15 Best Project Scheduling Software Of 2023

monday.com is a project management platform with intuitive collaboration features that are easy to learn and quickly understand. It’s a highly customizable tool that helps you clarify the sequence of work and see the progress and status of your projects at a glance.

Why I picked monday.com: Most of the project scheduling features in monday.com are in the “timeline” feature—this is where you can plan projects, set deadlines, assign team members, break down tasks, and set dependencies. You can reassign tasks by simply clicking and dragging, and you can view your timelines as spreadsheets, as lists, on a map, on a Kanban board, and other views.

With monday.com you can create summary charts and export and share project plans in a variety of formats (XML, PDF, etc). Apart from that, the platform enables big-picture views using reporting dashboards that collect data from multiple boards, allowing better progress tracking.

All said and done, monday.com technically doesn’t enable you to make Gantt charts in the very traditional sense (nor can you import or export MPP files). However, it’s a flexible, intuitive schedule management software tool that helps you see where tasks are bottlenecking, understand who’s currently working on what, etc. What’s more, the customizable fields and the drag-and-drop functionality makes it easy to quickly set up and start using.

monday.com Standout Features & Integrations

Features include automations, shared documents for real-time collaboration, file management, dashboards, Gantt charts, and 5+ views so you can see your project information the way you want to.

Integrations include apps like Slack, Excel, Google Drive, Gmail, Google Calendar, Jira, GitHub, Trello, Dropbox, Typeform, and thousands more accessible via Zapier.

Kantata is a resource management & PSA software with modules for project scheduling and management, accounting, resource management, business intelligence, and team collaboration.

Why I picked Kantata: It offers a system of dashboards, live time and expense tracking features, and a great document management system. All of these best-in-class features are delivered through straightforward and minimalistic design.

For project scheduling specifically, Kantata offers a complete set of useful features. As you make detailed project plans, the tool support a multi-level work breakdown structure that lets you define the project by a series of granular tasks and subtasks. Other scheduling features include: Gantt chart-based project plan capabilities, schedule management, multi-level WBS, workflow planning, task assignment and scheduling, and critical path and variance analysis.

It also has some good contextual collaboration features to communicate around tasks, projects, and many other project objects. It’s a full suite that takes time to truly master, but the simple, streamlined UI shortens the learning curve significantly.

Kantata Standout Features & Integrations

Features include resource management features (real-time utilization, resource forecasting, capacity management), analytics (built-in reports, custom reporting, trend analysis) and accounting tools (project costing, budget management, invoicing).

Integrations include pre-built integrations with tools like Expensify, G Suite, Xero, Salesforce, Netsuite, Jira, Hubspot, Slack, Concur, Dynamics 365, Qualtrics, and Quickbooks. They also provide an integration platform called M-Bridge to help you build your own integrations.

Parallax is a project scheduling software that offers an intuitive way to create project plans quickly and easily by connecting tasks with timelines. Parallax uses data points to connect tasks with dates, helping users make more accurate plans without manual calculations. It simplifies task management by providing users with a detailed schedule that can be customized.

Users can adjust tasks based on start and end dates, budget constraints, or other variables. This allows teams to execute their projects more efficiently while avoiding costly delays or overruns. Parallax offers features like task view and resource view, which provide a real-time overview of the project's progress. Task view shows who is responsible for each task and who needs the task completed first or last; resource view shows who has been assigned the most tasks or requests for additional resources if needed.

Why I Picked Parallax: With Parallax’s forecasting feature, users can track their current project activities, establish and modify future tasks, and understand the overall trajectory of their projects—all in one comprehensive view. Additionally, Parallax leverages predictive analytics to adjust timelines and cost estimates as changes occur, helping organizations stay proactive and minimize risk.

Parallax’s capacity management system lets users easily create profiles for each resource and use them to plan for week-by-week workloads as projects are created. The software allows users to compare proposed changes against the exact resource capacity, eliminating the possibility of overloading resources and improving on-time delivery. Additionally, it provides strategic planning tools so that adjustments in workloads can be made accordingly when necessary.

Parallax Standout Features & Integrations

Features include resource management, budgeting, dashboards, notifications, API, data visualizations, external integrations, forecasting, multi-user, and scheduling.

Integrations include Harvest, Clockify, Toggl, Kimai, Evenhour, Netsuite, Noko, Tempo, Replicon, Hubspot, Salesforce, Copper, and Pipedrive.

ClickUp is a project management software that is designed to become one tool that replaces several ones that are commonly a part of a project manager's toolbox.

