attachment limits.

Pros

+Cross-platform support+Cloud-based+Team supported

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Based around the kanban card-based management system, Trello’s simple interface and generous free tier makes it the ideal place for individuals and small teams to get started with basic project management.

Rather than traditional tools designed for managing resources and tracking progress towards a specific end date, kanban-based apps like Trello are more free-form and flexible.

You can manage both individual projects and ongoing workflows equally well, and the board and card metaphors are easy to understand. There’s plenty of power under the hood, with cards able to include images and attached files, hyperlinks, custom dropdowns, due dates, and plenty more.

Once you’re finished with a particular card or an entire board, it can be archived to hide it from daily view while still being accessible if needed in the future.

The basic free tier includes unlimited users and cards, up to 10 boards, and just one “Power-Up” (i.e., integration with other services) per board. Its unlimited storage is restricted to 10 megabytes per file. Paid plans start at $10 per month, with fewer or no limitations.

There’s very limited reporting built into Trello, and although third-party extensions add more options, you’ll likely still need to look elsewhere if detailed reports are a major requirement. For everyone else, however, Trello is a great place to start with project management. It’s available on the web, mobile, and desktop.

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Trello is unlike these other project management softwares in that it is an online kanban tool. This means that it visualises an entire project in just one single view. Trello makes it possible to make cards and move them around on the ‘board’. These cards can display – for example, conversations or to-do lists, which can be placed on a board, making them accessible for any of the designated tool users.

Pricing: Trello offers a free package (with unlimited boards, lists, cards and members). It also has a business class package that costs $9.99/month, which includes unlimited ‘power-ups’, which are different features and integrations, and an enterprise package that costs $20.83/month.

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Trello is a great option for small teams or individuals looking to utilize a simple project management tool. The tool is Kanban board-based, which is a project management methodology started by an industrial engineer in the 40s. Cards are the basics of Trello, which you can organize into different phases on the board.

You can also color-code and attach images or files to the cards, and invite team members to collaborate on a board with you for a more interactive experience. One major negative with Trello is that each board only corresponds to one project, so if you want to create two bigger projects, you need to make two boards.

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Trello is a familiar name in project management, best known for letting individuals or teams create a series of boards and cards through which you can more easily visualize project objectives and track projects from the “to-do” to “done” phases.

Trello is free to use and offers you the chance to create unlimited cards for as many team members or projects as you need. The service also provides infinite storage space, but file sizes are limited to 10 MB each.

Other free tier items include:

• Up to 10 free boards
• 250 Workspace commands per month
• Custom backgrounds and stickers
• An unlimited activity log
• Assignee and due date designations

Beyond the web version, you can access and use Trello through iOS or Android. If you are not sure about the need to upgrade to access premium features, Trello provides a free 14-day trial and a basic free plan. If you need a simple, visual tool for organizing products, you may get away with just using the free version. However, for more involved projects, you will likely have to upgrade. That is not necessarily a bad thing, as Trello has some great features.

Some users also worry that Atlassian, which bought Trello in 2017, has not improved user experience. The setup, especially the freeware, can feel a bit basic and underdeveloped. Even so, Trello is easy to set up and start using immediately and offers limitless possibilities for self-organization, even at the free tier.

Who should use it:

Trello is great for teams of every size and budget that want to streamline their projects and more easily track progress visually.

Pros & Cons

• Free and easy to use
• Great tool for visual organization
• Unlimited storage available
• Free board customization options
• Lots of integrations available

• Not much user experience improvement in recent years
• Very basic setup compared to other project management software

Plans & Pricing

Standard

If you upgrade to Trello’s Standard plan, you can be charged as little as $5 per person per month if you choose to pay the annual, upfront fee. Otherwise, the price is $6 per user each month. For this tier, you’ll get everything at the freeware level plus:

• Unlimited boards
• Custom fields
• Advanced checklists
• Unlimited storage, with a file size cap of 250 MB
• 1,000 Workspace commands per month
• Single board guests

Premium

Trello’s Premium tier starts as low as $10 per user and month. Without the annual discount, it increases to $12.50. This plan has everything in the Standard and free tiers while also adding:

• Dashboard, timeline, calendar, map and Workspace Table views
• Unlimited Workspace command runs
• Google Apps support
• Workspace-level templates
• A simple data export
• And more

Premium plans also provide customers with priority support.

Enterprise

Unlike many other project management software providers, Trello does provide a monthly price estimate for the Enterprise tier. You must purchase licenses for a minimum of 25 users. Customers get charged at least $17.50 per month. The pricing page includes a sliding scale to determine the “per-user” fee for up to 5,000 users. As you increase the number of users, the per-person price decreases as well. Any license total above 5,000 will require a direct quote.

At the Enterprise level, Trello adds:

• Multiple guests per board
• Organization-wide permissions
• Organization visible boards
• Attachment permissions
• Power-up administration

Citrix Podio

Podio has been designed for professionals who are always working on multiple projects and generating new ideas. More than 400,000 businesses and teams from across the world are using it, including the likes of Sony, Volvo and the NFL. 

With the Podio app, you have the ability to create tasks and customize them based on your workflow, taking into account deadlines and responsibilities. There’s also a built-in instant messaging function that you can use to share ideas and see how others are getting on with delegated tasks. Additionally, there is a handy tool for getting quick feedback without having to send several emails.

There are integrations with third-party services such as Dropbox and Google Drive, meaning you can share content quickly and easily. Podio is available in a number of additional languages, including French, German, Danish, Chinese, Spanish and Russian.

On the web, there is a free tier with a limit of up to five employees. 

Pros

+The option of in-app purchases+Useful IM function

Cons

-Premium plans are expensive

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Podio is a great project management software that helps teams improve and better structure their workflows. In Podio, you can set up content, conversations, and processes to help your team and organization stay on the same page. A few other helpful features of this project management software includes ability to bring freelancers and external parties into the app, high-level admin capabilities, and ability to create custom structure and processes.

Cost: Citrix Podio is free for up to 5 employees and then starts at $7.80 per user for their “basic” subscription.

LiquidPlanner

Eliminate any danger of missed deadlines

LiquidPlanner has a robust feature set for enterprise-grade project management, boasting corporate customers which are leading Fortune 500 firms including Bayer, Cisco and Daimler.

Features include the Smart Schedule that can assist in prioritizing work, assigning people resources, and then estimating the hours needed for completion, which then allows the project to be tracked given the hours devoted to it by the assigned workforce.

Conversely, the Resource Management feature can show the hours put in by each worker, and track who is available to assign to the next project. All of this data feeds into easy-to-read dashboards that can be integrated into financial metrics and trends.

Note that there is a free 14-day trial to take LiquidPlanner out for a test drive before you commit.

Pros

+Smart schedules to prioritize work+Enterprise-grade feature set+14-day free trial

Cons

-Expensive

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LiquidPlanner is one of those pieces of software that tries to be many things to many people, and unlike most others with such grand ambitions, it generally succeeds.

In addition to being a powerful way of running traditional projects, with all the features you’d expect, LiquidPlanner performs equally well as a helpdesk-style issue tracker and general resource management tool.

Strong reporting is built in, along with integration with major cloud storage providers. There’s also Zapier support, so you can build your own automated connections with other business tools as needed.

One-off pieces of work can be assigned to any user or group, and the impact of that extra work on the people performing it is automatically taken into account when estimating project deliverables.

With extra features comes extra complexity, of course, and while LiquidPlanner does a good job of explaining some of its trickier aspects and then getting out of the way, it still requires a greater time investment to set up, learn, and master than many of its competitors. For that reason—not to mention the cost—it’s better suited to larger teams and organizations than small, ad-hoc groups.

LiquidPlanner doesn’t offer a free tier, although you can try various plans for two weeks at no cost. Plans start at $29 per month per user (with annual billing) for a maximum of 50 projects and go up from there.

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LiquidPlanner is a project management software that adapts to your business automatically. For example, when a user’s priorities and resources change, the software automatically updates these changes. This software also offers cross-project visibility, showing insights into progress, risks and budgets for all projects at once. It’s advanced analytics help users manage project performance, view costs and profits, and monitor resource utilisation, client portfolios and baseline trends.

Pricing: LiquidPlanner has three packages (based on team size and features needed): Small Team ($9.99/month), Professional ($39/month) and Enterprise ($69/month). Cost: Starts at $39 per user per month, billed annually.

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LiquidPlanner project management software is a fusion of traditional PM and time-tracking. One of its most unique features is that it updates and shifts due dates and projects when resources per project change. This helps you manage expectations around when a project can be completed or when milestones can be hit based on workload.

LiquidPlanner also has a great resourcing feature that clearly shows how many available hours an employee has per week, as well as a helpful budgeting feature.

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LiquidPlanner provides the ability to help organize thousands of tasks, providing a streamlined project management structure that allows you to know when to expect objectives to get completed. Not only that, but LiquidPlanner is adaptable, letting you adjust priorities whenever change becomes necessary.

All LiquidPlanner tiers use Planning Intelligence, enabling you to better schedule, track and manage projects. One major issue with LiquidPlanner is that its subscription structure is somewhat murky; it lists its annual pricing for each package, but it’s unclear what you would pay month-to-month, or if a monthly subscription is available at all.

Though there might be some confusion over costs, it is nothing that cannot be fixed by reaching out to LiquidPlanner’s customer service for answers.

Who should use it:

Larger businesses with a good budget that will get the most from access to all of LiquidPlanner’s features.Pros & Cons

• Free tier includes almost as many features as the premium plan
• Highly adaptable and scalable
• Allows you to see an entire project and understand exactly when it will be completed
• Great for multiuser collaboration

• Setup can be somewhat time consuming
• Unclear pricing structure
• No mobile or downloadable desktop versions

Plans & Pricing

Free Plan

Customers can get familiar with LiquidPlanner first through its free tier level that offers features like:

• Task management
• Integrated time-tracking abilities
• Project workload, board, priority and personal work views
• Timesheet views
• Change tracking
• Alerts and insights

It’s very similar to the Essentials tier but lacks certain benefits.

Essentials

LiquidPlanner’s Essentials package starts at the equivalent of $15 per month per user (must pay for 12 months at a time), with an annual agreement. Upgrading from the free tier brings some key benefits:

• Maximum tasks increase from 300 to 5,000
• The allotted projects improve from 3 to 50
• You can add more than five users

Professional

The Professional plan breaks down to $25 per user per month. It includes everything in the previous tiers while adding:

• Custom data fields, filtering and customizable cost codes
• The ability to review and export timesheets
• Package dashboards with smart widgets scaled up to handle multiple projects
• The opportunity to draw insights from dashboards across the whole workspace

Another bonus is that the Professional tier lets users handle 50,000 tasks with a max of 500 projects.

Ultimate

Ultimate is LiquidPlanner’s highest available service plan, available to purchase starting at $35 per month and user. It includes all of the previously mentioned features but offers unlimited tasks and projects. Users seeking this level of service should contact support for volume pricing.

Basecamp

Best for external and internal team communication

Basecamp is one of the oldest project management solutions, having been around for more than 10 years, building a reputation which makes it a highly credible tool for businesses that work on big projects.

The latest version of the app offers a variety of helpful features, including the ability to send direct messages for quick discussions, set up a schedule so you only get notifications within work hours, and show your appreciation for colleagues by clicking an applause button. Basecamp avoids a fragmented workflow, and as the firm says, it keeps “discussions, tasks, files, schedules and chat in one place.”

There are some nifty functions for dealing with clients, too. For instance, you can easily save and track client feedback and approvals, and you can also get reports on how projects are going. And when you want to collaborate with others, you can create group chats.

A free version lets you work on up to three projects with up to 20 people, to allow you to try out the software. After that, there’s only a single paid-for plan, which includes all features and an unlimited number of users, making this a great deal for teams but not so much for individual users.

Pros

+The ability to create group chats+A weighty veteran solution

Cons

-Expensive for SMBs

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A veteran of the project management world, Basecamp was launched in 2004 and has built a customer base of 3.5 million users.

The software makes much of its ability to replace several other paid monthly services, from Slack to Dropbox. While it’s not always a complete replacement, the software does take many of the features of those tools and rolls them all into one system. Scheduling and calendars, real-time chat, private messaging, file storage, and more are included.

An uncluttered interface and powerful search tools make it straightforward to find the task, image, or message you’re after, and a strong reporting suite lets you go as wide or deep as required.

Working with clients is handled well, with e-mail integration and the ability to share individual tasks and messages with people outside the organization. Notifications can be customized to your requirements, including shutting them off outside office hours.

Basecamp’s fixed $99 per month pricing makes it an appealing option for larger organizations, but small teams may find better value elsewhere. There’s no free plan, but the length of the 30-day trial is more generous than most. Web, desktop, and mobile versions are available.

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Basecamp is a popular project management software that is widely used by many project management teams. This software offers several different collaboration features such as a designated discussion area where users can leave behind comments. Additionally a recap of the projects your team is working (e.g. statuses and updates) is sent out on a daily basis to your email. Users can contribute to discussions via email as well. If you are unable to find a particular item, you can make use of this software’s powerful search tool to locate files or conversations. Some shortcomings, however, include the lack of milestones and customisation options as well as the inability to add an estimated duration for a task or assign it to more than one user.

Pricing: Basecamp is available to businesses for $99/month. For teachers and students it is entirely free of charge. Cost: Basecamp’s personal package is free for personal use. Business plans start at $99 monthly for unlimited users and projects.

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Basecamp is a cloud-based tool with lots of features for individuals, project managers or even marketing teams that enables collaboration on tasks. Some of the features include to-do lists for tasks, which can be assigned to different users, and tasks that the system will automatically follow up on when the due date lapses. 

It also has a real-time group chat feature and a tool that enables the client to view the progress of the project. As with the majority of services on this list, Basecamp can also be integrated with other products for reporting, analysis, and time tracking, among other features. Aside from its cloud-based solution, Basecamp can be integrated with iOS, Android, Mac, and PC.

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Basecamp remains one of the best and most used project management software options on the market. It offers a variety of integrations across its mobile and desktop versions. It also provides two-factor authentication and single sign-on security features for both free and premium accounts.

Perhaps the biggest drawback is the excessive gulf between free and paid account options, especially as the upgrade is best for larger teams that will see savings in ways that a much smaller business team probably will not. Still, Basecamp is a very reliable project management tool with great software options. And as it is available for free, either via freeware or a trial, there’s no risk in trying it out for a few weeks to see if it’s worth the investment.

Who should use it:

Basecamp’s freeware is probably best for an individual or small team that only needs the basics. Meanwhile, the premium tier works best for larger organizations wanting to cut down on monthly fees for good quality project management software.

