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10 Best Project Management Tools For Remote Teams In 2023

List Of Best Project Management Tools For Remote Teams

Here’s a shortlist of the best project management tools for remote teams:

  1. 1. monday.com — Best remote PM tool for 3rd-party integrations
  2. 2. Smartsheet — Best remote project management tool for sales reps
  3. 3. Hub Planner — Best for midsized to large companies
  4. 4. Height — Best for extensive reporting and analytics tools
  5. 5. Miro — Best collaborative whiteboard for remote teams
  6. 6. Forecast — Best for managing your projects, resources, and finances in one
  7. 7. Paymo — Best remote project management tool for freelancers
  8. 8. MeisterTask — Best tool for mixed OS teams
  9. 9. ProjectManager.com — Best software for remote teams using hybrid project methodologies
  10. 10. Hubstaff — Best free PM tool for remote teams

Below you’ll find an overview of each of the 10 best project management tools for remote teams, with screenshots, feature overviews, and pricing.

Remote work is both a current trend and the way of the future. There are benefits that come along with it, too. Teleworkers are, on average, 35-40% more productive than their in-office counterparts! It’s a great way to attract quality candidates to your company, as you can hire from anywhere. A report by Buffer indicated that a whopping 99% of survey participants preferred some level of remote work in their career.

That being said, remote teams only work if you have the best apps backing you up. Communication tools and Gantt charts, roadmaps and time management, Kanban boards, and file management—you’ll need it all! Here are 10 project management tools for remote teams that I have personally vetted and think you will love.

Overviews Of The 10 Best Project Management Tools For Remote Teams

Here’s a brief description of each of the tools on my list showing what it does best, plus screenshots to showcase some of the features.

1

monday.com

Best remote PM tool for 3rd-party integrations

Used by over 100,000 teams, Monday.com offers a host of tools for planning, tracking, and delivering remote work for different projects. Out-of-office teams will most likely have a collection of apps they need on a daily basis and Monday.com delivers with hundreds on third-party integrations to choose from. They connect with the apps you would expect, like Slack and Microsoft, as well as more niche software like Eventbrite.

monday.com costs from $6/user/month and comes with a free 14-day trial. They offer a free plan for up to 2 users.

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
4.7 8599

14-day free trial + free plan available

From $8/user/month (billed annually, min 3 seats)

Pros

  • Very easy to invite others, share timelines, and assign tasks
  • Simple organization by dragging and dropping tasks
  • Excellent collaborative features

Cons

  • No bottleneck identification or assistance
  • Automations are not fully customizable
  • Best features locked to Standard or Pro versions
2

Smartsheet

Best remote project management tool for sales reps

Smartsheet unifies the most important work functions—collaboration, workflows, and content management—in a single, flexible platform. They have plenty of department-specific recommendations but the sales solution stands out in particular thanks to its ability to manage complex customer engagement processes. Deal management and pipeline transparency are just a few of the sales-specific tools remote sales teams will appreciate.

Smartsheet costs from $7/user/month, with a minimum of 3 users and a maximum of 25 users. They also offer a 30-day free trial.

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
4.4 7400

Freemium version available

From $7/user/month

Pros

  • Customizable sheets and dashboards for different departments
  • Reminders and update requests are great collaborative tools
  • Quick Gantt charts with easy entry of tasks

Cons

  • Power users may hit row and cell link limitations
  • Changes do not autosave instantly when editing
  • Might be over-engineered for simple projects
3

Hub Planner

Best for midsized to large companies

Hub Planner is a remote project management tool with robust resource management and team management tools. The tool provides transparency and visibility into which team members are working on what, and allows users to see availability by team member and skill set.

The tool allows users to optimize resource time, handle time off and vacation requests, forecast your demand, and track actuals in timesheets and much more. Visualize team utilization and plan your project schedules effectively. The intuitively designed scheduler gives management and team members a birds eye view of what they are working on in remote environments.

Other useful features include custom fields, timesheets, budget management, and more. Hub Planner can integrate with a variety of other apps through Zapier, and the tool offers an API for further integrations.

Pricing starts at $7 per month.

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
4.2 16

30-day free trial

From $7/user/month (billed annually)

Pros

  • Excellent capacity planning and forecasting
  • Beautiful user experience and user interface
  • Powerful built-in and custom reporting features

Cons

  • Some features only available through the premium plan
  • Needs more inline integrations
4

Height

Best for extensive reporting and analytics tools

Height is a cloud-based project management tool that helps organizations boost productivity, streamline communication, and enable efficient collaboration among remote team members.

