The 15 Best Project Management Software List
This is a snapshot of the best project management solutions:
- monday.com
Best for building custom workflows across teams
- ClickUp
Best for unlimited users/seats
- Wrike
Best project management software for scaling organizations
- Smartsheet
Best for flexibility & customizability
- Confluence
Best for software teams
- Kintone
Best for building custom project workflows
- Celoxis
Best for customer-facing teams
- Zoho Projects
Best for integrations & add-ons
- Height
Best for its custom command center and guest accounts
- Airtable
Best for building project databases
- Forecast
Best AI-native project planning tool
- Microsoft Project
Best for large teams
- Paymo
Best project management software for SMBs
- MeisterTask
Best for WIP limits
- Backlog
Best for software developers
Projects are getting more complex by the day. Why? Because geographically dispersed teams and remote work have become more and more common. If we add that to the already complex nature of our profession, it’s imperative that we pick the right project management software to help us smoothen our team interactions and increase collaboration.
The tools on this list offer a wide range of benefits and features to help you achieve that. While they vary in the type of features and integrations that they offer, I've tried to cover this in each overview and provide relevant information that will make you differentiate them.
Feel free to read how I picked the project management software on this list and if you have more general questions on the topic you can go to the FAQ section before you start reading overviews.
The 15 Best Project Management Software Overviews
monday.com
Best for building custom workflows across teams
monday.com is an award-winning project management platform used across diverse industries by companies like Hulu, BBC Studios, Coca-Cola, L'Oréal Paris, Adobe, and Deezer.
Why I picked monday.com: monday.com features for managing projects include resource and project management, time tracking, collaboration, and reporting features. For example, users can upload and attach files to cards, make comments, mention teammates, and more. It also offers a great project reporting dashboard that can collect data from multiple boards, allowing better tracking abilities of progress. And while monday.com doesn’t offer a complete set of tools for project accounting and invoicing solution as other tools, you can use monday.com to track hours, timelines, and invoices.
Overall, it’s a highly customizable tool that lets you work in whatever methodology—Kanban or otherwise—that fits your project and team. You’ll also find some useful workflow tools for automating parts of your process. Read our in-depth monday.com review for a complete overview of the tool, as well as a short video tutorial of basic features.
monday.com Standout Features & Integrations
Features include resource and project management, time tracking, collaboration, file management, collaborative docs and reporting dashboards.
Integrations include project management apps like Slack, Google Drive, Gmail, Google Calendar, Jira, GitHub, Trello, Dropbox, Typeform and many more, accessible via Zapier.
monday.com Plans & Pricing
monday.com costs from $8/user/month and comes with a free 14-day trial. They offer a free plan for up to 2 users.
Pros
- Helpful visual/color coding customization
- Easy to customize a workflow or board
- Long list of supported integrations
- Huge focus on collaboration
Cons
- May be too robust for small teams
- Gantt charts locked to mid-level plan
- Complex pricing rubric
ClickUp
Best for unlimited users/seats
ClickUp is a project management app with powerful features for managing and completing all your team's projects in one platform. Users can plan projects, schedule tasks, and manage resources in a centralized workspace, as well as communicate and collaborate with team members and guests.
Why I picked ClickUp: ClickUp has features for creating, sharing, and collaborative editing for Wikis and documents. Users can comment on documents and tasks, assign comments, and chat with other team members for increased communication and collaboration. Reporting features include the ability to create custom dashboards, as well as six built-in report types for team reporting.
Task management features include task checklists, subtasks, and task templates, as well as the ability to filter, sort, search for, easily reorder, and view tasks in the manner most convenient for the team. You can also create Gantt charts, calendars, and timelines to visualize tasks.
ClickUp Standout Features & Integrations
Features include real-time reporting, whiteboards and shared documents for collaboration, task management with different views, goal tracking, and templates.
Integrations include native ones with Slack, G Suite, Dropbox, and many more tools, as well as over 1,000+ integrations through Zapier.
ClickUp Plans & Pricing
ClickUp's free plan is robust and includes all primary features. The unlimited plan starts at $9/user/month and offers additional functionality.