Pros & Cons

• Free to use
• One flat monthly price
• No auto-charging when trial is up
• Free accounts for teachers and students
• Discounts for nonprofits
• Unlimited projects and users
• Dedicated space to run company
• 500 GB storage space
• Unlimited clients and control of what clients can see
• Assign spaces to different teams

• Free tier is severely limited compared to competitors
• You’ll have to upgrade to get better customer service support
• Lack of automation features
• Monthly fees could feel very expensive to a very small team

Plans & Pricing

Basecamp Personal

At the free level, known as Basecamp Personal, you have the option to create boards for up to three projects and grant access to as many as 20 users. In addition, Basecamp Personal offers up to 1 GB of storage space. It’s very limited, but makes for a good entry point if you want to try it out before making a commitment.

Basecamp Business

If you require more features, you can upgrade to Basecamp Business, its sole premium subscription plan. It costs $99 per month, with the option of a 15% discount if you pay the annual cost up front. What’s great about this tier is that it’s not “per user.” Your entire team, no matter how many people, gains access. For some companies, this represents immense savings. However, for a much smaller group, it might feel expensive to a disadvantageous degree.

Should you upgrade, the Basecamp Business plan provides additional features such as:

• 500 GB of storage space
• Real-time chat
• Scheduling and to-do lists
• Document creation
• Check-ins
• Messages

With Basecamp Business, you can explore the premium tier free for 30 days and cancel at any time. Best of all, there’s no auto-charge at the end of the trial as Basecamp doesn’t require payment information to test out its service.

ClickUp

Best for unlimited users/seatsSmall and large teams can easily plan projects, assign team members, and track progress.

ClickUp is a project management software tool with powerful features for managing and completing all your team’s projects in one platform. Users can plan projects, schedule tasks, and manage resources in a centralized workspace, as well as communicate and collaborate with team members and guests.

Task management features include task checklists, subtasks, and task templates, as well as the ability to filter, sort, search for, easily reorder, and view tasks in the manner most convenient for the team. Users can also create Gantt charts, calendars, and timelines to visualize tasks.

ClickUp also includes features for creating, sharing, and collaborative editing for Wikis and documents. Users can comment on documents and tasks, assign comments, and chat with other team members for increased communication and collaboration. Reporting features include the ability to create custom dashboards, as well as six built-in report types for team reporting.

ClickUp offers native integrations with Slack, G Suite, Dropbox, and many more tools, as well as over 1,000+ integrations through Zapier.

ClickUp’s free plan is robust and includes all primary features. The unlimited plan starts at $5/user/month and offers additional functionality.

Free forever with paid plans starting at $5/user/monthCheck out ClickUp

PROS

• Free forever plan allows unlimited members
• Unlimited file storage on all paid account tiers
• Can email (set-up) a task directly from Outlook

CONS

• Read-only guest permissions are limited to paid account
• Reporting suite is limited to paid plans only
• Granular customization options results in a time consuming set-up

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Clickup is perfect for process and task management. You can customize your workflow, assign tasks and add different types of dependencies for tasks. If you work Agile, this tool will suit you. Manage your sprints, manage the resources, check the workload of your team and work together with other teams in this tool.

Pricing: CickUp offers a free plan and a paid Unlimited plan (€4.55 user/month) or Business plan (€8.18 user/month). Cost: ClickUp is free up to 100MB of data. After that, pricing starts at $5 per user per month billed annually.

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ClickUp is a project management software with customizable views, including list view, board view (similar to Kanban view), box view (which breaks out individual workload), and calendar view (sorts actions by due date). With ClickUp, users can work towards goals, which are the users “mission control center.”

Other features include a 2-way calendar sync and time-tracking integrations with Toggl.

Smartsheet

Best for flexibility & customizabilitySmartsheet offers a variety of views and visualizations for project info, including Gantt charts, Kanban boards, and lists.

Smartsheet is a spreadsheet-like project management tool. It has won a few awards for quickly becoming a favorite business app. It’s a nice project management software if you’re comfortable working in Excel but wants a break from complicated formulas—Smartsheet performs all the calculations for you across multiple sheets. You can also add customized brand logos and set color themes for individual projects.

Smartsheet has useful project management features such as workflow automation and visualization of tasks in Gantt, calendar and card views. Team members get notified of critical changes in real-time, and the tool provides shared views, detail history, activity logs, automated alerts, reminders, and status reports to keep everyone aligned and informed. The Critical Path feature highlights all the tasks which directly impact your project completion date to keep an eye on important milestones. Reporting is a strong feature of this tool, with editable summary reports that you can easily export to Excel.

Check out our in-depth Smartsheet review if you want a deep-dive into the tool or to watch our short tutorial video of some basic features.

Smartsheet integrations include Microsoft and Google apps, as well as development essentials like Jira, and useful business apps like Salesforce, ServiceNow, Slack, Box, and Tableau. The platform is extensible through a REST API and webhooks.

Smartsheet costs from $7/user/month, with a minimum of 3 users and a maximum of 25 users. They also offer a 30-day free trial.

30 days free trial

From $7/user/monthCheck out Smartsheet

PROS

• Sheet-to-sheet linking
• Many project templates & resources
• Ease of sharing
• Easily customizable dashboards

CONS

• Jira, Salesforce, Dynamics connector limited to Premier plan
• Changes don’t update in real-time
• Can’t customize chart colors

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Smartsheet is a leading work execution platform that has real-time work management features, collaboration and automation tools. Users are presented with a familiar and easy-to-use spreadsheet-like interface. However, it has enterprise-grade capabilities that even Fortune 500 companies like Cisco, Bayer, HP, and PayPal are confident to adopt in their business. Strong project management features enable teams to utilize different views of real-time data, and switch easily from Gantt, card, grid and calendar views. Smartsheet has automatic update requests, and can be used for waterfall and agile projects, product launch, sprint planning, and more. The resource management feature provides users the visibility who is busy, and who is not, in real-time. They can also attach files, share sheets, get notified, view the activity log, export, email, and print.

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Smartsheet heavily markets itself towards larger companies—some of its top customers include Cisco, McGraw Hill and Whirlpool—yet its pricing can also make it accessible to smaller businesses. Clients applaud Smartsheet as intuitive, reliable and easy to use. Though it doesn’t include freeware, the service offers a 30-day trial for each of its three subscription plans.

Customers seem to be pleased overall with Smartsheet’s customer service. There is some disagreement about whether or not Smartsheet is as easy to navigate as other project management software. However, the consensus is that if you read instructions and communicate your questions with customer service reps, you should be good to go in no time.

Who should use it:

Smartsheet is best suited for established, more prominent brands and teams that already understand a great deal about complex project management setups.

Pros & Cons

• Free to try for 30 days
• No credit card information required to test features
• Good value for the money for larger enterprises

• Basic tier is very limited
• Not as many third-party integrations as some other choices

Plans & Pricing

Pro

Pro is Smartsheet’s most basic plan, starting as low as $21 per month when you agree to pay upfront annual costs. If you don’t, the Pro plan starts at $27 per month. Plan charges are per user; you must sign up for a minimum of three users. The Pro subscription tier provides a series of simple but beneficial project management features:

• Private sheets and reports
• Forms
• Up to 250 automations per month
• Cell and column formulas
• Dependencies
• Grid, Gantt, card and calendar view options
• Support for Microsoft 365, Google Workspace and Apple ID

Pro subscribers can also have ten viewers per object. Although Smartsheet says this tier does not limit the number of sheets, reports and dashboards, it clarifies that you get one sheet per report and ten widgets per dashboard.

Business

Smartsheet’s Business tier costs $32 per month and user; the monthly price drops to $25 with the upfront annual subscription contract.

By upgrading to Smartsheet’s Business plan, you gain the ability to add an unlimited number of collaborators, who cannot only view projects but also edit. You also gain the ability to develop an infinite number of sheets, reports and dashboards, without the stipulations. Other perks include:

• Unlimited automations
• Document builders
• Adobe Creative Cloud extension
• Activity log
• User and group license management
• And much more

The Business tier also offers 1 TB attachment storage. This tier is great for larger teams seeking a greater ability to manage projects and reliance on automation to reduce time use.

Enterprise

To get a price for Enterprise, you must contact Smartsheet directly to get a quote. Should you agree to sign up for this level, you will have access to an even more significant number of high-level premium software tools.

For instance, Enterprise offers a directory integration, allowing administrators to replicate user groups using existing account information. You can also limit domain account sharing or create custom email domains.

Other Enterprise features include:

• Unlimited attachment storage
• Single sign-on or SAML
• eLearning
• “Smartsheet Advance” tools access: customer-managed encryption keys, event reporting, governance controls, and more

Smartsheet also offers its Enterprise customers 24/7 phone support.

Hive

Best for collaboration & messagingPlan projects and tasks, on Kanban-style boards, assign team members, and track progress.

Hive is a project management tool and collaboration platform that powers companies like Starbucks, Uber, WeWork, and IBM. As the world’s first community built software, Hive’s product roadmap is built entirely of customer requests.

With flexible project views, dependencies, unlimited projects, and thousands of integrations, Hive streamlines your work in one centralized platform. Used by teams of varying sizes, from 10 people to 1,000, Hive is a great option for a diverse range of companies and work styles.

Hive’s time tracking, analytics, and flexible view capabilities allow for transparent understanding of other team members work and upcoming projects. Hive also has full email integration in their project management tool, which allows you to send and receive Gmail and Outlook messages from the app. Choose Hive if you’re in the market for a well-laid-out, comprehensive project management tool that can be scaled up or down based on team needs.

The tool starts with a free package for 1-2 users, and the Hive Teams package is $12/user/month when billed annually.

14 days free trial

Cost: Free 14-day trial with plans starting at $12 per user, per month. Hive Solo is free forever for up to 2 users.

PROS

• Excellent built-in communication features
• Great all-in-one option for SMBs
• Intuitive & pleasant UI
• Easy to integrate with other tools

CONS

• Reporting functions could be expanded
• Vastness of capabilities means steep learning curve
• Mobile version limited in functionality

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Hive is a comprehensive, intuitive, all-in-one project management tool – the only tool you need to open in the morning to get your work done. Hive is unlike other tools on the market because it’s the world’s first democratic productivity platform. But what exactly does that mean? At Hive, new features are constantly being developed based on user feedback on the Hive Forum. You know what you need in a tool to work better and faster, and Hive is committed to creating a project management software that does just that. It’s the only tool on the market built for users, by users. 

In addition to task management, time-tracking and resourcing, Hive takes project management to the next level with native chat, native email and over 1,000 integrations. Hive also offers 6 different flexible project layouts, letting you switch between Gantt, Kanban, Calendar, Portfolio and Table, and Label view with just a few clicks. 

The building blocks of Hive are action cards, which exist inside of larger projects. Inside these action cards, teams can upload files, provide feedback with proofing and approvals, tag each other, and leave provide comments with @mentions. Teams at all-star companies like Comcast, Toyota, and Starbucks work in Hive – just another reason why it tops every list of best project management software.

Kintone

Best for building custom project workflowsFilter projects and tasks by name, start and end dates, status, manager, team members, and more.

Kintone is a customizable project tracking software platform used by teams at Volvo Trucks North America, Japan Airlines, Shiseido, and over 23,000 organizations worldwide. Their unique approach to project and task management lets you build a wide variety of customizable “apps” either from scratch, using templates or from your existing spreadsheets, for data management, business processes, and workflows. Kintone apps can be customized for project management, sales CRM, customer databases, expense reports, shared to-do lists, equipment management, product feedback, and much more.

Kintone lets you build no-code project tracking apps by dragging and dropping elements that you want to see onto the page: rich text fields, date fields, drop-down menus, number fields with built-in calculations, spaces for attachments, user or group selection menus, related data from other apps, tables, and more.

Once you’ve built the app you want, you can use it to more easily manage whatever data and tasks you and your team need to track. And with custom notifications and reminders as well as detailed permissions settings, your project tracking solution can look and work however you want it to.

What makes Kintone particularly great for project tracking are the features to filter and prioritize tasks by data field or team member to generate custom reports or dashboard views, as well as the ability to automate reminders and handoffs between team members for multi-step workflows.

Kintone’s built-in communication features also allow teams to discuss projects directly in the app and in topic or project-based threads. Dedicated “spaces” organize everything your team needs for your project, including task-tracking apps and searchable conversation threads.

Kintone lets you expand its capabilities with both free native plugins built by the Kintone team as well as integrations with other tools like Slack, Gmail, Google Calendar, Outlook, Tableau, Dropbox, Salesforce, HubSpot, Eventbrite, WordPress, QuickBooks, MailChimp, and many more through a paid plan with Zapier or via API integrations.

Kintone costs $24/user/month with a minimum requirement of 5 users. They offer a 30-day free trial (no credit card required) and discounted prices for nonprofits and educators. Kintone’s team also offers a free custom app build as part of the free trial process.

30 days free trial

From $24/user/monthCheck out Kintone. Cost: Kintone’s professional subscription starts at $24 per user per month.

PROS

• Flexible pricing that includes special deals for schools and NPOs
• Admin accounts have access to tons of customization tools
• Data is easy to pull and manipulate into good looking reports

CONS

• No single-user plan available (minimum 5 users)
• Limited to 5GB/user storage on every pricing tier
• No native templates for common project types or documents

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If you’re working on multiple projects across a large team, Kintone could be the project management software for you. In this app, users can automate workflows, view status of in-progress projects, be notified with reminders when things are due, and prioritize or filter tasks. Kintone also has a range of apps and add ons that you can pair with tools like Box, Domo, Dropbox and Eventbrite.

Celoxis

Best for customer-facing teamsCeloxis includes a portfolio dashboard where users can view project data across their portfolio.

Celoxis is a comprehensive and web-based all-in-one platform for project portfolio management and work collaboration. One of the world’s most adopted tools in PM, Celoxis is the software of choice for brands like HBO, Rolex, Virgin Care, KPMG, Singapore Post, Del Monte, LG and Deloitte for streamlining their projects, processes and people.

Celoxis’ real world project schedules and powerful interactive Gantt Charts packs all of the team and work dynamicities including  geographically distributed project teams working in different timezones,  part-time resources, unavoidable absences, interim resource swaps, and even inter-project dependencies.

Task management within Celoxis is strong and unique. Teams get an edge over other tools by eliminating multiple software they’d use otherwise. Celoxis lets them see their tasks and to dos, report bugs, manage tickets, or fill time all from a single tool. They also get relevant notifications to their inbox and can send updates directly even without logging in. Collaboration is powerful with project discussions, @mention comments, file sharing, document version control, and activity stream. 80% of their typical actions such as starting a timer, attaching a file or updating status can be done straight from their dashboards.

Celoxis provides a single source of truth for executives with a real-time project tracker, resource availabilities and utilization, timesheets, project finances, risks, issues and to-dos.

