25 Best Project Management Tools For Remote Teams In 2024
10 Best Project Management Tools For Remote Teams Shortlist
Here's my pick of the 10 best software from the 25 tools reviewed.
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There are seemingly countless project management solutions that claim to help remote teams, so figuring out which is best for you is tough. You want to bring your teams together under a single platform where they can collaborate just as if they were in the same room but need to figure out which tool is the best fit. I've got you! In this post I make things simple, leveraging my experience reviewing hundreds of different PM tools and experience in remote-first companies to bring you this shortlist of the best project management tools for remote teams.
What are project management tools for remote teams?
Project management tools for remote teams are digital platforms specifically tailored to support project planning and execution in a distributed work environment. These tools provide a centralized space where remote team members can access project information, collaborate on tasks, and stay updated on project progress, overcoming the geographical barriers associated with remote work.
Some common features include various communication channels, video-conferencing capabilities, and document sharing. The transparency provided by these tools ensures that all team members have visibility into project status and updates, regardless of their physical location – promoting a sense of unity and shared purpose.
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Hub Planner
Visit WebsiteThis is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.4.2 -
ClickUp
Visit WebsiteThis is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.4.7 -
Miro
Visit WebsiteThis is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.4.8
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.
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.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Excellent collaborative features
- Simple organization by dragging and dropping tasks
- Very easy to invite others, share timelines, and assign tasks
Cons:
- Best features locked to Standard or Pro versions
- Automations are not fully customizable
- No bottleneck identification or assistance
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.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Powerful built-in and custom reporting features
- Beautiful user experience and user interface
- Excellent capacity planning and forecasting
Cons:
- Needs more inline integrations
- Some features only available through the premium plan
Best for agencies, consultancies, and professional service firms
Bonsai is a comprehensive business management platform designed to consolidate the management of projects, clients, and finances. With an intuitive interface and powerful features, Bonsai is ideal for agencies, consultancies, and professional service firms looking to enhance their operations and enhance productivity.
Bonsai is particularly well-suited for remote teams, thanks to its robust project management capabilities. The platform's task management features include Kanban and list views, which provide a clear visual representation of tasks and their progress. Additionally, Bonsai supports collaboration by allowing team members to comment on tasks, share files, and receive real-time notifications. The integrated time tracking and invoicing features further enhance its utility for remote teams, enabling tracking of billable hours and efficient financial management.
Integrations include Slack, Asana, Trello, Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, QuickBooks, Xero, PayPal, Stripe, Zapier, Google Calendar, Box, Mailchimp, HubSpot, Salesforce, Zoom, Notion, Microsoft Teams, and FreshBooks.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Automation for repetitive tasks
- Wide range of templates for important client-facing documents
- Integrated project, client, and financial management
Cons:
- Resource planning features are limited to higher-tier plans
- Mobile app is limited compared to desktop version
Miro is a comprehensive online whiteboard designed with remote teams in mind, providing an extensive array of over 1,000 templates for various project management tasks. Its infinite canvas allows teams unlimited space for brainstorming and project mapping, supporting a wide range of idea expression, including numerical data, images, videos, and brand elements.
With the Miro Assist feature, the platform can generate ideas and pathways from initial prompts, facilitating collaborative brainstorming. Additionally, Miro enables asynchronous collaboration, accommodating diverse schedules and work habits, through features like comments and reactions.The platform also integrates well into hybrid work environments, offering interactive displays and mobile access, making it a suitable choice for teams looking to collaborate remotely.
Miro has integrations with a whole suite of tools, including Zoom, Figma, Asana, Microsoft Teams, Jira, Slack, Monday.com, Confluence, 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).
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Built-in communication features for streamlined collaboration
- Intuitive and easy setup
- Free forever plan available
Cons:
- Free version does not allow high-quality export to pdf
- Zooming can be jumpy on larger projects
- Visitor/guest accounts locked to paid plans only
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.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Easy to share content with external stakeholders
- Organizes jobs intuitively and can easily archive jobs
- Time tracking easily runs in the background with little interference
Cons:
- Budgets from projects to tasks can be difficult to calculate
- Project table layout categories challenging to edit
- Large learning curve compared to others
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.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Access to unlimited project boards
- Very easy to manage several projects at the same time
- Intuitive and user-friendly UI
Cons:
- After loading a file into a task it cannot be downloaded immediately
- File attachments limited to 200 MB per file
- Timeline and custom fields are restricted to Business accounts
Kintone is a customizable project planning platform used by teams at Volvo Trucks North America, Japan Airlines, Shiseido, and over 23,000 organizations worldwide. Their unique approach to project and task management lets you build a wide variety of customizable “apps” either from scratch, using templates or from your existing spreadsheets, for data management, business processes, and workflows. Kintone apps can be customized for project management, sales CRM, customer databases, expense reports, shared to-do lists, equipment management, product feedback, and much more.
Apps can be built either from scratch, using templates, or from existing spreadsheets for data management, business processes, and workflow purposes. Kintone apps can be customized for project management, sales CRM, customer databases, expense reports, shared to-do lists, equipment management, product feedback, and much more.
