20 Best Creative Project Management Software List
Here’s a list of the best creative project management software.
Planning, managing, and controlling creative projects is no easy feat. Creative agency project management software can help you address risks and challenges on your projects, keep the team on track, and deliver the work on time and within the budget.
There are plenty of creative agency project management software solutions out there, but it can be tough to find the right fit for your agency or in-house team. I'll simplify this for you—I've shortlisted the best project management tools based on my extensive experience managing creative projects.
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The Best Creative Project Management Software Comparison Chart
Use this table to compare my picks side by side.
| Tool | Best For | Trial Info | Price | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Best for AI-enhanced workflow automation | 7-day free trial | Pricing upon request | Website | |
| 2 | Best for visibility into agency operations | 14-day free trial available | From $19.9/user/month (billed annually) | Website | |
| 3 | Best for managing resources, projects, and finances | 14-day free trial | From $9/month (billed annually) | Website | |
| 4 | Best for annotating and versioning | 14-day free trial + free plan available | From $8/user/month (billed annually) | Website | |
| 5 | Best for capacity planning | 30-day free trial | From $4.16/user/month (billed annually) | Website | |
| 6 | Best for scaling organizations | Free plan available | From $10/user/month (billed annually) | Website | |
| 7 | Best for full-scale creative agency project management | 7-day free trial | From $9/user/month (billed annually) | Website | |
| 8 | Best for full lifecycle creative service delivery | Free demo available | Pricing upon request | Website | |
| 9 | Best for strategic agency management | Free bespoke demo | From $17/month | Website | |
| 10 | Best for breaking down complex tasks | Free plan available | From $7.65/user/month | Website | |
| 11 | Best for no-code business apps | 30-day free trial | From $35/user/month (billed annually, min 20 users) | Website | |
| 12 | Best to connect with Figma | Free plan available | From $15/seat/month (billed annually) | Website | |
| 13 | Best for cross-organizational reporting | Free plan available | From $7/user/month (billed annually) | Website | |
| 14 | Best Kanban-inspired collaboration for creative teams | Free plan available | From $13/user/month (billed annually) | Website | |
| 15 | Best for 3rd party integrations | 14-day free trial | From $1.49/user/month (billed annually) + free plan available | Website | |
| 16 | Best for its variety of ways to gather feedback | Free plan available | From $109/month (unlimited team members, billed annually) | Website | |
| 17 | Deliver exceptional creative work with the leading creative collaboration platform for agencies and brands | 14-day free trial + free plan available | From $199/month (billed annually) | Website | |
| 18 | Best for monitoring team capacity and workload | Free plan available | From $10.99/user/month (min 3 users, billed annually) | Website | |
| 19 | Best creative project management software for enterprise | Free demo available | Pricing upon request | Website | |
| 20 | Best creative PM tool with time tracking | Free demo available | From $10/user/month (billed annually) | Website |
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Accelo
Visit WebsiteThis is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.4.4 -
monday.com
Visit WebsiteThis is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.4.6 -
Smartsheet
Visit WebsiteThis is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.4.4
Best Creative Project Management Software Overviews
Read about each tool and get relevant information regarding its use in creative projects. Feel free to check out how I picked the software on this list.
Screendragon is a creative project management software designed to speed-up creative delivery and reduce project risks and costs. It is used and loved by in-house and agency teams at Kellogg’s, BP, The International Olympic Committee, TBWA, and McCann World Group.
Screendragon particularly stands out for its AI-enhanced workflow automation, which helps creative teams eliminate repetitive manual tasks, reduce approval bottlenecks, and simplify complex processes. By automating workflows intelligently, teams free up more time for high-value creative work while ensuring projects move forward with fewer delays. This automation, combined with a highly customizable interface and branding options, makes Screendragon a powerful fit for agencies that need both flexibility and speed.
From a usability perspective, Screendragon offers an intuitive interface with features covering every stage of creative project management—SOW creation, creative briefs, visual proofing, file sharing, and review and approval workflows. Advanced customization comes in the form of granular user permissions, personalized dashboards, custom forms, templates, and workflow management rules.
Creative teams can manage and visualize their work through interactive Gantt charts, Kanban boards, or list views. Its integrated budget module makes it easy to build estimates and track expenses across the project lifecycle. Leaders also benefit from the capacity view, which provides a 360-degree perspective of current and upcoming resource availability to help with better forecasting.
To streamline production even further, Screendragon includes version control, advanced routing, and automation of approvals, making it a popular choice for in-house agencies focused on boosting productivity and reducing costs. The platform is highly adaptable to different organizational needs, ensuring it scales as teams grow.