Celoxis comes with powerful analytical capabilities and their rich and interactive charts breathe new life into your project data. Organizations can leverage their built-in best practice reports and dashboards to gather 360-degree real-time insights around project health, tracking actuals vs estimates, team utilization and profit margins. With their exhaustive custom field library including formula fields, you can easily track all of your financial KPIs such as NPV.

Celoxis is extremely customizable and flexible when it comes to different organizations and industries. With their unique custom apps, you have the power to create and configure intuitive project and business processes within the project management system.

Celoxis is one of the few project manager software programs to be available both in SaaS and on-premise flavors. SaaS costs $22.50/user/month (annually) and on-premise costs $450/user one-time. Both require a minimum 5-user sign-up and come with 30-day free trial.

30 days free trial

From $22.50/user/monthCheck out Celoxis

PROS

• In-app timer for task tracking
• Customizable widgets for groups or individuals
• Percentage of project tasks-per-user feature
• Very interactive Gantt chart

CONS

• Some difficulty with report building
• Complex menu structure
• Resource planning is not automated

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Celoxis is rated among the top 3 best project management softwares worldwide. This software is simple and straightforward with a responsive interface that includes a Gantt chart view of projects and a number of different financial tools that can help track hours and project income. Celoxis hosts an online version (the SaaS plan) or users can host the data themselves. This software has many great features, but where it really stands out is reporting with its advanced reporting engine, drill-down charts, time-phrased data and flexible/shareable reports.

Pricing: Celoxis has two packages: SaaS ($25/user a month) and On-Premise, which is the self-hosting service ($450/user – one time payment). Cost: Celoxis starts at $25 per user per month billed monthly.

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Celoxis is a project management tool built to help teams run smooth workflows and track resources. It’s included in our list of best project management softwares because it helps teams with project request tracking, project planning, resource management, accounting, and portfolio management. This tool also has a client portal for anyone working with a client that you want to give partial access to.

PSOHub

Best for integrating project management with CRMPlan, track, and optimize projects and workload throughout the project life cycle.

PSOhub is professional services automation (PSA) software that provides all-in-one project management, enabling users to maintain visibility into all facets of the process, from deal won to deliverables and all the moving parts in between. PSOhub was designed with marketing and creative agencies in mind, but it can be used by anyone from accounting firms to architects to managed IT services companies and beyond.

Key features include predictive project management, accessible task management, smart contract management, real-time resource management, time and expense tracking, and invoicing. PSOhub’s best features are its self-driving tools, which automate project setup, milestone alerts, time tracking, and more. While automated and self-driving features handle repetitive and time-consuming tasks, users can focus less on administration and more on serving clients.

Integrations include CRMs like HubSpot, Salesforce, and Dynamics 365 and accounting software like Quickbooks, Xero, and more. Additional integrations are available via Zapier and PSOhub’s API.

PSOhub costs from $8.50/user/month and offers a 30-day free trial.

30 days free trial, no credit card

From $8.50/user/month (annually)Check out PSOhub

PROS

• Robust time tracking tool built-in
• Excellent integration opportunities
• User-friendly, easy to onboard

CONS

• No freemium plan
• Resource management module limited to highest plan

Wrike

Best for scaling organizationsCreate Gantt charts in Wrike, and switch between list, board, and table views for tasks.

Wrike is an award-winning project management software suitable for teams of five or more, as the software allows for an unlimited number of users. The tool is highly configurable and allows users to customize workflows, dashboards, reports, and request forms.

Wrike’s simple interface enables users to switch between Kanban boards, interactive drag-and-drop Gantt charts, and traditional workload views, allowing them to choose how to visualize their priorities. Wrike also features task lists, subtasks, schedules, shared workflows, file sharing, and real-time communication and collaboration. Users can get advanced insights on their project with performance reporting tools, resource management and allocation, and more.

Wrike has an easy-to-use, intuitive interface and navigation with distinct spaces, folders, and tasks. You can switch between the home screen and timesheets, dashboards, calendars, reports, and stream (for notifications and messages). Wrike also has a dedicated help center with interactive training, videos, a ‘Getting Started’ guide, and a thriving community.

Wrike also offers a variety of specific solutions depending on the type of team or organization — including marketing teams and professional service teams. Users can also try a variety of templates for common organizational processes. Feel free to check out our in-depth Wrike review if you want more details or fancy watching our brief features tutorial video.

Wrike offers 400+ pre-built native integrations, including the most popular file management software from Microsoft, Google, and Dropbox, along with sales and marketing software from Salesforce and Marketo.

Pricing starts at $9.80/user/month. There are four different price points, including a free version and plans which offer the ability to invite free external collaborators to a paid account.

14 days free trial

From $9.80/user/monthCheck out Wrike

PROS

• Different ways to view the same data
• Holistic, comprehensive task modeling
• Many options and opportunities to customize

CONS

• No subtasks in the freemium plan
• No offline access
• Commenting system is pretty basic

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If Trello’s approach seems a bit limited, but you don’t have hours to devote to learning and setting up a complex project management tool, it’s time to check out Wrike.

Standard project management features like Gantt charts, useful dashboards, and a comprehensive reporting suite are built in, and getting up and running on a small- to medium-sized project can be done quickly without learning all the ins and outs of a new, complicated system.

A time tracking tool is built in, available to both the individual working on a particular task and whoever is managing the project as a whole. Like those found in other project management tools, it’s not a replacement for a dedicated time tracking system but easily handles most basic requirements.

The interface is functional, and while it could do with a bit of a visual refresh, it is fine for the job. The free plan offers task management, interactive boards and spreadsheets, an account-wide work schedule tool, cloud integrations (Google Drive, OneBox, Box, OneDrive), and two gigabytes of total storage space for unlimited users.

Paid plans are a bit more expensive than some of the competition but open up all of the software’s options, starting with shareable dashboards, interactive Gantt charts, and productivity integrations like MS Projects at the Professional tier ($9.80 per month per user); and adding custom workflows, real-time reports, time tracking, salesforce integration, and five gigabytes of storage per user at the Business tier ($24.80 per month per user). Wrike is available on the Web, along with iOS and Android app versions.

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Wrike is an award-winning work management software used by 2.3 million professionals that enables teams to plan and track projects, collaborate in real-time, and automate reports. Wrike’s 100% scalable features include Gantt charts, Kanban boards, personalized dashboards, and custom request forms. Automate processes and get up to 50% more productive. Create 360° visibility with time tracking, budget management, and project portfolio analysis. Keep data protected with enterprise-level security features. Wrike’s solutions include Wrike for Marketers and Wrike for Professional Services, along with specific team templates. Integrate with 400+ apps from the likes of Microsoft, Google, and Salesforce. Used by 20,000+ companies globally. Free plans available, with paid plans starting at $9.80/user/month.

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Wrike is a cloud-based collaboration and project management software. This tools helps its users keep track of day-to-day operations and ensures that the project is finished within a certain frame and pre-determined cost. When setting up tasks, Wrike can be integrated with other business tools such as Google Apps, Microsoft Excel, Dropbox and many more.
The wrike app also provides the option to transform emails into tasks. This email integration also enables users to create, assign or edit documents from their email account.

Pricing: Wrike offers a free version, professional version (5-15 users, $9.80/user/month), business version (5-200 users, $24.80/user/month), a version for marketers ($34.60/user/month) and an enterprise version (pricing available upon request). Cost: Wrike offers a free pricing plan for unlimited users, without no time restrictions. To access all of Wrike’s features, paid professional plans start at $9.80 per user per month.

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Wrike is a powerful project management tool best for creating custom team workflows. From there, you can easily set a timeline, create interactive charts like Gantt view, and easily visualize tasks and next steps. Wrike also allows you to analyze performance with their real-time report building feature.

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Why We Picked It

Wrike is another ideal task management tool that consistently receives positive feedback due to its remote and collaboration-friendly setup. Users start with 2 GB of storage space and a variety of no-cost service options, for instance:

• Task and subtask management
• A personalized app experience through AI work intelligence
• Live activity streams across task, project and global levels
• Both external and internal collaborators
• Interactive board or spreadsheet view
• Ability to create account-wide work schedules
• Cloud storage integrations

Because this is the free tier, many task limitations do apply. Still, Wrike offers a decent amount of integrations and task management options through its freeware, which will work perfectly for smaller teams or organizations seeking good quality project management software without having to exceed their budget.

Should you need more, Wrike offers a straightforward premium tier system. Upgrade to Professional, Business or Enterprise tier to enjoy a better service experience. Many customers enjoy using Wrike and consider it among the most user-friendly platforms in its industry.

Who should use it:

Wrike works for small and large teams alike, especially those seeking customizable, scalable software options to fit their individual needs.

Pros & Cons

• Very user-friendly software
• 2 GB of free storage
• Tools for internal and external collaboration
• Live activity streams available, including at the global level
• Account-wide work schedules
• Tiers are highly scalable in nature

• Limited third-party integrations available
• Some of the best features must be bought separately as add-ons
• Must upgrade to Enterprise for unlimited users

Plans & Pricing

Professional

The Professional tier costs $9.80 monthly per user. This plan introduces:

• Sharable dashboards
• Interactive Gantt charts
• Productivity integrations such as Microsoft Project and Excel, and RSS

The free level includes 2 GB of storage in total, and the Professional tier offers 1 to 2 GB of space per person.

Business

Wrike’s Business plan costs $24.80 per month and user. The price is more than double that of the Professional tier because it introduces nearly double the number of features available to those using the free basic level or the Professional plan. Business subscribers get:

• Custom fields and workflows
• Real-time reports and report templates
• An automation engine providing up to 200 actions per user per month
• Resource management tools
• User groups and permissions
• And much more

Professional tier users also get 5 GB of storage per user, a Salesforce integration and an extension for Adobe Creative Cloud. Both the Business and Professional plans cover five to 200 users. To have unlimited user options, you’ll need to upgrade to the Enterprise plan.

Enterprise

Wrike’s Enterprise tier price is available when you call for a quote. There’s a particular emphasis on its scalable nature and added security through two-factor authentication, passwords and single sign-on.

Customers who upgrade to this tier get everything at the lower plan levels plus:

• Customized access roles
• User audit reports
• Admin permissions
• Automation (up to 1,000 actions monthly per user)

You also gain 10 GB of storage for each user.

Add-Ons

In addition to the subscription plans, Wrike offers a series of add-ons.

• Wrike Integrate: custom integrations and access to more than 400 cloud integrations
• Wrike Two-Way Sync: lets tech teams sync with popular tools such as Jira and GitHub
• Wrike Lock: better manages your encrypted data
• Wrike Marketing Insights: provides cross-channel marketing insights across social media, Marketo Engage, ad platforms and more

It’s worth noting that competitors include similar features, most notably the integrations, in their plans at no extra charge. Having topay more to give your team access on top of the monthly subscription might frustrate some.

awork

Best UI for usability & intuitivenessawork’s clean and intuitive interface minimizes distractions and enables a fast learning curve.

awork is a project management software with an intuitive interface that allows creative teams and project teams to quickly adopt it within their day-to-day workflows.

awork includes features for organizing projects and tasks in to-do-lists, creating boards and timelines, managing resources, and collaborating with teammates. For example, teams can plan all their clients’ timelines based on project templates, then assign the team based on their availability and start collaborating on tasks and files immediately.

awork has time tracking options built into the project management workflow, so teams can track their progress against project milestones. Customizable visual reports allow teams to further track metrics and progress.

While it features direct integration with common billing tools, awork does not offer the option to calculate charge rates or monetary budgets.

awork’s interface helps ensure a fast learning curve for all users, including non-specialists, and does not require any in-depth project management knowledge. Personal onboarding support and a wide range of tutorials and best practices are included with an awork subscription.

awork’s integrations include communication tools like Slack, Microsoft Teams, Google Drive, OneDrive, Google Calendar, Office 365, and Google Assistant, as well as with several billing solutions. More integrations are accessible via Zapier. Unlimited use of awork’s open API is also included.

awork costs from $11.76/user/month (10€/user/month). They also offer a 14-day free trial and a 30-day money-back guarantee.

14 days free trial + 30 day money back guarantee

From $11.76/user/monthCheck out awork

PROS

• Focus on intuitive interfaces
• Unlimited access to personal support
• Easy to automate recurring workflows
• Clever time tracking options

CONS

• No option to customize forms

MeisterTask

Best for WIP limitsMeisterTask enables users to manage tasks on Kanban-style boards, create checklists, attach files to tasks, and more.

MeisterTask is a web-based task and project management tool that is perfect for managing agile projects on simple, Kanban-style boards. The tool offers user-friendly interfaces, intuitive functionality, and seamless integrations with other software in the project ecosystem.

The tool includes colorful, customizable project boards, as well as other features designed to make projects more streamlined, productive, and effective. Workload management is enabled through the timeline feature: a Gantt-style overview of tasks that allows users to pinpoint bottlenecks and keep work flowing smoothly. Automations can also be established to speed up manual work and to complete recurring tasks automatically.

Other task management features include due dates, time tracking, assignees, watchers, checklists, tags, and more. MeisterTask also enables communication with comments, @mentions, notifications, and inline file attachments (including integrations with external cloud storages). MeisterTask is simple to use and doesn’t require any formal onboarding or training.

MeisterTask’s integrations include Slack, Microsoft Teams, G Suite, Zapier, IFTTT, MindMeister, and more.

MeisterTask costs from $8.25/month and offers a freemium plan for up to 3 projects. Their paid plans come with a 30-day free trial.

30 days free trial

From $8.25/monthCheck out MeisterTask

PROS

• User-friendly interface with intuitive functionality
• Includes the ability to automate recurring steps
• Gantt-style Timeline feature for scheduling tasks on a calendar

CONS

• Recurring tasks limited to paid users
• There is no Linux desktop application
• No subtasks possible, only checklist items

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MeisterTask’s simple, yet powerful Kanban structure facilitates the smooth management of projects. With its wide range of collaborative capabilities, this smart, intuitive online task management tool is a popular choice for teams that value clean visual design and user experience.

Features such as watching, mentioning, tags and task scheduling make it simple and enjoyable to collaborate with colleagues both in-house and in home office. MeisterTask also includes the first-of-its-kind agenda: a personal board to which tasks from any project can be pinned and organized. Despite this extensive functionality, MeisterTask remains swift and logical thanks to a range of intelligent automations and robust native integrations with software including G Suite, Slack and GitHub.

Pricing: MeisterTask offers a free Basic version with selected core functionality. Pro ($8.25/per user/per month), offers a more comprehensive feature set for single users, while teams are best served by the Business ($20.75/per user/per month) and Enterprise (upon request) packages.

