10 Best Project Planning Tools & Software List [2021]

monday.com - Best for Google users (G Suite and so on)

Use monday.com for any Scrum project planning.

Runn - Resource and project planning tool with integrated time-tracking, variance reporting, and financial forecasting

Runn's charts update in real-time as you schedule project assignments.

Wrike - Best collaborative project planning tool

View and adjust team member workload with drag-and-drop capability.

Wrike is a project planning tool that is suitable for teams of five or more. Wrike includes tools for predicting and preventing delays, visualizing deadlines, and monitoring project progress in real-time. The tool is also highly configurable, and allows users to customize workflows, dashboards, reports, and request forms.

Users can switch between Kanban boards, interactive drag-and-drop Gantt charts, and traditional workload views to understand priorities. Project planning tools include task lists, subtasks, schedules, file sharing, and real-time communication and collaboration.

Wrike also offers a robust mobile application that allows users to update team members or upload files and photos. You can easily switch between calendars, dashboards, and task lists and keep an eye on notifications and messages. Wrike has a dedicated help center with interactive training, videos, a ‘Getting Started’ guide, and a thriving community.

Wrike offers a host of pre-built templates that make project planning more efficient, including a phased project template, which can help break a complex project into manageable chunks, as well as a simple project scheduling template. Real-time reporting helps project managers allocate resources and adjust workloads.

Wrike integrates with over 400 apps, including the most popular file management software from Microsoft, Google, and Dropbox.

Wrike starts at $9.80/user/month and has a free version for up to five users. There is also a 14-day free trial for paid plans.

CROOW - Best for workflow customization, automation, and visibility into overall business performance

Create custom workflows, assign due dates, and view projects in Gantt charts.

CROOW is a project management platform with a simple and flexible structure for project collaboration. The tool supports waterfall and agile methodologies, offers multiple views such as Gantt and Kanban, and automates workflows through customizable templates.

The tool includes project planning features for managing to-dos, timelines, and deliverables. Users can also create tasks, assign due dates, and communicate with team members through comments and message boards. Another great feature is the option to create custom workflows that correspond with specific project plans.

CROOW offers additional project and business management features such as automated processes and notifications, forecasting and reporting on dashboards, and Kanban and Gantt views. Users can also manage workloads with resource scheduling capabilities, as well as manage digital assets within the platform.

CROOW offers a freemium plan, as well as paid plans starting at $20 per month.

GanttPRO - Best for building project plans and timelines with online Gantt charts

Online project planning solution based on Gantt charts that facilitates teamwork, automates workflows, and makes planning processes simple.

GanttPRO is a project planning tool with powerful features for managing and completing various projects. Project teams can plan projects, schedule tasks, and manage resources in a centralized workspace, collaborating with colleagues, customers, and stakeholders.

GnttPRO users can break down their work into tasks using handy Gantt charts, assign tasks to their teammates, organize them into projects for timelines, set task dependencies and milestones, check the team’s progress, get notifications, and more.

This planning tool allows creating of several workspaces and projects. As soon as you’re done creating them, the drag & drop option will make it easy to start adding tasks and setting start/due dates.

GanttPRO is an inexpensive project planning solution with a friendly design, so you can get started without extra overhead. For an easy start, you may use ready-made Gantt chart templates. Additionally, you may export your diagrams and import charts from software like Microsoft Project and Excel.

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 project planning tool that unites your task lists, 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.

Primetric - Best for IT service companies & digital agencies

A Primetric project portfolio progress report gives a snapshot of clients/accounts, budget, timeframe, status, and sprints.

Primetric is a project management software for small and medium-sized IT service companies and/or digital agencies. It replaces massive spreadsheets and smatterings of disconnected tools with a multifaceted solution that encompasses resource management, project management, finance management, business intelligence, and even timesheets & time tracking.

Primetric considers the tentative project pipeline and soft allocations to forecast your profitability and people workload. The planning module is connected with time tracking and budgeting modules, so you can compare your plans to reality and then optimize them. What’s more, to give you real information about your resources’ availability, it takes into account public holidays for different countries, time offs, and contract terms.

Primetric’s intelligent resource assistant helps you find the most suitable resources for planned or ongoing projects based on hard or soft skills, cost rate, experience, and availability. If you don’t have the needed resources, you can report the vacancy and see what people you will need to hire in the upcoming months. You can take stock of your current staff using the CV generator and skills matrix, which will show you where knowledge gaps exist.

The platform comes with extensive roles and permissions capabilities, allowing every company within your network to create different organizational structures with different data access (financial, HR, sales, and so on). You can manage multiple corporate locations with one Primetric account and create custom dashboards and reports for different departments or teams.

Primetric integrates with BambooHR, Redmine, ClickUp, Tempo Timesheets, Calamari, JIRA, Teamwork, Hubstaff, Harvest, and Clockify. You can also leverage their open API to connect more tools.

Primetric costs from $171/month + $17.10/user. Add an additional $6.30/virtual seat for each employee being managed through the platform without administrative access to the software itself.

Kissflow Project - Best collaborative project planning tool

Kissflow Project allows users to plan the team’s work, see who’s working on what, and deliver great results with minimal tracking.

Kissflow Project is a collaborative project planning tool designed to focus on collaboration, transparency, coordination, and productivity. Tracking features are streamlined to provide a clearer view of items and tasks that actually matter.

Kissflow Project’s customizable platform gives you total control and adapts to your team’s needs. It offers multiple views for projects, including Kanban boards, list views, and swimlanes. The Project States function helps users reduce the amount of tracking they need to do by allowing team members to mark tasks with one of three statuses — on hold, in progress, and done.

The tool allows users to share project plans, documents, and other files, as well as discuss projects directly within the software. Team members also get reminders when due dates are approaching. Another great feature is the ability to set priorities and assign team members to them.

Kissflow integrations include native Microsoft and G suite integrations, and the platform offers a REST API and webhooks.

Pricing for Kissflow Project starts at $35 per month.

Nutcache - Best time tracker + planner

Customizable timelines for planning what needs to be done and when.

ProWorkflow - Best for mobile users

A work breakdown structure plotted across an intuitive calendar.