Screendragon also offers an open API and seamless integrations. Native connections with ERP systems like SAP and PeopleSoft are available, as well as integrations with thousands of apps via Zapier—including Slack, Trello, Google Drive, Office 365, and Microsoft Dynamics.
Scoro is a work management software that caters to professional service businesses, including creative agencies, by providing a unified platform for managing projects, finances, and resources.
Why I Picked Scoro: Scoro is an all-in-one work management tool that integrates project delivery, sales and CRM, resource planning, time tracking, and financial management into a single system. This integration is especially valuable for creative teams where collaboration, visibility, and real-time updates are essential.
The platform includes customizable dashboards that help teams make informed decisions based on live data.
Scoro Standout Features & Integrations
Features include reporting and analytics for agency operations as a whole (not just per project), providing insights into progress, results, capacity, and financial performance. Scoro also includes automatic retainer invoicing so your agency gets paid faster and stays profitable.
Integrations include Google Calendar, Microsoft Exchange, Xero, QuickBooks, Sage Intacct, Expensify, Stripe, Jira, Slack, Asana, Dropbox, PayPal, and more.
New Product Updates from Scoro
Scoro Version Update: Enhancements to Billing and Reporting
Scoro's latest update introduces advanced purchase order status automation, cost-tracking features, and better integration with BambooHR. For more information, visit Scoro's official site.
Productive is an all-in-one agency management software with project management, resource planning, time tracking, budgeting, and collaboration features.
Why I picked Productive: Creative agencies can use this tool to not just plan their projects, but manage their resources, budgets, and time. The software offers a comprehensive task management system that allows users to assign tasks to individual team members, keep track of progress on each task, and set deadlines. Users can also set up recurring tasks so they don’t have to worry about manually creating them each time.
Users can upload documents in the platform or link them from other cloud storage services, and connect them with specific projects or tasks. The resource management features allow teams to keep track of who is working on which tasks and assign tasks in the context of everyone's workload.
Productive Standout Features & Integrations
Features include a built-in time tracker tool that you and your team can use to log hours for each task or client project, which helps keep billing and budgeting accurate. The scheduling tool in Productive also allows you to include placeholders as you're assigning work to resources and setting due dates. This is useful if you're planning tentative work that your agency hasn't officially won yet or when project priorities aren't set in stone.
Integrations include Dropbox, Exact, Jira, Outlook, Microsoft Calendar, Slack, QuickBooks, and Xero. A Zapier integration is also available, which can unlock more integrations with a paid account.
New Product Updates from Productive
Productive Launches Dashboards 2.0
Productive has rolled out Dashboards 2.0, introducing upgraded widgets and new formatting options to help teams build clearer and more customizable performance views. For more information, visit Productive's official site.
monday.com is a work management platform that has dozens of use cases, including creative and design work.
Why I picked monday.com: Easy, visual and intuitive, monday.com is an award-winning software used by over 70,000 teams. In our evaluation criteria, I specify that we are looking for customizable workload management and collaborative feedback, which is something that this platform handles particularly well.
monday.com has a repository where you can store all files related to your projects and easily collaborate on them. Once a file is uploaded, you can annotate and comment on an asset, and keep a record of the different versions of it. Finally, the boards have the capacity to handle custom workflows where you can keep your team up to date on expectations.
monday.com Standout Features & Integrations
Features include shareable forms for project management steps like project initiation, requirements gathering, and approvals, which helps speed up these processes and make sure you're getting input from everyone involved. The tool also includes expense tracking (via a customizable template) and the ability to create content calendars for marketing and social media projects.
Integrations include DropBox, Excel, Google Calendar, Google Drive, Integromat, Slack, Trello, Pipedrive, Jira, Mailchimp, and even more through Zapier.
New Product Updates from monday.com
Visualize Board Data with WorkCanvas in monday.com
monday.com has introduced a new feature on WorkCanvas that allows users to visualize and style board data directly on their canvas, enhancing insights and context clarity. For more information, visit monday.com's official site.
Resource Guru is a creative project management tool that helps agencies and in-house teams schedule people, equipment, and meeting spaces in one place. Its focus on resource allocation and project forecasting makes it especially useful for creative teams juggling multiple deadlines and overlapping priorities.
I picked Resource Guru for this list because of its clear visibility into team availability and its robust capacity planning tools. You can see how work is distributed across your team and spot potential over-allocation before it causes delays. I also like its project forecasting reports, which help you anticipate future resource needs and plan accordingly. The leave management function is another standout—by tracking vacations and sick days alongside project schedules, you get a complete picture of resource availability.
Standout features include a unified resource pool for managing people, equipment, and meeting rooms; resource utilization monitoring to track billable versus non-billable time; and daily schedule emails so team members always have the latest updates. These tools make it easier to keep creative projects moving without resource conflicts or unexpected shortages.