Pros
- Can email (set-up) a task directly from Outlook
- Unlimited file storage on all paid account tiers
- Free forever plan allows unlimited members
Cons
- Granular customization options results in a time consuming set-up
- Reporting suite is limited to paid plans only
- Read-only guest permissions are limited to paid account
Wrike
Best project management software for scaling organizations
Wrike is an award-winning project management software suitable for teams of five or more, as the software allows for an unlimited number of users. The tool is highly configurable and allows users to customize workflows, dashboards, reports, and request forms.
Why I picked Wrike: Wrike’s simple interface enables users to switch between Kanban boards, interactive drag-and-drop Gantt charts, and traditional workload views, allowing them to choose how to visualize their priorities. Wrike also features task lists, subtasks, schedules, shared workflows, file sharing, and real-time communication and collaboration. Users can get advanced insights on their project with performance reporting tools, resource management and allocation, and more.
Wrike has an easy-to-use, intuitive interface and navigation with distinct spaces, folders, and tasks. You can switch between the home screen and timesheets, dashboards, calendars, reports, and stream (for notifications and messages). Wrike also has a dedicated help center with interactive training, videos, a 'Getting Started’ guide, and a thriving community.
Wrike Standout Features & Integrations
Features include pre-built templates, custom request forms, interactive Gantt charts, visual proofing, workflow automations, time tracking, project portfolio management, and dashboards.
Integrations in Wrike include 400+ pre-built native integrations, like the most popular file management software from Microsoft, Google, and Dropbox, along with sales and marketing software from Salesforce and Marketo.
Wrike Plans & Pricing
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
- Many options and opportunities to customize
- Holistic, comprehensive task modeling
- Different ways to view the same data
Cons
- Commenting system is pretty basic
- No offline access
- No subtasks in the freemium plan
Smartsheet
Best for flexibility & customizability
Smartsheet is a spreadsheet-like project management platform. It’s a nice platform if you’re comfortable working in Excel but want a break from complicated formulas, as Smartsheet performs all the calculations for you across multiple sheets.
Why I picked Smartsheet: 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.
Further, the Critical Path feature highlights all the tasks which directly impact your project completion date to keep an eye on important milestones. If you are the type that wants everything personalized, including your tools, you can also add customized brand logos and set color themes for individual projects.
Smartsheet Standout Features & Integrations
Features include dashboards, reports that consolidate multiple sheets, workflow automation, resource management, multiple views, forms to collect information, and digital asset management using Brandfolder.
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.
Smartsheet Plans & Pricing
Smartsheet has three plans and starts at $9/user/month, with a minimum of 3 and a maximum of 25 users. They offer a 30-day free trial.
Pros
- Easily customizable dashboards
- Ease of sharing
- Many project templates & resources
- Sheet-to-sheet linking
Cons
- Can't customize chart colors
- Changes don’t update in real-time
- Jira, Salesforce, Dynamics connector limited to Premier plan
Confluence
Best for software teams
Confluence, an Atlassian product, lets users tailor a collaborative digital workspace to their needs using drag-and-drop functionality. Features include creating a knowledge database, generating actionable meeting notes, sharing announcements, and dashboard pages for products and teams.
Confluence’s fast, flexible templates are a stand out feature for project managers. The tool offers project templates for product requirements, marketing campaigns, recruiting initiatives, executive reports, resource scheduling, and more.
Integrations include Jira, Trello, Slack, Microsoft Office, inVision, Dropbox, Google Drive, Box, Draw.io, Productiv, Bitbucket, Hipchat, Bamboo, and 3000+ more through their app marketplace.
A con to be wary of with this tool is the permissions concepts can be a bit tricky to navigate and even trickier to teach/train to team members who need to be aware of them. They lost a few marks in the Usability evaluation because of this.
Confluence starts at $5/user/month and has a freemium version of the tool for us to 10 users, plus a 7-day free trial for any paid plan.
Pros
- Great version control
- Good iOS & Android apps
- 3,000+ integrations
- Plenty of best practice templates
Cons
- Weak search bar functionality
- Rudimentary word processing features
- Limited integration with MS Office
Kintone
Best for building custom project workflows
Kintone is a customizable project tracking platform used by teams at Volvo Trucks North America, Japan Airlines, Shiseido, 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. 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.
Build your no-code project tracking apps 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, and more. Once you’ve built the app you want, you can use it to track whatever data and tasks you and your team need. Finally, custom notifications and reminders will keep you up to date.
What makes Kintone particularly great for project tracking are the features to filter and prioritize tasks by data field or team member to generate custom reports or dashboard views, as well as the ability to automate reminders and handoffs between team members for 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.
