The Best Design Project Management Software Shortlist
Here’s the list of the best design project management software that I’ll cover in this article.
Design projects, also known as creative projects, are a particular flavor of digital projects. They require massive amounts of participation and collaboration because there is high dependency between departments to complete a job. Chances are you will not be working on one project only, so you need a tool that can help you and your team manage multiple projects at the same time.
Even though I’m covering these tools from a design-focused and client approval lens, remember that design is not the only component. In website design projects, for example, it’s important to have a good looking site. Equally important is to have a content creation process because that’s what will make the reader stay after being lured by the design.
Content creation might be the topic some other time, but for now let's go to the tools that will help us get our designs done and approved faster!
Comparison Criteria
What do I look for when I select the best design project management software? Here’s a summary of my evaluation criteria:
- User Interface (UI): Does it offer clear displays and intuitive navigation that your team members would like to use?
- Usability: How easy is it to move the content from one stage to the other and alert teams of what is happening with the project? Additionally, I want to see if it’s easy to manage files efficiently and access team members through built-in communication features.
- Integrations: I’ll look for pre-built integrations with Adobe’s Creative Suite (Photoshop, Premiere Pro, InDesign, Illustrator, etc). Anything that can help the team import or export their work, and make the transition to this software easier.
Design Project Management Software Key Features
- 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.
- Collaborative Feedback: 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.
- 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.
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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.
Wrike
Creative brief templates to help you start your project on the right foot.
Wrike is a powerful project management software that enables design teams to create their own customized workflows based on their unique needs. Streamline work intake, simplify proofing, configure creative workflows, and increase delivery in a single collaborative platform. Spend less time on repetitive administrative tasks and more time producing high-quality design projects.
Pre-built templates will help you create design workflows and launch design projects quickly and efficiently. Wrike features customizable briefs and request forms, visual and customizable workload management, space for team members to provide feedback, and reporting and analytics. Customize workflows, dashboards, reports, and request forms with highly configurable software that’s designed to eliminate time-consuming admin, so your team can spend more time creating high-value assets.
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. Users also have access to a variety of pre-built templates for common organizational processes that allow teams to launch projects faster.
Wrike has over 400 integrations, including with Adobe Creative Cloud, giving you the visibility and efficiency you need without disrupting your team’s creativity. The Wrike extension for Adobe is free for all Wrike subscribers and is available for Photoshop CC, Illustrator CC, InDesign CC, and Premiere Pro CC.
Wrike costs $9.80 per user per month and offers four different price points, including a free version and plans which allow users to invite free external collaborators to a paid account. It’s suitable for teams of five or more.
monday.com
Annotations and version control so you don’t miss a beat.
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.
Ziflow
Deliver great creative work through collaboration
Want to avoid wasted hours spent reworking design projects, a frustrated team, and dissatisfied clients? Ziflow’s creative collaboration software is used by companies such as Amazon AWS, Toyota and Weber to streamline the creative review, approval and project management process.
The platform offers a real-time collaboration & feedback capture, and workflow automation that, together, can bring clarity & visibility to your creative process and enable faster turnarounds.
Ziflow's key features include centralized asset management across projects and file types, workflow automation and templates, intake forms so anyone can easily launch a project centralized collaboration & review platform, and project dashboards.
Ziflow integrates with Adobe Creative Suite, Dropbox, Slack, Basecamp, and more right out of the box. Also, they have an integration platform called Ziflow connect, with which you can connect it to 1000+ more apps.
Ziflow has a free forever plan, and its prices start at $40/user/month. Finally, they offer a 14-day free trial of their business tier.
ClickUp
Share links with clients to review your work and hide sensitive information.
Among the many use cases that ClickUp has, design work is definitely one of the top ones as the tool has templates for projects like clothing design, website design, interior design, graphic design, and more.
Design work requires a lot of interaction with clients and this pm tool is ready for it. It has proofing and annotation features that streamline content approval communications. Want to invite your client into the process? ClickUp lets you share a customized link to a task, where you can choose the information your client will have access to.
You can embed Figma and Invision designs directly in ClickUp. The software can also integrate with Adobe Creative Cloud through Zapier.
ClickUp is free with limited storage for an unlimited number of users. Paid plans start at $5/user/month and offer a free-trial.
Height App
Best for collaborating across teams and with external partners
Height App is a project management software that supports cross-functional collaboration and collaboration with external contributors. Users can create and assign tasks and subtasks related to projects and provide customized guest access to parties outside of the organization. Projects can be managed using a calendar, spreadsheet, Gantt charts, or Kanban boards.