Website:www.meistertask.com

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MeisterTaskis another Kanban-based tool (like Trello) that helps you sort projects and tasks within a larger team. Compared to other project management tools on the market, MeisterTask’s offerings are much more streamlined and tailored. 

This tool also has pre-made workflows that can help you make the most of the tool. Alternatively, you can design your own custom workflow for your team.

Cost: MeisterTask has a free version, but the paid version starts at $8.25 per user per month.

FunctionFox

Best for creative teams and agenciesBuild, view, and adjust project schedules using FunctionFox’s Gantt charts.

Built by creative professionals for the creative industry, FunctionFox features user-friendly tools to help you create detailed project schedules, track your progress through interactive gantt charts and calendars, manage your resources with action assignments and to-do lists, and communicate and collaborate through the project blog. FunctionFox is entirely web-based so it allows both in-office and remote users to work together seamlessly.

FunctionFox’s intuitive project scheduling tool allows you to allocate work to your team through action assignments, mark out important dates within a project using milestones, and schedule project meetings. Keep a close eye on your team’s capacity through to-do lists and the availability tool, and monitor project timelines with interactive gantt charts and project calendars. The project blog feature allows your team to communicate in real time, and the tool also offers flexible, comprehensive reports that can be exported in an Excel format.

FunctionFox is easy to use and made even easier with the tutorials and support provided. All customer support is unlimited, ongoing, and included in the subscription cost. The FunctionFox website also includes a help center, and there are detailed help files included within the software itself.

Project scheduling tools are included in the FunctionFox Premier plan. Compatible with all up to date web browsers, users can also schedule projects and monitor deadlines while on the go using the mobile site, an iPhone/iPad, or Android apps.

Pricing for the Premier plan starts at $50 per month.

14 days free trial

Premier plan starts at $50/month for the first user, plus $10 USD/month for each additional userCheck out FunctionFox. Cost: FunctionFox Classic starts at $5 per month per user.

PROS

• User-friendly, modern interface
• Time tracking is built in
• Easy to produce reports
• Ability to archive past projects/clients

CONS

• More integrations welcomed
• Limited invoice customizability
• No free plan available

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FunctionFox project management software is rooted in tasks, timesheets and budgeting functionalities that make it easy to view the full scope of a project via the app. FunctionFox caters specifically to creative professionals, and those who work in a project-based space. The tool also allows for detailed reporting and has a view called CEO Desktop, which provides a graphical representation of projects alongside estimated hours they will take.

Teamwork

Best for remote teamsTeamwork allows users to visualize project tasks on a board, as well as view milestones, messages, files, and more.

Teamwork is a work and project management software that helps in-house teams and agencies improve collaboration, visibility, accountability, and ultimately, results. It is a flexible, fully-featured project management solution that helps you to manage the entire project lifecycle from start to finish.

Teamwork includes features that help you structure your projects and milestones: create task lists, tasks, and subtasks to break down the work into action items for your team. You can add due dates, priority, descriptions, supporting documents, or tags to help mark up your tasks with useful information. There’s also a useful “Workload” feature that provides a big picture of your team’s capacity. The collaboration features in this project management software are great—collaborate with clients and/or your internal team with comments on tasks.

Overall, Teamwork is an intuitive and highly customizable tool. It has a lot of features, so it does come with a learning curve to get up to speed. However this is made much easier with ongoing webinars, access to help docs, an online resource center, and a dedicated customer support team.

Teamwork integrates easily with other tools including Gmail, Harvest, HubSpot, QuickBooks, Slack, Dropbox, and more.

Teamwork costs from $10/user/month. They also offer a 30-day free trial.

30 days free trial. No credit card required.

From $10/user/monthCheck out Teamwork

PROS

• Features can be turned on/off (tasks, messages, time, risks, billing)
• Easy zoom in/zoom out on project plans
• Easy to communicate task status with clients or team

CONS

• No CSS template option for advanced customizability
• No industry-specialized project templates or formats
• No way to measure your team’s capacity

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If you’ve ever been daunted by the sheer complexity of using a fully fledged project management system, it’s well worth taking a look at Teamwork Projects. Despite its full feature set, the app’s interface is straightforward and easy to use, doing a good job of surfacing useful information without throwing endless lists and complex charts at its users. 

Tasks are viewable as kanban boards or traditional lists, and the sensible menu options help avoid the need to dig through multiple screens to find the detail you need.

As with many other similar tools, Teamwork Projects lets you automate various actions, both within the app itself and using outside tools and services. These sort of integrations can be a real time saver, although you’ll need to devote some effort to the initial setup.

The company offers several pricing options, from the limited free tier that only permits two projects and has limited storage space, through to a high-end enterprise version. Most smaller teams will get by on the $10 per month per user plan, since it includes unlimited users, 300 projects, and 100 gigabytes of storage space. All paid tiers offer a 30-day free trial. Mobile apps are available for iOS and Android, along with the standard Web view.

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As the name suggests, Teamwork is a management software option that emphasizes collaboration, providing many smaller teams with the resources necessary to plan and manage objectives at absolutely no cost. You can get started quickly and easily with Teamwork’s time management, task tracking and milestone tools.

The most basic tier offers simplistic features, which is why you’ll want to consider upgrading to enjoy the best of what Teamwork has to offer. There are three premium tiers available: Deliver, Grow and Scale. The Deliver and Grow plans are available as part of a 30-day trial before committing; no credit card is necessary to sign up.

Although Teamwork does provide integrations, it doesn’t have as many offerings as other popular project management software. Still, it offers great quality freeware, and two of its premium subscription plans come with a generous trial period. Give Teamwork a try, and you may find it’s a straightforward and engaging asset for your team.

Who should use it:

Teamwork is a great resource for organizations seeking straightforward software that’s very affordable.

Pros & Cons

• Easy-to-use freeware version
• Affordable subscription tiers
• Strong customer service and willingness to improve product based on customer feedback

• Lacks the amount of third-party integrations that rival platforms offer
• Must upgrade for most reliable security features

Plans & Pricing

Deliver

The Deliver plan helps you manage multiple projects more efficiently. It costs $12.50 per user and month. However, Teamwork drops the fee to $10 if you go with its annual pricing plan.

Should you upgrade to Deliver, you’ll get features such as:

• Time tracking and invoicing
• An integrated team chat
• Tableview
• Agile view with workflows
• A collaborative document editor
• Intake forms
• Project templates (20)

Deliver is an ideal and affordable tier for smaller teams that need more collaborative options than the freeware plan has.

Grow

The Grow plan is for larger teams with a need to streamline projects and become more organized. It costs as little as $18 monthly per user when you agree to an annual contract. Otherwise, you’ll pay $22.50 per person per month.

Teamwork’s Grow tier includes everything at the Free Forever and Deliver levels while also having:

• Access to up to 50 templates
• Project portfolio workflows
• Workload resource management
• Custom field creation
• Resource scheduling options
• Project time budgeting
• Creation of utilization reports

Also, this service tier offers the ability to integrate with HubSpot.

Scale

As you might expect with the Scale tier, you’ll need to contact Teamwork directly for a quote. This service plan works for larger enterprises with a greater need for advanced security and extra speed.

Aside from features in the previous tiers, organizations that upgrade to Scale will also get access to:

• Profitability report
• Unlimited financial budgets, projects and templates
• Advanced resource scheduler
• 500 GB storage

Quire

Best for remote teamsQuire’s nested task list view lets you see what needs to be done now and what’s happening next.

Quire is an award-winning project management software for remote teams that aims to simplify workflows and encourage communication and collaboration. Quire is trusted by hundreds of thousands of users all over the world, including those from big companies across diverse industries such as Google, IBM, Dyson, Nasdaq, and Stanford.

Quire is built for teams that struggle to take big goals and make them more manageable; it will help you create and track tasks and subtasks within each greater project item. Three main view modes in Quire include a nested task list view, Kanban view, and timeline view. Quire also helps users manage and track their tasks regardless if they are solo users or working as a team.

Quire comes with task management features such as a Gantt chart builder, task templates, sorting & filters, data search, and customizable tags. The team collaboration and project management features include file sharing, attachments management, comments on tasks, multiple assignees, real-time updates, and a flexible reporting suite.

Quire offers native integrations with Slack, Github, Google Workspace, Microsoft, and many more tools, as well as thousands of integrations through Zapier (paid plan required).

Quire is free to use for 8 projects and 10 users. Paid plans start from $8.95/user/month and come with a 30-day free trial.

30 day free trial

From $8.95/user/monthCheck out Quire

PROS

• Free to use
• Excellent for time tracking
• Intuitive user interface & dashboard
• Highly customizable

CONS

• Mobile app not as robust as web
• More integrations needed

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Quire is a great project management software that helps teams visualize and collaborate on their projects from all angles. Within Quire, teams have Workspaces where they can collaborate, as well as individual task lists which can help contributors stay up-to-date. Additionally, actions can be sorted into a Kanban board, which helps others in the organization understand progress.

Cost: Quire is currently free.

Nifty

best for remote teams & ease of useNifty’s project dashboard provides overviews of tasks, files, and project milestones.

Nifty is a project management tool that reduces project development cycles and improves team productivity by measuring progress by milestones and ensuring organizational goals remain on schedule. Nifty allows you to manage tasks through Kanban or list views, has a built-in calendar that can be integrated with Google, and includes features for file and document sharing. Nifty also has some great collaboration features, such as individual discussion threads that are project-specific.

Nifty is flexible to your team’s project workflow, and the cross-organizational project overview tab provides insights into high-level timelines, as well as task-level deep-dive analyses for projects. Nifty’s help center assists with ensuring maximum team efforts on the platform.

Nifty allows you to import data from Asana, Basecamp, ClickUp, and Trello, and has native integrations with Slack, Zoom, GitHub, Dropbox, Google Drive, and Google Calendar, while its Zapier integration connects Nifty with over 1000 additional apps.

Pricing starts at $39/month.

Pros

• Good chat feature within the system
• Multitude of integrations
• Easy document storage, creation, and management

Cons

• No milestone templating
• Clutter notifications in discussion streams
• Cannot pin/highlight a discussion from the chat widget

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Nifty is an award-winning project management software designed to keep people, projects, and functions aligned in your organization. It is ranked #1 by G2 for its ease of use — so you can start with little to no learning curve.

Maintain organizational oversight and never miss a deadline again with Nifty’s automated progress reporting. Plan, track, and visualize everything from marketing campaigns, to development sprints, and product launches — all in one collaborative workspace. Nifty offers a free 14-day trial and a complimentary product walkthrough.

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Nifty is a new-wave project management tool that reduces project development cycles and improves team productivity by combining all of the important features of project management into one software. The end result is milestone-driven progress that keep teams inspired, insuring organizational goals remain on schedule. Nifty’s software allows you to manage tasks through both kanban or list view, has a built in calendar that can be integrated with Google, as well as file and document sharing. Collaborating on Nifty is natural because each project has an individual discussion thread encouraging project specific communication. Nifty also has an integration with Github that truly makes Nifty unique by encouraging cross departmental collaboration like no other.

Pricing: Nifty’s pricing ranges from $39 for 10 team members, $79 a month for 25 team members and $124 a month for 50 team members. In each plan teams can invite as many guests or clients as they would like for no extra charge. Cost: Pricing starts at $39 per month for a team of 10.

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Nifty is a great project management software if you’re in the market for an intuitive, easy-to-use tool for individual or team work. Within the app, you can modernize and centralize work operations, and find one central tool for your team to work from. Nifty lets you manage full projects, campaigns and individual tasks in views like Kanban or Gantt, which can be organized by milestone.

Zoho Projects

Best for unique team collaboration featuresWith Zoho Projects, you can easily visualize your project data and monitor project progress.

Zoho Projects is a project management application that can handle projects of all sizes and levels of complexity. The tool comes with features that imitate social networking sites such as feeds, forums, and discussions and is available on mobile for iOS, Android, and other systems.

For project planning and monitoring, Zoho Projects’ Gantt chart features let you break large projects down into manageable sections and actionable tasks, plan and visualize different tasks and milestones, and create tasks lists to help you plan in better detail. Zoho Projects’ Gantt charts can also be used for resource allocation, so you can visualize your project schedule and the team’s workload. The resource usage table tells you who is available, who is busy, and who is overloaded.

With Zoho Projects, you can define dependencies between tasks and assign them to the right people, schedule events in your calendar, and monitor the percentage of work that’s been completed once the work has begun. Automate routine tasks at regular intervals by setting up a recurring task, and set reminder emails for tasks.

You can also create or download project documents, presentations, and spreadsheets, as well as upload and share files for team collaboration. Record the hours spent on tasks and compare them with what you had originally planned. This can be done manually or with the help of an integrated timer. Entries are automatically recorded in your timesheet, and generating invoices from this information requires only a few clicks.

Being part of the Zoho ecosystem allows you to connect to several of Zoho’s other services such as Zoho Books and Zoho’s finance suite. The new Zoho marketplace allows 3rd party integrations as well, like Microsoft Office 365, Microsoft Teams, Google Drive, Zapier, Zendesk, and ServiceNow. Integrations via Zapier and Zoho Flow are also supported.

Zoho Projects costs from $5/user/month and offers a 10-day free trial. Zoho Projects also offers a free plan for up to 3 users and 2 projects.

10 days free trial

From $5/user/month and offers a 10-day free trialCheck out Zoho Projects

PROS

• Unlimited number of projects
• Easy workflow automations
• Robust communication features
• Time-track multiple tasks at once
• Easy visualizations
• Document storage options
• Integration options

CONS

• Does not integrate with Quickbooks
• Lacks some reporting features
• Lack of file type export options

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Zoho Projects is another project management tool that allows users to plan, organize, and collaborate on projects, while using Gantt charts for detailed visualization of progress and schedules. 

There are also options for document management, time keeping, as well as tracking and fixing errors. A range of integrations are available, such as Slack, Google, Dropbox, as well as the numerous other Zoho suites.

Pricing is dependent on both the number of users, number of projects, and the depth of features required, with higher level plans offering unlimited projects and higher limits according to the plan subscribed to. There is a free plan available to explore the software’s features.

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Part of a wide suite of productivity tools from the same company, Zoho Projects has nearly all the standard features you’d expect from a project management app, at a particularly affordable price.

Tasks are viewable in either kanban or more traditional styles, with dependencies able to be set between each task. Tools like issue and workflow management, Gantt charts, and customized reporting mean the tool can handle even relatively complex project requirements. There’s also strong integration with other services, both Zoho’s own suite of apps, and those from major players like Google and Microsoft.

Basic time tracking is built-in, and although it doesn’t replace a dedicated tracking tool, there are enough features included to make it useful. Contacting other project team members can be done via the built-in chat app, which saves jumping out to external tools like e-mail or Slack.

