10 Best Design Project Management Software Shortlist
Here's my pick of the 10 best software from the 20 tools reviewed.
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With so many different design project management solutions available, figuring out which is right for you is tough. You know you want to streamline the communication between designers, project managers, and clients, facilitating a more efficient design review and approval process but need to figure out which tool is best for it. I've got you! In this post I'll help make your choice easy, using my personal experiences in dozens of different creative projects and exposure to design tools with large teams and projects to share my picks of the best design project management software.
What is design project management software?
Design project management software is a specialized tool that coordinates and optimizes the planning, execution, and monitoring of design projects, whether it be graphic design, industrial design, or architectural design. These tools typically include features like project planning and scheduling, collaborative design tools, version control for design files, feedback and approval workflows, and integration with design software such as Adobe Creative Cloud or AutoCAD.
Design project management software is essential to orchestrate communication between designers, project managers, and clients and create a central feedback and approval hub for efficient project delivery.
The Best Design Project Management Software Comparison Chart
Here is a table where you can compare all the tools we just covered in the overviews.
Tool | Best For | Trial Info | Price | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Annotations and version control so you don’t miss a beat. | 14-day free trial + free plan available | From $8/user/month (billed annually) | Website | |
2 | Best for resource planning | 14-day free trial + free demo available | From $19.90/user/month (billed annually) | Website | |
3 | Best for profitability tracking | 14-day free trial | From $9/month (billed annually) | Website | |
4 | Best project and work management software for design agencies | 14-day free trial | From $29/user/month (billed annually, min 5 seats) | Website | |
5 | Best for professional services businesses | Not available | Pricing upon request | Website | |
6 | Best for managing design agency projects, clients, and finances | Free trial available | From $9/user/month (billed annually) | Website | |
7 | Best for a highly flexible and customizable solution | Free plan available | From $8/user/month | Website | |
8 | Best for connecting with Figma's design platform | Free plan available | From $15/seat/month (billed annually) | Website | |
9 | User-friendly visuals and intuitive navigation for design teams. | Free trial available | From $8.25/user/month (billed annually) + free plan available | Website | |
10 | Kanban views that can easily map your design projects and keep everyone on track. | 14-day free trial | From $5/user/month (billed annually) + free plan available | Website |
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Smartsheet
This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.4.4 -
Wrike
This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.4.2 -
monday.com
This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.4.6
Overview Of The 10 Best Design Project Management Software
Here’s a brief description of each design project management tool to showcase some noteworthy features, and screenshots to give you a snapshot of the user interface.
monday.com is a feature-rich tool that will allow you to handle almost any project that comes your way. Their creative request workflow template allows you to centralize all the design work in one place, standardize request intakes, organize and manage assets.
Want to start simple? Build a ‘creatives board’. It will give you some structure on the main table view, like a status and file column. Add a kanban view to your board, start changing the status to the stages of your design project cycle and voila! You have your first attempt at a design project board.
Once you upload files, anyone added to the board can click on it, add comments, and download files. Great to keep your client and team feedback in one place.
Designers rejoice! monday.com has developed a plugin for you to use with your Adobe Creative Cloud software. You can review the tasks assigned to you, read briefs, and upload designs directly to your monday.com account once you are done.
monday.com is free for up to 2 users and paid plans start at $8/user/month and offers a 14-day free trial.
Scoro is an all-in-one business management software designed to help professional and creative services streamline their operations. It combines project management, time tracking, sales, billing, and reporting into a single platform, enabling teams to work more efficiently.
One reason I chose Scoro is its real-time Gantt chart feature. This tool lets you track progress, tasks, dependencies, and events in an always up-to-date view, helping you adapt quickly to changes and understand how delays or logged hours impact your plans. By minimizing manual updates and avoiding double bookings, your team can focus more on the creative aspects of design projects.
I also like Scoro's resource planning capabilities. With a drag-and-drop planner or Kanban task board, you can distribute tasks effectively, ensuring balanced workloads and preventing overlaps. Shared calendars, timesheets, and a built-in time tracker help manage your team's time efficiently while monitoring billable and non-billable hours ensures accountability for time spent on client work.
Integrations include Google Calendar, Microsoft Exchange, QuickBooks, Xero, Stripe, PayPal, Jira, Asana, HubSpot, Salesforce, Dropbox, and Zapier.
Productive is an all-in-one project management tool that helps you manage your entire workflow, from sending proposals and planning resources to delivering projects and billing clients.
Productive provides a focus on profitability. It allows you to run each project like a separate profit and loss statement, giving you clear insights into your financial performance. This feature helps you understand which projects are most profitable and where you might need to adjust your strategies.
Another useful aspect is Productive's resource planning capabilities. You can allocate your team's time effectively, ensuring that everyone is working on the right tasks at the right time. This helps prevent overbooking or underutilizing your team members, leading to more efficient project completion.
