10 Best Project Management Software For Small Business

monday.com is an easy-to-use project management tool that saves small businesses money in two ways: offering free/affordable entry-level plans and being super user-friendly to cut back on money lost on training and onboarding. They are used by teams at Uber, Adobe, Hulu, and Unilever, so your SMB can feel like its playing in the software big leagues.

Why I picked monday.com: monday is flexible and scalable with 5 pricing plans available so that it can grow with you. With their freemium plan, you'll already have access to unlimited project boards, hundreds of project/task templates, 20+ column types, and their iOS and Android apps. Pay particular attention to the free project template library—here, you'll find pre-made outlines for editorial calendars, marketing campaign planning, CRM charts, event planning, HR forms, and more. The usefulness of this section for small businesses can not be overstated.

monday.com Standout Features & Integrations

Features include automations, customizable dashboards, forms for client brief intakes, support for agile methodologies, and unlimited free viewers.

Integrations include project management apps like Slack, Google Drive, Gmail, Google Calendar, Jira, GitHub, Trello, Dropbox, Typeform and many more, accessible through a paid plan with Zapier. They also have an apps marketplace with free and paid add-ons to boost your functionality. Again, I cannot stress the level of flexibility and scalability with this form.

Kintone is a customizable project management software for small businesses that is used by teams from McCormick Distillery (Missouri), A-B Emblem (North Carolina), Michael Callahan & Associates (Virginia), and over 23,000 organizations worldwide.

Why I picked Kintone: Their unique approach to project and task management lets you build a wide variety of customizable “apps” either from scratch, using templates or from your existing spreadsheets, for data management, business processes, and workflows. Kintone apps can be customized for project management, sales CRM, customer databases, expense reports, shared to-do lists, equipment management, product feedback, and much more.

Kintone lets you build no-code, project management apps for your small business by dragging and dropping elements that you want to see onto the page: rich text fields, date fields, drop-down menus, number fields with built-in calculations, spaces for attachments, user or group selection menus, related data from other apps, tables, and more.

Once you’ve built the app you want, you can use it to more easily manage whatever data and tasks you and your team need to track. And with custom notifications and reminders as well as detailed permissions settings, your project management solution can look and work however you want it to.

With Kintone’s customization features, small businesses are able to manage all of their workflows for every department within one central platform instead of across dozens of tools (CRMs, expense reports, project trackers, and spreadsheets, to name a few). Save time and effort for your team with clear assignments, filtered lists to help prioritize tasks, and automated reminders and handoffs to manage multi-step workflows.

Kintone’s built-in communication features also allow teams to discuss projects directly in the app and in topic or project-based threads. Dedicated “spaces” organize everything your team needs for your project, including task-tracking apps and searchable conversation threads.

There are so many ways to customize Kintone it can be hard to know where to start. Read the starter blog “What Can You Build with Kintone?” or watch Creating an App from Scratch for a quick look at how the drag-and-drop builder works.

Kintone Standout Features & Integrations

Features include a pre-built application library, enhanced process management, private messaging, real-time custom graphs and charts, and granular permission controls.

Integrations include tools like Slack, Gmail, Google Calendar, Outlook, Tableau, Dropbox, Salesforce, HubSpot, Eventbrite, WordPress, QuickBooks, MailChimp, and many more through a paid plan with Zapier or via API integrations.

Kintone has discounted prices for nonprofits and educators, and it offers a free custom app build as part of the free trial process.

Wrike is a project and resource management tool with a generous free plan (unlimited users!) that will appeal to small businesses on a tight monthly budget.

Why I picked Wrike: Upon logging in to your account, you'll have 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 you.

Wrike lets you snooze inbox notifications to be re-reminded of them later at a more convenient time. Default settings snooze for 3 hours, 1 day, or 1 week but you can use the custom menu option to pick your own date and time. You can also instantly order your task lists by priority, date, status, importance, or alphabetically within a simple dropdown menu. Workspace themes let users easily swap between color schemes.

Businesses of all sizes will appreciate Wrike’s work schedule management feature (business plan and above) lets you group and flag employees according to what a typical weekly schedule looks like for them. Wrike will take this into account when planning your project timeline.

Wrike Standout Features & Integrations

Features include Kanban boards, cross-tagging across multiple work streams, Gantt charts, proofing, customizable request forms, task automation, and dashboards.

Integrations include over 400 pre-built native integrations, including integrations with the most popular file management software from Microsoft, Google, and Dropbox, along with sales and marketing software from Salesforce and Marketo.

ClickUp is a project management tool that is one of the top tools on the market and could seem unaffordable for a small business at first glance. As a small business owner myself, I can tell you that is not the case. Plus, ClickUp’s free version might just be enough to get you started.

Why I picked ClickUp: The tool has features like task management, time tracking, whiteboards, shared documents, dashboards, and communication tools to keep your team aligned. As you can see on the screenshot above, you can use documents to store company information such as brand guidelines and core values.

Note: Their free version has pretty much every feature (with certain limitations). Enough to get you to try it and see if it makes sense to invest.

ClickUp Standout Features & Integrations

Features include collaborative documents, time tracking, whiteboards, task management, task automation, dashboards, and in-app collaboration features like comments, mentions, attachments, and annotations.

Integrations include Slack, G Suite, Dropbox, and many more tools, as well as over 1,000+ integrations through Zapier. If you want to build custom integrations, there is a public API you can use for it.

Height is a robust and feature-rich project management software with an offering that fits small businesses perfectly. It has 100+ features available, from attribute features, subtasks, and chat with real-time and contextual messaging to role-based permissions and powerful visualization tools.

