Team project management is all about collaboration and communication. However, this can be challenging to achieve in an increasingly remote or mixed work environment. Team project management software can ease pain points by providing a unified work environment.
In this article, I’ll compare some of the best team project management tools and create a trustworthy list of apps designed to foster teamwork, meet due dates, and knock out tough tasks.
I’ll also dive into what makes each PM tool special so that you can match them up to your unique needs and find something that compliments your team’s workflow.
Best Team Project Management Tools List
Here’s a shortlist of the best team project management tools:
- monday.com - Best for Gantt charts
- Wrike - Best tool for marketing teams
- Teamwork - Best free team management tool plan
- ProjectManager - Best team project management tool for time tracking
- Mavenlink - Best team tool for managing professional services
- Smartsheet - Best for portfolio management
- Clickup - Best enterprise team project management tool
- Meistertask - Best for Kanban boards
- Paymo - Best for remote teams
- Hive - Best for agencies
Below you’ll find an overview of each of the 10 best team project management tools, with screenshots, feature overviews, and pricing.
Team Project Management Tools Comparison Criteria
Here’s a summary of my evaluation criteria:
- User Interface (UI): Team project management requires a UX that updates in real-time, is customizable based on user needs, and streamlines communication processes. Team members should be able to spot and utilize collaboration features easily, even for complex projects. Features like drag-and-drop interface, custom fields, and interactive board view are a plus.
- Usability: Project teams need to be up and running fast, so the PM tool should be incredibly user-friendly with a help desk team that is ready to assist at all times. Does the tool also have tutorials, webinars, whitepapers, a community forum, and other self-help features?
- Integrations: Teamwork rarely relies on a sole tool so the PM software in question should integrate easily with other popular programs, like Slack, Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Project, Jira, Asana, and more.
- Value for $: How appropriate is the price for the features, capabilities, and use case? Are there multiple pricing tiers for easy scalability as your team grows? Does the price come with a version for all platforms: iOS, Mac, Android, PC, and all common internet browsers?
Team Project Management Tools Key Features
- Workflow automation – automate common and repeating tasks and processes
- Task lists with dependencies – easily gauge what order tasks need to happen to prevent bottle-necking
- Project planning templates – variety of project templates made available to quick-start new projects
- Workspace customization – your team’s work is supported by the flexibility to make each dashboard and flow most useful to your needs
- Unlimited projects – supporting all of your projects without needing to cull them because of plan limitations
- Time management – track time and access team timesheets right in the app
- Agile functionality – supports agile work for fast iteration and improvement
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Overviews Of The 10 Best Team Project Management Tools
Here’s a brief description of each of the tools on my list showing what it does best, plus screenshots to showcase some of the features.
monday.com - Best for Gantt charts
Simple, aesthetic, and easy to use Gantt charts with point-and-click flexibility.
monday.com is a super user-friendly team project management tool with features for marketing campaigns, CRM and sales, HR and recruitment, workflow automation, calendars and timelines, (including Gantt charts), and a ton of third-party integrations. Their Gantt charts (all their timelines and charts, actually) are so easy to use that non-tech member of your team can figure it out—drag and drop organization, minimal menuing for basic functions, and colorful UI.
monday.com costs from $14/user/month and offers a free version with 1 board per dashboard.
Pros
- Very easy to invite others, share timelines, and assign tasks
- Simple organization by dragging and dropping tasks
- Excellent collaborative features
Cons
- No bottleneck identification or assistance
- Automations are not fully customizable
- Best features locked to Standard or Pro versions
Wrike - Best tool for marketing teams
Marketing teams can leverage the quick commenting and approval capabilities.
Wrike is a powerful, modern teamwork project management platform with features like social campaign reporting, custom dashboards and workflows, and easy integration with the apps you already use in your day-to-day like Google, Microsoft, and Adobe Creative Cloud. Wrike offers real-time performance data that marketers will love, it accesses social data from over 50 channels and delivers accessible, readable visuals for each metric.