Integrations include Google Calendar, Jira, Slack, QuickBooks, Xero, Zapier, Sage, BambooHR, and HubSpot.
Ravetree
Best project and work management software for design agencies
Ravetree is a work management app that can help teams in various industries and domains track their projects from conception through to completion. In addition to its project management capabilities, the software offers resource planning, budgeting, file management, and a built-in CRM. Its robust feature set makes it a good option for design teams working in agency settings, but it can just as well be used by in-house design teams.
Teams can build request forms using the software to handle incoming projects from clients or other internal departments. The details from these forms can then be used to create new projects, which can be broken down into tasks and checklists for various team members to accomplish. Multiple deadlines can be set for different project pieces, helping teams break their work down into milestones.
The software also has budgeting, billing, and invoicing capabilities. Teams can track their project budgets as they progress in their work. Client portals can also be configured to manage communications, updates, invoicing, and other customer relations directly through the platform.
Users can connect the software to their other tools including Dropbox, HubSpot, Instagram, Google Drive, OneDrive, QuickBooks, and Stripe. Paid plans start from $29/user/month, and a 7-day free trial is available.
Kantata is a digital work management platform designed to streamline and optimize the management of digital projects. It provides not just basic project management features but also workflow, resource, and financial management tools, as well as team collaboration and business intelligence features. It's a good option for professional services businesses and teams, such as design agencies or creative services providers.
The software aims to enhance performance throughout the professional services project lifecycle. You can ensure projects stay on track with real-time financial oversight and status updates. Its ability to centralize project management alongside assigning tasks and tracking budgets makes it an ideal choice for managing complex digital projects. Plus, your team can stay in the loop through its built in collaboration tools.
Kantata integrates with several other workplace tools including Slack, Sage, Quickbooks, Expensify, BambooHR, NetSuite, Jira, Salesforce, Xero, and Google Workspace.
Pricing information is available upon request, as is a free demo.
Best for managing design agency projects, clients, and finances
Bonsai is a comprehensive business management platform tailored for creative and digital agencies, consultancies, and professional service providers. It offers a suite of tools essential for design project management, including client management, project management, and financial management.
Its client management features, including CRM capabilities, enable designers to maintain detailed records of client interactions, preferences, and project history, facilitating personalized service and efficient communication. Additionally, Bonsai’s project management tools allow for the seamless organization of tasks, deadlines, and milestones, ensuring that every aspect of the design process is tracked and managed effectively for both budgeting and billing purposes.
Bonsai also offers built-in invoicing, time tracking, and expense tracking, so designers can easily manage their finances without needing separate software. Automated invoicing and integrated payment processing further improve the billing process, while detailed financial reports provide insights into project profitability and overall business health.
Integrations include Trello, Google Sheets, Google Drive, Slack, Gmail, Google Calendar, ClickUp, Calendly, Zapier, Xero, Mailchimp, HubSpot CRM, QuickBooks Online, and more.
Miro is a visual collaboration platform tailored for design project management, offering an extensive virtual whiteboard space. It supports various forms of idea expression, including shapes, flowcharts, sticky notes, and multimedia elements. Additional key features include an infinite canvas for unrestricted ideation, TalkTrack for asynchronous video explanations of process maps, and asynchronous collaboration tools, like comments and reactions, to facilitate continuous feedback.
Miro also comes with a large bank of templates for agile workflows, roadmaps and strategy planning, brainstorm sessions, and various other use cases. Overall, it's a highly flexible solution that's well suited to the needs of design teams who may need a customizable workspace that accommodates diverse working styles and schedules.
The software integrates with other workplace tools like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Slack, Google Workspace, Asana, monday.com, Jira, Dropbox, OneDrive, Notion, Airtable, ClickUp, and Unito, among others. A free plan is available and paid plans start from $10 per user per month.
FigJam is a virtual whiteboard solution that offers real-time collaboration tools. It's created by Figma, and designed to integrate with Figma's design platform. The flexible and versatile platform can facilitate project planning, task tracking, and more, and you can then sync up the assets you create with your Figma account.
Because of how freeform of a solution it is, the whiteboarding tool is helpful for more than just project management. You can use it for ideation, rough prototyping, and other use cases. Its automations can do things like auto-sort your sticky notes or consolidate notes into clear action items. There's also lots of support documentation available, both from Figma and from the Figma community.
What makes FigJam especially useful for design teams is its integration with Figma's design platform. For product and design teams, this is super useful because you can plan, manage, and execute your work all within the same environment.
Native integrations are available for Figma, Microsoft Teams, Asana, Jira, Mixpanel, and Github.
A freemium plan is available for up to 3 boards, and paid plans start from $3 per user, per month.
User-friendly visuals and intuitive navigation for design teams.
MeisterTask is a task management tool with user-friendly visuals and intuitive navigation. Although it has no proofing integrated just yet, it has other features that can help you and your team stay on top of projects.
