Best Online Project Management Tools Shortlist
- monday.com
Best for its capacity to be customized for almost any workflow.
- ClickUp
Best project management tool for its comprehensive free plan to test features.
- Smartsheet
Best for flexibility & customizability
- Wrike
Best agile project management tool
- Zoho Projects
Low price point pm software with a user friendly interface and mobile version of their tool.
- Height
Best project management tool with advanced, calendar-based productivity features
- Kintone
Best management platform for its 100+ workflow templates to help you start faster.
- Celoxis
Best project portfolio management and collaboration solution
- Project.co
Best for its free collaborator accounts
- VOGSY
Best performance monitoring for client/project health
Project management tools live at the center of your project team operations. Therefore, choosing the right tool is crucial to support the execution of your project plan.
Further, you want to pick a tool that promotes team collaboration, helps you assign tasks, track progress in a project dashboard, and overall makes you look to your boss like you are Henry Gantt himself.
Every project management app on this list is an option you should consider as your next, and the comparison criteria below will help you understand what I'm looking for.
How I Picked The Best Project Management Tools
I’ve researched, reviewed and selected some of the most popular project management tools. To decide which tools to feature in this list, I weighed a variety of key factors, including the following criteria.
- User Interface (UI): I look at the tool's interface design and if it's easy on the eye. Some interfaces can become crowded as they increase the number of features.
- Usability: I analyze how easy it is to learn and navigate the app. Does the company offer good tech support, user support, tutorials, and training? Is it intuitive?
- Integrations: Is it easy to connect with other tools that can fill any gaps in the software, such as time tracking software, Gantt chart software, workflow management tools, and more? Any pre-built integrations?
- Value for $: I look at the pricing details, features it includes, and tiers (if any). In addition, I research the free trials or free versions of the software you can use to further support your decision-making.

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Overview Of The 10 Best Project Management Tools
monday.com
Best for its capacity to be customized for almost any workflow.
monday.com work management is one of the top project management platforms on the market.
Why I picked monday.com: Their tool is hyper-customizable, has loads of features, and offers colorful boards that will make your project plans easier to read. Although it is a visually complex tool, it has tons of videos and training tutorials to help you master its different features. Additionally, if you are looking for a more focused product, monday.com offers different options. These include a product for marketers, development teams, sales teams (CRM), and project teams. You can look at all of them by going to the products menu option on their website.
Finally, it's important to mention that the wide range of features and customization might make it challenging for you to set up the product and train your team at first. However, once you get over that hump, I promise you'll see the benefits of having this product and how efficient it can make you and your team.
monday.com Standout Features & Integrations
Features include resource and project management, time tracking, collaboration, file management, collaborative docs and reporting dashboards.
Integrations include project management apps like Slack, Google Drive, Gmail, Google Calendar, Jira, GitHub, Trello, Dropbox, Typeform, and thousands more, accessible via Zapier.
You can use monday.com regardless of the size of your team. There's a free version that you can try for as long as you want.
ClickUp
Best project management tool for its comprehensive free plan to test features.
ClickUp is a project management tool with powerful features for managing and completing all your team's projects on one platform.
Why I picked ClickUp: You can plan projects, schedule tasks, and manage resources in a centralized workspace, as well as communicate and collaborate with team members and guests. The platform is visually easy on the eye despite the elevated number of features. However, I'll make it even easier for you to learn.
The content hierarchy for this platform is Workspace > Spaces > Folders > Lists > Tasks > Subtasks. Now, you can focus on learning about tasks and how to filter, sort, search for, easily reorder, and view tasks in the manner most convenient for the team.
ClickUp has close to a dozen different task views, including timeline, table, box, and board. In addition, their collaboration features focus on interactive chats, wiki-type collaborative documents, and whiteboards. Your project team can comment on documents and tasks, assign comments, and chat with other team members easily.
Finally, its reporting features allow you to create custom dashboards, as well as six built-in report types for team reporting.
ClickUp Standout Features & Integrations
Features include real-time reporting, whiteboards and shared documents for collaboration, task management with different views, goal tracking, and templates.