Wrike costs from $9.80/user/month and offers a free version for up to 5 users.
Pros
- Ease of use and setup
- Holistic, comprehensive task modeling
- Variety of project views meet different user needs
Cons
- Best features limited to Business plan
- The commenting system needs to be more prominent
Teamwork - Best free team management tool plan
Teams on a budget will appreciate the functionality of the free Teamwork plan.
Teamwork is a team project management tool used by the likes of Disney, Netflix, PayPal, and Spotify. Teams can create tasks and projects, upload files, and add comments to collaborate easily and remotely. Managers will benefit from their workload capacity features to help organize and schedule the team’s day, week, and month in advance. Their free plan is quite generous and offers space for 5 users and 2 projects; plus, it comes with 100MB storage.
Teamwork costs from $10/user/month and offers a free version for up to 5 users.
Pros
- Excellent time tracking features
- Easy and comprehensive report building
- Easily track comments and feedback from clients
Cons
- Billing and invoicing limited to paid plans
- Doesn’t sync with QuickBooks
- Can be difficult to move/adjust milestones
ProjectManager - Best team project management tool for time tracking
Track time for your team to customize and optimize each member’s workload.
ProjectManager is a management and teamwork tool with an approach to workflow that blends both Agile and Waterfall frameworks for high flexibility. Users can choose what style of working they like best, be it Gantt charts, task lists, Kanban boards, or a hybrid system. They have a particularly robust time tracking system that updates in real time and offers a multitude of tags, groups, and labels by which to sort each entry with hyper specific detail.
ProjectManager costs from $15/user/month and offers a 30-day free trial.
Pros
- Good for costing and construction work monitoring
- Easy to use project scheduling
- Fits well into an Agile framework
Cons
- No way to track and update partially complete tasks
- No way to sort Agile Boards by project, only by task
- Most reports require a manual clean-up
Mavenlink - Best team tool for managing professional services
Professional service teams can see up-to-the-minute progress against timeline and budget.
Mavenlink is award-winning software for professional services organizations, though their broad workflow and collaboration feature sets are appropriate for any industry setting. With Mavenlink, users can manage workload and assignments, provide ROG charts for project status, bring teams together with built-in messaging, and empower advanced accounting and BI. Professional service teams will improve their client satisfaction tools in particular.
Mavenlink costs from $19/user/month and offers a 10-day free trial as well as a free demo.
Pros
- Good for resource planning and project accounting
- Ability to search all client communication within a single space
- Easy to track time, develop timelines, and break projects down into tasks
Cons
- Can’t automatically repeat budgets or resource allocations
- Some data syncing lag
- Task and Gantt data columns aren’t fully customizable
Smartsheet - Best for portfolio management
10,000FT panel for Smartsheet is a PPM specific tool for accurate project planning.
Smartsheet is a robust work OS that stands out thanks to its extensive project template gallery and their dedicated portfolio management solution, called 10,000FT. They have project plans and scheduling, task tracking, program rollups, resource management, and budget tracking. 10,000FT by Smartsheet does a deep dive into resource management and portfolio planning, including allocation, dynamic reporting, and forecasting.
Smartsheet costs from $18/month and offers a 30-day free trial.
Pros
- Customizable sheets and dashboards for different departments
- Reminders and update requests are great collaborative tools
- Quick Gantt charts with easy entry of tasks
Cons
- Power users may hit row and cell link limitations
- Changes do not autosave instantly when editing
- Might be over-engineered for simple projects
Clickup - Best enterprise team project management tool
Enterprises will benefit from micromanaging task lists with folders, subtasks, and ROG alerts.
Clickup is a PM team management tool with modules for tasks, documents, and goals on either browser or mobile apps. Clickup is great for enterprise for two reasons. One, their enterprise-oriented feature set, including streamlined workflows, goal and OKR setting, and workload visibility. Two, they have two plans, free and unlimited, the second of which has an excellent pricing scheme that won’t gouge you just because you need enterprise-level support.