Why I picked ClickUp: ClickUp offers Gantt charts along with Kanban boards, calendars, conversations, and reminders in a bright, user-friendly interface. The tool has scheduling features that allow you to plan your tasks, resources, and projects as part of a portfolio. Gantt is the traditional view for task management and seeing the project schedule. Resource management features like workload or time tracking will help you optimize resource utilization.

With its wide variety of management templates, you can customize your workspace to suit your project needs. Additionally, teams can easily break down their project with subtasks and assign team members to each one to ensure things stay on schedule.

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 Slack, G Suite, Dropbox, and many more tools, as well as over 1,000+ integrations through Zapier. The calendar integration also works with Apple’s Calendar and Outlook.

Resource Management by Smartsheet is a high-level resource management and scheduling software that helps modern teams make confident decisions about project planning, team capacity, budget forecasting, team utilization, and hiring needs in real time.

Why I picked Resource Management by Smartsheet: Built-in timesheets, mobile time tracking, and expense tracking, enables you to create rich project reports by filtering project data with just a few clicks. Reports can give insight into historical data or offer a forecasted view of team utilization, actual vs. planned time reports, budget tracking, expense reports, and projects in the pipeline.

Over 1,000 of the most innovative companies in the world rely on Resource Management by Smartsheet, from 10-person shops and 100-person teams within global brands to 1,000+ person professional services firms. Resource Management by Smartsheet has been recognized for its design excellence with awards from FastCo, SXSW, IxDA + IDSA.

RM by Smartsheet Standout Features & Integrations

Features include project and resource matching, dynamic reporting, time tracking, a resource management panel, and a resource timeline for projects.

Integrations include apps like Slack, Brandfolder, Workplace, Microsoft Teams, and Facebook Ads. It additionally has a flexible API you can use to build custom integrations with the tools you use and automation through Zapier where you can connect to 1000+ apps.

Resource management is a premium add-on that you need to purchase on top of your Smartsheet plan.

Resource Guru is a dedicated resource management software. The tool allows team members to visualize tasks on calendars, shows what everyone is working on, and clearly displays availability so project managers can maximize utilization.

Why I picked Resource Guru: Project managers can make resource bookings simultaneously while ensuring they aren’t overbooking resources.

Resource and project clashes are automatically prevented. Bookings can be added to a waiting list and used for capacity planning later. Each staff member gets their own resource dashboard so they can log in and know exactly what they should be working on. Powerful reporting features allow users to monitor utilization and business performance, as well as help with capacity planning.

Resource Guru Standout Features & Integrations

Features include resource scheduling, resource management, leave management, project scheduling, capacity planning, and forecasting reports.

Integrations include calendar apps like Outlook calendar, Calendly, and Google calendar. Thousands of additional apps are accessible through Zapier.

Wrike is an award-winning, easy-to-use project scheduling software trusted by 20,000+ organizations worldwide. It's suitable for teams with anywhere from five members to an unlimited number of team members. The tool is highly configurable and allows users to customize workflows, dashboards, reports, request forms, and more.

Why I Picked Wrike: Wrike’s simple project scheduling software enables users to plan and schedule projects on Kanban boards, interactive drag-and-drop Gantt charts, or traditional workload views, as well as switch between them. Wrike also features task lists, subtasks, calendars, and real-time collaboration. Unlock advanced insights with performance reporting tools, time tracking, and more.

Wrike has an easy-to-use, intuitive interface and navigation with distinct spaces, folders, and tasks. Toggle quickly between the home screen and timesheets, dashboards, calendars, reports, and the activity stream. Wrike has a dedicated help center with interactive training, videos, a ‘Getting Started’ guide, and a thriving community.

Wrike Standout Features & Integrations

Features include project management, task scheduling/tracking, resource management, expense tracking, API, budgeting, Gantt charts, marketing automations, collaboration support, and reporting.

Integrations include 400+ pre-built native integrations, including integrations with the most popular file management software from Microsoft, Google, and Dropbox, along with sales and marketing software from Salesforce and Marketo.

Hub Planner is a resource management software with a full suite of project scheduling, time entry, and reporting features.

Why I picked Hub Planner: The core feature is the simple and usable Scheduler, which allows for project and resource planning and visualization. Users can drag and drop to plan projects and schedule resources. The tool also offers a multi-function menu, powerful filtering, and a dynamic team capacity bar. Multiple view modes allow for both high-level birds-eye views and granular views of projects.