The free tier is limited to three users, with just 10 megabytes of storage and two projects. It’s sufficient for small projects or getting a feel for the software, however, and all of the paid plans are available on a 10-day trial. Other plans which allow for more users, more projects, and more storage start range from $5 per user to $10 per user, and you can save 20% if billed annually. Both Web and mobile versions of Zoho Projects are available.

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Zoho projects is an extensive project management software with a clean and straightforward interface. This software covers the following areas everything from Project Planning (breaking down projects into manageable units) and Gantt Charts (to visual the progress of tasks) to Reporting Tools, Collaboration Software (to ease contact between consultants, vendors, employees and clients) and Document Management. It can also be integrated with tools such as Google Apps and DropBox.

Pricing: Zoho offers a free plan that includes 1 project and 10 MB storage, an express plan (€25/month), premium (€50/month) and enterprise (€80/month). These last plans all depend on the number of project and storage space. Cost: Zoho has basic plans that start at $10 per user per month.

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Zoho is a web-based CRM suite that is best used to manage leads, purchases and pipelines. Among the tools in this CRM platform are automated tasks like account management, lead tracking, prospect tracking and other sales tasks. Zoho also has a native chatroom that can either be private or public, and the ability to track the time spent on projects.

The tool also has features outside of the project management and marketing scope, including HR and finance management.

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We think Zoho Projects is perhaps one of the most cost-effective options on the market. For that reason, it’s definitely worth considering. Its freeware features Gantt and calendar views. You and your team can run two projects and attach files of up to 10 GB.

This basic tier is admittedly bare, offering simple task tracking features. Aside from the web browser, you can also access Zoho Projects using iOS and Android. For very small teams that can operate with a bare-bones project management tool, this might be enough. However, larger teams will want to consider upgrading.

One thing we noted is that Zoho tends to prefer integrations featuring its own products such as Meeting, CRM, Desk and Sprints. It only lets you link up with a handful of non-Zoho third-party integrations. This isn’t necessarily an outright bad thing, but if you are part of a larger team that wants loads of integration options, you might need to look elsewhere.

Who should use it:

Very small teams just starting with project management that want affordable software.

Pros & Cons

• Very affordable monthly and annual pricing plans
• User-friendly interface that makes it easy to manage and track objectives
• Great tool for Kanban teams

• Not too many third-party integrations outside of Zoho products
• Notably short trial period

Plans & Pricing

Premium

Zoho Project offers the Premium tier at a monthly rate of $5 per user with an upward limit of 50 users. It’s also possible to add “client users” for $3 each. Should you subscribe to this plan, you’ll enjoy features that include:

• Unlimited projects
• Task automation
• Time tracking
• Project budget and earned value management

Premium also provides up to 20 project templates and file attachments of up to 100 GB in size.

Enterprise

Zoho Project provides one of the more affordable Enterprise tiers we have seen, asking just $10 per month and per user, with no upward limit on the number of licenses you can buy. With an annual discount, pricing starts at $9 per month, per user.

You receive all the features in the other two tears, as well as:

• Global Gantt chart, resource utilization and planned versus actual
• Inter-project dependencies
• Teams (custom user groups)
• Workflow rules
• And much more

While these are the basic tier prices, Zoho Project did mention that taxes will also apply, which could affect the final price.

Microsoft Project

Best For Large project And Organizations

Microsoft Project has been around since 1984 in one form or another, and it’s still the preferred tool of many experienced project managers. With its higher pricing and steep learning curve, it’s very much aimed at those responsible for very large, complex projects who have the expertise, time, and budget to get the most out of this comprehensive tool.

MS Project looks and feels like other Microsoft Office apps, but with few tutorials or hints, it can be daunting for newcomers to the project management space. Trained professionals, however, will appreciate the extremely granular detail available for each task and resource, whether that resource is a specific person, role, physical material, or something else.

Reporting is similarly powerful, with both pre-built and customizable reports that can be quickly exported to Microsoft PowerPoint for those inevitable management summaries. Integration with non-Microsoft tools is limited, however.

MS Project can be tacked onto an existing Office 365 subscription, at a couple of different price points, or purchased as a one-off piece of software to be installed on a single computer.

In 2021, Microsoft dropped the tiered naming convention of Essentials, Professional, and Premium and replaced it with Project Plan 1, Project Plan 3, and Project Plan 5, leaving the majority plan features unchanged. Features differ between tiers, but subscription prices for Plan 3 (formerly Professional) start at $30 per month per user.

Jira

Jira is an agile project management software used by development teams to plan, track, and release software. It is a popular tool designed specifically and used by agile teams. Aside from creating stories, planning sprints, tracking issues, and shipping up-to-date software, users also generate reports that help improve teams, and create their own workflows. As part of Atlassian, it integrates with many tools that enable teams to manage their projects and products from end to end.

Jira Software is built for every member of your software team to plan,track, and release great software. Every team has a unique process for shipping software. Use an out-of-the-box workflow, or create one to match the way your team works.

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JIRA is a popular project management software that caters mostly to agile, software development teams. Within the software, these teams can create customisable scrum boards, kanban boards, and make use of agile reporting (in real-time). Users can also track bugs, view any outstanding issues and monitor time spent per task. JIRA comes with a robust set of APIs that enable users to connect it with many third party softwares.

Pricing: Pricing ranges from $10/month to $1500/month depending on how many users you have. There is also an option to deploy JIRA on your own server for a one-time payment. Cost: Pricing for Jira starts at $10 per user per month.

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Jira is a bug-tracking and agile project management tool that started as a software primarily used by engineering and remote dedicated development teams. It’s currently used by a variety of teams all over the world, but it’s an especially useful tool for a software development company, as it has roots remain in issue/bug tracking, agile and test case management spaces.

Some of the features of Jira include customizable scrum boards, roadmaps to sketch out plans and individual team actions, as well as flexible Kanban boards that help visually manage issues.

EngageBay

Integrated, affordable and powerful marketing, sales & service CRM for small and growing businesses. The platform includes Marketing Automation, Landing Pages, Web Forms, Free CRM, Free Live Chat Software, SLAs and Tickets, among other solutions.

Learn more about EngageBay

The PlanMinder

The Plan Minder is a predictive project planning tool, that uses automatic scheduling to make it easy to keep plans up to date. Time reports are automatically used to update the schedule, and uncertainty analysis gives you insight on risks and lets you make better decisions.

The PlanMinder is best for teams where you need to plan and coordinate, but where estimates are uncertain, and priorities and scope change over time.

 Buildertrend

Buildertrend is the #1 Software for home builders, contractors & remodelers. Our construction software is an all-in-one solution, it features everything you need in one construction app.

Learn more about Buildertrend

WorkflowMax

Cloud-based worklow and job management software delivered as Software-as-a-Service. It is an end-to-end PM solution that has tools for leads, quotes, timesheets, job management, and invoicing.

Learn more about WorkflowMax

BuildTools

BuildTools is a web-based, fully integrated construction project management software. It is a modular construction management platform designed to manage the back-office processes of custom builders and remodelers.

Learn more about BuildTools

Caspio

Cloud platform for creating business database applications, forms and reports fast and without coding. It includes everything you need to create and run online database applications on any website and for any number of users.

Learn more about Caspio

Knack

Knack is an online database builder that transforms spreadsheets into a web database application. As an easy web app builder framework, it allows anyone to build applications that can access data, run reports, and share with a lot of people.

Learn more about Knack

Easy Projects

Easy Projects is an award-winning collaborative work management platform used by local and remote teams to achieve quantifiable operational improvements. Complete projects faster with the ability to customize Easy Projects’ dashboard to match exactly how your team likes to work. Avoid missing deadlines and improve team collaboration with features like inter-project dependencies. Easily provide project metrics and a birds-eye view on updates to your Executive Team with in-depth Business Intelligence reports. Teams that use Easy Projects report a 30% decrease in project duration and a 60% increase in productivity. To experience these results and provide your business with work management software built for your entire team to utilize, not just Project Managers, book your free demo of Easy Projects today.

Learn more about Easy Projects

Procore

Procore is a project management software built specifically for construction. With Procore’s project management software, teams can communicate more seamlessly and have one central source for all project information. The mobile app also makes it easy for teams and individuals to communicate from the field.

Creates schedules, closes RFIs faster, tracks project emails, archives documents & photos. Manage submittals, daily logs, change orders, job costing and punch lists. Integrates with MS Project and Sage Timberline Office.

Cost: Procore starts at $375 per month.

Proofhub

ProofHub is an online project management app that places an emphasis on simplicity. This project management software is intended mainly for small and growing businesses. Projects are assigned to groups and clients, who are able to discuss, share and edit.

Proofhub also offers to create custom roles for users to create Gantt charts. The following are some of the subcomponents of ProofHub: Custom Roles, Task management, Workflows and Boards, Gantt Charts, Reports, Time tracking, Discussions, Chat, Calendar, File management, Notes, and in-app notifications.

Pricing: ProofHub pricing ranges from $45/month to $99/month depending on the number of projects and storage needed.

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ProofHub lets teams collaborate, organize and deliver on projects across an organization. Users can assign specific tasks to individuals, which can have a breakdown of deadlines and recur at a determined frequency. ProofHub has several views including Gantt, Kanban and calendar view, and is also a central place to store files related to all of your projects.

This tool also has chat, a proofing capability, timesheets and reporting to better equip teams with all of the tools they need to collaborate.

Cost: ProofHub starts at $89 per month billed annually for up to 100MB of storage (unlimited projects and users).

Hubstaff

Hubstaff is a tool with automated workflows, based on the agile methodology. With Hubstaff you can focus on your sprints by prioritizing tasks, automated stand-ups and easily share comments and the status of the project with your team members.

Pricing: Hubstaff offers a free plan up to 5 users.

Adobe Workfront

Adobe Workfront is a user-friendly project management software offers customisable project dashboards, real-time reporting and clear visibility of all ongoing tasks and operations. It also offers capacity planning and project prioritisation tools as well as notifies teams of work in progress. Workfront can be integrated with other systems such as Adobe Creative Cloud, Google Drive and Microsoft Outlook.

Pricing: Pricing for all packages is only available upon request.

Website:www.workfront.com

TeamGantt

TeamGantt is a project management software that caters really well to smaller businesses. It is very easy to set up and can probably be up and running within an hour or two. The software allows users to invite colleagues to a gantt chart, which they can also edit once access has been granted. TeamGantt’s only weak points are in-app communication and collaboration.

Pricing: Pricing ranges from $0/month (max 10 users and 1 project) to $175/month (unlimited users and projects).

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TeamGantt is a great visual project management tool based on the enduring Gantt chart style. With Gantt, the vertical side of the chart lists the tasks. The horizontal bar demonstrates how much of the project is complete or when each item is started and completed. This style of chart creation and task management is more than a century old and remains popular.

As such, TeamGantt remains a well-regarded management tool because it’s so easy to use, you can set it up and get going within a matter of minutes. It not only allows better time management, but team members can actively update their progress.

TeamGantt is available to use for free, with admittedly limited features. For example, free accounts can only create a single Gantt chart with a maximum of three users and five labels. You’re also only able to list up to 60 tasks. Things are much different for Standard and Advanced users. Still, the pricing remains competitive; at the very least, you can commit to a 30-day premium trial to see if TeamGantt will work for you.

Who should use it:

TeamGantt works well for small or large businesses, and its easy-to-use nature makes it ideal for anyone new to project management.Pros & Cons

• Very easy to set up and start using
• Excellent introduction to Gantt charts
• Great resource for Agile teams

• Limited third-party integrations
• Freeware doesn’t offer many options compared to other free project management services

Plans & Pricing

Standard

The Standard plan starts at $19.90 per user per month when you pay annually; the price rises to $24.95 without the yearly discount.

If you upgrade to Standard, you can create an unlimited number of Gantt charts, also setting an unlimited number of tasks. There are also no limits on the number of users you can add. Standard plan subscribers gain endless labels, workload forecasting, custom project templates, and the ability to view project history and undo actions.

While TeamGantt’s Free and Standard tiers offer a wide range of project management features, you’ll need to move to the Advanced level for time tracking tools.

Advanced

When billed yearly, the advanced plan is available starting at $24.45 per month and user. Without the annual discount, it increases to $29.95. This tier features everything in the Free and Standard plans as well as:

• Portfolio management
• Time tracking tools
• Hourly estimates

TeamGantt does offer an Enterprise plan, but you’ll need to contact sales for a quote.

Backlog

Backlog is a project management and collaboration tool for different teams in an organization.

You can manage projects and tasks wisely and for each team there are special features. Sales teams can track leads, while development teams can assign issues and review code within this one tool.

Pricing: Offers a Unlimited and Enterprise Edition, pricing for both editions is given upon request.

Cost: Backlog starts at $35 per month for 30 users and 5 projects.

XXXX

Backlog is a project management software built for all types of teams to help them organize and streamline work. In Backlog, you can organize projects by Gantt and Kanban view, create and assign tasks to teammates from anywhere in the world, and track issues in a way that’s easy for non-technical teams.

Plutio

Plutio is an all-in-one business management platform designed to help you manage projects and tasks, create proposals and send invoices. Track your time from anywhere and visualise everyone’s time entries in a powerful time-sheet, with Plutio you stay organized.

Pricing: Plutio offers a paid plan for individuals $15/month, Studio plan $20/month and a Team plan $30/month.

Airtable

Airtable is a high-powered spreadsheet in which you can list tasks, projects, and store files. Within the spreadsheet, you can attach a variety of items, including images, links to other tasks, and assignees. Airtable also has other views aside from the spreadsheet/table view, which include calendar view, Kanban view, and gallery view. This tool is one of the best project management softwares if you’re primarily used to working in Excel or Google Sheets.

For project management on-the-go, Airtable also has a great mobile app available on iOS and Android app stores.

Cost: There is a free version of Airtable, and paid plans start at $10 per user per month billed annually.

Project Manager

Last, but certainly not least is ProjectManager.com. This award-winning tool has several nice features including task management and time sheets, both of which can be updated remotely. This project management tool also offers its users Gantt charts, Project Planning features and a real-time dashboard.

Pricing: Pricing starts at $35/month for a single user. However, they also offer two team packages: $20 per user/month for a team of 10 users and $25 per user/month for a team of 20 users. Additionally, ProjectManager.com offers an enterprise package (pricing available upon request).

Mavenlink

Mavenlink was built specifically for the operational and financial sides of service businesses. This project management software serves as the “Operational Service of Record” for service businesses and connects whole organizations with ease. Within the tool, there are several different functions including traditional project management, resource management, and business accounting, which help unite multiple people working on a specific project.

