Project Management Software Tools. Do you know that you can find cloud-based project management tools for your small business or a multi-billion dollar company with a project portfolio to match? Some of these software tools have free plans with limited features, and the majority of them are of the monthly subscription model. However, businesses can price the features they need and go for what is best for their business.
Are Project Management Software Tools Worth the Cost?
Project management tools are very resourceful in a team or remote work setting. With these tools, people work together in one place and collaborate, make notes, and meet deadlines with less effort. To try out any software, it’s a good idea to try a free version. However, if you’re a large company or have multiple team members, go for the paid software best suitable for your business needs.
The Project Management Software Tools we have here are the very best in terms of organizational needs, a variety of features, availability, affordability, and business size.
Who Uses Project Management Software Tools?
- Work teams
- Small business owners
- Individuals managing multiple projects
- Remote workers
- Sales teams
- Contractors and construction workers
Best for Speedy Setup: Wrike
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Wrike is a standard project management tool with features like Gantt charts, useful dashboards, and a comprehensive reporting built-in suite. You can easily learn how to use this software even if you have never used any before.
Further, it has a time tracking tool built-in, available to both the individual working on a particular task and the project manager. It handles the most basic requirements. But it cannot replace complex time tracking systems.
It has a free plan which is generous with the number of projects you can create — it’s unlimited — but has restrictions on the number of users and available features.
On the other hand, paid plans are a bit quite more expensive than some of the competition, starting around $9.80/month per user, but open up all of the software’s options. Wrike is available on the Web, along with iOS and Android app versions. You can give it a trial today.
Best for Getting Started: Trello
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This is perfect for small businesses, individuals, and small teams. With it, they can start; when they expand they go for bigger options. Trello is flexible and easy to use. It is a great place to start with project management. It’s available on the Web, mobile, and desktop.
Also, users find it easy to manage both individual projects and ongoing workflows equally well. Further, the board and card metaphors are easy to understand. You can add images and attached files, hyperlinks, custom dropdowns, due dates, and plenty more.
Even when you have finished with a card or an entire board, you can archive to hide it from daily view and access it when you need it in the future.
Moreover, Trello has a free tier including unlimited users, boards, and cards, but has file size restrictions and just one “Power-Up” (i.e., integration with other services) per board. Paid plans start at $9.99 per month, with fewer or no limitations.
However, if you seriously need detailed reporting, this will not be your best option. It has very limited reporting built into Trello, and although third-party extensions add more options, you’ll still have a challenge.
Best for Collaboration: Basecamp
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This software, basecamp is already a veteran of the project management world, for more than a decade. It has built a large, loyal customer base and still building. You can easily use this software to replace other paid monthly services, from Slack to Dropbox. But it takes many of the features of those tools and rolls them all into one system. Scheduling and calendars, real-time chat, private messaging, file storage, and more are included.
Another strong point about it is that it has an uncluttered interface and powerful search tools make it straightforward to find the task, image, or message. It as well has a strong reporting suite.
It costs $99/month. Many large organizations can afford this. It has no free plan, but the length of the 30-day trial is more generous than most. Web, desktop, and mobile versions are available. It is one of the best choices for large firms.
Best Value: Zoho Projects
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Zoho Projects is superb. It has almost all the standard features that the normal project management app has. The price too is quite affordable.
Users can view their tasks in Kanban or more traditional styles, with dependencies able to be set between each task. It can handle even relatively complex project requirements. Further, there’s also strong integration with other services, both Zoho’s own suite of apps and those from major players like Google and Microsoft.
It has primary time tracking built-in with enough features to make it useful. Contacting other project team members can be done via the inbuilt chat app, which saves jumping out to external tools like e-mail or Slack.
Lastly, the free tier is limited to three users, with just 10MB of storage and two projects. It’s sufficient for small projects or getting a feel for the software. All of the paid plans are available on a 10-day trial. Other plans which allow for more users, more projects, and more storage start range from $3 per user to $6 per user. Both Web and mobile versions of Zoho Projects are available. It is a great option for many small and medium firms.
Best for Powerful Simplicity: Teamwork Projects
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Teamwork Projects is a fully-fledged project management system. It is straightforward and easy to use, doing a good job of surfacing useful information without throwing endless lists and complex charts at its users. This is good, right?
With this tool, users can automate various actions, both within the app itself and using outside tools and services. The sort of integration saves a lot of time. But setting it up is a bit tactful and requires time.
It has a free tier that only permits two projects and has limited storage space, through to a high-end enterprise version. Some small teams can get the $10/month plan for 5 users, since it includes unlimited users and 100GB of storage space, with extra users costing $10/month each. Mobile apps are available for iOS and Android, along with the standard Web view.
Best Features: LiquidPlanner
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LiquidPlanner is an all-purpose project management software. It is suitable for small and large businesses but best for large teams. It has strong reporting is built-in and integration with major cloud storage providers. Also, it as well as Zapier support to help you build your own automated connections with other business tools.
One-off pieces of work can be assigned to any user or group, and the impact of that extra work on the people performing it is automatically taken into account when estimating project deliverables.
Also, it has extra features with extra complexity. It demands a greater time investment to set up, learn, and master than many of its competitors. There is no free tier, although you can try various plans for two weeks. Plans start at $45/month per user, with a minimum of five users, and go up from there.
Best for Big Projects: Microsoft Project
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This is one of the most preferred tools of many experienced project managers. It is best suited for very large, complex projects, which have the expertise, time, and budget to get the most out of this comprehensive tool.
It is just like other Microsoft Office apps. However, it has few tutorials or hints which can be hard for newcomers to learn. But trained professionals like the extremely granular detail available for each task and resource, whether that resource is a specific person, role, physical material, or something else.
With it, users can create customizable reports that can be quickly exported to Microsoft PowerPoint for those inevitable management summaries. Integration with non-Microsoft tools is limited, however.
You can tack it onto an existing Office 365 subscription, at a couple of different price points, or purchase it as a one-off piece of software to be installed on a single computer. Features differ between versions, but subscription prices for the professional start at $30/month per user.
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