ClickUp costs from $5/user/month and offers a free version with limited features.
Pros
- Easy to switch between unrelated project plans
- Huge number of customization options
- Impressive organization: create folders, sub-groups, and sub-tasks
Cons
- Steep learning curve due to the number of features
- Tricky to email with attachments, files sometimes unopenable
- More third-party integrations would be welcome
Meistertask - Best for Kanban boards
Intuitive, flexible Kanban boards make task management between team members easier.
Meistertask is a user-friendly, feature rich team PM tool that was named an Editor’s Choice in the Apple App store and maintains a high 4.7/5 score on Google Play. They have task relationship charting, action automation, checklists and recurring tasks, time tracking, and custom fields for data entry. Their Kanban board is straightforward to set up and very easy to maintain with easy drag-and-drop cards and simple point-and-click commands.
MeisterTask costs from $8.25/user/month and offers a free version for up to 3 projects.
Pros
- Intuitive and user-friendly UI
- Very easy to manage several projects at the same time
- Access to unlimited project boards
Cons
- Timeline and custom fields are restricted to Business accounts
- File attachments limited to 200 MB per file
- After loading a file into a task it cannot be downloaded immediately
Paymo - Best for remote teams
Remote teams can leverage robust planning and scheduling features.
Paymo is a team project management software with features for planning and scheduling, communication and messaging, resource allocation, timesheets and time tracking, and feedback reports. Remote teams will particularly benefit from their global Meta Kanban Board for joint task planning as well as transparent performance reporting using customizable and comprehensive metrics. Paymo also has a reliable app for iOS and Android smart devices.
Paymo costs from $9.95/user/month and offers a 15-day free trial.
Pros
- Time tracking easily runs in the background with little interference
- Organizes jobs intuitively and can easily archive jobs
- Easy to share content with external stakeholders
Cons
- Large learning curve compared to others
- Project table layout categories challenging to edit
- Budgets from projects to tasks can be difficult to calculate
Hive - Best for agencies
Agency teams will appreciate a variety of project planning methods to best suit each client.
Hive is a collaborative team project management tool with modules for project management, operations, education, and startups. They offer a flexible approach to task management using Kanban boards, Gantt charts, or tables. Hive also boasts an in-app proofing and approvals system. Agencies can lean on their tailored approach to client retention using campaign planning software, robust satisfaction and performance metrics, and proposal planning.
Hive costs from $12/user/month and offers a 14-day free trial.
Pros
- Infinite sub-tasks available
- Task owners can turn sub-tasks into separate projects
- Add external users without paying for a seat
Cons
- Mobile app notifications are unreliable
- Comments could be made more prominent
- Have to delete all sub-actions manually after deleting a phase
Summary Of The Best Team Project Management Tools
Other Team Project Management Tools
Here’s a few more that didn’t make the top list, and a bit about what they do:
- Basecamp – Best remote resource management
- Scoro – Best invoicing system
- Zoho Projects – Best for CRM
- Asana – Best visual messaging
- Trello – Best task management cards
- Airtable – Best for software development teams
- Keyedin – Best for a high number of projects
- Workzone – Best for marketing work management
- Proworkflow – Best client/stakeholder/guest portal
- EasyProjects – Best to track time remotely
- Sciforma – Best project tasks scoring system
Looking for Another Tool?
You’ve read through this list and maybe you’ve found a good team collaboration software for your projects (hooray!). If you’re still hunting, I’ve covered some similar types of use cases and tools in these other articles:
Which Team Project Management Tools Do You Use?
Have you tried any of these team project management systems? What project management app do you use for team collaboration? Is there a collaboration-focused project management solution that you would add to this list if you could? What do you think is the best project management software for small teams? Let us know in the comments!
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