Mavenlink’s resourcing and budgeting tools are particularly useful, as they help increase overall financial visibility within an organization.

Cost: Pricing starts at $19 per month for a group of five users.

Float 

Float is specifically made for resource scheduling and multi-project planning across a team. This app is ideal if you want a general overview of team workload and want to know which tasks are taking up the most time. Agencies and other project-based organizations love Float because it allows them to track across multiple clients and better understand bandwidth.

Tools like Float also protect against burnout and high team turnover because managers have a better grasp of who is overworked and can take actionable next steps to combat this.

Cost: Float costs $5 per scheduled person per month, and comes with a 30 day free trial of the tool.

Workfront

Workfront is a highly customizable tool that helps users to manage their projects, which is why it’s one of our picks for best project management software. Features include setting up priorities for tasks, assigning them to specific team members, managing an entire project, and reviewing its progress. Besides automating the whole workflow, this top project management software also provides a centralized platform for digital collaboration and integration with various other services.

Workfront also delivers powerful tool integrations to help your team take their tech stack to the next level.

Cost: Workfront has four pricing plans — you must request a quote for each plan.

GanttPro

As the name suggests, GanttPro is one of the best project management softwares based on Gantt charts. With GanttPro, users can plan projects with interactive Gantt charts, split projects out into tasks, milestones and subtasks, and set a specific timeline with resources allocated. GanttPro also allows users to measure out team resources, availability, and estimate project costs.

Cost: Pricing starts at $15 per user per month for one user.

Scoro

Scoro is a complex project management software built to help teams manage tasks and reporting. Tasks can be tracked and divided into subtasks, assigned to individuals, and have deadlines and milestones attributed to them. Scoro is also great if you send invoices — the tool lets you send quotes and bills with ease via the app itself. 

This tool also contains thorough reporting functionalities that let you view project status reports, unscheduled time, and projects by accounts. 

Cost: Pricing starts at $26 per user per month.

Timely

Timely is an automated time-tracking tool that also lets you track projects, monitor budgets, and view team performance all in one software. With Timely, you can examine past costs, tasks and turnarounds to set competitive rates and improve future project profitability and efficiency. Timely prioritizes privacy in its functionality, giving each team member their own private work timeline so they can control what information is displayed publicly. And with automatic time-tracking and timesheet drafts, your team can focus less on daily admin tasks — and more on the work itself.

Cost: Starter plan is $8 per user per month, scaling up to the unlimited plan at $20 per user per month.

Proggio

Proggio is a collaborative solution for project and portfolio management that has a range of features including high-level portfolio monitoring, Kanban and list views, a mobile app, and a robust Jira integration. The Jira integration helps teams connect with their coworkers in the development and software space, which is great for teams across many organizations. In Proggio, you can also sort tasks by “My Tasks,” “Assigned by Me,” “By Projects,” and “My Team,” which helps sort and filter to-dos.

Cost: Proggio costs $19 per user per month for 5-20 users.

Timecamp

Timecamp is unique because there are plenty of project management softwares on the market, but most of them don’t give your team an hours logging feature. If you’re in the market for time tracking, Timecamp is a great tool as it offers automatic time tracking that works in the background and logs time for projects seamlessly.

The tool’s unique project structure allows you to create or import as many projects as you need, track time for them, and then analyze the reports to figure out how the team is performing.

Cost: Timecamp offers a free plan for single users and paid plans that start at $5.25

Workzone

Workzone is a customizable project management software that helps bring all relevant information together for teams to collaborate at macro and micro levels. Within Workzone, you can access things like “Project Dashboard,” pictured above, which is a big picture view of where all projects stand across an organization. You can also drill down into “To-Do Lists” which are created for each individual user and emailed to them.

This tool also offers features like templates, Gantt charts, dependencies, and request forms.

Cost: Enterprise costs $43/user per month.

Paymo

Paymo is a tool built to help teams work together and stay on task. One of the main selling points of Paymo, and what makes it one of the best project management softwares, is that it lets you manage tasks, create team schedules, and track work time in one cohesive platform. This tool will primarily be useful if you’re doing project-based work, say at an agency or creative organization, and want to track time spent across specific tasks and projects.

Paymo also allows you to create invoices from the app, and has tons of integrations with software like Google, Slack and Quickbooks.

Cost: Paymo’s business plan starts at $14.25 per user per month.

Forecast

Forecast is an intelligent automation platform that helps teams run project from start to finish. They use AI to help plan out project duration and scope, allocating resources and teammates to each project with a few clicks. Forecast also has a great resource utilization functionality, which can help teams understand where individuals are over or underutilized across the team.

Cost: Forecast’s pro plan starts at $49 per user per month.

TeamGantt

One of TeamGantt’s biggest advantages is that it’s an easy-to-use product that is great for beginners, or those who might not have had extensive experience with project management software in the past. As the name suggests, this tool is Gantt-heavy, which gives teams an easy and straightforward was to manage projects. With TeamGantt’s Gantt charts, you can plan, schedule and manage Gantt charts. Plus, the software is free.

Cost: TeamGantt’s basic plan is free.

Hubspot

While HubSpot Task Management Software isn’t a project management tool per-se, this CRM platform has project and task management capabilities, which are also available in the free plan. If you’re a marketer or a salesperson and you’re looking for an integrated tool, then you might consider HubSpot CRM because of the free marketing, sales, service and, of course, task management tools that are natively integrated.

Once you want to set a task for a contact, simply choose the company, contact or deal in the HubSpot CRM. Click “Create task” and add your details and notes; set a due date; set an email reminder, task type, and task owner (all optional); and then click “Save Task.” Once you’re ready

Clarizen

As a project and portfolio management solution, Clarizen is an enterprise-level tool that helps teams all over the world simplify work and accomplish their goals. A few things that Clarizen can help with include: sharing goals across an organization so people understand macro-level decision-making, merging different work styles into one comprehensive framework, and increasing speed with which teammates can communicate.

Cost: Clarizen’s professional plan starts at $30 per user per month.

Ravetree

Ravetree is your hub for storing all project information, budgeting, files, client information, and more. With this tool, you can manage projects via agile and waterfall methods, as well as create multi-level approval flows for creative assets, track times and expenses, and use Ravetree’s integrated CRM. With Ravetree, you can also give clients access to your project progress and campaigns with the client portal.

Cost: Ravetree’s pricing starts at $39 per user per month when billed monthly.

Quickbase

Quickbase is a customizable collaboration and project management software that allows teams to work cohesively together, track time, and manage tasks seamlessly. Quickbase helps to streamline overall processes for teams of all sizes, driving insights and agility across the board. A few great features of Quickbase include low-code development, integration and workflow orchestration, and continuous deployment.

Cost: Quickbase starts at $500/month for the premier option.

Robohead

Robohead is a project management software built for creative teams and agencies. This tool allows you to manage creative projects from inception to completion with a variety of features including request forms, conditional logic, approvals, templates, flexible projects views, and more.

Cost: Robohead pricing is available by request only.

Planview

Planview is a portfolio and project management software with five different offshoots including Planview Enterprise One, Planview LeanKit, and Planview Projectplace. With their wide array of solutions, your team can find the perfect fit for strategic planning, enterprise agile planning, work management, or agile program management.

Cost: Planview pricing is available if you reach out to their team.

nTask

nTask is a project management software that teams rely on to get their work done faster. nTask is a leading Gantt chart software for teams of all sizes, whether its an individual or a group of 50. With dependencies and milestones for task tracking, nTask makes it easy to plan and oversee all projects. They’ve also got some great meeting features, which include the ability to create an agenda, write out discussion points, sync recurring meetings, and slot out follow-up actions.

Cost: nTask premium starts at $2.99 per user per month.

Notion

Notion is a great all-in-one project management software that helps your team collaborate, plan for the future, and stay organized in the present. Notion is broken up into three parts — the team Wiki, where information can be stored and recorded; projects and tasks, where teammates can record individual tasks or assign to teammates; notes and docs, where teams can share meeting notes or relevant documents.

Cost: Notion’s team package costs $8 per user per month.

Yodiz

Yodiz is a popular project management software among teams who really want to lean into Agile and Scrum methodologies. With Yodiz, teams can track, plan, and garner smart insights throughout their project and campaign lifecycle. A few of this tool’s features include team planning, which helps you get an idea of team capacity and capability, delivery tracking, which lets teams set goals and track them with powerful dashboards, and analytics, which allow teams to track performance metrics.

Cost: Yodiz’ agile tool starts at $5 per user per month.

Todoist

Todoist is a basic project management software that helps individuals create interactive to-do lists to manage projects and tasks. Part of their mission is to help people free up mental space by getting all of their tasks down in one place — with the added mental capacity, individuals can think bigger and better.

Cost: Todoist has a free version of their software.

Infinity

Infinity is a powerful project management software that allows teams to sort and store information about projects and tasks in a streamlined way. With tons of unique project views, ranging from table to Gantt, Infinity has a unique view and solution for every team member. Additionally, with this project management software you can structure data into hierarchies including workflows, items, and tabs.

Cost: Infinity starts at $9 per user per month.

MindGenius

MindGenius is a comprehensive project management software that helps remote teams around the world stay connected and work together. This app has a few different variations, including MindGenius and MindGenius 20. The latter is their desktop app, which helps teams pull together mind-maps and can show tasks in a variety of views including Gantt, solutions, and slide view. MindGenius Online allows teams to collaborate together and assign each other tasks remotely.

Cost: MindGenius starts at $160 for your first year subscription.

Rindle

Rindle is a great process and project management software that teams can use to encourage teams to adopt the correct processes and workflows. With Rindle, you can build processes in a no-code environment by creating “rules” for each step of the process. From there, you can set triggers and actions, which can be organized into boards and assigned to teammates.

Cost: Rindle starts at $9 per month for each user.

Accelo

Accelo bills themselves as “project management software for profitable projects.” With Accelo, users can not only plan projects and deliver client work, but also track results and automate processes. If you’re looking for more traditional project management, Accelo has drag-and-drop Gantt charts, or if you’re looking for more team-focused features, they’ve got team scheduling capabilities.

Cost: Accelo starts at $39 per user per month.

Process Street

Process Street is a workflow and project management software that helps teams manage recurring checklists and procedures. With this project management software, teams can create a process template with tasks and actions, run multiple instances of the checklist, and track progress while collaborating with your teammates. Users can even set up conditional logic inside this project management software.

Cost: Basic package starts at $12.50 per user per month.

Chanty

Chanty is a great team collaboration and project management software that is easy-to-use and straightforward. Within Chanty, you can chat with teammates, organize team activity in Teambook, share screens and files, and bring all of your most-loved apps into Chanty itself. Additionally, Chanty has a dark mode.

Cost: Chanty is free for their basic version.

Project.co

Project.co is an ideal project management software for teams that are client facing. Each project has a dashboard, which houses all of the project status, comments, team members, payments, and time tracked. In the discussion section, you can have real-time conversations with internal or external teammates about project progress.

Cost: $10 per user per month.

Freshservice

Freshservice is a project management software built specifically for IT teams to improve efficiency and deliver projects on time. With Freshservice, teams have a single unified platform where they can collaborate and execute flawlessly on all projects and tasks. This project management software has a great overall dashboard that helps you understand how projects are tracking, as well as project templates and time tracking capabilities

Cost: Starts with a 21-day free trial and also at $19 / agent per month.

Google Tasks

We all know and love Google as our favorite search engine or email provider, but did you know that Google Tasks exists? This app lets you create and organize tasks, add subtasks, view, edit and manage tasks, create tasks from emails, and so much more. This project management software would be best suited for someone who needs simple project management and already uses the Google suite.

Cost: Google Tasks is currently free.

Indy

Indy is a user-friendly platform for managing your freelance projects. Bring all your workflows into one place with Indy’s tools. Create proposals, contracts, and invoices in minutes with automatic tools. Indy makes managing projects easier because you can use the Forms tool to automate client info requests, the Time Tracking tool to manage hourly billing, and the Tasks tool to connect tasks to Projects and get work done.

Cost: $5.99 per month

Best Project Management Tools Summary

	TOOL	FREE OPTION	PRICE
1	monday.com Best for building custom workflows across teams	14 days free trial	From $8/user/month	Check out monday.com
2	ClickUp Best for unlimited users/seats	Freemium version	Free forever with paid plans starting at $5/user/month	Check out ClickUp
3	Smartsheet Best for flexibility & customizability	30 days free trial	From $7/user/month	Check out Smartsheet
4	Hive Best for collaboration & messaging	14 days free trial	From $12/user/month	Check out Hive
5	Kintone Best for building custom project workflows	30 days free trial	From $24/user/month	Check out Kintone
6	Celoxis Best for customer-facing teams	30 days free trial	From $22.50/user/month	Check out Celoxis
7	PSOhub Best for integrating project management with CRM	30 days free trial, no credit card	From $8.50/user/month (annually)	Check out PSOhub
8	Wrike Best for scaling organizations	Freemium version14 days free trial	From $9.80/user/month	Check out Wrike
9	awork Best UI for usability & intuitiveness	14 days free trial + 30 day money back guarantee	From $11.76/user/month	Check out awork
10	MeisterTask Best for WIP limits	Freemium version30 days free trial	From $8.25/month	Check out MeisterTask
11	FunctionFox Best for creative teams and agencies	Freemium version14 days free trial	Premier plan starts at $50/month for the first user, plus $10 USD/month for each additional user	Check out FunctionFox
12	Teamwork Best for remote teams	Freemium version30 days free trial. No credit card required.	From $10/user/month	Check out Teamwork
13	Quire Best for remote teams	Freemium version30 day free trial	From $8.95/user/month	Check out Quire
14	Nifty best for remote teams & ease of use	14 days free trial available, no credit card required.	From $39/month	Check out Nifty
15	Zoho Projects Best for unique team collaboration features	Freemium version10 days free trial	From $5/user/month and offers a 10-day free trial	Check out Zoho Projects

Other Project Management Software To Consider

Below is a list of additional PM tool options. Check them out if you’re looking for the best software for your agency or studio:

1. ProWorkflowBest for unlimited client/contractor access
2. XebrioBest for project requirements management
3. TeamGanttBest for visual planning
4. WorkotterBest for enterprise project management
5. PaymoBest for SMBs
6. ConfluenceBest for software teams
7. Kissflow ProjectBest for workflow automations

What is project management software?

Project management software is software that helps project managers (PMs) plan, execute and control their projects across the five phases of the project lifecycle. It’s a suite of tools to help project managers, the project team and stakeholders work together more effectively. The ultimate goal of the software is to help deliver value more efficiently by facilitating organization, communication, and management.

This software covers a huge range of functionality – some tools focus on a discrete aspect of project management, like resource management, time tracking, or Gantt charts, while others like do try to do it all.