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. Kintone lets you expand its capabilities with both free native plugins built by the Kintone team as well as integrations with other 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 Plans & Pricing
Kintone costs $24/user/month with a minimum requirement of 5 users. They offer a 30-day free trial (no credit card required) and discounted prices for nonprofits and educators. Kintone’s team also offers a free custom app build as part of the free trial process.
Pros
- Data is easy to pull and manipulate into good looking reports
- Admin accounts have access to tons of customization tools
- Flexible pricing that includes special deals for schools and NPOs
Cons
- No native templates for common project types or documents
- Limited to 5GB/user storage on every pricing tier
- No single-user plan available (minimum 5 users)
Celoxis
Best for customer-facing teams
Celoxis is a comprehensive and web-based project management software. It comes with powerful analytical capabilities, and its rich and interactive charts will breathe new life into your project data.
Why I picked Celoxis: First, project schedules and powerful interactive Gantt charts pack all of the team and work dynamicity, including geographically distributed project teams, part-time resources, unavoidable absences, interim resource swaps, and even inter-project dependencies.
Further, task management within Celoxis is strong and unique. The platform lets you see your tasks and to-dos, report bugs, manage tickets, or log time from a single tool. You can also get relevant notifications to your inbox and send updates to someone, even without logging in.
Collaboration is also available through project discussions, @mention comments, file sharing, document version control, and activity stream. Additionally, 80% of your team's typical actions, such as starting a timer, attaching a file or updating status, can be done straight from the dashboards.
Celoxis Standout Features & Integrations
Features include a real-time project tracker, task management, resource availabilities and utilization, timesheets, project finances, risks, issues and to-dos.
Integrations include pre-built connections with Google Drive, Outlook, Microsoft Project, Excel, Salesforce and hundreds of other tools like JIRA, Slack & Trello.
Celoxis Plans & Pricing
Celoxis is one of the few project manager software programs to be available in both SaaS and on-premise. SaaS costs $25/user/month, and on-premise pricing is available upon request. Both require a minimum 5-user sign-up and come with a 30-day free trial.
Pros
- Very interactive Gantt chart
- Percentage of project tasks-per-user feature
- Customizable widgets for groups or individuals
- In-app timer for task tracking
Cons
- Resource planning is not automated
- Complex menu structure
- Some difficulty with report building
Zoho Projects
Best for integrations & add-ons
Zoho Projects is a project management application that can handle projects of all sizes and levels of complexity. The tool comes with features that imitate social networking sites such as feeds, forums, and discussions, and is available on mobile for iOS, Android, and other systems.
Why I picked Zoho Projects: For project planning and monitoring, Zoho Projects' Gantt chart features let you break large projects down into manageable sections and actionable tasks, plan and visualize different tasks and milestones, and create tasks lists to help you plan in better detail. Zoho Projects' Gantt charts can also be used for resource allocation, so you can visualize your project schedule and the team's workload. The resource usage table tells you who is available, who is busy, and who is overloaded.
With Zoho Projects, you can define dependencies between tasks and assign them to the right people, schedule events in your calendar, and monitor the percentage of work that's been completed once the work has begun. Automate routine tasks at regular intervals by setting up a recurring task, and set reminder emails for tasks.
You can also create or download project documents, presentations, and spreadsheets, as well as upload and share files for team collaboration. Record the hours spent on tasks and compare them with what you had originally planned. This can be done manually or with the help of an integrated timer. Entries are automatically recorded in your timesheet, and generating invoices from this information requires only a few clicks.
Zoho Projects Standout Features & Integrations
Features include task management, task automation, blueprints, time and issue tracking, reporting, and forums for detailed discussions with your team.
Integrations. Being part of the Zoho ecosystem allows you to connect to several of Zoho’s other services such as Zoho Books and Zoho’s finance suite. The new Zoho marketplace allows 3rd party integrations as well, like Microsoft Office 365, Microsoft Teams, Google Drive, Zapier, Zendesk, and ServiceNow. Integrations via Zapier and Zoho Flow are also supported.
Zoho Projects Plans & Pricing
Zoho Projects costs from $5/user/month and comes with a 10-day free trial. They have a freemium version for up to 3 users and 2 projects.