Why I picked Height: For agency users, Height provides features like project planning and calendar view where project heads can effectively communicate progress and create momentum at every stage of the development process. You can leverage the calendar view to create schedules and plan key events, deadlines, and product launches. The tool also allows you to invite your clients and other stakeholders to collaborate with, provide up-to-date project status and deliver detailed reports.

For recruiting teams, Height enables lead tracking, private tasks, and Kanban-based visualizations. The lead tracking function helps keep hiring teams and key stakeholders well informed about potential candidates as they move through the evaluation and interview process. When evaluating applicants, you can plan and work privately on sensitive candidate information and other related tasks with the key individuals who need to be involved in the screening process. Kanban boards will help you visualize the status of your hiring process and find potential bottlenecks.

Height Standout Features & Integrations

Features include lead tracking, private tasks, chat with contextual messaging, multiple task visualizations, infinite task nesting, smart lists, and dynamically updated reports.

Integrations for this software include Slack, Discord, Sentry, Figma, Zendesk, Notion, Slab, and Google Sheets. You can also connect to an additional 1000+ apps using Zapier or create your own using webhooks and Height's API.

Zoho Projects is an online project management tool that lets teams plan, track, and collaborate on project work. The tool is scalable for small businesses and mid-size businesses.

Why I picked Zoho Projects: It allows users to set up project plans, as well as create and assign ad-hoc tasks across the team. The tool also includes features like flexible work hours, baselines, and critical paths in Gantt charts, team based work allocation, and task reminders. Time tracking and resource utilization features help managers ensure that employees are not over or under worked.

Users can automate task transitions and workflows, track activities and progress by using the advanced reports, and manage budgets with expense management features. Collaboration features include team-wide and individual discussion management, a meeting tab to facilitate virtual meetings, a social feed to interact with and keep track of all your project activities, a forum to discuss ideas and solutions, and a central document management module to manage all information. Mobile applications are also available.

Zoho Projects Standout Features & Integrations

Features include critical path, resource utilization, task workflow automations, virtual meetings, project forums, multiple task views, issue tracking, charts, and reporting.

Integrations include Zoho apps like Zoho CRM, Zoho Cliq, Zoho Meeting, as well as with other third party apps like Microsoft Office 365, Microsoft Teams, Google Drive, Zapier, Zendesk, and ServiceNow.

Hub Planner is a simple online project management tool designed to help small businesses manage their resources, schedules, and projects more efficiently. With advanced features such as resource management, scheduling, time tracking, collaboration, and customizability, Hub Planner is ideal for teams looking to improve their project management capabilities.

Why I Picked Hub Planner: Hub Planner stands out for its comprehensive resource management and scheduling features, user-friendly interface, and excellent customer support. I appreciated the platform's ability to track and allocate resources effectively, manage complex projects with ease, and visualize project progress through its Gantt chart feature. The platform's flexibility and customizability, as well as its integration with other software tools, are also worth checking out. Furthermore, users appreciate the responsiveness and helpfulness of Hub Planner's customer support team. Overall, Hub Planner's powerful features, intuitive interface, and exceptional support have made it a popular choice among businesses looking to improve their project management capabilities.

Hub Planner Standout Features & Integrations

Features include resource management, PTO planning, timesheets, reporting, skills matching, task management, templates, drag and drop scheduler, project budgets, approval flow, smart scheduler, and third-party integrations/add-ons.

Integrations include DIY options via their Hub Planner API and webhook. Or, open an account with Zapier for more options (may incur an additional cost). 

Miro is a collaborative online whiteboard with over 1,000 templates including mind maps, Kanban boards, Gantt charts, product wireframes, research boards, and flowcharts. It’s trusted by 99% of the Fortune 100, and used by teams at TransUnion, HP, Upwork, Cisco, Qlik, and Atkins. Miro’s visual platform is built for hybrid work, and has robust resources for continuous learning like Miro Academy, online events, and a community forum.

One of Miro’s many functionalities is as a project management tool with a focus on interactive, visual work boards. Project management is seamless with built-in video conferencing, Agile workflows, ideation and brainstorming templates, and wireframing tools. Paid plans allow guest and visitor access so you can collaborate with clients and stakeholders.

At The Digital Project Manager, we use Miro to map out content clusters and to visualize content workflows from start (brainstorming ideas) to finish (publishing the content on our site).

Miro has integrations with a whole suite of tools, including Zoom, Figma, Asana, Microsoft Teams, Jira, Slack, Google Drive, Box, Airtable, Notion, Azure, and Webex. Some integrations are limited to paid plans only.

Miro is free to use for unlimited members with up to 3 editable boards. Paid plans start at $8/user/month (billed annually).

GanttPRO is project management software that comes with Gantt chart templates for planning, managing, and executing projects such as marketing projects, retail processes, or event planning tasks.

GanttPRO comes with features for work planning and scheduling, and task and resource management. GanttPRO also comes with features for setting up work calendars, tracking time, reporting, communicating with customers, and importing and exporting projects.

GanttPRO integrates with Slack, Google Drive, and Jira Cloud. More integrations are available through their API.

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

Forecast is a project management software for small business that unites your projects, resources, and financials in one AI-powered platform.

Why I picked Forecast: You can leverage Forecast’s workflow automation capabilities to create smart schedules, estimate timeframes and budgets, and populate timesheets instantly.

Additionally, you 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 Standout Features & Integrations

Features include resource management, project accounting, business intelligence, retainer budget-type projects, auto-schedule, and AI-based recommendations.

Integrations include 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.