What project management software programs are best? A number of questions regarding project management software come to mind. How do you choose what project management software is right for your marketing agency, or digital advertising agency? How do you choose the right tools and the best features to make your agencies efficient at all tasks?
There are plenty of project management software for agencies and digital agencies out there to choose from. Therefore, it is not easy to find the best one. As a PM for advertising agency, I want this project management software for advertising agencies/digital agency for my team as well. Thus, I have put together some points you need to consider before choosing a good project management software for advertising agencies/digital agencies.
The Agency Management Software from MA Systems is the most powerful and user friendly project management software for creative agencies like advertising agencies and web design firms that want to plan, manage and control their projects.
A project management software with a complete solution for managing all your advertising projects. This agency project management software includes task management, a comprehensive calendar, emails, collaboration and reporting abilities; all in ONE place.
Common creative agency management workflows
Agency workflows are often simple. But, they have a lot of moving parts and need close collaboration between team members.
Some of the common workflows include:
- Plan project schedules.
- Capture, organize and prioritize project ideas and requirements.
- Track project tasks as they move from to-do to done.
- Collaborate, discuss, and share files with other team members to complete tasks.
- Keep track of milestones and other critical project dates.
- Plan and track team availability and workload.
- Plan, allocate, and manage team resources.
monday.com
Best for annotating and versioning
A sample event planning workload using a Monday project management template.
Monday offers a range of tools that creative professionals will benefit from, including monthly and annual expense tracking, a recruitment tracker for HR, easy editorial and blogging planning, competitor analysis, the management of marketing projects, onboarding processes, creative requests and more. Easy, visual and intuitive, Monday is an award-winning PM software used by over 70,000 teams.
In our evaluation criteria, I specify that we are looking for customizable workload management and collaborative feedback, which is something that Monday handles particularly well. Monday allows you to easily collaborate with freelancers and third parties by sharing the same project “boards” and has many options for interface customizability to help navigate the uniques ins and outs of your workload.
Optional integrations include DropBox, Excel, Google Calendar, Google Drive, Integromat, Slack, Trello, Pipedrive, Jira, Mailchimp, and even more through Zapier.
If you are looking for web software that has seamless mobile integration, this may not be it. The tutorial and training options available through the site are also lacking, which leaves users scrounging on the depths of YouTube for unauthorized user-generated content in order to address the steep learning curve.
Monday costs from $6/user/month and comes with a free 14-day trial. They offer a free plan for up to 2 users.
ClickUp
Best free plan for creative project management software
Small and large teams can easily plan projects, assign team members, and track progress.
ClickUp is a creative project management tool software that offers built-in creative features for every step in the design process.
Users can collaborate with their teams on any design project with features for proofing, threaded comments, chat, and easy file sharing. Share files and deliverables with clients and control what they can access with permissions. Collect approval, feedback, or customer information with custom branded forms. ClickUp also offers multiple views and templates for building and managing your creative workflow or getting projects started.
Task management features include task checklists, subtasks, and task templates, as well as the ability to filter, sort, search for, easily reorder, and view tasks in the manner most convenient for the team. Users can also create Gantt charts, calendars, and timelines to visualize tasks.
ClickUp also includes features for creating, sharing, and collaborative editing for documents and files. Users can comment on documents and tasks, assign comments, and chat with other team members for increased communication and collaboration. Reporting features include the ability to create custom dashboards, as well as six built-in report types for team reporting.
ClickUp offers native integrations with Slack, G Suite, Dropbox, and many more tools, as well as over 1,000+ integrations through Zapier.
ClickUp’s free plan is robust and includes all primary features. The unlimited plan starts at $5 a month per user and offers additional functionality.
Smartsheet
A work execution platform with useful content collaboration tool features and project dashboards to keep creative teams in sync
Smartsheet’s online project management tool checks off a lot of the boxes I’ve laid out in the criteria for a creative project management software. For briefs and intake forms, you can use the “Forms” feature which offers the ability to create and customize forms to collect essentially any data from anyone in a structured format—you could use it for collecting information, including images and files, from clients in order to make briefs, for example.
Team collaboration features are great—members get notified of critical changes in real-time, and the tool provides shared views, detail history, activity logs, automated alerts, reminder, and status reports to keep everyone aligned and informed. There are content collaboration features like pinned feedback, approvals, and annotations that make it easier to collaborate on creative work.
Creative teams can then manage their tasks with visual workload management tools that offer real-time visualizations of live data, charts, and key metrics, which you can customize in drag-and-drop dashboards.
Finally, reporting is a strong feature of this tool, with editable summary reports that you can easily export to Excel.
Smartsheet 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.
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.
Basecamp
Basecamp is the go-to option for many agencies looking for a simple, easy-to-use task management and communication that just works.
Features include:
- Assign to-do tasks to one or multiple people
- Message boards for discussing a project or idea
- Chat function for communicating with team members
- Reports for better understanding a team’s capacity and projects
- Separate screen for managing projects with a client
Price: $99/month with all features for the entire company
Workamajig
Workamajig brings together accounting, client management, new business, creative, media, traffic, and production departments and their tasks into one collaboration software platform.
