Wrike’s homepage has super clean and straightforward access to your inbox, recent and pinned items, your spaces, and the administrative menu bar. Your personalized dashboard lets you add widgets to see the most pertinent information for your workday—items like To-Do Today, My Overdue Tasks, Due: Next 7 Days, and/or Tasks Created by Me. Wrike touches all the most-needed MS Project features, like task and subtask management, Gantt charts, reporting templates, and customizable notifications and alerts.

Wrike handles DIY templates particularly well for project managers that want to standardize everything from processes, projects, and forms. Users are empowered to design their own “template” for almost anything, from client request forms to high-level task blueprints. This set-it-and-forget-it approach means that you can reduce administrative burdens and prevent data input inconsistencies with ease. Higher-level paid plans will start to unlock a ton of cool stuff, too, like time tracking for timesheets, custom work schedule calendars, and workflow automations.

Comparatively speaking, Wrike’s interface—though clean and uncluttered—is not as intuitive as others on this list, which makes the learning experience a bit slower. Navigating Wrike comes with a few quirks, like the fact that some menu items have an in-app right-click option and others don’t, or that a ton of useful features are buried in the account management menu via your profile settings. This challenge is more than manageable so long as you don’t mind memorizing a few UI quirks.

Wrike integrates with dozens of third-party apps, like Salesforce, Tableau, Microsoft Teams, MediaValet, Adobe Creative Cloud, Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, MS SharePoint, Github, JIRA, Outlook, Slack, Dropbox, and Box. Wrike also imports Microsoft Project files, if needed.

Monday.com is a Mac-friendly Microsoft Project alternative that offers unlimited boards (for projects, data, clients, et cetera) even if you are only using the freemium account offer. Monday.com provides many of the features spotlighted on MS Project, like task lists, Gantt charts and timelines, communication features like comments and tagging, the ability for different stakeholders to coauthor items in real-time, reporting and analysis functions, and time tracking.

One thing users will appreciate is monday.com’s flexibility, as everything is customizable, adjustable, and editable. Flexible Kanban boards and columns accommodate different data types: status, text, people, timeline, dates, tags, numbers, and more. The text column, for example, can be renamed to encapsulate whatever data is housed there, be it general notes, addresses or names, or keywords.

Monday.com excels with their Standard pricing plan (and above), specifically, which opens up Gantt charts, workflow automations, and multi-project dashboards. This isn’t necessarily a huge downside to such a versatile and intuitive tool but it’s definitely something to consider before diving in.

Monday.com integrates with hundreds of third-party apps, like Outlook, Microsoft Teams, Dropbox, Slack, Zoom, Google Calendar, Google Drive, Gmail, LinkedIn, OneDrive, Adobe Creative Cloud, and more with a paid account through Zapier.

monday.com costs from $6/user/month and comes with a free 14-day trial. They offer a free plan for up to 2 users.

Zoho Projects is an award-winning project management software and collaboration tool from Zoho. It offers flexibility and customization options to suit the needs of traditional project managers as well as agile teams. Zoho Projects supports multiple platforms including Mac. Some of the core features include a Gantt chart maker, kanban board, inbuilt chat, and a highly collaborative social feed.

Zoho Projects also packs features that help managers such as resource utilization charts, task automation features, customizable dashboards, baseline, critical path and budgeting features. It integrates with other first-party Zoho software for sales, CRM, HR, marketing, and IT (to name a few). This makes them great for scalability because you can add additional service packages as you grow.

Users can generate and share Gantt charts as PDFs. The tasks in Projects can be exported to XLS or CSV. Zoho Projects also supports importing Microsoft Project MPP files.

The interface and modules are highly customizable. All aspects of the UI from theme colors to arrangement and visibility of the various modules can be changed to suit a user’s preferences. Zoho projects also offer free onboarding for its customers and a comprehensive online help guide for all users.

Being part of the Zoho’s ecosystem allows Projects to connect to several of Zoho’s own services such as Zoho CRM, Zoho Desk and Zoho’s finance suite. The new Zoho marketplace allows for several 3rd party integrations as well including iCal sync, Google integrations and much more.

Pricing starts from $4/user/month billed annually. Also has a freemium version upto 3 users for 2 projects No credit card information required.

Process Street is a versatile software platform that provides checklist, workflow, and standard operating procedure (SOP) solutions for businesses. The platform allows users to create and manage workflows, projects, data sets, forms, and pages, as well as to utilize AI, automations, and analytics features. Overall, Process Street aims to bring documentation to life, improve governance, and achieve consistent results for its users.

Process Street serves as a viable workaround for Microsoft Project on Mac OS by offering a comprehensive platform for managing workflows, projects, and SOPs. It provides features such as workflow automation, data unification, and project organization, which are essential for project management.

Other features include the ability to snooze tasks to focus on more urgent ones, grouping related tasks, saved data views, dropdown menus that can be linked to data sets, forms with conditional logic and custom branding, and change tracking and user permissions for documents.

Additionally, Process Street integrates with various tools like Jira, JotForm, Google Forms, Typeform, Pipedrive, HubSpot, Office 365, Google Workspace, Asana, and Poptin.

Jira is a project management tool developed by Atlassian, aimed at facilitating issue tracking and agile project management for business and software teams. It is widely used by a variety of teams, from startups to large enterprises, to help plan, track, and manage complex projects. 

Jira is a viable alternative to Microsoft Project for Mac OS users, providing a diverse array of project management functionalities. Moreover, the tool's compatibility with Mac OS makes it a suitable workaround for those who cannot use Microsoft Project natively on their system. It is also equipped with a variety of reporting types, including sprint reports, time tracking reports, and burnup charts, which cater to different project management needs. 