One of my personal favorites is their agenda. This is a section where your team will be able to see all the tasks assigned to them and arrange them in custom status columns. Perfect so they can prioritize their work across different projects.
MeisterTask has integrations with Google Workspace, Office 365, and thousands of other apps through Zapier.
MeisterTask is free for single use. Paid plans start at $8.25/user/month and offer a 30-day free trial.
Trello
Kanban views that can easily map your design projects and keep everyone on track.
Trello is a kanban-specialized software that has robust features and lovely visuals. Although I would not recommend it if you need a view like Timeline (since it’s relatively new), it’s a software that has been around since 2011 and has millions of dollars invested in its development.
The thing I enjoy the most and think is useful for design projects is the checklists. Inside each card we can create checklists with items that could be considered subtasks. Since the client is always trying to change the scope of projects, this helps it be flexible enough to support it.
Trello has over 150 power-ups that can help you connect to tools like Zeplin, InVision, Miro, and Figma.
Trello has a free version of the software and paid plans start at $5/user/month with a 14-day free trial.
Other Design Project Management Software Options
Here are a few more tools that did not make it to the top but are worth your consideration.
- IntelligenceBank
Marketing operations platform with digital asset management capabilities.
- Filestage
For its variety of ways to gather feedback
- Ziflow
Deliver great creative work through collaboration
- Teamwork.com
Project management with unlimited free access for your clients.
- Gain
Reviews and team collaboration in one place so you have full control of your project.
- Height App
For collaborating across teams and with external partners
- ClickUp
Share links with clients to review your work and hide sensitive information.
- Celoxis
For managing a portfolio of design projects
- Zoho Projects
Design project management and collaboration software
- Screendragon
Real-time collaboration for your proofing stage.
How I Picked The Best Design Project Management Software
Coming up with this list started by selecting the best project management software for design projects based on user rating and reviews. Then, I used my experience to list the basic and advanced features this type of software needs to be deemed a good tool. Finally, I selected the top contenders and developed the criteria below to use in my evaluation.
Core Functionality
As a baseline, I looked for core project management features like task management and project planning tools.
Key Features
Beyond the basic functionality, I looked out for these key features in the project management solutions I evaluated:
- Briefs & Intake Forms: this simplifies the intake process with dynamic forms that allow your teams to set specific question flows for incoming requests, storing all these details in a central location.
- Visual, Customizable Workload Management: this includes project planning and task tracking features that help everyone manage their workloads. They should be able to see projects, tasks, deadlines, dependencies, and scheduling conflicts in a timeline, and track their progress on visual dashboards. And because each creative team works in its own unique way, custom approval workflows are a useful feature for defining and monitoring your work.
- Collaboration Features: feedback, revision, and collaboration is a major part of the creative process. The best project management system for creative teams should facilitate this process with real-time collaborative editing in a shared workspace, visual markups, feedback consolidation, and version control that clearly shows the item’s changes and approval history. You can find specific design collaboration tools here as well.
- Reporting Features: because of the nature of creative work, justifying the cost of creative teams can present a challenge—the best software includes beautiful, simple reports that illustrate your team’s progress and value to stakeholders.
- Budget Management: includes estimation, invoice management, billing, time-tracking, and financial reporting features that capitalize on project data already in your system, saving you from administrative headache.
- Project Templates: These can seriously speed up the process of outlining new projects. Having customizable templates you can reuse for new client projects is super helpful, and the ability to create your own templates is even better.
- Guest Access: Whether it’s for clients, freelancers, or another external contributor, it’s great to be able to share your project plan or progress with a guest. Especially for design projects where you may be soliciting external feedback or collaborating with outside contributors.
Usability
I want to see if team members can easily access communication features that will help work on complex projects. Collaboration in these projects includes the ability to share files and docs, monitor project progress, and collaboratively tackle task lists. The user interface can also heavily impact a tool’s learning curve. Therefore, I see if it offers clear displays and intuitive navigation that your team members would like to use.
Integrations
I’ll look for pre-built integrations primarily with Adobe’s Creative Suite (Photoshop, Premiere Pro, InDesign, Illustrator, etc). Other tools can include resource management software, file sharing software, and even other PM tools, like Basecamp. Anything that can help the team import or export their work, and make the transition to this software easier.
Pricing
The cost of these tools can vary, but most are a subscription-based model with a cost per user, per month. Entry-level plans can be anywhere from $6 up to $25+ per user per month, while premium plans will come at higher price points. Many vendors offer free trials and even free plans with limited feature sets and functionality. For small businesses, small teams, and startups, these can often be enough!
What tools are commonly used in design management?
A common tool in these types of projects is digital asset management software. This is a tool that allows your design team to upload all creative deliverables onto the same platform, collect multiple versions of a file, request feedback, collaborate, and interact with the client.
What's Next?
That’s all folks! If you are still curious to find more tools, check out our list for creative agency project management. Additionally, I would invite you to read on the use of design thinking in project management as it will help you generate a wide range of creative ideas.
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