Integrations include Google Calendar, Microsoft Outlook Calendar, Apple Calendar, Calendly, Fantastical, Zapier, Slack, Salesforce, NetSuite, HubSpot, ChatGPT (OpenAI), and Microsoft Dynamics CRM, plus connections to popular project management platforms like Asana, monday.com, Basecamp, and Jira Software Cloud.
New Product Updates from Resource Guru
Resource Guru Expands Reporting With Six New Reports
Resource Guru introduced six new reports to help teams make smarter decisions with clearer insights into utilization, availability, scheduling, and time off. For more information, visit Resource Guru's official site.
Wrike is an award-winning creative project management software that allows creative teams to streamline their processes from start to finish.
Why I picked Wrike: It features customizable briefs and request forms, visual and customizable workload management, space for team members to provide feedback, and reporting and analytics. You can automate work intake and proofing, enable creative workflows, and improve delivery with a single collaborative platform.
Additionally, you can customize workflows, dashboards, reports, and request forms. Wrike has an easy-to-use interface with distinct Spaces, folders, and tasks. You can switch between Kanban boards, interactive drag-and-drop Gantt charts, and traditional workload views to visualize priorities. Or navigate between the home screen and timesheets, dashboards, calendars, reports, and a stream for notifications and messages. You also have access to a variety of pre-built templates for common organizational processes that allow teams to launch projects faster.
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 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.
Best for full-scale creative agency project management
Bonsai Agency Software is a full-scale solution designed to enhance the operations of creative teams. It's a robust platform that simplifies project tracking, client management, and financial oversight. Aimed at agencies within the creative industry, Bonsai helps users maintain a clear focus on their creative work while efficiently managing the administrative aspects of their projects.
Why I Picked Bonsai: What sets Bonsai apart from its competitors is its deep customization specifically tailored for creative workflows. It provides an intuitive interface that supports not only project management but also aids in automating repetitive tasks such as invoicing and contract management. Unique features include a suite of templates specifically designed for creative proposals and contracts, integrated time tracking directly linked to specific tasks and projects, and a powerful budget planning and expense tracking system that caters to the nuanced needs of small and mid-size agencies.
Bonsai offers advanced insights and analytics on team profitability based on total logged time, billable hours, and cost rates per project or per client. This feature allows users to uncover hidden costs and opportunities and improve their business’s efficiency and profitability. Bonsai also allows users to assign projects and tasks to their team or contractors, prioritize their week, and see exactly how projects progress. The ability to analyze team effectiveness helps your agency refine your resource management and improve success rates by completing projects on time and on budget.
Bonsai Standout Features and Integrations
Features include a client CRM, which means you don't have to switch between account management and project management tools. The tool also offers a client portal, which allows clients to view project progress, approve deliverables, and communicate directly within the platform.
Integrations include Gmail, Google Calendar, Zapier, Slack, QuickBooks Online, Calendly, ClickUp, Trello, Google Drive, Google Sheets, Xero, HubSpot, and more.
Kantata is a SaaS platform designed to help creative agencies manage projects across their entire lifecycle. From scoping and planning to delivery, tracking, and reporting, it centralizes your work so you can keep client campaigns on schedule, budgets under control, and teams working in sync.
Why I picked Kantata: What stands out most is how Kantata connects every stage of project delivery in one place. Its project dashboards provide a clear overview of timelines and milestones, while integrated financials let you track budgets and profitability in real time. For agencies where billable hours and accurate forecasting are crucial, the built-in time tracking and reporting tools help ensure work is properly captured and clients are billed with confidence.
Kantata Standout Features & Integrations
Features include dynamic dashboards that highlight project health, resource scheduling tools to balance workloads across your creative team, and collaboration features like task boards and activity feeds that keep clients and team members aligned throughout the project. It also offers pulse surveys to capture both team and client sentiment at key milestones, helping agencies stay proactive about project delivery.
Integrations include Salesforce, SAP, Jira, Xero, BambooHR, Slack, Worday, QuickBooks, HubSpot, and NetSuite.
Synergist is a project management and agency management software that caters to the needs of marketing, creative, PR, digital agencies, and consultants. The software is designed to offer real-time insights, enhance business intelligence, and facilitate remote work.
Why I picked Synergist: Synergist is designed to assist agencies in managing their projects, clients, and financials. It includes features for customer relationship management, project planning, resource scheduling, time tracking, invoicing, and advanced analytics, all aimed at improving project profitability and management efficiency.
Moreover, Synergist emphasizes a strategic approach to agency management by offering a comprehensive system for project and financial oversight, backed by bespoke onboarding, expert advice, and ongoing support from experienced consultants. It is designed to help agencies make better business decisions, manage clients and new business effectively, and accurately plan for future capacity.