One of the critical features of Height is its centralized task management system, which makes it easier for team members to stay on top of their assigned tasks, the project's status, and essential deadlines. This system also allows team leaders to prioritize specific tasks and monitor the work progress of their team members. With its inbuilt messaging system and real-time collaboration tools, team members can easily communicate and collaborate regardless of their geographical locations. This helps minimize communication barriers, encourage transparency, and ensure everyone works towards the same goals.

Height boasts of various automation tools that help reduce team members' workloads and streamline project workflows. This includes task automation, recurring tasks, and the ability to create project task templates that can be reused for future projects. The software comes with extensive reporting and analytics tools that provide valuable insights into project performance, identifying potential bottlenecks and highlighting areas that require improvement. This helps team leaders make informed decisions, optimize project workflows, and ensure projects are completed on time and within budget.

The platform is highly customizable and quickly tailored to suit unique needs and preferences. Its flexible user interface allows users to modify settings, workflows, and visualizations to match their team's specific requirements. It also seamlessly integrates various project management components such as task lists, calendar views, and dashboards to provide a comprehensive overview of the work. With the tool's dashboard functionality, team leaders can easily see the project's progress and identify any issues that need to be addressed. It provides automated reports and analytics that allow team members to measure their progress against their goals, making it easier to identify areas of improvement.


30-day free trial

From $8.50/user/month

5

Miro

Best collaborative whiteboard for remote teams

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

Miro has a shared visual workspace for remote project management teams, with interactive displays, video conferencing, and work on mobile devices (Android and iOS). You can choose from a library of readymade project templates to decide how your team should visualize each project. To get started, you can check out Miro’s free Hybrid Team Collaboration Guide.

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

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

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

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
4.8 3414

Free plan available

From $10/user/month

Pros

  • Free forever plan available
  • Intuitive and easy setup
  • Built-in communication features for streamlined collaboration

Cons

  • Visitor/guest accounts locked to paid plans only
  • Zooming can be jumpy on larger projects
  • Free version does not allow high-quality export to pdf
6

Forecast

Best for managing your projects, resources, and finances in one

Forecast is a project management software for remote teams that unites your projects, resources, and financials in one AI-powered platform. Project managers can leverage Forecast’s workflow automation capabilities to create smart schedules, estimate timeframes and budgets, and populate timesheets instantly. Forecast is currently used in over 40 countries by an assortment of remote- and hybrid agencies, consulting companies, SMBs, and enterprises.

PMs can control the workflow by building out detailed task lists and flagging clear priorities. Task cards allow remote team members to easily comment, share files, and register time spent. Everything related to the specific task appears in one place, including dependencies and subtasks. You can put together projects for any type of work: fixed price, time and material, or retainer.

Forecast’s AI learns from previous work and suggests the number of hours you normally register on similar tasks to help you log time faster. You can monitor time registrations from a team perspective and notify each member if they forget to enter something in. Time tracking utilization on a company-wide level is calculated for you for easy alerts, estimates, and reporting.

Forecast integrates with Slack, Microsoft Teams, iCloud Calendar, Google Drive, Google Calendar, Outlook, Harvest, Trello, Asana, GitLab, Github, and dozens more using a paid plan through Zapier. Higher-tier subscriptions include native integrations with Timelog, Xero, QuickBooks Online, JIRA, Azure DevOps, Salesforce, Okta, OneLogin, and Azure Active Directory.

Forecast cost from $29/user/month with a minimum of 10 users and offers a 14-day free trial.

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
4.7 248

14-day free trial

From $29/user/month

Pros

  • Projects, resources and financials connected in one platform
  • AI powered auto-scheduling and time entry suggestions
  • Excellent iOS and Android apps
  • Automated cost and budget estimations

Cons

  • No browser extension for time tracking
  • No asset management
  • Minimum of 10 seats
7

Paymo

Best remote project management tool for freelancers

Paymo helps users manage tasks, create schedules, track time, and bill clients with a solution that's tailored to the needs of small and medium businesses. Used by over 50,000 recorded freelancers, Paymo has a simple but thorough time management system, easy invoicing, client-ready report templates, and convenient file storage. For simple task management and time tracking, Paymo offers a free freelancer edition of their tool.

Paymo costs from $9.95/user/month and offers a 15-day free trial.

