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10 Best Capacity Planning Software For Project Managers In 2023
  1. 1. Wrike — Keep track of your project’s progress in real-time
  2. 2. Parallax — Best for professional service providers and agencies
  3. 3. monday.com — Build a capacity planning tool tailored to your business
  4. 4. ClickUp — Plan for the future with adaptable templates
  5. 5. Productive — Best for managing resources at creative agencies
  6. 6. Resource Guru — Get your workloads balanced and resources aligned in a clean and simple interface
  7. 7. Runn — Best for real-time capacity planning, tracking, and forecasting
  8. 8. Saviom — Best for real-time, enterprise capacity reports
  9. 9. Hub Planner — Best for drag-and-drop capacity planning with linked budgeting tools
  10. 10. Kantata — Spot and avoid roadblocks to increase productivity

Growing a business is hard work. And growing a business with limited resources can feel overwhelming. 

Capacity planning enables you to organize your workload and get accurate insights on your resource capacity, so it helps you deliver your work on time and within budget. This can help you meet your current work demands and plan for future projects, accelerating your growth. 

Capacity planning software helps project managers create demand forecasts, set prices and deadlines, oversee resource allocation, and increase their team’s efficiency. 

Read my review to find out which are the 10 best capacity planning software project managers can use in 2023. The review includes a short description of each tool that made my list, screenshots, and a helpful comparison chart so you can determine which solution would be an asset to your company. 

Comparison Criteria

What do I look for when I select the best capacity planning tools? Here’s a summary of my evaluation criteria: 

  1. User Interface (UI): I look for tools that offer a simple interface. Your project managers are busy enough as it is, they shouldn’t waste time looking for the right feature or functionality. 
  2. Usability: I look for software that is easy to understand and use. The project manager should be able to learn how to get the most out of the tool after a short training period. 
  3. Integrations: I look for solutions that integrate with the other software your team uses on a daily basis. The more integrations, the better. 
  4. Value for $: I look for tools that can help you achieve multiple goals, so you get a good return on your investment. 

Capacity Planning Platforms: Key Features

  1. Project management - Capacity planning is not possible without strong project management features because you need to stay on top of what your team is doing. 
  2. Task management - You should be able to assign tasks and check on their status to see how they are going. 
  3. Time-tracking - Knowing how long it takes to complete any given task with your current resources helps you with pricing your services and enables you to estimate your supply chain’s capacity. 
  4. Resource allocation - You should be able to identify the weak points in your execution process and allocate resources to improve the delivery times. 
  5. Business intelligence - The solution should organize your company’s data in neat reports so you can interpret the metrics and project your resource utilization and profitability with accuracy.
capacity planning software logos list

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Overviews Of The 10 Best Capacity Planning Software Solutions

Here’s a brief description of each capacity planning app to showcase each tool’s best use case, some noteworthy features, and screenshots to give a snapshot of the user interface.

1

Wrike

Keep track of your project’s progress in real-time

Wrike is a work management platform that lets you plug into 400+ integrations and customize your workflows, dashboards, and request forms.

This tool offers all-in-one capacity planning software where users can monitor projects, fill required gaps in workloads, capitalize on resources, and lean on a variety of templates to accelerate common projects and tasks.

Wrike has a user-friendly interface with advanced customization capabilities. For example. you can organize, see, and manage project timelines using Kanban boards, drag-and-drop Gantt charts, and detailed dashboards. Additionally, you have access to advanced insights with a suite of analytics, resource management, and performance-reporting features.

Wrike offers native pre-built integrations with more than 400 popular platforms, including Microsoft, Google, and Dropbox, along with sales and marketing software from Salesforce and Marketo.

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.

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
4.2 2544

Free plan available

From $9.80/user/month

2

Parallax

Best for professional service providers and agencies

Parallax is a service operations software with resource management, sales and pricing, project financials, and business intelligence functions. The software helps project managers better understand their current and future resource needs, track business financials, and monitor business performance and efficiency. All of this supports informed capacity planning and management.

This software solution is particularly suited to professional service providers, agencies, and studios. It tracks the availability of resources across different teams over time and provides an overview of upcoming tasks and projects, helping project managers plan ahead rather than react to immediate needs. Users can assign tasks with confidence as they can see which team members have the most available time at any given moment. For organizations juggling multiple projects, deadlines, stakeholders, and clients, this software can be a great solution for keeping everything on track.