Synergist Standout Features & Integrations
Features include pipeline management tools, estimating and quoting capabilities, task and workflow management, expense tracking, purchasing tools, invoicing and revenue management, dashboards and reporting, and a mobile app.
Integrations include Xero, Sage, HubSpot, Outlook Calendar, Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox, Microsoft 365, HubSpot CRM, and Salesforce CRM.
Quire is a visual task and project management tool designed to help teams plan, execute, and deliver creative work. It gives users flexible ways to organize ideas, manage workflows, and stay aligned through each stage of a project.
Why I picked Quire: Quire stands out because of how it helps teams organize complex, nonlinear projects. Its infinite nested task lists make it easy to map out an entire creative process, from early concepting through drafts and reviews, without losing sight of the big picture. You can break down high-level themes into scenes, campaigns, or assets, and then layer in more granular actions like “design," “copy edit," or “client feedback” under each one.
I also like how it supports visual planning and scheduling. The timeline view lets you map out creative deliverables on a Gantt-style chart so you can see deadlines, overlaps, and pacing at a glance. Paired with the Kanban board view, which is great for tracking production pipelines (like writing, editing, approvals), it helps keep creative workflows moving smoothly.
Quire Standout Features & Integrations
Features include the ability to create personalized sublists from the main task list, helping team members focus on specific tasks or priorities. Quire also offers a document feature that centralizes all project-related information, notes, and updates, enriching documents with task details and user mentions.
Integrations include Google Calendar, Gmail, Slack, Outlook, Zoho Flow, GitHub, Apple Calendar Sync, Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, and Microsoft Teams.
QuickBase is a platform that allows users to create custom business applications without extensive coding knowledge. The platform aims to help businesses streamline their processes and improve productivity by providing a flexible and user-friendly interface for creating and managing applications.
Why I picked QuickBase: With QuickBase, creative agencies can easily build custom applications tailored to their specific project management needs, without the need for extensive coding knowledge or IT support. This enables agencies to quickly adapt and configure their apps to match their unique workflows, ensuring seamless integration with existing processes.
By leveraging QuickBase's customizable forms, automated workflows, and data tracking capabilities, creative agencies can streamline project management processes. They can centralize project information, track tasks, assign responsibilities, and monitor progress in real-time. This promotes efficient collaboration among team members, facilitates communication, and enables stakeholders to have a comprehensive view of project status and milestones, all within a single platform.
QuickBase Standout Features & Integrations
Features include enterprise-grade security and compliance tools, AI capabilities, reporting and analytics capabilities, mobile capabilities, end-to-end visibility, and resources such as eBooks, research reports, and webinars to help users learn and stay updated on the latest technology trends.
Integrations include Jira, Asana, Tableau, Microsoft Teams, Slack, Trello, DocuSign, Zendesk, OneDrive, and Quickbooks Online.
FigJam is an online whiteboard solution that's versatile and user-friendly. It's created by Figma, and connects easily with the company's design platform, making it a good choice for creative teams already using Figma.
Why I picked FigJam: This software can be used for project management but also brainstorming, ideation, workflow mapping, and more. Your team can either start from a blank canvas or select from one of many pre-built templates available. Templates include timelines, roadmaps, brainstorm frameworks, flowcharts, and more.
What makes this tool stand out is not just its versatility but also its connectivity with Figma. For creative design teams, this is super helpful because you can ideate, plan, track, and execute your work all in the same environment. FigJam assets can be turned into prototypes in Figma, helping your team reduce app-switching and keep things cohesive.
FigJam Standout Features & Integrations
Features include pre-built project management templates, audio and live chat, stamp and emoji reacts, external collaborator access, calendar and timeline widgets, bitmoji avatars, music player, and mobile app.
Integrations include Figma, Microsoft Teams, Asana, Jira, Mixpanel, and Github.
Nifty offers creative teams and organizations a single workspace to collaborate and manage projects.
Why I picked Nifty: Cross-project overviews give organizational clarity, and task progress is automatically updated as teammates complete the corresponding tasks. Nifty boasts automated project status reporting, and a time tracker to track time across members, tasks, and projects. The task list and Kanban view offer added task management flexibility.
Nifty is robust enough to manage development sprints while remaining approachable and flexible to a variety of workflows. A cross-organizational project overview tab provides insights into high-level timelines which can be turned into a task-level deep-dive analysis of any project. Nifty also has a help center to ensure you maximize your team’s efforts.
Nifty Standout Features & Integrations
Features include discussions, forms, time tracking, milestones, file management, project portfolios, and reporting.