Pros
- Time-track multiple tasks at once
- Robust communication features
- Easy workflow automations
- Unlimited number of projects
Cons
- Lack of file type export options
- Lacks some reporting features
- Does not integrate with Quickbooks
Height
Best for its custom command center and guest accounts
Height is the all-in-one project management tool that can be customized to accommodate workflows on a team-by-team basis and includes visualizations like Spreadsheet (table), Kanban, Calendar, and Gantt.
Why I picked Height: Besides the multiple views, the platform offers real-time chat per task. This effortlessly ensures that all conversation about work happens in context, is searchable, and only notifies the people for whom the information is relevant.
Its robust offering includes a command center where you can customize keyboard shortcuts for almost anything you can think of, macOS and Windows apps, and SOC 2 Type II compliance for data protection.
Height Standout Features & Integrations
Features include customizable workflows, task forms to collect user data, multiple task views, real-time chat, and smart lists with dynamically pulled filters.
Integrations include Notion, Slack, Discord, GitHub, GitLab, Sentry, Zendesk, Figma, Slab, Fivetran, and many more through Zapier.
Height Plans & Pricing
Height's pricing starts at $8.50/user/month and comes with a free 30-day trial. One last thing, guest accounts are free in all paid plans.
Pros
- Guest account permissions
- macOS and Windows apps
- Request collection through forms
Cons
- No automations (coming soon)
- Relatively new in the market
Airtable
Best for building project databases
Airtable is a project management solution that lets users add attachments, long text notes, checkboxes, links, barcodes, and more to records in other tables. Powerful filtering, sorting, and grouping give you the freedom to arrange your work in whatever way works best for your team.
The user interface is sleek, modern, colorful, and attractive, making Airtable a pleasure to use and navigate. This software scored well in the UX consideration for the evaluation criteria listed earlier in this article.
Airtable has built-in support for many popular apps and a robust API. Use Zapier, Workato, Integromat, or Automate.io to connect Airtable with over 1000 websites and apps like Asana, Basecamp, Box, Evernote, Facebook, Github, MailChimp, Slack, and more.
The learning curve for Airtable is made troublesome by a general lack of tutorials and training on their site. Certain features, like posting assignments, might be tricky to teach or learn.
Airtable starts at $10/user/month and has a freemium version of the software.
Pros
- Color-code lists and project items
- Forms easy to distribute and embed
- Rollups and Lookups to organize data
- Flexible for small businesses
Cons
- Time consuming to build custom tables
- Steep learning curve
Forecast
Best AI-native project planning tool
Forecast is an all-in-one platform for resource and project management, that is equipped with tools to manage everything from quote to invoice, plus it offers intelligent automation to predict project delivery dates, forecast capacity needs, and become more efficient. Their AI uses cumulative learnings from hundreds of thousands of projects and creates rules based on that user data.
Why I picked Forecast: Let’s talk about features. The Auto-Schedule feature is great for project scheduling, providing estimates, automatically assigning resources to tasks. It’s got a drag-and-drop module that lets you adjust plans and resources in an instant. Another cool feature is that the tool automatically builds a budget for every project with key financial metrics to track planned vs. actuals. It also supports various billing types (fixed price, time & materials) side-by-side and in real-time. It has advanced up-to-the-minute reports you can customize.
Forecast also introduced a one-of-its-kind feature to manage projects in a retainer setup. A dashboard with retainer periods and totals lets you track the financials of ongoing projects without losing sight of staff workloads and time spent on delivery.
Forecast Standout Features & Integrations
Features include resource management, project accounting, business intelligence, retainer budget-type projects, auto-schedule, and AI-based recommendations.
Integrations include several turnkey integrations with mainstream project management tools and two-way sync with Jira on the market. It also complements accounting systems like Quickbooks and Xero with PM capabilities.
Forecast Plans & Pricing
Forecast costs from $29/user/month with a 10-seat minimum in an annual plan. They offer a 14-day free trial.
Pros
- Easy to plan projects and timelines
- Can manage resources across multiple projects
- Predictive tasks for spreadsheets
Cons
- Higher learning curve
- Additional fee for onboarding/training
- Milestone data is lumped together rather than separated
Microsoft Project
Best for large teams
MS Projects is Microsoft’s answer to project management. This tool lets users manage agile projects using simple, visual task boards that support Scrum, Kanban, or custom workflows and choose whatever methodology makes sense for the project: agile, waterfall, or hybrid.