The financial features of the product help users manage budgets across projects and resources. Features like service offer templates and project financial tracking and forecasting support more consistency in costs, profit, and budgets. Users can also track performance and finances using the business intelligence features.

The platform has native integrations for Asana, Harvest, Hubspot, Jira, Microsoft Teams, Oracle NetSuite, Salesforce, and Tempo. Book a free demo through the site and receive a quote for your use case.

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
4.5 2

Free demo

Pricing upon request

3

monday.com

Build a capacity planning tool tailored to your business

monday is an open platform that enables team leaders to create their own capacity planning solution. The tool’s visual interface allows you to pick and choose the modules and integrations you need to use to create the perfect management software for your business.

With monday, you can project roadmaps, assign available resources, assess your team’s capacity, and automate workflows. The great thing about this solution is that it’s adaptable, so you can tailor it to your organization’s needs.

The tool’s time projection ability enables you to estimate how long it would take to complete a project with the resources at your disposal. You can also see how long it takes to deliver different projects, which can help with pricing your work.

Thanks to its project management and forecasting functionalities, monday enables you to determine your team’s current and future capacity with a high degree of accuracy.

monday integrates with dozens of apps, including Outlook, Microsoft Teams, Slack, Zoom, Google Calendar, Google Drive, Zapier, Jira, and more.

monday costs from $6/user/month. The platform offers a free-forever version for up to two users. You can also try out the pro version for free for 14 days.

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
4.7 8065

14-day free trial + freemium plan available

From $8/user/month (billed annually, min 3 seats)

4

ClickUp

Plan for the future with adaptable templates

Clickup is a configurable project management system that helps managers determine if they have sufficient capacity to deliver projects on time and take on new work. The software offers a lot of features, but you can adapt it to work as a capacity planning tool with ease.

Clickup’s resource management features enable you to project timelines and budgets, allocate the right resource to any task, and avoid human resource shortages. The tool’s dashboards enable you to identify skill gaps and poor resource scheduling practices, helping you improve your capacity planning process.

One of the things that make Clickup stand out from its competitors is its rich template library. There are dozens of templates to choose from, and you can use them to automate task management operations, calculate billable hours for invoicing, or create workflows.

Clickup integrates with over 1000 apps, including Slack, Gmail, Google Sheets, Microsoft Excel, Outlook, Zoom, GitHub, Toggl, Airtable, Salesforce, and more.

Clickup costs from $5/user/month. The platform offers a free forever plan for personal use. You can try out the paid solution for free for 30 days.

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
4.7 4135

Freemium plan available

From $9/user/month

5

Productive

Best for managing resources at creative agencies

Productive is a complete workforce management software designed primarily for agencies and other service-based industries. The software's resource planning module helps make the most of every team member's time and keep workload capacities in check. Users can access visual representations of team members’ workload and availability, and use this information to assign tasks and distribute work. Employees can also be grouped by skill sets and departments to enable better resource allocation.

The software's time tracking tool is directly connected to its capacity planning functionality, because employees can log the time they're spending on various tasks and projects. This information feeds into the resource planning tools, supporting smarter scheduling through forecasting and predictive insights. Project managers can use previous project data to forecast future work requirements accurately, including estimated time ranges to complete a tasks and what-if scenarios.

Budgeting and financial planning are also included in the feature set. This can be tied to the capacity and workload planning tools, ensuring teams don't go over budget on projects. Other functionalities included in the software are project management, document management, billing, and reporting tools.

Teams can connect the software with their other SaaS tools like Dropbox, Google Workplace, Jira, Outlook, Microsoft Calendar, Slack, QuickBooks, and Xero. A Zapier integration is also available for configuring additional integrations.

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
4.7 28

14-day free trial

From $20/user/month

6

Resource Guru

Get your workloads balanced and resources aligned in a clean and simple interface

Resource Guru is a resource management software that helps you schedule teams, people, and projects. Its drag-and-drop interface lets you assign work in seconds, and its entire UI follows the mantra of being clean and simple.

The software has two things I like a lot. The first is clash management which ensures that you avoid double bookings and overtime while taking into account individual working hours, workloads, and vacation time. The second is the waiting list. This feature keeps tabs on your resources and prevents over-allocation, so every resource has a manageable workload.