Integrations include native connections to Slack, G Suite, Jira software, Dropbox, and many more tools, as well as over 1,000+ integrations through Zapier.
Check out ClickUps free plan, which lets you use all features for a limited time and really know if it's the best solution for you and your team.
Smartsheet
Best for flexibility & customizability
Smartsheet is a spreadsheet-like project management tool that is a nice project management software if you’re comfortable working in Excel but want a break from complicated formulas.
Why I picked Smartsheet: It offers a white-label product where you can add customized brand logos and set color themes for individual projects. Smartsheet has useful project management features such as workflow automation and visualization of tasks in Gantt, calendar and card views.
Team members get notified of critical changes in real time, and the tool performs all the calculations for you across multiple sheets. The Critical Path feature highlights all the tasks which directly impact your project completion date to keep an eye on important milestones. Reporting is a strong feature of this tool, with editable summary reports that you can easily export to Excel.
Smartsheet Standout Features & Integrations
Features include detailed history logs, activity logs, automated alerts, reminders, status reports, resource management, multiple views, forms to collect information, and digital asset management using Brandfolder.
Integrations include Microsoft and Google apps, as well as development essentials like Jira, and useful business apps like Salesforce, ServiceNow, Slack, Box, and Tableau. The platform is extensible through a REST API and webhooks.
Check out our in-depth Smartsheet review if you want a deep dive into the tool or to watch our short tutorial video of some basic features.
Wrike
Best agile project management tool
Wrike’s software features award-winning, easy-to-use project management tools that are suitable for teams of five or more. It’s a collection of the most configurable project management tools, so users can customize workflows, dashboards, reports, request forms, and more.
Why I picked Wrike: The tool enables you to switch between Kanban boards, interactive drag-and-drop Gantt charts, and traditional workload views to visualize priorities in the way that works best for you. For advanced insights, users can access performance reporting tools, resource management and allocation, and more.
Wrike has an easy-to-use, intuitive navigation with distinct spaces, folders, and tasks. You can toggle between the home screen and timesheets, dashboards, calendars, reports, and an activity stream for notifications and messages. It also offers access to a variety of templates for common organizational processes.
Wrike Standout Features & Integrations
Features include task lists, subtasks, schedules, shared workflows, file sharing, proofing, cross-tagging, approvals, and real-time communication and collaboration.
Integrations. Wrike has over 400 pre-built integrations, including integrations with most popular file management software from Microsoft, Google, and Dropbox, as well as with sales and marketing software from Salesforce and Marketo.
Consider Wrike if you are interested in having control over resources and budget, as well as agile supporting features.
Zoho Projects
Low price point pm software with a user friendly interface and mobile version of their tool.
Zoho Projects is a low-cost project management software that comes with features such as Gantt charts to plan projects, Kanban boards to organize work items, resource utilization charts to allocate work, and numerous dashboards, reports and charts to analyze and track project metrics.
Why I picked Zoho Projects: It allows team members to virtually meet online, converse over chats, discuss in comments, or collaborate within documents. Zoho Projects also provides issue tracking, budgeting and portfolio management capabilities. Additionally, your team can track their time using the timer or the check in and check out button right within Zoho Projects.
Finally, the tool lets you automate routine work processes like assigning users to work items, updating fields or sending notifications with workflow rules and blueprints. These automations can save you a considerable amount of time in the long run.
Zoho Projects Standout Features & Integrations
Features include task management, task automation, blueprints, time and issue tracking, reporting, and forums for detailed discussions with your team.
Integrations include tools such as Google Drive, Google Calendar, Slack, Github, Bitbucket, and Dropbox. Access even more integrations through Zapier. Additionally, being part of the Zoho ecosystem allows you to connect to several of Zoho’s other services such as Zoho Books and Zoho’s finance suite.
Zoho Projects has a free plan that you can use for a limited number of projects and test if it's the right option for you.
Height
Best project management tool with advanced, calendar-based productivity features
Height is an online project management tool that allows teams to manage their projects in a collaborative environment. It provides a single platform where everyone can stay on top of their tasks, track progress and ensure their goals are met.