Hub Planner has a powerful reporting engine with 70+ pre-formatted templates. If you can't find what you're looking for in a template, you can create reports from scratch.

Hub Planner also has a number of inline workflows for timesheets, requesting vacation time, and a slick resource requesting & approval option. Their Unassigned Work feature is great for scheduling and forecasting ahead of the pipeline, and users can create custom fields at the resource or project level. Users can also customize schedule notifications and reminders.

Hub Planner Standout Features & Integrations

Features include timesheets and approval, vacation and lead management, reporting, skills matching, and resource management.

Integrations include apps like Basecamp, Slack, and iCal. Thousands more can be accessed using Zapier, and its REst API can help you build custom integrations.

Zoho Projects is a project management and project scheduling software from Zoho. It offers flexibility and customizations to suit the needs of traditional project managers as well as agile teams.

Why I picked Zoho Projects: It has multiple ways of viewing information, like lists, kanban, or Gantt charts. With task tags and custom views and filters, you can organize your tasks and find them with ease. In addition to timeline planning, you can plan your resources effectively with the drag-and-drop resource utilization module. Keep everyone in the loop right inside Projects via inbuilt chat, forums, and comments, or take the social route with the project portal feed. Add to that the integrated advanced analytics capabilities to generate more than 50 types of charts and reports. The colorful dashboards are fully customizable so that users can make Zoho Projects their own.

The interface and modules are highly customizable. All aspects of the UI from theme colors to arrangement and visibility of the various modules can be changed to suit a user’s preferences. Zoho projects also offer free onboarding for customers and a comprehensive online help guide for all users.

Zoho Projects stands out in cases where there are multiple hand-offs involved. It is especially popular among IT companies, consultants, and education organizations. The tool is trusted by over three million users and hundreds of big brands across the globe.

Zoho Projects Standout Features & Integrations

Features include task management, task automation, blueprints, time tracking, team collaboration, charts, and reporting.

Integrations. Being part of Zoho’s ecosystem allows Projects to connect to several of Zoho’s own services such as Zoho Books, Zoho CRM, and Zoho’s finance suite. The new Zoho marketplace allows 3rd party integrations as well.

Jira is a tracking software solution designed to enable teams to schedule their software development projects efficiently. It’s primarily aimed towards software development and comes with a range of features that help make scheduling projects easier—including roadmaps, reports, and Scrum and Kanban boards that give users critical insights into the context of their work.

Why I Picked Jira: Jira supports teams consisting of 1 to 35,000 users and allows them to schedule their work, set deadlines, and stay on track with the project's timeline. Managers can allocate and schedule tasks and streamline the development process and everyone involved can view the status of different tasks and change schedules when necessary.

Jira’s UI is intuitive; it helps managers plan projects by enabling them to break down ideas into manageable chunks, set up schedules easily, and help teams stay on track with the project even when there are changes in the schedule. Roadmaps also help team members stay on the same page and reduce friction from miscommunications. These allow teams to collaborate easily by seeing each other’s status on the projects and making changes should delays and revisions occur anywhere in the timeline.

Jira can help teams stay on track with their projects and accomplish deadlines and handle any possible backlogs. A free plan that supports up to 10 users is available for smaller businesses and teams that first want to test whether the solution is suitable for them before spending on it. The free plan includes several of the same features available in the paid plans, with the main difference being the limited number of users per site and the unavailability of advanced automation, roadmaps, and dependency management that are only available in the Premium and Enterprise plans. Having a project scheduling solution like Jira gives businesses either a basic or advanced roadmap feature that allows people to see the progress of projects in real time and improve project scheduling.

Jira Standout Features & Integrations

Features include product management, project management, issue tracking, collaboration, customizable workflows, reporting & analytics, mobile support, permission & access management, time tracking, custom data fields, and third-party integrations/add-ons.

Integrations include Confluence, Slack, Trello, Google Drive, Bitbucket, GitHub, Salesforce, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams.

Jira Pricing & Plans

A free plan is also available for up to 10 users. Pricing for Jira starts at $10/user/month with the Standard plan, which includes a 7-day free trial.

Forecast is a brilliantly simple combination of resource management and project management tool built on the foundation that successful projects require a combination of short and long term planning. It does not dictate how you work so you can mix Scrum, Kanban, and traditional Gantt scheduling.

Why I Picked Forecast: The artificial intelligence (AI) built into Forecast enables you to easily spot projects that are at risk of delay or veering off track. Build and share your own powerful dashboards, reports, and insights so you can put real-time information right at your team or clients’ fingertips. Effortless resource planning enables you to track utilization and capacity. In the upcoming work view, the connection between prioritization and scheduling easily lets team members focus on the most important tasks.