Different tools offer features to facilitate every phase of your work, from planning the initial outline or proposal before you begin and then reporting on your successes or shortcoming after everything is said and done. Along the way, you’ll probably need access to tools for proposals, note-taking, collaborative document building, internal messaging, stakeholder communications, creating and assigning tasks, plotting milestones, planning sprints, imaging user stories, data and analytics reporting, project portfolio management, and budget tracking, and timeline scheduling. The best software will attend to the majority of these needs so that you don’t have to bounce between tabs or use multiple apps.

Although some PM software can be installed on-premise, most new tools are offered online as a software-as-service or SaaS which means new features and functionality are rolled out.

What makes a good Project Management Software?

From tracking down deliverables to managing resources and from budget management to collaboration with team members, there is a lot to be considered when running and managing projects. This holds true when choosing the right project management software tool as well. Here’s a list of the top 5 key functionality aspects of project management software to guide you in your decision.

• Task lists – being able to assign and update the status of tasks so that everyone in your team is on the same page is critical
• Schedules – many tools offer calendars, Gantt charts or milestone tools that help you understand where a task fits into the project as a whole and how much time there is to complete it.
• File sharing – being able to share and organise key project documents eliminates time wasted searching for files
• Communication – this is critical in project management as a smooth flow of communication means quick and easy problem solving
• Reporting – this is important for all team members when it comes to updating themselves on the project as a whole. However this is also a huge plus for project managers who want to ensure that the project is progressing and tasks are being carried out in a timely manner

What Is Best-In-Breed Software?

Many of the PM solutions on this list focus on being jacks-of-all-trades, packing as many features as possible to assign tasks, navigate team collaboration, flag status, perform resource allocation, and so on and so forth, ad nauseam.

Another kind of tool—the “best-in-breed” or “one trick pony”—does the opposite and hyper-focuses on doing one thing really, really well. You can find specialized tools for things like resource scheduling, communication, managing tasks, making Gantt charts, creating reports, managing digital assets, and managing requirements. Tools like Slack (comms), Dropbox (storage), and Todoist (lists) are examples of these uber-specialized tools. Specialized tools can be great—especially for a small team working with niche requirements, fewer clients, or complex projects with unique needs.

Do I need more than one tool?

Sometimes! And that’s okay. However, if you’re not careful, you end up with a collection of unrelated SaaS software that doesn’t sync properly. You use one tool for communication, another for file sharing and yet another for task management and none of them will speak together behind-the-scenes. You run the risk of duplicate work, entering the same data into each application.

There’s a better way. Instead of using dedicated tools and manually tying them together, use a project management tool with shared-data functionality built-in. This facilitates better briefing and contextual communication.

What are the key Features of a Project Management Tool?

In defining a good project management tool I’ve focused on tools that facilitate the “doing” aspect. That means getting people together to create something, and get from A to B.

So what does it take to deliver a  project? I’ve identified five key aspects of functionality that makes delivering projects easier. You can use them to get rid of your post-its and spreadsheets, and to run your project more efficiently.

1. Project task lists: Projects are made up of sub-tasks, sub-sub-tasks, checklists, and to-do’s. Being able to outline what needs to be done, by when & by who, is critical to delivering a project well. Individual task lists as well as those accessible by the entire team are essential. In-house project team and/or remote team members should be able to assess any project or task progress at a glance.
2. Schedules: Timelines, calendars, and Gantt charts help you track progress and know where tasks fit within the broader scheme of a project. This is key to being able to deliver a project on time. A robust, visual, and editable schedule is key to any good project plan.
3. File sharing: No one likes having to waste timing trying to dig around for random files. The ability to organize and share key project files and assets is important for delivering projects efficiently.
4. Communication: A good collaboration tool that allows for contextual project-specific communication enables you and your team to hash things out quickly. Regular communication with your team and client is vital for tracking progress and keeping everything in line.
5. Reporting: It’s your job to know whether or not a project is on track and to use this information in communication. Therefore, it’s essential to know how a project’s tasks are progressing—will it be delivered on time, or not?

With any software, you have to draw a line between what’s essential and what’s not. In my criteria, I’ve focused on the execution of a project. That means I haven’t focused on mind map planning, billing, post mortem, or other above-and-beyond capabilities. However, if the tools above touch on any advanced functionality (pre-project estimating, post-project aspects, etc.), that’s great! That’s just not my focus here.

What Are Project Management Software Tools?

Project management software tools enable teams, small businesses, and individuals to keep track of projects in all their stages. These software tools can be used to work collaboratively and remotely on a project, add notes and deadlines, track progress, and make updates. Some software tools include search functions and email integration as well as organizational tips.

Who Uses Project Management Software Tools?

Project management software tools are used by:

• Work teams
• Small business owners
• Individuals managing multiple projects
• Remote workers 
• Sales teams
• Contractors and construction workers

How Much Do Project Management Software Tools Cost?

Project management software tools vary from basic versions to more complex versions with built-in integration and search functions. There are free versions and paid versions, and some software tools offer monthly paid subscriptions. Expect to pay from $10 to $99 per month, depending on how many users you have and what specific features you need.

Types of Project Management Software Implementation

When software became available and affordable to business, companies replaced their pen-and-paper project tracker systems with project management software. But technology continues to evolve, so desktop applications improved in features, scale, and security that allowed multiple users access to the software over a company’s own data network. When cloud computing presented options and advantages, management software vendors offered their subscription-based products over the internet to businesses of all sizes. It also opened the market to more providers offering a variety of systems.

Online Project Management Software

Web-based project management programs are accessible from any internet-connected web browser through a software-as-a-service (SaaS) subscription. These online platforms cater to businesses of all sizes across industries. Users in various locations can access the tool from different devices such as desktops, tablets, and smartphones to get up-to-date project status and information from a central database.

Today’s online project management software have a rich set of features that can compete with enterprise systems. Many of these apps provide several methods to visualize project tasks and goal progress, collaborate with coworkers, automate workflows, share files, message team members, and integrate with email. By expanding their feature sets, online management software also fall into the categories of collaboration software or business process management software.

Examples of online project management software include Zoho Projects, Microsoft Project, and Basecamp.

On-Premise Project Management Software

On-premise project management programs reside on the company’s own server. The server will be inside their data center and managed by its IT employees. Companies often purchase a single on-premise license and may have to purchase additional upgrades or updates.

Companies prefer on-premise software for their concern on security as well as long-term costs. When the company runs the software on their private servers, they have full control over the data storage and security protocols to protect that data. Enterprises with 50, 100, or more users can save from monthly subscription costs if they purchase one-time license fees used in on-premise project management programs. They also have control when to schedule software updates to make preparations and not experience any downtime due to an automatic product update inherent in SaaS systems.

Integrated vs Best-of-Breed Software

Today’s project management solutions includes several features and tools to manage a wide array of business project scopes. Specialized software can manage simple projects satisfactorily. A best-of-breed application specializes in one particular capability, such as task management, scheduling, or time tracking.

Integrated suite applications combine several functions like task management, Gantt charting, and time tracking. Businesses prefer integrated tools for a unified solution that provides visibility, improves collaboration, and supports accountability.

Startups and small businesses need simple management software solutions with fewer features that cover basic functionality. Task management, team collaboration, document management, and email integrations are all common features that should be included in simple project management software.

A comprehensive project management solution has more features that cover core project management functions such as scheduling, resource management, and financial management on top of more advanced project management features. A PM suite will have a higher cost but also deliver accurate estimates, dependencies control, unlimited projects within a single instance, real-time progress tracking, and comprehensive reports that justifies the price of the solution. These tools also require more oversight and time to be more effective in managing projects. Larger organizations and teams prefer integrated management software, especially for more complex projects.

Free Project Management Software

Free software is available for home use, for very small teams of 1-2 people, and as a fully-featured free and open source system. However, many of these simple project management solutions are offered as a free tier by project management vendors that also provide various levels of paid service. Free tiers may have more limited features, may be restricted to a few users, or may come with limited personalized support. However, many small teams and those just testing out a new tool may find these options useful to help in their decision-making process.

Open source is a valuable option for large teams looking for a free management software. These tools provide all of the same features you may find in a subscription or on-premise tool and many of these tools are highly customizable for different project types. However, access to support, implementation help, and custom changes will need to be managed by an in-house or third party development team.

Industry-Specific Project Management Systems

Not every industry is best-served with a standard project management system, and so industry-specific project management tools were developed to reduce the amount of customization a company will need upon implementation. Construction, software development, financial services, healthcare, and law all have features and customizations that make them better suited to industry work.

In industry-specific tools, you can expect to find collaboration tools, expense tracking, portfolio management, contractor management, resource management, and more. These tools may also help you manage a creative team, a remote team, or a specialized project within your larger portfolio.

Project Management Software Features

As you research your next project management solution, you’ll likely choose the right tool by the features it offers. The right features for your team will depend on the size of your team, the complexity of the projects you run, and the use case you will use the software in.

Task Management

Task management software features let project team members create, update, and manage the progress of tasks throughout a project’s lifetime. This feature allows team members to:

• Set dependencies on a task
• Create and manage subtasks from larger tasks
• Set a task to repeat or recur at a specified time or date
• Assign tasks to one or more people
• Import a list of tasks from an external file

Task management is essential in management software. The best project management tools offer visual task management in Kanban boards, Gantt charts, waterfall dependencies, and burndown charts. These tools give a visual representation of project progress that is often easier to understand than a set of lists or items in a spreadsheet.

Team Collaboration

Collaboration tools help solve complex projects. These features ensure that everyone who can see a task or portion of the project can comment, add assets to, and notate changes in the same interface where all of the project information is stored. Visual task representations, messaging, task descriptions, notation features, asset upload capabilities, tags, email integrations, calendar tools, and more are considered collaboration features.

Collaboration tools enable project teams and stakeholders to:

• Exchange information
• Hold discussions
• Send comments or approvals
• Put context to project files
• Directly message one another

Creative teams may run several smaller projects concurrently, and can make use of Gantt charts and cross-team approvals to keep work flowing to reach deadlines. Large teams should use collaboration tools to keep the project up to date, alert team members to major and minor changes, and centralize assets.

Support Documentation

Software support documentation helps new and existing team members troubleshoot issues within the software and learn to use the tools quickly. Documentation and support tools that shorten the learning curve include:

• Help desk articles
• Support videos
• Periodic educational webinars
• In-software tooltips
• Chatbots
• Email or phone support

Some tools offer email and phone support only to paying subscribers, while others offer only online documentation or customer forums for any plan. If you think your team will need personalized support, look for tools with good support ratings.

Email Integration

Email features within a project management tool will:

• Send notifications to individual team members regarding the status of their projects
• Send alerts regarding due dates, keywords, or status changes to individuals or the entire team
• Make new or update existing tasks via email
• Add comments, files, or custom labels to an existing task

This feature significantly increases productivity as the user can manage tasks and updates from their inbox without logging in to the tool. Individual members should also be able to set limits on the frequency and types of email notifications they receive.

Document Management

A good project management app provides a space for teams to store and manage files directly in the tool or by using an integrated third-party solution. Document management features that are indispensable in a PM software are:

• A centralized document storage
• The ability to attach documents to tasks
• The ability to attach notes and comments to uploaded documents
• Multiple document upload using drag and drop functionality
• Document organization within folders, projects, or custom settings
• Version control
• Security features that can restrict document sharing to a small team, an entire project, or outside parties

An  online PM app also provides cloud storage space or integrates with a third-party service that provides it. Basecamp is a project management tool that is built around a centralized project document and also provides some asset upload capabilities.

Project Portfolio Management

Large teams that manage many concurrent, complex projects may need to track each of those projects separately while also retaining the ability to report on and analyze their progression. Project portfolio management software gives companies an interface to run several projects within one or more portfolios.

The project managers and stakeholders can then take a high level view of project progress, quickly identify bottlenecks, and drill down into problem areas with each project. These tools are also instrumental in team resource allocation and expense tracking across a number of project timelines, as they can show where slack can be taken up by other individuals.

A key feature of project portfolio management software is its ability to scale. These tools can manage unlimited projects with their own separate settings and workflows, but have reporting tools that are powerful enough to give a top-level view. Microsoft Project, Jira, and Wrike all provide project portfolio management features.

Mobile App

Today’s work has moved from the office desk to the field. Mobile access via native project management apps helps all types of teams, and are especially useful for distributed or remote teams. It provides a familiar interface and functionality so users can catch up on work, track progress, and message their teammates easily while on the go. PM vendors offer mobile app solutions on various platforms and technology such as iOS, Android, and HTML5.

Third-Party Integrations or API

The best project management tools have a solid core of PM features that allow users to manage an entire project effectively. It also has multiple integrations directly or via APIs for features and data sources outside of the project management tool. A flexible solution can readily integrate with many of the most popular project management software and services in use by companies today such as G Suite, Microsoft 365, Salesforce, or Dropbox. Zoho Projects, Wrike, Asana, and many other project management vendors offer a lot of integrations to connect to many other business software types.

White Label, Branding, and Custom Settings

When used for external clients, management software will help teams with additional features such as white labeling, custom branding, or customization settings. These features often appeal to sales and marketing agencies and global or multinational corporations who want to adapt their tool to meet language and cultural requirements.

Reporting

Project management programs have reporting functionality included—but to varying degrees. Consider the depth of your reporting needs and whether the software you’re considering meets those needs. Another feature to consider is the ability to export project data to a third-party business intelligence tool if your company has one or is planning to have one. Helpful reporting features might track progress by due date or task type, update stakeholders on resource allocation, give a list of unfinished tasks, use tags to filter data, and estimate on-time delivery.

Scheduling

PM software with scheduling functionality promotes organization in large, multiple, and remote teams. It allows the user to set schedules on tasks, create a project timeline with milestones, and determine dependencies and resources. For some, this is an essential project management function. However, for organizations with simple projects, short-duration projects, recurring tasks, or small teams, this may not be as important.

Time Management

Time management features in a project management app let team members track how much time they spend on independent tasks, let project managers set ideal time goals for the project, and integrate with a timesheet or payroll app. Teams with long-term projects or that regularly employ contractors may find these tools especially useful. In software options built for large teams or industries with contractors, these features may also be called resource management and include expense tracking features.

Buying Considerations

Small Businesses

Small businesses relying on spreadsheets or whiteboards miss an opportunity to manage their projects more efficiently. They can enjoy the advantages of a modern solution and still stay within budget with careful planning and mindful selection of important items while purchasing an affordable PM solution.

User Counts

While it may be helpful for everyone on the team to have access to a project management tool, many options base price on user seats. Companies can identify the essential personnel who need paid access and those who can collaborate for free through other channels such as email or integration. Smaller organizations can easily bring the rest of the team up-to-date through reports that are generated without costs.