Why I picked Microsoft Project: This PM software is particularly easy to use and learn if you are at all familiar with the Microsoft family of products, which most offices are these days. Online tutorials and forums can fill in any gaps, making the learning curve small. Thus, it evaluated well in Usability.
Side note: This is a standard and industry-accepted tool, but it’s not perfect. One major downside is that it’s not easy to run on iOS. If you like MS Projects but are looking for similar options that run on a Mac, check out my post on MS Project options for Mac.
Microsoft Project Standout Features & Integrations
Features include kanban boards, timelines with milestones, Power BI dashboards, resource requests, visual heatmaps to identify over-allocation, built-in templates, reporting, task management, and portfolio management.
Integrations include other Microsoft software, like Outlook, Excel, Skype, and more.
Pros
- Integration with other Microsoft software
- Driver prioritization module for ranking strategies/objectives
- Helpful project template descriptions for guidance
- Can generate a Gantt chart from a spreadsheet
Cons
- Poor customization options
- Steep learning curve
- Limitations on collaboration tools
Paymo
Best project management software for SMBs
Paymo is the best project management software to use if you're working in consultancy and the creative/marketing industry. Paymo suits freelancers, small and medium teams, or businesses as it helps creatives navigate projects and tasks, keep track of their time, and bill clients from the same platform.
Paymo lets you streamline your workflow as you manage a creative project. With Paymo, you get a good grasp of task details and status (task management) using multiple views, task lists, Kanban, and Gantt charts. You’ll see how many hours you’ve put in (time tracking)—and how that fares with your initial estimates. You’ll be able to then send invoices to your clients and be paid through online payment gateways like Square, Stripe, PayPal, and others. On top of all that, you can manage everything on the go using the mobile app.
Paymo lets you assign users, collaborate in real-time, file proof, and be updated via notifications or oversee the stream of recent activities. Paymo alos comes with a resource scheduling module and resource management to help manage leave days and set up bookings for clients.
Paymo integrates with Zapier, Google, and Slack for an extra ping.
Paymo’s free plan is available for freelancers and teams of up to 10 users. Paid plans start at $9.95/user/month. Paymo comes with a 15-day free trial.
Pros
- Free for 1 user
- Easy to use project filters
- Seamless time tracking
- View all projects on a single Kanban board
Cons
- Some data export limitations
- No way to invite collaborators/reviewers
- Not great at tracking a large number of projects
MeisterTask
Best for WIP limits
MeisterTask is a web-based task and project management tool that is perfect for managing agile projects on simple, Kanban-style boards. The tool offers user-friendly interfaces, intuitive functionality, and seamless integrations with other software in the project ecosystem.
The tool includes colorful, customizable project boards, as well as other features designed to make projects more streamlined, productive, and effective. Workload management is enabled through the timeline feature: a Gantt-style overview of tasks that allows users to pinpoint bottlenecks and keep work flowing smoothly. Automations can also be established to speed up manual work and to complete recurring tasks automatically.
Other task management features include due dates, time tracking, assignees, watchers, checklists, tags, and more. MeisterTask also enables communication with comments, @mentions, notifications, and inline file attachments (including integrations with external cloud storages). MeisterTask is simple to use and doesn’t require any formal onboarding or training.
MeisterTask’s integrations include Slack, Microsoft Teams, G Suite, Zapier, IFTTT, MindMeister, and more.
MeisterTask costs from $8.25/month and offers a freemium plan for up to 3 projects. Their paid plans come with a 30-day free trial.
Pros
- Gantt-style Timeline feature for scheduling tasks on a calendar
- Includes the ability to automate recurring steps
- User-friendly interface with intuitive functionality
Cons
- No subtasks possible, only checklist items
- There is no Linux desktop application
- Recurring tasks limited to paid users
Backlog
Best for software developers
Backlog is a cloud-based project management tool perfect for developers and the teams they collaborate with. Backlog provides a range of useful collaboration features including task management software (including subtasks, checklists, and custom fields), milestones, file management, wikis, and more. But Backlog is more than a project management app, it’s also a bug tracker and version control system in one.
For collaborating on code, Backlog provides SVN and Git repositories, a different viewer and inline comments, plus pull requests, merge requests, and branches. Visually, the app provides burndown charts, Git graphs, Kanban boards, and Gantt charts, so project managers and users alike can quickly assess projects at a glance.
