The best way to get your clients to pay the invoices is if you are using the best project management templates. This article will look at the rationale behind using this software, the most popular project management for designers and what you should expect from it.
Searching for a way to handle your creative projects? There are many ways you can assess and manage creative development. One of the most popular ways is with the use of graphic design project management software. This software allows you to keep track of everything from creative briefs to inspirations. The software provides a central location for all information about your projects, keeping everyone on the same page and preventing confusion. Want to learn about project management templates for graphic designers? Or about project management software for creatives? Check out these project management software and resources.
WP Project Manager
Do you like to work with WordPress? Then WP Project Manager can be your best fit. It’s a simple yet powerful open-source project management software where your teammates will experience a joyful ride.
As we are talking about designers, they have to focus on the deadline, currently processed tasks, complete tasks, and creating new projects with the whole crew. Apart from that, time management for creatives is one of the important criteria, and WP Project Manager can do that without any issues.
Key Features
- Add unlimited To-do lists with a little description.
- Assign tasks to the teammates with a due date.
- Discuss projects with all the co-workers.
- Users get email notifications about assigned, upcoming, or outdated tasks.
- Users can manage projects from the frontend without going to the backend interface.
- Kanban Board facilities in WordPress.
- Track time with start, stop and pause buttons.
- WooCommerce, Slack, Github integrated.
Who Should Use It?
You can consider it as one of the best graphic design project management tools without any hesitation. WP Project Manager is specially built for the people who want to save their time from managing the organization and use that in more productive aspects. Like- Web Designers, Graphic Designers, Client Manager, Freelancers, and more. So, just run after your new thoughts & dreams and let this project manager help you.
monday.com
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 starts at $17/month for 2 users and has a free 14-day trial.
ClickUp
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.
nTask
nTask is an intuitive project management software ideal for the design team to plan, organize and collaborate on everyday tasks productively. With its Kanban Board feature, users can create their own workflow templates and use them for other projects as well. It helps you monitor the progress and keep track of the work done with the help of Gantt charts.
What It Offers
The workspaces in nTask contain all the information for your work, tasks, and projects. Using this app, the users can create personal and group workspaces to help manage their work. The teams can collaborate on projects and tasks using comments and send replies for sharing feedback. It also helps save and organize documents in folders, which is a necessity for design and creative teams. It can help you see the project progress in real-time with an interactive Gantt chart view having a drag and drop functionality.
Pricing
There are different pricing tiers for nTask including Basic, Premium, Business, and Enterprise. Each plan offers a 14-Day free trial. The Premium plan costs $2.99/month for each user and the Business plan is at $7.99/month per user.
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Easy to use for complex projects
- All in one project management and team collaboration platform
Cons
- No desktop app available now
ProofHub as Project Management Tool
ProofHub is a versatile project management software for designers. It keeps everyone from teams to clients in the loop of the design project-related information.
What It Offers
The inbuilt proofing tool of ProofHub makes it the main attraction for designers. Clients and team members can suggest changes in a design using the markup and annotation tools in ProofHub.
This way team members do not need to fall into the web of email threads to share files and get feedback before the final design is approved.
Apart from this, the elaborate Kanban boards of ProofHub help in a clear understanding of various design tasks, allocations, status updates in no time. Other features of ProofHub relevant to designers include discussions, announcements, chats, Gantt charts, etc.
Timesheets is another important feature that helps in proper tracking of time, creating invoices and analyzing the productivity of design teams.
Pricing
ProofHub offers a free trial. The Ultimate Control plan of ProofHub begins at $89/month billed annually for unlimited users.
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Feature-rich
- Does not charge per user
Cons
- Needs to work on its integrations which they have already announced are in the development process
Conclusion:
A good project management tool can make a huge difference to your business productivity. Whether you are a creative agency or freelancer, I bet you need an efficient way to manage clients and their projects. There are many project management software out there but not every one of them is suitable for graphic design. It is quite challenging to find the best one with the limited time and resources we have.