Free Project Management Collaboration Tools is the theme of the next week’s blog series. Every week I will be analysing various collaboration tools, in case you need to find an online project management software for your team, or just want to take a look at different options.
Free project management collaboration tools are essential if you are managing remote employees or are part of a dispersed team. With many free products, professional features are included at no cost to you.
Trello (Web, macOS, Windows, iOS, Android)
Trello is a simple way to organize your projects with Kanban boards. And with a free plan that allows for unlimited boards and users, it’s a tool that anyone can use. Freelancers can use Trello to plan their assignments on a personal board, and teams can use Trello to build a complete project workflow with visibility at every stage.
Start by creating a new board from scratch or choosing a template from dozens of options across marketing, sales, design, team management, and more. Add a handful of lists for your tasks (each list is a column), and customize those lists with the steps in your workflow (e.g., to-do, doing, and done) or as separate parts of your project (e.g., development, design, and distribution). Next, add your tasks as visual cards in each column—with labels, due dates, members, checklists, images, attachments, and comments to keep everything in one place.
As you start completing tasks, simply drag the cards to the appropriate list. You can keep track of all comments and tasks that mention you—or that you’re watching—from the activity menu.
For more features, Trello’s Power-Up options (now unlimited even on the free plan) let you view tasks on a calendar, add voting options on tasks, fade away old tasks automatically, and much more. And you can make Trello boards for everything—personal and work tasks alike—to get your work done in a way that best fits your needs.
For even more flexibility, use Trello’s Zapier integrations to connect Trello with your favorite apps, like Gmail and Slack. Or check out these 6 ways to automate Trello.
Trello Price: The free plan includes unlimited cards and members, 10 team boards, unlimited Power-Ups, and 250 automated commands each month; upgrade for $5/user/month (billed annually) to the Standard plan that includes unlimited team boards and Power-Ups, custom fields, up to 1,000 automated commands per month, and more.
ClickUp (Web, iOS, Android)
Most project management apps let you choose from only a handful of task views, like a list, calendar, or Kanban view. Additional views, especially Gantt charts, are usually a premium feature. ClickUp is different.
It’s a simple and free project management app that lets you choose from 11 different task views, including Gantt charts and mind maps. There are also four different page views: Chat (which displays conversations alongside your tasks), Doc (which lets you create docs, wikis, and knowledge bases), Embed (to add apps and websites next to your tasks), and Form (to add a form next to your tasks to gather, organize, and collect data).
ClickUp’s dashboards are just as customizable, letting you choose from more than 20 different widgets so you can only highlight the most important project information.
There’s a lot to parse when you’re first getting started with ClickUp. The onboarding process won’t be as simple as Trello, for example, but the extra customization is worth it—especially when it’s completely free. Plus, the company has done a great job with guided in-app onboarding to get you started.
With ClickUp’s Zapier integrations, you can connect ClickUp with your favorite apps. Try one of the automations below, or read about why ClickUp users love Zapier.
ClickUp Price: The free plan includes unlimited tasks and users, up to 100MB of storage, and up to 100 uses of Gantt charts, mind maps, dashboards, and timeline views. Upgrade to the Unlimited plan for $5/user/month for unlimited list, board, and calendar views, unlimited dashboards, and guests and permissions.
HubSpot Project Management Software
HubSpot’s project management tool includes task creation, task automation, and pre-made to-do lists. It’s specifically designed for marketing teams and integrates seamlessly with Marketing Hub. With this tool, you can keep track of tasks alongside your marketing projects — so that both are integrated and not managed on different tools.
Features include:
- Task management right alongside your marketing workflows
- File attachment capabilities to keep track of important assets
- Pre-made to-do lists to immediately launch projects
- Custom templates for recurring projects
- Landing pages, emails, and workflows available in the same tool
Pricing: Free with HubSpot Marketing Hub
Toggl Plan
Toggl Plan is an effective project management tool to automate your task delegation process and visualize which project tasks have been completed, and which haven’t. If your team often collaborates with other departments on projects, this might be a useful tool for you.
Features include:
- Gantt-chart visualization to track important deadlines and projects
- Integrations with Slack, Github, Evernote, and others
- Team collaboration option through shared calendars and task notes
Pricing: Free for 14 days; $8/user/month (Team); $13.35/user/month (Business)
Airtable: Offers 200+ pre-designed templates
Airtable is a cloud collaboration and project management tool that helps you plan and organize your projects as well as set a roadmap for you and your team.
The tool helps you distribute projects based on use cases and offers advanced filtering and sorting options to arrange unlimited tasks according to your preference. Airtable also contains built-in applications such as a scheduler, webpage designer, and an email marketing tool.
Additionally, you can also automate routine tasks such as sending and approving project requests, scheduling team meetings, and processing bills and invoices.
Airtable offers phone, email, and chat support. The tool has a mobile app for both iOS and Android devices.
Basecamp: Creates automatic check-ins for teams
Basecamp is a project management software tool designed for freelancers, creative teams, and small businesses. It helps you organize your projects in one place and split work between team members.
The tool offers a message board that you can use to pitch ideas, as well as send and receive progress updates and project feedback from your team. With Basecamp, you can create checklists and to-do lists to assign items to team members and set due dates for projects.
Another convenient feature is the schedule manager which integrates with your calendar to automate setting up meetings and subscribing to events.
Basecamp offers phone, email, and chat support and has a mobile app for both iOS and Android devices.
Conclusion
Project management is one of the most difficult jobs if you’re working alone, but it’s not impossible. You can use different tools like Trello, Asana or even Microsoft Project if you’re advanced. However, these tools are only as useful as your ability to use them. When I created this list of free project management collaboration tools I found that many of these apps are much more beginner friendly than the paid versions out there. Additionally, you’ll find that these tools may be simple, but they’re effective nonetheless (which is all that really matters).