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
- CROOW - Best team project management tools with time tracking
- Forecast.app - Best for managing your projects, resources, and finances in one
- 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
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
- freemium version
- Free version permanently available but limited access to certain platform features
- From $19/month
CROOW - Best team project management tools with time tracking
Measure and manage project timelines, tasks and resources in a variety of visually engaging views including Kanban, list, calendar and Gantt.
CROOW is an innovative project management platform designed to unify business leaders, project managers, and creatives. CROOW is a versatile end-to-end platform that accommodates all of your project management needs and business growth ambitions. The platform is powered by advanced collaboration for teams and clients. Collaborate from concept to delivery in a functional environment made to organize, manage and communicate around all aspects of a project that creates a truly centralized platform for generating superior deliverables.
CROOW is an engaging, user-friendly platform that features powerful project and business management functionality, including: asset creation & management; automated processes & notifications; forecasting & reporting; Kanban & Gannt views; team & workload scheduling; and team management.
Create an unlimited free account to try out the basic features of the tool. Simplified onboarding and quick setup results in an easy and free platform built for managing projects, teams and clients.
CROOW is free to use. Paid plans with additional features cost from $19/month.
Pros
- Free plan allows for unlimited team creation
- CROOW Teams enable roles, departments, and permissions
- Robust reporting dashboards for real-time BI
- Flexible sharing options that allow you to bring your clients directly into the process
- Minimal set up time to get registered, build and invite your team
Cons
- Access to full business performance reporting requires paid plan
- Limited online support (human) but offers a number of educational resources
- Depending on workspace or project size some page load speeds can be longer than industry or best practice standards
Forecast.app - Best for managing your projects, resources, and finances in one
Forecast’s auto schedule feature turns a rough list of tasks into a comprehensive project plan
Forecast is a team project management software that unites your projects, resources, and financials in one AI-powered platform. Project managers can leverage Forecast’s workflow automation capabilities to create smart schedules, estimate timeframes and budgets, and populate timesheets instantly. Forecast is currently used in over 40 countries by an assortment of agencies, consulting companies, SMBs, and enterprises.
PMs can control the workflow by building out detailed task lists and flagging clear priorities. Task cards allow every team member to easily comment, share files, and register time spent. Everything related to the specific task appears in one place, including dependencies and subtasks. You can put together projects for any type of work: fixed price, time and material, or retainer.
Forecast’s AI learns from previous work and suggests the number of hours you normally register on similar tasks to help you log time faster. You can monitor time registrations from a team perspective and notify each member if they forget to enter something in. Time tracking utilization on a company-wide level is calculated for you for easy alerts, estimates, and reporting.
Forecast integrates with Slack, Microsoft Teams, iCloud Calendar, Google Drive, Google Calendar, Outlook, Harvest, Trello, Asana, GitLab, Github, and dozens more using a paid plan through Zapier. Higher-tier subscriptions include native integrations with Timelog, Xero, QuickBooks Online, JIRA, Azure DevOps, Salesforce, Okta, OneLogin, and Azure Active Directory.
Forecast costs from $29/user/month with a minimum of 10 users and offers a 14-day free trial.
Pros
- Projects, resources and financials connected in one platform
- AI powered auto-scheduling and time entry suggestions
- Excellent iOS and Android apps
- Automated cost and budget estimations
Cons
- No browser extension for time tracking
- No asset management
- Minimum of 10 seats
Wrike - Best tool for marketing teams
Easy-to-Use Project Timeline.
Wrike is a powerful and customizable team project management tool that is best for teams with between five and an unlimited number of members. Wrike includes tools to configure custom workflows, dashboards, reports, and request forms, as well as collaboration tools such as real-time updates, mentions, and live editing capabilities.
Wrike enables users to switch between Kanban boards, interactive drag-and-drop Gantt charts, and traditional workload views so each team member can choose the way of working that suits them best. Wrike also features powerful automation with custom request forms that auto-assign tasks, push notifications, and deadline tracking.
Wrike has an easy-to-use interface with navigation between distinct spaces, folders, and tasks. The tool also has a dedicated help center with interactive training, videos, a ‘Getting Started’ guide, and a thriving community. Users also have access to a variety of templates for common organizational processes.
Wrike includes over 400 pre-built native integrations, including integrations with the most popular file management software from Microsoft, Slack, Google Drive, and Dropbox.
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.
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
Summary Of The Best Team Project Management Tools
| Software | Overview | Free Option | Price | Site |
|---|---|---|---|---|
monday.com  | Read monday.com features & functionality | Offers a free version with 1 board per dashboard | From $14/user/month | Check out monday.com |
| CROOW | Read CROOW features & functionality | Freemium version Free version permanently available but limited access to certain platform features | From $19/month | Check out CROOW |
Forecast.app  | Read Forecast.app features & functionality | 14 days free trial | From $29/user/month | Check out Forecast.app |
Wrike  | Read Wrike features & functionality | Freemium version Offers a free version for up to 5 users | From $9.80/user/month | Check out Wrike |
Teamwork  | Read Teamwork features & functionality | Offers a free version for up to 5 users | From $10/user/month | Check out Teamwork |
ProjectManager  | Read ProjectManager features & functionality | 30 day free trial | From $15/user/month | Check out ProjectManager |
Mavenlink  | Read Mavenlink features & functionality | 10 days free trial and free demo | From $19/user/month | Check out Mavenlink |
Smartsheet  | Read Smartsheet features & functionality | 30 day free trial | From $18/month | Check out Smartsheet |
Clickup  | Read Clickup features & functionality | Offers a free version with limited features | From $5/user/month | Check out Clickup |
Meistertask  | Read Meistertask features & functionality | Offers a free version for up to 3 projects | From $8.25/user/month | Check out Meistertask |
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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