Integrations include data import from Asana, Basecamp, ClickUp, and Trello so you can quickly establish your workflow. Along with native integrations with Slack, Google Drive, G Suite, Google Calendar, Zoom, and GitHub; Nifty’s integration with Zapier connects Nifty with over 1000+ apps.
MeisterTask is a Kanban-inspired software that enables effective, creative project management through stunning design and intuitive user experience.
Why I picked MeisterTask: You can organize and manage tasks in a beautifully designed, customizable environment that perfectly adapts to your needs. MeisterTask also helps you bring all your task-related documents into a centralized location. You can attach files and images up to 250MB directly to tasks and browse through them using the integrated attachment viewer.
With MeisterTask, you can also automate recurring steps in your team’s workflow, ensuring team members work more consistently and get more done together. You can automatically assign tasks, move tasks between projects/sprints when they are moved to a new section, track time, or create recurring tasks that are due weekly or monthly.
MeisterTask Standout Features & Integrations
Features include comments and mentions, assignable checklist items, task and project watch, and advanced permissions settings—to provide teams with a robust platform on which to work together.
Integrations include popular tools such as Slack, Microsoft Teams, GitHub, Zendesk, Harvest, and various email apps. In addition to these native integrations, you can use Zapier or IFTTT to connect your projects with hundreds of other tools.
MeisterTask offers a free plan that you can test to see if you're comfortable with the user interface and its task management features.
Freedcamp is a free project management tool that helps streamline projects, processes, workflows, track time and issues.
Why I picked Freedcamp: Freedcamp has invoicing tools, project templates, CRM tools, widget and task boards, Gantt charts, Kanban boards, white-label capabilities to use your own URL and logo, file storage, file editing, a social hub (“Wall”), issue tracker, and more. They have iOS, Android, and Desktop applications available.
As far as my evaluation criteria that chart value for cost, Freedcamp is a standout. That makes it perfect for smaller creative teams that do not have the resources for an expensive suite of PM software on top of everything they already use.
Freedcamp Standout Features & Integrations
Features include FileEdit for automatic upload of document changes, tags, mentions, smart quotes, templates, flexible permissions, and email notifications.
Integrations include Google Calendar, Google Drive, Dropbox, and more through Zapier.
While the UX is a bit clunky, you’ll find it perfectly usable. The clutter of items on-screen at any given time can be a distraction but is not a deal-breaker by any means.
Filestage is a review and approval platform used by agencies and in-house creative teams around the world. From sharing files to collecting feedback, it speeds up every step of your creative review process.
Why I picked Filestage: Filestage centralizes your approval workflow into a single dashboard. From there, you can see every review step, file format, version, and reviewer in your project, with status indicators to show who’s approved what. So at any stage in your creative review process, you can see exactly where things are at a glance.
However, feedback management is where Filestage really shines. You can invite reviewers to add comments and discuss ideas right alongside your content and create review steps to group feedback from different types of stakeholders, like Creative, Account management, and Client. Add in automated timecodes, version comparisons, annotations, and attachments, and Filestage is a great feedback platform.
Filestage Standout Features & Integrations
Features include one-click approvals, unlimited reviewers for your files, annotations on any comment, file attachments, file versioning, and a folder structure so you can organize your different projects.
Integrations include native connections to Slack, Microsoft Teams, Adobe Creative Cloud, and Asana – plus thousands more apps through their integration partners, like Pabbly.
Ziflow
Deliver exceptional creative work with the leading creative collaboration platform for agencies and brands
Ziflow is the leader in online proofing and creative project management. You can automate your entire creative content review process for shorter feedback cycles and faster approval times—all with less manual work. Ziflow is currently used by creative project management teams from Showtime, Splash Worldwide, AWS, Hilton, Weber Grills, WeatherTech, Olly, and Everyday Health.
Ziflow boasts over 1,200 file types supported, SOC2 compliance and capabilities like automated workflow, rich comment threads, auto compare, version management, and integrations with leading project management solutions. They have mark-up tools like real-time discussions threads, shapes/arrows, @-mentions, and change management for audits.
Ziflow integrates with Slack, Clarizen, monday.com, Microsoft Teams, JIRA, Dropbox, Trello, Google Drive, and Asana.
Regular Ziflow users report it being a versatile and easy-to-use creative project management solution. It will excel for teams with numerous feedback cycles or rigorous asset/content approval processes. Graphic design teams, editorial teams, creative agency teams, and marketing departments are just a few examples of groups that will benefit from what Ziflow has to offer.
Ziflow costs from $40/user/month (paid annually) and comes with a 14-day free trial.
Teamwork is a flexible work and project management software that helps agencies become more productive and profitable. It enables agencies to manage high volumes of client projects from start to finish. Teamwork allows you to build flexible, custom workflows and gives you one central place to visualize your team and client projects.