Backlog works for a range of team sizes. They have a free account available to teams of up to 10, while also offering a self-hosted Enterprise option for larger companies. They also provide a mobile app on both iOS and Android for collaborating on-the-go. It integrates with Nulab’s other apps and provides both Redmine and Jira importers.
Backlog allows you to assign, track, and release work, right in one app while ensuring transparency and accountability across teams. If you’re looking for a tool to help manage development projects or working closely with a team of developers, this is the app for you.
Backlog is free for up to 10 users with some feature limitations or $35/month for up to 30 users. For $100/month, your team gets unlimited users, i.e. their Standard Plan.
Pros
- Easily separate tasks through projects and milestones
- Can customize the issue characteristics for each project
- Easy bug identification and logging
Cons
- Can’t sort using multiple filters at the same time
- Difficult to backup all contents and versioning
- Can’t assign multiple members to bug
Need expert help selecting the right Project Management Tool?
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Best Project Management Tools Comparison Chart
Review all the tools we just covered in this convenient table where you can see them side-by-side.
Tool | Free Option | Price | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | monday.com Best for building custom workflows across teams | 14-day free trial + freemium plan available | From $8/user/month (billed annually, min 3 seats) | Visit Website |
2 | ClickUp Best for unlimited users/seats | Freemium plan available | From $9/user/month | Visit Website |
3 | Wrike Best project management software for scaling organizations | Freemium version available | From $9.80/user/month | Visit Website |
4 | Smartsheet Best for flexibility & customizability | Freemium version available | From $7/user/month | Visit Website |
5 | Confluence Best for software teams | Free plan with limited features | From $5.75/user/month | Visit Website |
6 | Kintone Best for building custom project workflows | 30-day free trial | From $24/user/month | Visit Website |
7 | Celoxis Best for customer-facing teams | 30-day free trial | From $25/user/month | Visit Website |
8 | Zoho Projects Best for integrations & add-ons | 10-day free trial | From $5/user/month | Visit Website |
9 | Height Best for its custom command center and guest accounts | 30-day free trial | From $8.50/user/month | Visit Website |
10 | Airtable Best for building project databases | Free-forever plan available | From $10/user/month | Visit Website |
11 | Forecast Best AI-native project planning tool | 14-day free trial | From $29/user/month | Visit Website |
12 | Microsoft Project Best for large teams | 30-day free trial | From $10/user/month | Visit Website |
13 | Paymo Best project management software for SMBs | Free plan available | From $5.95/user/month | Visit Website |
14 | MeisterTask Best for WIP limits | Free trial available | From $8.25/month (billed annually) | Visit Website |
15 | Backlog Best for software developers | 30-day free trial | From $30/month | Visit Website |
Other Project Management Software To Consider
Below is a list of additional PM tool options that we shortlisted, but did not make it to the top 15. Definitely worth checking them out.
- Quire
Best project management software for team collaboration
- MindGenius
best built-in mind mapping capabilities
- Asana
Best online task management software for complex projects
- Hubstaff
Best easy agile project management software
- Hive
Best for collaboration & messaging
- FunctionFox
Best for creative teams and agencies
- awork
Best UI for usability & intuitiveness
- Easy Projects
Best for enterprise teams from medium to large companies.
- ProWorkflow
Best for unlimited client/contractor access
- PSOhub
Best for integrating project management with CRM
Check out our video on the top project management tools:
How I Picked The Best Project Management Software
I evaluated and compared the most popular project management tools on the market, both for their reviews and user interface. Then I weighed factors that make software a good option for project management, such as the ones that follow.
Task Management Capabilities
Every project management software should have powerful task management capabilities. This includes being able to schedule tasks, assign resources to them, set due dates, and dependencies. Additionally, it includes several ways to view that information, such as Kanban, Gantt, calendar, and table views.
Collaboration
I looked at the platforms and the way they enable you and your team to interact with each other. Among these collaboration features are mentions, comments, annotations, built-in chats, attachments, and anything that involves team communication.
Standout Features
Here, I focused on the available categories of features that are helpful in managing projects. It was more about the quality of the features than quantity. Therefore, I focused on the ones that bring our teams closer for collaboration, provide valuable insights or help us automate our work.