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
4.6 561

15-day free trial

From $5.95/user/month

Pros

  • Time tracking easily runs in the background with little interference
  • Organizes jobs intuitively and can easily archive jobs
  • Easy to share content with external stakeholders

Cons

  • Large learning curve compared to others
  • Project table layout categories challenging to edit
  • Budgets from projects to tasks can be difficult to calculate
8

MeisterTask

Best tool for mixed OS teams

MeisterTask tackles everything from individual task management to holistic project planning with a simple-to-use interface. Remote teams may be scattered across a variety of device types but that's not a problem for MeisterTask, which works with iOS, Android, Mac, and Windows. Their smart device apps are no joke, either, with a 4.7-star rating on the Google Play Store at the time of writing this. They were also named Editor's Choice on the iOS App Store.

MeisterTask costs from $8.25/user/month and offers a free version for up to 3 projects.

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
4.6 171

Free trial available

From $8.25/month (billed annually)

Pros

  • Intuitive and user-friendly UI
  • Very easy to manage several projects at the same time
  • Access to unlimited project boards

Cons

  • Timeline and custom fields are restricted to Business accounts
  • File attachments limited to 200 MB per file
  • After loading a file into a task it cannot be downloaded immediately
9

ProjectManager.com

Best software for remote teams using hybrid project methodologies

ProjectManager lets users choose their own project view, be it agile, waterfall, or a hybrid methodology—whatever suits their needs. Flexible project views offer kanban boards, Gantt charts, task lists, and other common workflow arrangements. Remote teams will also appreciate their dedication to interdepartmental collaboration through an intuitive commenting system, robust roadmaps, and unlimited file-sharing.

ProjectManager costs from $15/user/month and offers a 30-day free trial.

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
4.4 90

30-day free trial

From $16/user/month

Pros

  • Good for costing and construction work monitoring
  • Easy to use project scheduling
  • Fits well into an Agile framework

Cons

  • No way to track and update partially complete tasks
  • No way to sort Agile Boards by project, only by task
  • Most reports require a manual clean-up
10

Hubstaff

Best free PM tool for remote teams

Hubstaff Tasks is a project management tool for remote teams with multiple task tracking and collaboration features. Its interface is based on the Kanban methodology; it lets you organize tasks in different project stages, which are represented by columns. Each task can be categorized using color-coded labels. One of its notable features is custom workflows. These let you automate assigning tasks to team members at different project stages and moving them forward with one click.

You can create checklists within each task and track them from the project view using progress bars. Files can also be attached to task cards, but the free plan only allows up to 100 MB of storage per user. Switching to the sprints view displays all your assigned tasks, organized by sprint. You can move tasks to current or future sprints or to the backlog with a drag-and-drop mechanism similar to Kanban.

Hubstaff Tasks integrates with Active Collab, Asana, Breeze, ClickUp, GitHub, GitLab, Insightly, JIRA, LiquidPlanner, Mavenlink, Paymo, PivotalTracker, Podio, Redbooth, Redmine, Teamwork Projects, Trello, Unfuddle, Wrike, Zoho Projects, Slack, Zendesk, Salesforce, QuickBooks, and other apps. You can boost your integration options with a paid plan through Zapier, unlocking hundreds of other possible connections.

Hubstaff Tasks is free for up to 5 users and 10 projects. The premium plan starts at $7/user/month.

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
4.3 392

14-day free trial

From $7/user/month

Pros

  • Generous free plan for small teams
  • Excellent project management templates
  • Can opt in/out of sprints for each project
  • Very simple to launch/get started

Cons

  • No WIP limits or swimlanes
  • Limited 3rd-party integrations
  • No mobile app

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The Best Project Management Tools For Remote Teams Comparison Chart

Here is a table where you can compare the tools we just covered in the overviews.

Tool Free Option Price
1
monday.com

Best remote PM tool for 3rd-party integrations

14-day free trial + free plan available

From $8/user/month (billed annually, min 3 seats) Visit Website
2
Smartsheet

Best remote project management tool for sales reps

Freemium version available

From $7/user/month Visit Website
3
Hub Planner

Best for midsized to large companies

30-day free trial

From $7/user/month (billed annually) Visit Website
4
Height

Best for extensive reporting and analytics tools

30-day free trial

From $8.50/user/month Visit Website
5
Miro

Best collaborative whiteboard for remote teams

Free plan available

From $10/user/month Visit Website
6
Forecast

Best for managing your projects, resources, and finances in one

14-day free trial

From $29/user/month Visit Website
7
Paymo

Best remote project management tool for freelancers

15-day free trial

From $5.95/user/month Visit Website
8
MeisterTask

Best tool for mixed OS teams

Free trial available

From $8.25/month (billed annually) Visit Website
9
ProjectManager.com

Best software for remote teams using hybrid project methodologies

30-day free trial

From $16/user/month Visit Website
10
Hubstaff

Best free PM tool for remote teams

14-day free trial

From $7/user/month Visit Website

Other Project Management Tools For Remote Teams

Here are a few remote project planning tools that didn’t quite make the list but are still worth checking out.