Teamwork offers a number of tools and features to help agencies manage their work. With the Workload feature, you can get a complete picture of your team’s capacity and manage resources and keep your team on track. There's built-in time-tracking on Teamwork to log hours spent working on tasks and track billable hours. Profitability reports allow you to track financial performance by project or team member and compare it against the budget for that client.
Something especially useful about this agency software is that you can add clients as collaborators for free so they can communicate with your team, leave comments in context, review assets and get visibility on project progress.
Teamwork integrates easily with other tools including Gmail, Harvest, Hubspot, QuickBooks, Slack, Dropbox and more.
Teamwork costs from $10/user/month. They also offer a 30-day free trial
Best creative project management software for enterprise
Clarizen is a project management software perfect for creative teams, as it supports and facilitates different workstyles and hybrid methodologies in order to appeal to every user. Configurable workflow automation, in-context collaboration, and real-time information sharing take the burden of much administration out of the picture.
In our evaluation criteria, we call for customization and flexibility because we understand how important these elements are to creative teams. Clarizen offers highly configurable UI at every level and workflow processes that can be customized using dynamic rule sets, ensuring that every kind of thinker feels comfortable with the toolset.
Integrations include Clarizen’s own Clarizen Go, as well as Jira, Microsoft Teams, Slack, Salesforce, Box, Google Drive, Netsuite, Tableau and more. They also have an apps marketplace for their own collections of add-ons and tools.
Clarizen could benefit from a more robust solution to issue tracking. There are also some confusing licensing restrictions with cheaper accounts, like not being able to see certain time tracking reports, paid time off, and so on.
Clarizen starts at $29.95/user/month and has a free 30-day trial.
FunctionFox is a timesheet and project management software that is ideal for creative professionals.
Why I picked FunctionFox: It helps streamline time and expense tracking, estimates and budgeting, running reports, schedules and calendars, task and action assignments, and internal communication. as well as other administrative busywork that can bog down your creative team. They also offer a dedicated account rep with paid plans so it is a good option for those unfamiliar with PM software.
The comparably low cost is complemented by a generous feature set, making it a great option for small teams. FunctionFox offers add-ons that allow for mobile app access (Android and iPhone), Flink (file exchange), and invoicing. Reports can be saved as Excel, CSV, PDF, and HTML.
FunctionFox Standout Features & Integrations
Features include time tracking, retainer tracking, editable rates, project templates, to-do lists with email alerts, freelancer access, and email alerts on comments.
Integrations are not available at the moment.
Affordable and easy to use, FunctionFox speaks to our evaluation component that digs into usability and value for your money.
Other Creative Project Management Software
Need more creative software app ideas? After all, creative projects, and design agency project management, sometimes require thinking outside the box. Here are a few more suggestions to get you going.
- Workzone
A well-rounded project management software that is both powerful and easy to use for creative teams
- Ravetree
For retainer contracts
- Streamtime
Job management software for creative businesses
- Admation
Creative project management and workflow management software designed specifically for marketing teams and ad agencies
- Robohead
Project management solution for in-house marketing teams
- ClientFlow
Software for small creative teams with features for client communication, team collaboration, and project tracking
- COR
All-In-One Management Solution For Creative Agencies
- Nuvro
Clean, efficient software for project collaboration, planning, and monitoring, with features geared towards distributed teams
- Workgroups DaVinci
Creative project management software for workflow automation
- Height
For centralized asset management
Related Project Management Software
If you still haven't found what you're looking for here, check out these other related tools that we've tested and evaluated:
- Project Management Software
- Video Production Project Management Tools
- PR Project Management Software
- Resource Management Software
- Workflow Automation Software
- Time Tracking Software
- Collaboration Tools
- Productivity Tools
- Free Project Management Software
- Advertising Agency Software
- Design Collaboration Tools
Selection Criteria for Creative Project Management Software
Here's the criteria I used to test and evaluate each tool on my shortlist.