Integrations
I looked at software that could help expand the platform's functionality. These integrations can be pre-built, through third-party software, or custom-built using an API.
Project Management Software FAQs
Here's what other people ask about this topic. These questions range from simple concepts to specific use cases.
What is project management software?
Project management software is software that helps project managers (PMs) plan, execute and control their projects across the five phases of the project lifecycle. It’s a suite of tools to help project managers, the project team and stakeholders work together more effectively. The ultimate goal of the software is to help deliver value more efficiently by facilitating organization, communication, and management.
This software covers a huge range of functionality – some tools focus on a discrete aspect of project management, like resource management, time tracking, or Gantt charts, while others like do try to do it all.
Different tools offer features to facilitate every phase of your work, from planning the initial outline or proposal before you begin and then reporting on your successes or shortcoming after everything is said and done. Along the way, you’ll probably need access to tools for proposals, note-taking, collaborative document building, internal messaging, stakeholder communications, creating and assigning tasks, plotting milestones, planning sprints, imaging user stories, data and analytics reporting, project portfolio management, and budget tracking, and timeline scheduling. The best software will attend to the majority of these needs so that you don’t have to bounce between tabs or use multiple apps.
Although some PM software can be installed on-premise, most new tools are offered online as a software-as-service or SaaS which means new features and functionality are rolled out.
Learn more about the different tools used in project management here.
What key features should I look for when selecting project management software?
I’ve identified five key aspects of functionality that makes delivering projects easier. You can use them to get rid of your post-its and spreadsheets and to run your project more efficiently.
- Project task lists: Projects are made up of tasks, sub-tasks, checklists, and to-dos. Being able to outline what needs to be done, by when & by who is critical to delivering a project well. Individual task lists, as well as those accessible by the entire team, are essential. An in-house project team and/or remote team members should be able to assess any project or task progress at a glance.
- Schedules: Timelines, calendars, and Gantt charts help you track progress and know where tasks fit within the broader scheme of a project. This is key to being able to deliver a project on time. A robust, visual, and editable schedule is key to any good project plan.
- File sharing: No one likes having to waste time trying to dig around for random files. The ability to organize and share key project files and assets is important for delivering projects efficiently.
- Communication: A good collaboration tool that allows for contextual project-specific communication enables you and your team to hash things out quickly. Regular communication with your team and client is vital for tracking progress and keeping everything in line.
- Reporting: It’s your job to know whether or not a project is on track and to use this information in communication. Therefore, it’s essential to know how a project’s tasks are progressing—will it be delivered on time or not?
What is the best project management software?
I hate to break it to you, but it depends. The best project management software is the one with features that solve your current needs. You should choose a product that can do that and grow with your company as you require more features or improved security. The last thing you want is to have to go through the process of choosing a new tool again further down the road.
Fortunately, most of the current online PM software solutions have pricing plans that you can pay month-to-month and upgrade any time.
I recommend you start by defining a budget for project management software licenses and go from there. Although these tools come at a low price point, PMs within our community have mentioned that they can get very expensive very quickly. Nothing beats proper planning. If you want more information on how to select the right software for you, check out our buyer’s guide.
What is the best free project management software?
The best free project management software is Microsoft Office (Excel, PPT, and Word) if your company is already paying for it.
Otherwise, free software exists, like ProjectLibre, but it comes at a cost. Usually free versions have limited functionality or, if they are open source, do not have the support level of a paid tool.
If you are interested in a list of free and freemium options have a look at our list of free pm software.
How do you implement project management software?
Implementing project management software will look very different depending on the size of your organization.
- For a small company, it’s counting how many people need access to the software, buying the licenses, and configuring the product.
- For a mid-sized organization, it triggers a change management project. You have to plan for a new tool because you may already have a system in place. This system (good or bad) currently works, and people are used to it. Therefore, a PM tool implementation involves meeting with the users affected by the change and getting buy-in from stakeholders.
- For a large corporation, it means change management plus strategy. At an enterprise level, your decision on a new tool implementation involves reviewing the tool and how it impacts the users, projects, company goals, and strategy. Add to that the security requirements of an implementation of this scale, and suddenly it’s not that straightforward.
Any implementation will have an adjustment period where people are either training on how to use the tool or being less productive than usual. Why? Because they are trying to figure out how to adapt their workflows.