Finally, powerful reports give oversight of team utilization rates and capacity, so you know exactly where your time is invested and how much other work you can take on. These reports can then be automatically generated and sent via email to everyone on the team so they stay on track and informed.

Resource Guru integrates with Outlook and Google Calendar directly and with thousands of other platforms via Zapier.

Their martial arts inspired plans start at $2.50/user/month and offer a 30-day free trial.

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
4.7 173

30-day free trial available

From $3/user/month

7

Runn

Best for real-time capacity planning, tracking, and forecasting

Runn is a resource and capacity management platform that helps project managers optimize their team’s workload according to their business needs.

With Runn, you can plan and forecast capacity so you can schedule your projects accordingly. The tool’s calendar enables you to access your resources in real-time and see the involvement of every team member. The software also helps you differentiate between billable and non-billable work, making it easier to price your services and raise invoices.

Runn’s highlight is its capacity forecasting feature. This feature helps you determine whether your team has the skills and resources to take on certain projects, and how new work would impact your team’s workload.

Runn integrates with multiple tools, including WorkflowMax, Harvest, Clockify, and more.

Runn costs from $10/user/month. You can access a free trial for 14 days. The solution also offers a free-forever plan for up to five users.

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
3.7 41

14-day free trial and free plan available

Plans start at $10/person managed/month

8

Saviom

Best for real-time, enterprise capacity reports

Saviom capacity planning solution helps replace silos of information by recording and consolidating every resource demand on a centralized platform. It enables businesses to analyze resource excesses or shortages and bridge the gap by implementing corrective measures ahead of the curve.

Saviom’s features include resource demand management, forecast capacity vs. demand, foresee utilization, pipeline management, bench management, and forecast project financials.

When you are using the software, you can foresee the utilization of every resource and enhance productivity by mobilizing them from non-billable to billable or strategic work. It also gives you insights on project vacancies and people on the bench to help minimize hiring-firing cycles.

Wanna talk numbers? Saviom helps you track critical project financial indicators such as costs, revenue, profit margins, forecast vs. actuals, and other KPIs in real-time.

Saviom’s integrates with other applications for data imports and exports such as Salesforce, MS Excel, SAP, and more.

Saviom offers pricing details upon request and also offers a 60-day free trial.

60-day free trial

Pricing upon request

9

Hub Planner

Best for drag-and-drop capacity planning with linked budgeting tools

Hub Planner is a modern, cloud-based resource management and scheduling platform that serves team-based businesses of any size or industry. It offers a wide variety of products besides resource management, including vacation and leave management, timesheets and approval, reporting and analytics, and skills matching. The platform’s main function is to aid project managers when it comes to the management, capacity planning, and monitoring of projects and resources within a central location.

Hub Planner provides a modern resource scheduling and management module that enables project managers to effectively conduct resource capacity planning and scheduling using a simple drag-and-drop mechanism. This makes the process of scheduling teams and allocating resources easier and more efficient Their project and resource planning feature allows managers to set their budgets so they don’t overspend or overextend valuable resources. They can plan their budget in hours and budget in cash. A currency feature is also available, allowing teams to set the proper currency for international projects.

Hub Planner includes a natively optimized mobile application and doesn’t require users to download any additional apps. They log in through any browser or device to access multiple dashboard views that contain all the information they might need, including project and task progress, schedules, as well as resource availability and utilization data.

Hub Planner costs from $7/resource/month and offers a 30-day free trial with unlimited projects and resources; all modules are available for users to pick and install. Businesses can customize their Hub Planner deployment and pay only for the products that they’ve implemented from the main platform. Premium Hub Planner extensions are also available, ranging from smart groups, custom fields, and approval workflows to task checklist creation and task management.

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
4.2 16

30-day free trial

From $7/user/month (billed annually)

10

Kantata

Spot and avoid roadblocks to increase productivity

Kantata (formerly Mavenlink + Kimble) is a resource management tool that enables managers to automate workflows, optimize their resource allocation, and improve their team’s operational performance.

The tool is great at organizing your data. The software’s dashboards allow you to compare your plan against your team’s timesheets and progress, giving you an accurate view of your performance and profitability.

The best thing about using this software is that it offers a real-time view of what every member of your team is doing. You can see when someone is struggling with a task, so you can prioritize the task and allocate more resources to speed up its completion.

Kantata (formerly Mavenlink + Kimble) integrates with multiple apps, including Microsoft 365, Oracle, Google Docs, Slack, JIRA, QuickBooks, and more.