Why I picked Height: It makes collaboration amongst team members much simpler by assigning task labels and tags to categorize tasks under specific categories. Using their task attributes feature, you can create custom, repeatable tasks and easily track progress. You can also break down complex projects into smaller tasks, set deadlines, and assign them to different team members.
Additionally, Height's built-in calendar is an all-in-one productivity assistant. You can create calendars for specific projects and events, and add to-dos, notes, reminders, and contacts for quick referencing and improved organization. It also includes various filtering options that help users obtain a more accurate bird’s eye view of their workflow to see where they’re overbooked or running behind schedule.
Height Standout Features & Integrations
Features include task tracking, resource management, communication tools, analytics, and reporting.
Integrations include Discord, Figma, Fivetran, Git Hub & Git Lab, Notion, Sentry, Slab, Slack, and Zendesk. It uses industry-standard encryption protocols, ensuring that all user data and communications are protected.
Height has Windows and macOS apps to help you access the software from any device through native-built software. If you want to try it out, it has a free version with unlimited members and tasks.
Kintone
Best management platform for its 100+ workflow templates to help you start faster.
Kintone is a customizable project planning platform used by teams at Volvo Trucks North America, Japan Airlines, Whole Foods, and over 23,000 organizations worldwide.
Why I picked Kintone: 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 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, and more. Your agile project management solution can look and work however you want it to. Moreover, 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.
Kintone Standout Features & Integrations
Features include a pre-built application library, enhanced process management, private messaging, real-time custom graphs and charts, and granular permission controls.
Integrations. 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.
There are so many ways to customize Kintone that 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.
Celoxis
Best project portfolio management and collaboration solution
Celoxis is a project management tool that is adaptable for small, mid-sized, and large businesses.
Why I picked Celoxis: It allows you to plan and schedule projects with cross-project and interactive Gantt charts, as well as manage resources across a portfolio of projects. The tool also includes the ability to create multiple custom dashboards for monitoring project task progress and metrics, as well as add custom fields and formula fields.
Further, reporting capabilities include reports on custom fields and drill-down charts. You can export reports, as well as schedule them to be sent via email.
Celoxis Standout Features & Integrations
Features include a real-time project tracker, flexible portfolio management, task management, resource availabilities and utilization, timesheets, project finances, risks, issues and to-dos.
Integrations include pre-built connections with Google Drive, Outlook, Microsoft Project, Excel, Salesforce and hundreds of other tools like JIRA, Slack & Trello.
Project.co
Best for its free collaborator accounts
Project.co is a user-friendly, all-in-one project management solution tailored for team collaboration and communication.
Why I picked Project.co: You can create and work on different projects simultaneously, create task lists and timelines, create schedules, as well as assign role-based permissions. With this online project management solution, active projects can be viewed in a variety of ways, including in calendar view, list view, scheduler view, and via Kanban board.
Project.co also comes with a project overview function that allows your team to collaborate and communicate efficiently with clients. This will help ensure that all stakeholders are always involved with every aspect of project development, from the planning stage to execution and delivery. Additionally, it features a discussion page, which stores all communications between team members and clients. This will help secure a historical record of project development data, which can be useful for future reference.
Project.co Standout Features & Integrations
Features include four different views (list, calendar, Kanban, and scheduler), in-app chat, notes, recurring tasks, time management, and payment capabilities supporting multiple currencies.
Integrations only include those you can make through Zapier, which is over 1000 apps. However, it will require you to have a paid account on Zapier.
In addition, the software enables you to set role-specific access to help with upholding quality standards, confidentiality, and data protection. You can test it out using its free forever version.
VOGSY
Best performance monitoring for client/project health
VOGSY takes a detailed and all-encompassing approach to project management, combining various aspects of sales, finance, and billing with web-based marketing project management. From the moment that a project manager or professional service provider begins their project planning process, the system automatically allocates the necessary budget to the appropriate departments and team members.