The software has collaboration features that support design teams in working together on projects directly in the platform. Live chat and inline media like images, videos, and even Figma files facilitates collaborative design processes and feedback loops. Multiple users can be assigned to tasks and multiple lists can be added to tasks to fit the needs of complex creative processes.
Users can configure custom keyboard shortcuts for faster navigation of the software. Dark and light modes are also available and individual users can create their own views in the app, making it customizable to various preferences. The software integrates with popular workplace tools like Slack, Notion, GitHub, and Zapier.
Paid plans start from $6.99/user/month and a 30-day free trial is available.
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.
Miro
Best for a highly flexible and customizable solution
Miro is a visual collaboration platform that allows teams to create and collaborate on project planning, brainstorming and ideation, and workflow processes virtually. It's a virtual whiteboard where team members can add shapes, flowcharts, sticky notes, and more to share their ideas and exchange feedback with one another. Voting, clustering, and timers are also included to facilitate meetings and decision-making.
Unlike more traditional project management platforms, Miro is truly a blank canvas that can be configured in a ton of different ways. It also comes with a large bank of templates for agile workflows, roadmaps and strategy planning, brainstorm sessions, and various other use cases. It's a highly flexible solution that's well suited to the needs of design teams who may work differently and require less rigid structures for their planning.
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.
MeisterTask
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.
IntelligenceBank
Marketing operations platform with digital asset management capabilities.
Intelligencebank is a marketing operations platform designed for agency projects. Centralizing your digital assets, collaborating with team members, and approving content are only some of the features this tool has to offer.
What I really like about this tool is that when you look at a design you can access other versions of that work in a couple of clicks. Go to the pane on the right and click on the revision tab. Want to compare two versions? Simply select the two and the tool will display them side by side.
Intelligencebank integrates with Adobe Photoshop, InDesign, and other tools from Adobe’s creative suite.
Intelligencebank pricing is given upon request and grouped into 5 tiers.
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.
The 10 Best Design Project Management Software Summary
| Tool | Free Option | Price | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Wrike Creative brief templates to help you start your project on the right foot. | Free plan available | From $9.80/user/month | Visit Website |
| 2 | monday.com Annotations and version control so you don’t miss a beat. | 14-day free trial + freemium plan available | From $8/user/month (billed annually, min 3 seats) | Visit Website |
| 3 | Ziflow Deliver great creative work through collaboration | 14-day free trial + freemium plan available | From $40/user/month | Visit Website |
| 4 | ClickUp Share links with clients to review your work and hide sensitive information. | Freemium plan available | From $9/user/month | Visit Website |
| 5 |  Height App Best for collaborating across teams and with external partners | Upon sign-up, interested parties can get a 30-day free trial of Height App's Team plan. | Height App's premium plan for teams costs $6.99 per member monthly. | Visit Website |
| 6 | Ravetree Best project and work management software for design agencies | 7-day free trial | From $29/user/month | Visit Website |
| 7 | Miro Best for a highly flexible and customizable solution | Free plan available | From $10/user/month | Visit Website |
| 8 | MeisterTask User-friendly visuals and intuitive navigation for design teams. | Free trial available | From $8.25/month (billed annually) | Visit Website |
| 9 | IntelligenceBank Marketing operations platform with digital asset management capabilities. | Demo available | Pricing upon request | Visit Website |
| 10 | Trello Kanban views that can easily map your design projects and keep everyone on track. | Free trial + freemium plan available | From $6/user/month | Visit Website |
Other Options
Here’s a few more that didn’t make the top list.
- Filestage
Best for its variety of ways to gather feedback
- Asana
Tool with proofing that automatically generates sub-tasks.
- Hive
Has a Photoshop plugin so your designers can focus on designing.
- Gain
Reviews and team collaboration in one place so you have full control of your project.
- Teamwork
Project management with unlimited free access for your clients.
- Zoho Projects
Best design project management and collaboration software
- Screendragon
Real-time collaboration for your proofing stage.
- VOGSY
Creative project management software for Google Workspace
- Smartsheet
A work execution platform with useful content collaboration tool features and project dashboards to keep creative teams in sync
- Planview Clarizen
Creative project management solution for enterprise
What Do You Think About This List?
That’s all folks! If you are still curious to find more tools, check out our list for creative agency project management. I also know you want more awesome project management content delivered right to your inbox, so join our Insider Membership Newsletter for fun facts, articles, and everything DPM.