Features include:
- Integration with STRATA and SmartPlus for media billing
- Ability to see all prospects in an agency’s pipeline with an opportunity widget
- Creates accounts receivable aging reports
- Templates for accurate estimating
- Ability to see overall team availability for resource planning
- Tracks projects per retainers
Price: $50/month/user for up to 5 users, $38/month/user for up to 10 users, $34/month/user for up to 50 users, $32/month/user for over 50 users
ProofHub
ProofHub is an all-in-one project management and team collaboration software that helps teams of all sizes and types to manage complex tasks and work together seamlessly.
Key Features:
- Custom workflows and Kanban boards
- Gantt charts and project calendars
- In-built chat and real-time discussions
- Robust Table view to keep track of every product detail
- Automatic and manual time trackers to keep track of your team’s productivity
- Project reports
- Proofing tool to streamline your review and approval process
- File management
- Stickies and notes
Pricing: The Essential plan starts at $45/motnth and the Ultimate Control plan is $89/month.
Scoro
Scoro combines project management with CRM and billing so that agencies need one tool instead of five different ones.
Top features:
- Projects with tasks and deadlines
- Project scheduling mode
- Customizable project management dashboard
- Detailed reporting and tracking metrics
- Time entries and billing for time
- Invoices and quoting with pre-set templates
- CRM and sales pipeline management
- Client and billing data attached to each project
What’s special about this tool: Scoro is more comprehensive than many other task and project management tools, including CRM, billing, and media planning. It is perfect for agencies that need to frequently bill their clients for work and projects.
Pricing: from $22 user/month for complete agency management
Trello
Trello is known for visualizing project tasks on a cardboard-like dashboard that’s great fo managing short and quick everyday assignments.
Top features:
- Task management on a cardboard
- Creating multiple task lists
- Attach pictures and files to tasks
- Organizing lists by date or priority
- Commenting on cards
What’s special about this tool: Trello has a highly visual interface, making daily task management fun and intuitive. It is great for small teams with no complex projects.
Pricing: Trello is a free tool, with paid pricing for Business and Enterprise plans
Asana
Asana combines elements of project management, file storage, and collaboration and helps to manage projects across a team without email.
Top features:
- Projects with multiple users, tasks, and subtasks
- Real-time interaction with team
- Commenting on projects and tasks
- Notifications about projects updates
- Attachments under projects
- In-app inbox for faster communication
What’s special about this tool: Asana is a really easy-to-use tool with a simplistic layout. If you’re a small team with unsophisticated projects, check it out.
Pricing: Free for up to 15 members, Premium from $8.33 user/month.
Hive
Highly adaptable project management and collaboration software used by small teams of 10 up to Fortune 500s
![Hive screenshot - 10 Best Creative Agency Project Management Software [2022]](https://obiztools.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Kanban-1-800x499-500x312.png)
Hive is a creative 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 including creative teams.
Hive’s time-tracking, analytics and flexible view capabilities allow for transparent understanding of other team members work and upcoming projects. You can organize your projects in a Gantt chart, Kanban board, calendar and easily switch between each layout. Custom designed automated workflows are also possible, along with resource tracking and team communication and collaboration.
Hive has a proofing and approval feature which simplifies feedback loops and approval cycles with the ability to assign approvals, share proofs and provide feedback. Forms can also be sent outside your organization to gather information about clients and customers.
Hive also has one of the first full email integrations in any project management tool, which allows you to send and receive Gmail and Outlook messages from the app.
Hive costs $12 per user per month when billed annually.
How to choose the best creative agency project management software?
At this point, you know about the project management software options you have for your creative agency. But, how do you go about choosing the right one for your needs?
Here are the factors that matter to creative teams:
- Features:
- Planning features: Does the software come with project planning features such as timelines or calendars? Can you plan your team’s availability and allocation?
- Task management feature: Can you customize the task workflow to suit your team’s process? Does the tool make it easy for the team to update tasks?
- Team collaboration: Can the team discuss and collaborate on tasks? Can you attach and share files?
- Workload management: Does the software come with a feature to visualize your team’s workload? Can you rebalance the workload on the fly?
- Integrations: Does the tool integrate well with other tools in your workflow?
- Budget: Do the features make sense to your team? Is the price reasonable for the features provided?
- User interface: Does the user interface match your team’s culture? Is the interface cluttered?
- Usability: Is the tool easy to use and update? Can your team update information quickly?
Conclusion
Agent Management software for advertising agencies is actually an extremely helpful piece of software for any business that needs to manage projects for multiple agencies. The system has truly taken the effort out of project management. Everything from tracking budgets, to keeping deadlines up to date and managing multiple clients from a single screen.
The best project management software for agencies is an essential tool for any online marketing agency that wants to be successful. It helps business owners track their team’s performance, produce detailed monthly reports and measure ROI. Marketing agencies want the ability to grow their business with tools that help them expand and be profitable. They can’t do this without the right project management software in place.