Among VOGSY’s online project management tools is an alert system that users can easily set up on their actions feed to ensure that team members get notified immediately whenever they go outside their allotted budget cap.
Why I Picked VOGSY: VOGSY works as a central platform for cloud-based project management where project heads can easily manage and keep track of their entire team, task assignments, deliverables, project documentation, invoicing, conversions, and email communications. Through seamless integration, users can instantly click through to other cloud-based applications like Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, as well as Gantt planning.
The platform also enables company and portfolio views. Users have access to their profitability data, either by department or by client. They have the option to use filtered Gantt views to gain insights into their budget and resource allocation status. Moreover, VOGSY is also equipped with a client board that can be used for portfolio views.
VOGSY’s project management solution supports automated billing and multiple billing types. Users have the option of bulk invoicing or ad-hoc with approval flows, while the automated billing feature handles subscription-based services, retainers, and/or installments.
The automated invoicing tool allows businesses to take in international clients with its multi-currency feature. Users can set up each individual project with its own currency, so every invoice that goes out to the client will have their local currency, while project results are still reflected in the user’s base currency.
VOGSY Standout Features and Integrations
Features include resource and project management, collaboration, reporting dashboards, budgeting, professional services automation, Gantt charts, notifications & alerts.
Integrations include Google Workspace, Jira, Microsoft Excel, Xero, Intuit Quickbooks Online, Copper, Hubspot, Salesforce, and Zoho.
VOGSY Pricing & Plans
VOGSY is free for single users and starts at $13/user/month for teams with a minimum of 10 members/users. All premium plans include a free trial.
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The Best Project Management Tools Comparison Chart
Nothing like a nice table with summarized information on what we just discussed.
Tool | Free Option | Price | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | monday.com Best for its capacity to be customized for almost any workflow. | 14-day free trial + freemium plan available | From $10/user/month | Visit Website |
2 | ClickUp Best project management tool for its comprehensive free plan to test features. | Freemium plan available | From $9/user/month | Visit Website |
3 | Smartsheet Best for flexibility & customizability | 30-day free trial | From $9/user/month | Visit Website |
4 | Wrike Best agile project management tool | 14-day free trial | From $9.80/user/month | Visit Website |
5 | Zoho Projects Low price point pm software with a user friendly interface and mobile version of their tool. | 10-day free trial | From $5/user/month | Visit Website |
6 | Height Best project management tool with advanced, calendar-based productivity features | 30-day free trial | From $8.50/user/month | Visit Website |
7 | Kintone Best management platform for its 100+ workflow templates to help you start faster. | 30-day free trial | From $24/user/month | Visit Website |
8 | Celoxis Best project portfolio management and collaboration solution | 30-day free trial | From $25/user/month | Visit Website |
9 | Project.co Best for its free collaborator accounts | Free forever, for up to five users and 10 active projects. | From $10/user/month | Visit Website |
10 | VOGSY Best performance monitoring for client/project health | Freemium plan | $13/user/month | Visit Website |
Other Project Management Tool Options
Here are a few more tools that didn’t make the top list.
- Asana – Task management and team communication in one place to help your team be more productive.
- Jira – Issue and project tracking tool used by software development teams.
- Celoxis – Project portfolio management and collaboration solution for teams of all sizes.
- LiquidPlanner – Automated scheduling and forecasting software, helping teams to plan intelligently through smart estimation and predictive scheduling.
- Mavenlink – Enterprise-grade business and project management solution for professional services & businesses.
- Podio – Citrix freemium cloud-based project management and collaboration service with 99.99% uptime and a fully exposed front-end API.
- ProofHub – PM software with proofing capabilities, workflow management, task management, and fixed pricing plans.
Project Management Tools FAQs
Find answers to common questions around this topic.
What are the different types of project management tools?
Below, I’ve listed the software reviews I’ve written according to the type of tools they cover so you can check out the other project management platform lists on The Digital Project Manager site and find the best project management software for your needs
What's Next?
If you are just getting started in project management, I recommend you read our article on how to become a digital PM. Otherwise, why not refresh your memory by reading the common types of project constraints and how to manage them?
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