  1. ClickUp

    Best remote project management tool for screen recording

  2. Kintone

    Best for building custom project workflows

  3. Teamwork

    Best platform for client work

  4. Hive

    Best remote tool for agencies

  5. Wrike

    Best for agile teams

  6. Celoxis

    Best for remote project portfolio management

  7. Kantata

    Best for business intelligence (BI)

  8. Ravetree

    Best remote project management for professional services businesses

  9. Kissflow

    Best simple project management software for remote teams

  10. Scoro

    Best for customizable dashboards

  11. Sciforma

    Best for scalability

  12. KeyedIn

    Best for PMO analytics

  13. Zoho Projects

    Best for CRM needs

  14. ProWorkflow

    Best variety of remote collaboration features

  15. Asana

    Best drag-and-drop task list

How I Picked The Best Project Management Tools For Remote Teams

First, I selected all the popular project management platforms on the market based on user reviews and ratings. Then, I narrowed down the list using my experience in building remote teams and the key features required for remote work. Finally, I weighed the remaining tools against each other based on their features and some of the criteria that I details below and used for my evaluation of each tool.

User Interface (UI)

Remote team members may have a series of apps to switch through every day, so is the software UI intuitive and engaging to prevent burnout? Bonus: Does the project management software for remote work feature any gamification or accountability boosters?

Usability

Can remote workers figure out the tool with no in-person training required? Do virtual teams have access to online tutorials, whitepapers, live chat check-ins, real-time webinars, project templates, and community forums?

Integrations

Remote employees rarely use only one piece of software for their day-to-day; so, does the PM tool integrate with other common types of software (timesheets, collaboration tools, file sharing, messaging, task management, video conferencing, CRM, invoicing)? Does the project management solution easily and securely connect with popular workspace software like Slack, Google Drive and Google Docs, Dropbox, Jira, Skype, Zoom, Microsoft Suite, Proofhub)?

Pricing

Most remote projects require workflow tools that do a bit of everything. Does the functionality of the tool seem fair for the list of services they are providing? Is the pricing scheme accommodating to large and small teams alike? Does the cost include mobile app access for Android or iOS?

How do I manage my project team remotely?

Managing a remote team can be complicated. Most times you have to deal with time zone and geographical barriers that impede fluid work. Therefore, as you can probably guess, you'll have to pay extra attention to team communication. And this comes in two variants, making sure they connect as a team and personally paying close attention to each member.

If you want to learn more about the communication needed and 8 tips to manage remote teams, go to our ultimate guide to remote project management.

What key features do remote teams need?

Here are three of the features you cannot miss if you want to give your team the best chances to succeed when collaborating remotely.

  1. Team communication options – You’ll want the basics (like @-tagging and a commenting system) but look for those that go above and beyond with team collaboration features.
  2. File management and sharing – Every project team is going to have a series of documents or items that must be easily accessible to all team members at any time. Good file management is crucial.
  3. Time tracking – This is a must for remote working. Depending on your needs, you can get time tracking tools with inactivity sensors and other software solutions to prevent time theft.
project management tools for remote teams logos list

What Are Your Favorite Project Management Tools For Remote Teams?

We have lots of useful information if you need to improve your project management and remote team collaboration. For example, here are 4 tips for hiring remotely and how to do virtual mentoring with your remote team.

Did you learn about new project management tools for your remote teams from this article? If not, what are some tools you know deserve to be on this list?Also, what PM tools help you work remotely, especially across different time zones?

Related tool lists:

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By Ben Aston

I’m Ben Aston, a digital project manager and founder of thedpm.com. I've been in the industry for more than 20 years working in the UK at London’s top digital agencies including Dare, Wunderman, Lowe and DDB. I’ve delivered everything from film to CMS', games to advertising and eCRM to eCommerce sites. I’ve been fortunate enough to work across a wide range of great clients; automotive brands including Land Rover, Volkswagen and Honda; Utility brands including BT, British Gas and Exxon, FMCG brands such as Unilever, and consumer electronics brands including Sony. Ben's a Certified Scrum Master, PRINCE2 Practitioner and productivity nut.

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1 Comment

  • Thank you for the list. In the word we live in those tools are very important and it is crucial to know what is best for You! I don't want to talk You into anything, because everybody has its own needs. Although I would like to share that I happily use digital tools, like kanbantool.com. Kanban often helps me to finish all the tasks and check If everything is well done and well completed. I would feel lost as hell, without it :)

    Reply