Whatever the size of your organization, I suggest you schedule a demo and meeting with the vendor. Then, ask for available training services and if they support the initial product configuration. Finally, run some numbers and make sure you have enough money to support this implementation and a bit more (planning for growth).
Please note that this is the case for online project management software and not on-premise. Hosting services on your servers will require extensive planning, no matter the company size.
What is Best-Of-Breed Software?
Many of the PM solutions on this list focus on being jacks-of-all-trades, packing as many features as possible to assign tasks, navigate team collaboration, flag status, perform resource allocation, and so on and so forth, ad nauseam.
Another kind of tool—the “best-of-breed” or “one trick pony”—does the opposite and hyper-focuses on doing one thing really, really well. You can find specialized tools for things like resource scheduling, communication, managing tasks, making Gantt charts, creating reports, managing digital assets, and managing requirements. Tools like Slack (comms), Dropbox (storage), and Todoist (lists) are examples of these uber-specialized tools. Specialized tools can be great—especially for a small team working with niche requirements, fewer clients, or complex projects with unique needs.
Do I need more than one tool?
In an ideal scenario, you wouldn't. However, the reality can be frustrating. You will probably end up using more than one tool. You use one tool for communication, another for file sharing and yet another for task management. An important thing to remember is that the best pm software for you should integrate all these tools you currently use.
If the tools can talk to each other, it can reduce manual update work and the number of times you switch between apps.
What can you do with project management software?
Project management software allows you to streamline your work.
- You can collaborate with your team in a centralized platform, comment on tasks, tag people that need to get involved in the conversation, and have stakeholders interact with the project through portals or guest accounts.
- With project management software you can also give visibility to everyone on the team of the project timeline. This will help keep your team aligned and alert them when the timeline has shifted.
- PM software lets you automate parts of your work that are repetitive, such as pinging individuals when a task is completed, or approvals are received. Nowadays, workflow automation is a feature that more vendors are trying to incorporate into their offering.
- One final thing you can do with project management is keep tabs on resources, their workload and availability. Although not all software has RM as a feature, those who do make it really easy to see who is available to take on more work, who is on their way to some classic burnout, and who can be pulled to another project.
What is the easiest project management software to use?
The easiest project management software is the one that is easy to use and learn. And although this might be different from person to person, we do have a list of some tools that fit this criteria, like Wrike, monday.com, and Hive.
In this list of the easiest project management software, I compare them and give them start ratings based on ease of use and available documentation.
What is the best project management software for small business?
The best project management software for small business is one like Zoho Projects. A solution that offers a decent amount of features for a low price per user, and can scale with you as you grow.
We've compiled some of the best software for SMBs in this list.
What is the best project management software for large organizations?
The best software for large organizations is one like Adobe Workfront. A software that keeps your information safer than the secrets inside Area 51. Also known as enterprise project management software, this is the top tier offering of any vendor, and usually requires you to schedule a demo before you have access to pricing information.
What project management software has the best special features?
I selected ClickUp as the best tool with special features. ClickUp's tagline mentions them being the app to replace them all, so they have made sure to add everything they can, and not in a sloppy way. The software works great and has a wonderful free version that lets you test all of its features.
Special features include:
- Collaborative whiteboards and documents
- Marketing collateral proofing with a comments section
- Over 35 clickApps that extend the software's functionality with stuff like Sprint points, time tracking, and automations.
- Fully customizable dashboards.
Other Project Management Software Reviews:
We've curated specific lists for you to find the perfect project management app by category.
- Enterprise – Enterprise PM software
- Agile – Agile PM software
- Remote teams – Remote PM software
- Web-based – Web-based PM software
- Free – Free PM software
- Online – Online PM software
- Mac – Best PM software for mac
- Microsoft – Alternatives to MS Project
- Agencies – PM software for agencies
- Individuals – Project management for individuals
- Creatives – Creative PM software
- Visual planning – Visual PM software
- Marketing – PM software for marketing agencies
- Advertising – PM software for advertising agencies
- Multiple Projects –PM software for multiple projects
- Small Business – PM software for SMBs
- Startups – PM software for startups
- Architects – PM software for architects
- Construction – Construction PM software

What's Next?
Remember that if you want to have more information about a specific use case, you can always schedule a demo with the vendor. This will clarify how the tool can solve the particular problems you are trying to solve.
You've looked at some of the best PM software on the market. Learn now about the most common features in project management software.
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