Jira's capabilities additionally extend to managing project workflows, which is beneficial for teams looking for a tool that supports agile methodologies and issue tracking. This includes a range of features including pre-built templates, automations, customizable workflows, and Scrum and Kanban boards.

Jira integrates with Opsgenie, GitHub, Slack, Zendesk, Invision, Trello, Microsoft Teams, Confluence, Bitbucket, and Jenkins.

Jira costs from $10/user/month. A 7-day free trial is available.

ProjectManager combines Gantt chart functionality with many other project views—kanban boards, spreadsheets, task lists, and more—to support the needs of hybrid teams. While the project manager may prefer the Gantt view to create a detailed work breakdown structure, others team members can work in the same project through a simple task list.

Offering key project management features such as collaboration tools, reporting capabilities, and to-do lists, ProjectManager is simple enough for anyone to use, yet powerful enough for managers to make data-driven decisions and for businesses to manage projects of all levels of complexity. The tool integrates with Office 365, Jira, Slack, and Google Drive, with even more connections available through Zapier.

Gantt charts allow users to drag-and-drop to adjust deadlines, add and visualize dependencies, and set specific milestones. Users can import Gantt charts to and from other tools (including .mpp files from MS Project) to get projects up and running quickly. The tool also allows users to create reports in one click, view progress bars for quick project health checks, and create PDF versions and shareable links.

ProjectManager offers users a 30-day free trial with no credit card required. After the trial, plans cost from $14/user/month or $11.50/user/month when billed annually. The tool also has a freemium plan for up to 3 users.

Project Plan 365 is a project management tool made for Apple devices (macOS and iOS) that can open, edit and save in .mpp (Microsoft's native file format for MS Project plans). The tool is compatible with the latest version of the MPP file format, as well as several previous versions.

Project Plan 365 looks and feels like MS Project and supports all standard views including Gantt Chart, Task Sheet, Network Diagram, Project Calendar, Task Usage, Resource Usage, Team Planner, and more. Project Plan 365 supports 12 different languages and over 100 different currencies.

Another great feature is the virtual project management assistant Erix AI. Erix is an AI chatbot that simultaneously provides in-app assistance for troubleshooting, a wiki database of project management definitions and knowledge, and Q&A assistance on your current projects. For example, you could ask it what the total cost of a project is or when a current project is expected to finish.

Project Plan 365 offers a Free Viewer for Microsoft Project MPP files and is integrated with all major cloud providers such as Google Drive, iCloud, Dropbox, OneDrive, Box, and SharePoint Online.

Project Plan 365 costs from $9.99/month and offers a 30-day free trial.

GanttPRO is a web-based project management tool for Mac users who need the same features that MS Project offers. It features a Gantt chart-based approach with a minimalist interface that gives users a similar experience to actually working in MS Project but with a more modern interface.

GanttPRO lets you create projects with drag and drop features for adding new tasks, creating dependencies, assigning resources, tracking progress, managing dates, and, if needed, changing data in real time.

Beyond the Gantt charts, GanttPRO offers a board view and enables team communication and collaboration through comments, attachments, real-time notifications, and mentions. In terms of resource management, users can track the performance of team members, as well as a color-coded way to see whether someone is overloaded or available for more work.

GanttPRO offers support information such as a learning center, video tutorials, easy-to-follow onboarding, and a dedicated customer service manager. Access to these features is unlimited and is included in every plan, even the free trial.

GanttPRO integrates with JIRA Cloud but does not list any other native third-party connections.

Basic plans for 1 user start at $7.99/month if billed annually.

ClickUp can handle all of the project management basics that you would expect from MS Project and Microsoft Project Server, like task dependencies, an Agile board view, workload stats, drag-and-drop organization, bulk rescheduling, and dynamic tables. ClickUp is one of the more affordable MS project alternatives, with the freemium plan being quite generous (no user limit) and the paid plan starting at just $5 per user per month.

ClickUp is special in that its freemium plan doesn’t limit the number of users you can include on your account, which makes it the best free plan for project management software that works on Mac. Additionally, ClickUp stands out as a very media-friendly option for project management teams, allowing integration with video and streaming services, free-form mind map creation, built-in screen recording, and an interactive map to track work being done globally.

ClickUp’s feature list is expansive and, at times, a bit unfocused—trying to do too much, a jack-of-all-trades. Mastering everything ClickUp has to offer would be a huge time commitment and teams who don’t need all of the bells and whistles might find navigation and training quite tiresome. Is “too many features” really a con? I’ll leave that up to you to decide.

ClickUp integrates with thousands of third-party apps through a paid plan with Zapier and includes free native connections with plenty of tools, as well. Native integrations include Slack, Github, Gitlab, Toggl, Harvest, Google Drive, Dropbox, Outlook, Google Calendar, YouTube, Zoom, Zendesk, Microsoft Teams, Box, Clockify, and many more.

ClickUp costs from $5/user/month and offers a freemium account for up to 5 spaces and 100 custom fields. They also offer a 30-day refund policy if you upgrade to a paid plan and are unsatisfied. They also have an iPhone app.

Smartsheet is a spreadsheet-like project management tool that is also available for Apple users. It has won a few awards for quickly becoming a favorite business app. It’s a nice project management software for mac 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.

If you’re looking for an application that can open Projects, and don’t need to work within the software, then I’d recommend Smartsheets. Users can import MS Project files and work on them within the software. This is an excellent option for users who want to stay on Mac, need to send and receive MS Project files for their professional work, and don’t care whether or not they work within MS Project. You can export the file as an MS Project when you’re done working. Nobody will ever know you used Smartsheet. It can also be a great planner for Mac, too.

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.

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.

Smartsheets 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.