Core Project Management Functionality: 25% of final scoring
- Task management and assignment
- Time tracking and logging
- Resource allocation
- Project scheduling and timelines
- Collaboration and communication tools
Additional Standout Features: 25% of final scoring
- Creative briefs for clear project direction
- File sharing and version control to maintain document integrity
- Project templates for quick setup
- Gantt charts for visual project tracking
- Client review and approval processes
Usability: 10% of final scoring
- Intuitive, user-friendly interface
- Drag-and-drop functionality for scheduling
- Customizable dashboards
- Simple navigation and layout
- Responsive design for mobile use
Onboarding: 10% of final scoring
- Comprehensive training videos and tutorials
- Interactive product tours
- Availability of templates to streamline setup
- Chatbots and customer support for immediate assistance
- Webinars and onboarding sessions
Customer Support: 10% of final scoring
- 24/7 support availability
- Multiple support channels (email, chat, phone)
- Responsive and knowledgeable support team
- Comprehensive help center and documentation
- Proactive issue resolution and follow-up
Value For Money: 10% of final scoring
- Competitive pricing plans
- Transparent pricing structure
- Free trial or demo availability
- Features included in basic plans
- Discounts for longer-term commitments
Customer Reviews: 10% of final scoring
- High overall rating
- Positive feedback on ease of use and functionality
- Reviews highlighting standout features
- Consistent praise for customer support
- Reported impact on productivity and project management for agencies
How to Choose Creative Project Management Software
As you work through your own unique software selection process, keep the following points in mind:
- Ease of use: Creative teams thrive in environments that are intuitive and user-friendly, while a steep learning curve can hinder productivity and delay project timelines. Look for software with a simple, clean interface that can be easily navigated by all team members, regardless of their technical proficiency.
- Collaboration features: Effective collaboration is crucial in creative projects where ideas and feedback need to be exchanged seamlessly. Choose software that offers real-time collaboration tools such as shared workspaces, comment sections, and integrated chat or video conferencing.
- Resource management: Look for software that provides comprehensive resource management capabilities, including workload balancing, resource allocation, and time tracking. This lets you optimize the use of your team’s skills and avoid burnout. An example would be a tool that offers a visual resource planner to see who is available for new tasks and who is overbooked at-a-glance.
- Integration capabilities: Creative projects often require the use of various tools and software. Make sure the project management software you choose can integrate with other essential tools like design software like Adobe Creative Cloud, file storage solutions, and communication platforms. This minimizes the need for constant switching between applications, saving time and reducing the risk of errors. .
- Customization options: Every creative agency has unique processes and workflows. It’s important to choose software that can be customized to fit your specific needs, instead of having to change your processes to fit the tool. Look for options that allow you to create custom workflows, templates, and dashboards. For example, the ability to create custom project templates can help standardize best practices across your team, improving efficiency and consistency.
Trends in Creative Project Management Software for 2025
Here are some key trends in agency project management tools that I believe will be influential both now and in the future:
- Enhanced AI-driven task management: AI-powered task management is becoming more popular within the AI project management tools space. This technology can automate routine tasks, prioritize workloads, and suggest optimal workflows, significantly improving efficiency.
- Automated creative workflow automation: The introduction of more sophisticated automation rules allows creative teams to automate repetitive processes and focus on higher-value tasks.
- Predictive analytics: More and more, project management software for creative agencies is incorporating predictive analytics to forecast project outcomes and potential bottlenecks and aid in proactive decision-making.
- Creative asset management: The introduction of creative asset management features allows for better organization and accessibility of digital assets. This can also be achieved using digital asset management software.
- Immersive collaboration environments: Emerging technologies like virtual and augmented reality are also being increasingly integrated into creative agency project management tools, which allows remote teams to experiment with immersive collaboration spaces.
What is Creative Agency Project Management Software?
Creative agency project management software is a tool that helps creative agencies organize, plan, and execute their projects effectively. It combines tools for task management, scheduling, resource allocation, and collaboration. You'll also find features for file sharing, feedback collection, and project tracking.
Project management tools for agencies can also streamline project delivery by keeping all project-related information in one place and providing a clear overview of project timelines, budgets, and resource utilization. This also helps you make informed decisions.
Features of Creative Project Management Software
When selecting creative project management software, keep an eye out for the following key features:
- Task management: Solid task management capabilities help teams assign, track, and prioritize tasks, so everyone knows their responsibilities and deadlines. This helps to manage dependencies and reduce bottlenecks.
- Collaboration tools: Collaboration tools facilitate communication among team members, making it easy to share ideas, feedback, and updates in real-time.
- Time tracking: Time tracking allows teams to monitor how much time is spent on each task. This helps with project budgeting and identifying areas for improvement.
- Resource management: Resource management helps allocate resources like team members, tools, and materials efficiently, which can help prevent overallocation and optimize utilization.
- File sharing: File sharing capabilities make sure all team members have access to the latest versions of files and documents. This reduces the risk of errors and miscommunication.
- Creative briefs: Creative briefs help outline project objectives, the target audience, and deliverables, which provides clear direction and makes sure all stakeholders are aligned.
- Version control: Version control keeps track of changes made to documents and files, so teams can revert to previous versions if needed and maintain a clear history of revisions.
- Project templates: Project templates save time by providing pre-defined structures for common project types. This also helps with consistency and getting started quickly.
- Gantt charts: Gantt charts offer a visual representation of the project timeline, so teams can understand project progress and identify potential delays.