Forecast Standout Features & Integrations

Features include resource planning, task management, time tracking, budget tracking, project portfolio management, collaboration, Gantt charts, reporting & analytics, mobile app, customization, and third-party integrations.

Integrations include 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.

Paymo is a project scheduling software for small and medium businesses to help creative and marketing teams own their entire project cycle. Besides planning and resource scheduling, Paymo is strong on task management, time tracking, and invoicing functionality.

Why I Picked Paymo: Paymo allows you to define the critical path by taking lead and lag time into account for project planning. Resource scheduling-wise, you can view your entire team’s workload across several projects, thanks to the multiple views by user/project/ungrouped tasks. Instead of manually setting up bookings, Paymo creates them automatically (ghost bookings) based on your previously entered task details to cut the data entry process in half. The built-in leave planner can also be used to mark leave days directly from the scheduler and save your company precious time and money.

Paymo Standout Features & Integration

Features include time tracking, task management, budget tracking, resource management, collaboration, Gantt charts, reporting & analytics, invoicing, mobile app, customizations, and third-party integrations.

Integrations include Slack, Google Suite, QuickBooks Online, Xero, JotForm, and Shift, to name a few. Other integrations are available through Zapier or by syncing with their fully-documented API.

Microsoft Project is a project management software built over 35 years ago to help you keep track of all your work.

Why I picked Microsoft Project: It can be purchased with Office 365 (which many companies use) or as a stand-alone item. Microsoft Project has the honed functionality of an Excel file with scheduling-specific tools for project management pros. If you need project scheduling help, try their intuitive and robust Gantt chart generator to navigate product timelines.

Adapting to our current needs, MS Project is available in both cloud-based and on-premise flavors.

MS Project Standout Features & Integrations

Features include three types of views, coauthoring on project schedules, pre-built reports, interactive roadmaps, resource management, portfolio modelling, and communication using MS Teams.

Integrations include other Microsoft software, like Outlook, Excel, Skype, and more.

ProjectManager.com is a well-rounded, award-winning software used by some big names including NASA, Volvo, Brookstone, and Ralph Lauren. This is a great solution, especially for managing multiple projects at once.

Why I Picked ProjectManager.com: ProjectManager.com delivers a ton of useful project planning and scheduling features: using this tool, you can create project plans (Gantt charts), manage tasks, create reports, and manage timesheets, expenses, and workloads. This project planning application also provides a useful feature that lets you easily switch between views—between Gantt chart, task list, and Kanban board views. You can use the in-app communication features to comment on tasks and assign them to team members.

Their real-time reports are easy to use—get pre-set reports (project status, timesheets, expenses) in a single click, or set up your own custom reports. You can also use the real-time dashboard to get a glimpse of your current project stats. And you can use all of these features to schedule and report across multiple projects, as well.

ProjectManager.com Standout Features & Integrations

Features include project management, Gantt charts, resource management, time tracking, collaboration, reporting, customizable dashboards, mobile app, Agile processes, and third-party integrations.

Integrations include MS Project, Excel, Office 365, Salesforce CRM, QuickBooks, Xero, Dropbox, Desk.com, JIRA, Hubspot, Slack, Zendesk, Evernote, OneLogin, OneDrive, and the complete Google Suite. They also have a powerful REST API to help you build against internal or external tools.

Hive is a project management and collaboration platform that powers companies like Starbucks, Uber, WeWork, and IBM. With AI-based analytics, thousands of integrations, flexible project views, and more, Hive streamlines your work in one centralized platform. Used by teams of varying sizes, from 10 people to 1,000, Hive is a great option for a diverse range of companies and work styles.

Why I Picked Hive: Hive’s time-tracking, analytics and flexible view capabilities allow for transparent understanding of other team-members work and upcoming projects, which can be tracked through action cards.

And much more than a project planner software, Hive’s AI and analytics component also leverages machine learning to provide interactive and customizable dashboards to gain insights on team productivity, and proactively spot risks or areas that need improvement.

Choose Hive if you’re in the market for a well-laid-out, comprehensive project scheduling and management tool that can be scaled up or down based on team needs.

Hive Standout Features & Integrations

Features include customizable dashboards, task management, collaboration, resource management, time tracking, mobile app, Agile methodologies, reporting & analytics, file sharing, and third-party integrations.

Integrations include over a thousand third-party apps but requires a paid plan through Zapier to do so.