Free or Low-Price Options

While every company wants to save money on their software, free and low-priced options are especially attractive to small businesses who run on a shoestring budget. Affordable plans have limitations on the number of access or features, so it is important to plan for growth or expansion.

Open source project management can provide a free or low-cost option, but these tools often do not provide the technical support or frequent updates that free or inexpensive SaaS tools cover.

Visualizations

Task and project visualizations help teams see the progress of multiple projects running at the same time. These tools can assist in managing the progress of the initiative, but they can also be useful for project planning by giving a visual mind map of the project timeline. Whether it’s through a Kanban board, Gantt chart, burndown chart, or other custom visualization, these tools give an overview of the project’s progress.

Small businesses should identify what data or metric is important for them to see and check that their choice of PM solution can display them by default or will allow for customization.

Midsize Businesses

Growing businesses face different challenges such as the task of scaling their company requirements. Project management solutions can help these businesses make a mind map of their upcoming projects, define their project processes, refine existing inefficiencies, and improve overall project outcomes.

Integrations

Midsize businesses have the tendency to adapt a greater number of solutions over time. As such, the ability of a project management software to integrate to these existing solutions plays a greater role. The candidate solution should have native app connections, capable of API calls, or include webhook features to automatically data transfer and speed up processes.

Time Tracking

Time tracking software helps teams track contract work, employee hours, and billable time spent on projects. Project management software should include features that tie work hours directly to individual tasks. The solution should also be able to compute hours across projects or filter hours for individual contributors. You should also look for connections to accounting or payroll systems via export or direct integration.

Time tracking reports are useful for building a project plan because they give the team an idea of how long previous tasks have taken. This can give the project manager and the individual contributors more context when they go to assign tasks.

Reporting and Analytics

Larger teams have a greater need to track and analyze key project data that comes from multiple sources. They need a project management software with a reporting and analytics engine to display the following metrics to help in the successful delivery of projects:

• Total tasks assigned to project and to individual team members
• Total time needed for task and overall project completion
• Tasks by completion stage
• Points, hours, or other metrics to indicate task and project weight

Reporting and analytics can also be useful to help the team benchmark successful projects and understand where they can streamline their processes in the future. Many teams use the project management software’s analytics in their retrospectives and for project planning.

Enterprise

Large companies have the financial and infrastructure resources to implement enterprise-scale solutions. They need to find the right project management software that will maximize their resources as well as provide them the insights from across a huge amount of data while keeping data secure.

Integrations

Enterprise businesses thrive on automation and connected apps. Whether your project management tool lives inside an ERP or business process management (BPM) system, or exists as a standalone solution, integrations are essential. API connections and native plugins ensure key information flows quickly into the project management tool and reporting metrics flow back out to the right systems.

Reporting and Analytics

Reporting and analytics features in enterprise project management systems play a vital role for the software to be widely useful. These features show bottlenecks in the process or other indicators of needed efficiencies. They help the team build a future project plan based on real data from previous projects and provide a talking point for otherwise subjective measures.

Enterprise companies need to check if their business intelligence tool can seamlessly integrate, import directly, or is compatible with the export format of their candidate PM solution.

User Controls

Data safety and security should matter to companies of any size, but enterprise companies need user controls to effectively manage data access. An enterprise company looking for their next project management solution should carefully consider how the tools provide administrative authority over access to projects, the number of available user seats, and granular access to capabilities and tasks.

Implementing the Right Project Management Software for Your Business

Companies should carefully plan how they roll out a new project management software. The project manager responsible should get the support of major stakeholders—from C-level executives to end-users of the project team. Project managers should include a schedule that allocates the time to learn how to use the software before taking a major project. That way, each and every project will be set up properly.

Be ready with support documents and some training materials to ensure that individuals don’t have to spend too much time learning about these project management programs and can quickly pivot back to their normal workloads.

Common Features in Project Management Software

Project management software is ideal for planning, organizing and keeping careful track of the state of your projects. It features a variety of digital resources to aid in the planning and execution of achieving a sole objective or set of goals. The software could be downloadable to desktop, web-based or available through a mobile app.

The best project management software will offer a variety of tools that equip team members to complete their assigned tasks in an organized and timely manner. Most software will offer the ability to track multiple projects at once, break them into smaller tasks, and assign those tasks to the appropriate team members. Stakeholders should then be able to see a bird’s-eye view of the project as a whole, via dashboards or timeline views.

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Choosing Project Management Software For Your Team

In addition to the methods we employed when creating this list, we admit that there might be other factors you’ll want to consider when trying to find the best project management software for yourself or your team.

Consider how experienced you or your employees are with project management software. It might be best to aim for software that most team members are familiar with if you’re not interested in tackling a significant learning curve.

Scalability is another factor. Some project management services are easy to use, but they are rudimentary and don’t have features that lend themselves to developing more complex management boards.

Another consideration: does it work best with one form of Agile over another? For instance, Trello can work for both Scrum and Kanban teams. But some programs work better for one type of Agile team than another. You should perform a good amount of research before settling on software that might not fit your particular approach.

With careful thought, research and attention to your budget, you’re bound to find the right project management software.

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Methodology

We used a variety of qualifying factors to help us determine the very best project management software. Methods of consideration included:

• Freeware availability. You might be surprised to know many top project management tools are, in fact, free to use. While they offer additional add-ons as part of premium tiers, we want to recommend software that lets you try them out before making a purchase.
• Features and functionality. We compared different management software to determine which had better integrations, how easy they were to use and if the interface was modern and useful.
• Reviews and recognition. We were keen to examine customer feedback and reviews from respected resources in addition to our observations. Additionally, we were mindful of how popular certain software choices were, as this often indicated how many people were genuinely getting the most out of these management systems.
• Customer support. We believe customer service is crucial. Should you run into an issue or face something about the software you don’t understand, it’s good to know that someone will get back to you quickly and that you can expect a helpful experience.

A numerical value represented each factor and, when totaled together, allowed each service to achieve a specific score. We considered a wide range of project management software products for this article, and ultimately ten were compared and ranked.

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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What are the most common types of project management software?

The three most common kinds of project management tools are broken down by individual, collaborative, and integrated tools. As the names suggest, individual tools are used by single team members. Collaborative tools allow multiple people to work together on the same project, and integrated tools provide a mix of both functionalities. All of the software on our list is integrated.

What’s the best free project management software?

If you’re looking for free project management tools, we highly recommend monday.com, Trello and Asana. They are not only available at no cost but are among the easiest to begin using immediately.

Why do you need project management software?

An essential aspect of digital project management software is that it provides an opportunity to be productive and organized from the beginning of a project until it ends. Additionally, it can assist in understanding how you might carry out a project better in the future.

What is the easiest project management software?

Every project management system has an interface to learn and features to master. But leading services like Asana and Trello offer drag and drop functionality and should be easy to learn after a short time.

What Is Project Management?

The concept of project management has been around since the early 20th century with the introduction of Henry Gantt’s Gantt charts. Over the last decade however, project management technology has brought this concept to the forefront like never before. In fact, PWC found that 77% of high-performing teams use project management software. Coincidence? We don’t think so.

The project is then “managed” through the “application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities to meet the project requirements.” The project management life cycle is divided into 5 phases: initiating, planning, executing, monitoring/controlling, and closing. The main goal of this entire process is to complete projects efficiently, while producing quality results.

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The establishment of teams and communication between members, as well as the assignment of tasks with due dates, can be features of various project management systems. Data should be stored, reports created and process analyses provided on these platforms. In addition, project management systems can integrate with other software applications. For example, a cloud-based automated file server or office system can serve as a repository for documents, a tool for monitoring sales, or a tool for managing customer relationships.

Below is a summary of the best project management software on our list, along with screenshots, a feature comparison and pricing information.

Project managers, on the other hand, love project management software. Without it, we run the risk of drowning in a sea of spreadsheets, post-it notes, and paperwork. It can be the only thing that saves us from total doom.

So you’re aware of the benefits of software and you know you need help getting organized. However, the often-asked question “What is the best project management software?” is definitely the wrong question. Instead, consider the following question: ‘What is the best project management app for our project and our team?’ It depends on the project, your workflow, your team, the size of the project, your current project management tools, and of course, your budget.

In recent years, project management systems have evolved significantly, offering a variety of new features, from Gannt charts to file sharing solutions. We conducted an unbiased study of several popular project management tools and evaluated their ease of use, functionality, and interfaces with other applications. Scalability, reliability and security are other important features that matter in a project management platform. We carefully considered all of these elements when selecting the best project management software.

To help you with this, I’ve put together this post as a comparison of project management software that you’ve undoubtedly come across in your search. I’ve highlighted the strengths and benefits of each tool, provided links to detailed reviews, and included screenshots to illustrate the user interface. I hope this takes some of the tedious work out of filtering out the noise for you.

What Is Project Management Software?

A project management software application today is a kind of collaborative web application. Each person working on a project logs in to see what they need to do and when they need to do it. In addition, these individuals can track their progress on each scheduled activity and provide relevant data, such as comments on any adjustments. People with the right permission level can also see what others are doing, what conditions they need to meet to complete the task, and when they need to do it.

How We Choose the Best Project Management Apps

For this compilation of the best project management apps, we have researched more than thirty project management platforms and only included the solutions we consider to be the best in our list of the best project management apps. Independent tests and reviews determine whether a candidate is accepted or not. Our rating system takes into account the needs of different types of businesses, including small companies with tight budgets and large organizations that need to manage multiple projects, employees, and budgets simultaneously.

We only consider traditional project management applications in this category. Unlike other types of software, these applications are specifically designed to handle projects rather than continuous work. A project is a collection of tasks with a start date, an end date, and a deliverable in the middle.

A Gantt chart, a form of timeline often used in project management, must be present for the app to be included in this overview. All of the programs listed below offer other basic ways to monitor, organize, and plan project-related work in addition to the features listed above.

In addition, there are many other fantastic collaboration apps, some of which are referred to as “project management tools,” such as Trello, Basecamp, and Airtable. Certain collaboration and work management applications are quite suitable for certain types of tasks; however, they are not necessarily suitable for the complex management of dozens or hundreds of projects and their schedules at the same time.

Therefore, they are included in this list but with a caveat emptor indication for project managers who are here to decide which is the project management software considere best for their project..

What Can You Do With a Project Management App?

Project management software allows you to monitor and manage almost all types of projects, including the development of a new product, the construction of a home or website, or the launch of a marketing campaign. Teams that utilize project management applications are more likely to be working on many projects at the same time. Based on when tasks need to be completed, there can be manhours assigned to the. The program assists them in determining when work should be scheduled.

The best project management software anticipates issues and prevents them from occurring. Using project management apps to track the progress of work and individual tasks (for example, having completed seven hours of a task that is expected to take a total of nine hours), project management software can trigger alarms when deadlines are approaching and can be eventually missed, but well before the event actually takes place. When tasks deviate from the original plan, the best project management software may also reschedule the deliverables to correct the deadlines. They provide reports that provide managers with information into whether team members are being overworked or underworked in their respective roles. Some allow you to keep track of project budgets as well as billable hours, allowing you to issue bills to customers for the time spent on their projects.

Project management software lets you monitor and manage almost any type of project, such as developing a new product, building a house or website, or launching a marketing campaign. Teams that use project management applications are more likely to work on many projects at once. Depending on when tasks need to be completed and the human resources available to complete them, the program helps set the schedule for the work.

The Best Free Project Management Software

A couple of the most effective project management software packages are available in free trial editions. Oftentimes, a free version of a project management software comes with significant restrictions in some fashion. Examples include being permitted to handle no more than a project simultaneously and inviting no more than a small number of individuals to collaborate with you. In addition, the free version of an app frequently does not include all of the program’s most useful features. Nonetheless, when you are a sole proprietor, or an individual LLC partner, or manage one or two resources, or likewise, you are only responsible for one or two projects, this approach may be appropriate.

You may sign up for a free account with Zoho Projects, Monday, Teamwork, Wrike, TeamGantt, ProofHub, and a few additional services such as AceProject, by clicking here.

Redmine, herein included, is a project management program that is completely free, but the users must install it on-premise. It is an open-source alternative to conventional products.

The Best Project Management Software for Small Businesses

Using a low-cost tool like Zoho Projects (which starts at five dollars per person monthly for Premium) is the best option if your team needs to manage and track a couple of projects but is less worried about resource scheduling, issuing timesheets for billing clients, and analyzing simultaneously the advance of several ongoing projects. Zoho Projects is particularly appealing to us since it is readily scaleable, which is important if your team grows and requires more functionality. As a result, Zoho, the firm, provides a broad choice of other business applications that may be connected to Zoho Projects in order to increase the capabilities of the software.

We also prefer GanttPRO since it is a low-cost alternative. In addition, it is one of the most user-friendly project management systems available, making it ideal for those with little or no previous expertise in the field.

If you aren’t going to utilize the features that are exclusive to more costly software, there is no need to pay more than roughly $14 monthly for each individual user, so go with something cheap but effective.

The Best Project Management Software for Large Organizations

The requirements of large organizations and small firms are diametrically opposed. Project management applications are used by organizations with more than a thousand users and more than hundreds of projects ongoing simultaneously using all types of functionalities, including scheduling, resource analytics, budget monitoring, revenue prediction, and time tracking for invoicing purposes, among others.

The ability to manage not only people but also groups is critical in a major corporation. Because it does not matter which employee completes the 11 hours of work, you want to be able to know the quantity of work allotted to each employee of that group, so that you may determine if you can release one of them to complete the assignment.

For the same reason, every one of your company’s managers and team leaders should be able to identify which activities must be prioritized and which project is at risk of falling behind schedule so that they can prioritize their efforts appropriately.

If your firm manages complicated projects and has a large number of team members that collaborate on projects, Celoxis or LiquidPlanner are excellent choices.

If your company is already utilizing SAP as your ERP system, then you should probably stick with SAP Project System.

The Best Project Management App With Special Features

Those teams who aren’t exactly tiny firms, but aren’t huge enterprises either, may have certain requirements for their project management software that they would want to have met by the program.

Teamwork is our top selection in this area since it is specifically designed to manage client work. For teams who finish projects mainly as billable work for customers, Teamwork is the project management tool that we suggest in this case. It offers the ability to construct specific forms for new projects, as well as the ability to bill and invoice clients. Another software, Paymo, encompasses billing and invoicing functionality as well.

Of course, project management software may be used in a variety of different areas of specialty. Our recommendations for project management software include Wrike and Celoxis.  LiquidPlanner is better suited for big groups. ProofHub is an excellent solution when your resources utilize a significant amount of time debating and iterating on graphic assets. Smartsheet is a useful tool for incorporating automation into your project management process.