Kantata (formerly Mavenlink + Kimble) offers customized pricing upon request. You can access a free 10-day trial and request a demo.

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
4.1 715

Free demo available

Pricing upon request

Need expert help selecting the right Project Management Software?

We’ve joined up with Crozdesk.com to give all our readers (yes, you!) access to Crozdesk’s software advisors. Just use the form below to share your needs, and they will contact you at no cost or commitment. You will then be matched and connected to a shortlist of vendors that best fit your company, and you can access exclusive software discounts!

The 10 Best Capacity Planning Software Solutions

Tool Free Option Price
1
Wrike

Keep track of your project’s progress in real-time

Free plan available

From $9.80/user/month Visit Website
2
Parallax

Best for professional service providers and agencies

Free demo

Pricing upon request Visit Website
3
monday.com

Build a capacity planning tool tailored to your business

14-day free trial + freemium plan available

From $8/user/month (billed annually, min 3 seats) Visit Website
4
ClickUp

Plan for the future with adaptable templates

Freemium plan available

From $9/user/month Visit Website
5
Productive

Best for managing resources at creative agencies

14-day free trial

From $20/user/month Visit Website
6
Resource Guru

Get your workloads balanced and resources aligned in a clean and simple interface

30-day free trial available

From $3/user/month Visit Website
7
Runn

Best for real-time capacity planning, tracking, and forecasting

14-day free trial and free plan available

Plans start at $10/person managed/month Visit Website
8
Saviom

Best for real-time, enterprise capacity reports

60-day free trial

Pricing upon request Visit Website
9
Hub Planner

Best for drag-and-drop capacity planning with linked budgeting tools

30-day free trial

From $7/user/month (billed annually) Visit Website
10
Kantata

Spot and avoid roadblocks to increase productivity

Free demo available

Pricing upon request Visit Website

Other Options

Here’s a few more that didn’t make the top list.

  1. Acuity PPM

    Best for an in-depth view of resource allocation

  2. Mosaic

    The only capacity planning software purpose-built to increase utilization rates

  3. Toggl

    Best for its financial features complementing capacity planning

  4. ProjectManager.com

    Assess project progression with ease

  5. Smartsheet

    Save time when planning a new project

  6. Meisterplan

    Best for its role-based resource allocation prior to staffing

  7. Float

    Manage multiple projects with ease

  8. eResource Scheduler

    Best for time tracking, scheduling, financials, and reports

  9. Connecteam

    Workforce management tool that enables project managers to automate recurring tasks and create shifts for their employees.

  10. Skedulo

    Productivity software designed to help companies that collaborate with international freelancers to keep their projects on track.

What is capacity planning?

Capacity planning is a process that helps you determine whether you have the resources you need to meet your current demand. The process enables you to pinpoint bottlenecks that slow down your team’s productivity, and it also allows you to plan for future projects. 

Related Read: Capacity Planning For Every PM: Strategies + Complete How To

Make your organization more profitable with capacity planning software 

Being able to plan your organization’s capacity can help you reduce downtimes and improve your team’s productivity. It enables you to determine how much work you can do within a timeframe, so you can plan your future projects with accuracy. 

Rhonda Abrams, small business expert and founder of a publishing company focusing on entrepreneurship, saidI always emphasize that it’s the planning that’s most important, not the plan. [..] It’s important to eliminate things that aren’t profitable or are shrinking your margins.

And this is why capacity planning is so important. It enables you to optimize your organization’s resources and increase productivity, thus making your company more profitable. 

You can learn more about resource planning and workload capacity planning on our blog. If you want to receive tips on capacity planning from top thinkers in the industry directly in your inbox, subscribe to the Digital Project Manager newsletter.

By Ben Aston

I’m Ben Aston, a digital project manager and founder of thedpm.com. I've been in the industry for more than 20 years working in the UK at London’s top digital agencies including Dare, Wunderman, Lowe and DDB. I’ve delivered everything from film to CMS', games to advertising and eCRM to eCommerce sites. I’ve been fortunate enough to work across a wide range of great clients; automotive brands including Land Rover, Volkswagen and Honda; Utility brands including BT, British Gas and Exxon, FMCG brands such as Unilever, and consumer electronics brands including Sony. Ben's a Certified Scrum Master, PRINCE2 Practitioner and productivity nut.

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