Kintone lets you build agile project management apps by dragging and dropping elements that you want to see onto the page: rich text fields, date fields, drop-down menus, number fields with built-in calculations, spaces for attachments, user or group selection menus, related data from other apps, tables, and more. Your agile project management solution can look and work however you want it to.
What makes Kintone particularly great for agile project management is that it empowers project managers to track all facets of their project, from individual tasks and project data to workflows and communication—and then use their findings to rapidly improve their processes as they go. Because the end-users are also the app designers, feedback loops are instant, continuous, and actionable.
There are so many ways to customize Kintone it can be hard to know where to start. Read the starter blog “What Can You Build with Kintone?” or watch Creating an App from Scratch for a quick look at how the drag-and-drop builder works.
Kintone lets you expand its capabilities with both free native plugins built by the Kintone team as well as integrations with other tools like Slack, Gmail, Google Calendar, Outlook, Tableau, Dropbox, Salesforce, HubSpot, Eventbrite, WordPress, QuickBooks, MailChimp, and many more through a paid plan with Zapier or via API integrations.
Kintone costs $24/user/month with a minimum requirement of 5 users. They offer a 30-day free trial (no credit card required) and discounted prices for nonprofits and educators. Kintone’s team also offers a free custom app build as part of the free trial process.
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.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Very simple to launch/get started
- Can opt in/out of sprints for each project
- Excellent project management templates
- Generous free plan for small teams
Cons:
- No mobile app
- Limited 3rd-party integrations
- No WIP limits or swimlanes
Ravetree
Best remote project management for professional services businesses
Ravetree is a complete work management platform with project management, time and expense tracking, resource planning, file management, and client and contact management. Remote teams can outline their projects, assign tasks and checklists, and track their progress in the cloud-based system. Every team member can track their time spent on various tasks and projects, and will receive notifications about upcoming due dates related to their work.
Professional services businesses will benefit from the software's client-facing features. Request forms can be created both for external and internal requests. Projects can be grouped into portfolios, making it easier to manage multiple projects for a single client. The software also has a client portal that facilitates communications and updates on project process. Financials and budgets can also be tracked, and files can be stored and managed through the platform, keeping everything connected to project plans.
Plans start from $29/user/month, and a 7-day free trial is available.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- File and resource planning included
- Video and chat support
- Customized onboarding
Cons:
- Limited customization options
- Broad functionality, can be overwhelming
Teamwork is a jack-of-all-trades project management tool that remote teams will love for its task management, time tracking, resource management, and robust reporting capabilities. Small businesses or budget-strapped teams will appreciate their free forever plan for up to 5 users, 2 projects, and 100MB of storage space. Stuff like change history and burndown reporting are limited to the higher plans but many inventive teams can do without.
Teamwork costs from $10/user/month and offers a free version for up to 5 users.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Easily track comments and feedback from clients
- Easy and comprehensive report building
- Excellent time tracking features
Cons:
- Can be difficult to move/adjust milestones
- Doesn't sync with QuickBooks
- Billing and invoicing limited to paid plans
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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.
| Tools | Price | |
|---|---|---|
| monday.com | From $8/user/month (billed annually) | Website |
| Hub Planner | From $7/user/month (billed annually) | Website |
| Bonsai Agency Software | From $10/user/month | Website |
| Miro | From $8/user/month (billed annually) | Website |
| Paymo | From $3.90/user/month (billed annually) | Website |
| MeisterTask | From $8.25/user/month (billed annually) + free plan available | Website |
| Kintone | From $24/user/month | Website |
| Hubstaff | From $4.99/user/month (billed annually) | Website |
| Ravetree | From $29/user/month (billed annually, min 5 seats) | Website |
| Teamwork.com | From $11/user/month (billed annually) + free plan available | Website |
Compare Software Specs Side by Side
Use our comparison chart to review and evaluate software specs side-by-side.
Compare SoftwareOther 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.
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.
Key Features
Here are three of the features you cannot miss if you want to give your team the best chances to succeed when collaborating remotely.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Collaboration tools – Features like screen sharing, video calling, shared to-do lists, and other means by which your team can collaborate.
- Workflow management – The ability to outline custom workflows, automate certain elements, and then track progress and milestones along your workflow.
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?
Remote Team Project Management FAQs
Here are some answers to common questions about managing projects on remote teams!
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.
How do project management tools help manage budgets?
Project management tools provide you with the tools and features to plan, track, and control project expenses effectively. These include:
- Time tracking features that will help you know how much time is spent on tasks.
- Resource management capabilities that can help you allocate the right resources for your project and know how much they cost.
- Notification systems that can keep an eye on budget spending so that you know when you are approaching your limits.
- Reporting that can help you see actuals vs budget details that you can compare with your timeline.
On top of all of these, the most value comes from having a system that stores historical data that can help you estimate project costs better. This project history can help you have better initial conversations with the client and set expectations.
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?
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