- Client review and approval: Client review and approval features streamline the process of getting feedback and sign-offs from clients, so projects stay on track and meet client expectations.
Benefits of Creative Project Management Software
Here are five key advantages of using creative workflow tools for both users and organizations:
- Enhanced collaboration: Project management software for advertising agencies can improve collaboration by providing a centralized platform for communication, so all team members are aligned and can easily share ideas and feedback.
- Improved efficiency: By streamlining workflows and automating repetitive tasks, the software helps teams work more efficiently, save time, and focus on high-impact creative work.
- Better resource management: Effective resource management features allow organizations to allocate team members and tools efficiently, prevent overwork, and make sure projects are completed on time and within budget.
- Increased transparency: With real-time updates and clear visibility into project progress, project management tools for creative agencies can increase transparency, so teams stay on track and you can make informed decisions quickly.
- Higher quality outputs: The structured approach and comprehensive tools provided by design agency management software lead to higher quality outputs, as teams can meticulously plan, execute, and review their work with greater precision.
Costs & Pricing For Creative Project Management Software
Here's a breakdown of the common plans, their average prices, and the features they typically include:
Plan Comparison Table for Creative Project Management Software
Here is a table that you can use to compare the different plans present in most creative agency PM software.
| Plan Type | Average Price | Common Features |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | Basic task management, file sharing, limited storage and user access, basic collaboration tools |
| Basic | $10 - $20 per user/month | Task management, time tracking, resource allocation, basic reporting, integrations with essential apps |
| Standard | $25 - $40 per user/month | Enhanced collaboration tools, advanced reporting and analytics, project templates, version control, increased storage |
| Premium | $50 - $70 per user/month | All standard features, AI-powered resource management, workflow automation, advanced security features, priority support |
| Enterprise | Custom Pricing | All premium features, custom integrations, dedicated account manager, unlimited storage, enterprise-grade security |
Creative Agency PM Software FAQs
Find answers to common questions about project management at creative agencies.
What is a creative project?
A creative project is, in most cases, an original imaginative or artistic solution to a client’s problem. These types of projects are commonly handled by digital marketing firms, advertising agencies, branding studios, and other creative business types.
What is creative project management?
Creative project management refers to the specialized processes and methodologies used to plan, organize, and execute creative projects and initiatives.
Unlike traditional project management, which focuses more on tangible deliverables and processes, creative project management deals with the unique challenges of managing creative work, such as iterative design processes, subjective feedback, and managing creative talent. It involves techniques like agile workflows, design sprints, and regular stakeholder collaboration to keep creative projects on track and deliver high-quality creative assets on time and within budget. As the project manager, you’re the “go-between” for technical, administrative, and creative teams.
Who uses creative project management software?
There are a number of types of teams and ways to use project management software. Some specific examples include creative agencies, marketing teams, design studios, and product development teams.
Creative work involves collaboration, feedback, and proofing, so an agency project management system that has communication and collaboration features is especially well-suited to this type of work. Creative teams may also have extra appreciation for a friendly drag-and-drop interface or interactive checklists.
As for agencies in particular, the ability to track progress — and to allow clients to track progress — is a big plus. Some agency management systems even offer client portals to facilitate this.
How do you manage a creative project?
There is no single way to manage a creative project. Depending on how your team works, you might take an agile or more waterfall approach. In the same sense, building a product might require a different approach from managing a marketing project.
Whatever your context, here are some steps that you can take to get started:
- Go through a careful requirements gathering process.
- Kick-off the project with solid project kickoff meeting.
- Make sure you know how to make and use a robust project plan and budget.
- Monitor progress and maintain frequent communication (and mitigate against scope creep!).
- Once you’ve delivered the final product, make sure you get useful feedback from your teams (for example, in a retrospective meeting).
What does a project manager at a creative agency do?
So what does the day-to-day of project management look like at a creative agency? Here’s a typical to-do list for a PM working at an agency:
- Review project timelines and adjust schedules as needed.
- Conduct team meetings to track progress and address any issues.
- Coordinate with clients to clarify requirements and provide updates.
- Allocate resources and assign tasks to team members.
- Monitor project budgets and ensure cost-effectiveness.
- Oversee the quality of deliverables and ensure they meet client expectations.
- Manage risks and implement mitigation strategies.
- Update project documentation and maintain records.
- Communicate with stakeholders to manage expectations and report on progress.
- Facilitate problem-solving and decision-making processes.

What’s Next:
If you're in the process of researching creative project management software, connect with a SoftwareSelect advisor for free recommendations.
You fill out a form and have a quick chat where they get into the specifics of your needs. Then you'll get a shortlist of software to review. They'll even support you through the entire buying process, including price negotiations.
