Open Source Project Management Software can be a great way to manage projects successfully. By choosing the right open source project management software, you can optimize your business processes and keep track of progress and status. Additionally, using open source project management software can help you follow up on your projects and keep them on track. Overall, using open source project management software is an effective way to manage your small business.
Best open source project management software
OpenProject
OpenProject is an agile, efficient, classic, and hybrid open-source project management software. You will have access to secure your privacy with the highest standards in privacy and data security. Installing it in your infrastructure helps you get complete control and data ownership.
Using the tool will give you insights into all your data and its storage without any external influence. It will also allow your team to work more productive, more pleasant, and simpler way. In addition, your team will be able to track their work to get better results while organizing tasks quickly and distributing tasks to anyone within the team.
OpenProject has everything in a single place so that you can communicate better. Optimize the creativity and experience of the teammates via shared timelines to visualize and create project plans.
Analyze the detailed activities to develop a plan and let everyone know how to proceed and when to deliver the project by understanding the scope. Agile teams will also measure, learn, and build to deliver faster and better work with every iteration.
OpenProject provides necessary tools to get methodologies like Kanban and Scrum and agile product development. It is a big community for developers, open-source enthusiasts, businesses, etc., where they can find the perfect setup to choose between premises and flexible hosting options.
The enterprise on-premises provides premium, professional support, and security features for the self-hosted OpenProject. According to your number of users, calculate your price. Choose the support options and subscription period to get your application starting at $405/year for 5 users.
If you need OpenProject hosting then you can try the Kamatera platform.
Focalboard
Are you searching for an alternative to Notion, Asana, and Trello?
Well, you can go for Focalboard, which is an open-source and self-hosted project management software. It helps to organize, manage, track, and define work across your teams by using the Kanban board view. It has two editions:
- Focalboard Personal Desktop: It is a desktop app for personal and to-do projects. It is a single-tenant that runs on a local server to get optimal performance and speed.
- Focalboard Personal Server: It is a self-hosted server to help collaborate better with your team.
Click over “add new boards” to pick project tasks from the different templates.
Change the created date, priority, sort settings, filter settings, and group by settings according to your preference. You can also drag cards from one column to another to change the group property. In addition, edit the cards whenever you want to know the set of properties and content and the list of comments.
Table views help you view the cards in a single place to hover over the title to open one. Furthermore, every board has card templates and board templates to customize each board as per your team. Get a Personal Desktop on your Mac and Windows or Personal Server on Ubuntu.
Restya
Get the open-source project management platform of Restya to manage tasks, chat, to-dos, etc. Restya is a Trello-like kanban board that will offer advanced category Extend Restyaboard and countless options such as scripts, user styles, widgets, integrations, etc.
They have the MyRestyaboards app that is compatible with iPadOS and iOS operating systems. It tracks numerous Restya Boards, and you can import existing boards easily from Asana, which is used in project and work management.
It’s a cloud-based project management solution where you can also import your work instantly from Kantree, a flexible management tool that helps organize, collaborate projects, manage, and plan. Furthermore, you can easily transfer boards from Pipefy, Taiga, Taskwarrior, Trello, and Wekan to Restya Board.
A separate board manages every project, and you can create numerous boards and manage them simultaneously. Use existing templates for instant and quick launches, and duplicate a single board multiple times with different names. In addition, the keyboard shortcut keys let you perform some actions like deletion and addition of members, open cards, voting, etc.
Create one digital platform with classified projects and descriptions. In this digital platform, you will get an interactive interface, better organization visibility, and the option to edit, add a member, remove a member, change permissions, sort, and delete.
View simple boards or apply filters to see a list of boards and set its visibility to public or private. You can also see the cards in grid format or a list view. Restya provides you with a calendar view along with color variations to make it distinct and highlighted.
Additional features you will have are Gantt view, report view, member invitation, list view of members, editing visibility mode, changing the background, modifying textures and patterns, custom background option, automatic subscription, productivity beats, and much more.
ERPNext
Upgrade your daily working style through an open-source project management software ERPNext. It allows you to organize your task, schedule, plan, and analyze the projects by collaborating with your team to accelerate the work.
ERPNext can keep track of your project deadlines with a clear view of the plan. You can manage everything from a single workspace and simplify the projects by discovering a task-driven approach.
ERPNext offers easy collaboration by allowing you to split the project into bite-sized tasks and assign them to your teammates. You will also get access to the progress of your project and its efficiency via priorities and clear scope, milestones, and estimated timelines.
Moreover, ERPNext lets you share and upload multimedia files like images, documents, and videos. Achieve smooth communication with everyone with the help of auto-replies to incoming emails.
Get current and accurate insights anytime you need to stay on top of expenses and budgets, plan better for every project and see how the budget has been spent. It also allows you to build software for open-source projects.
Taskcafe
Taskcafe is an open-source project management tool that helps manage different tasks via a Kanban board interface by setting due dates and adding checklists and labels. Once you get inside the “My Tasks” view, you will see each assigned task.
You will also get options like personal projects, task comments, task activities, etc. If you are searching for an alternative to NextCloud, Trello, etc., you can have Taskcafe that will fit your workflow and help you manage every project easily. It is in the alpha development stage and has many useful and unique features.
Orangescrum
Get a scalable and secure open-source project management tool – Orangescrum to manage agile and simple projects for your teams. It helps you make strategies, plan it well, execute your plan, and allow your team to finish within the deadline to complete a project successfully.
Orangescrum helps you plan everything strategically to achieve higher efficiency and have optimal results. Apart from creating project plans, you can also monitor and deliver them seamlessly. It also helps in real-time collaboration and minimum resource utilization when you are assigning roles to your teammates.
Orangescrum integrates your workflow with visual project planning to increase the success rates. Get insights into portfolio performance and initiatives through real-time data in your dashboards. Furthermore, you can manage financial activities and budgets by monitoring project expenses and resource costs to achieve higher profit margins.
Secure your data with role-based access control (RBAC) and Single Sign-On. You can also download Orangescrum on Android or iOS devices to manage the same work being outside. In addition, centralize your project information to access easily from anywhere.
If you are a startup and want to keep track of the work, choose the startup plan at just $9/month for 10 users and avail benefits like unlimited tasks, projects, Gantt chart, status, task reminder, 5 GB storage, and 5 guest users.
Taiga
Deliver your project as promised within budget with Taiga – a project management tool having rich features and simplicity with its intuitive interface for multi-functional agile teams. It lets you collaborate with your team to define deliverables and utilize their knowledge.
Start aligning tasks and prioritize the deliverables to allow each member for timely completion. As communication is a significant point in every management, Taiga helps you interact with your teammates quickly to share task progress. In addition, let your teammates view the ongoing activities and check the completed tasks.
With Taiga, you can enable better transparency with your team on the current status and resource allocation and better understand the effort required to complete the project. It has an easy-to-use interface to help improve the way of working and performing tasks.
You can change the workflows and add more features without any complex setup in between the project. Taiga also offers reliability, independence, adaptability, flexibility, security, performance, and stability to help you deliver excellent projects.
Sign up for free to get up to 5 private projects, unlimited public projects, and up to 300MB storage. If you want to have more benefits, go with the $5/user/month plan.
Best free open source project management software
1. Instagantt
If you want online Gantt software, this is the way to go. It’s designed to work with Asana (which we’ll talk about in a moment) and also allows you to link schedules from other sources. That means you only have to put in all of your information once, and you’ll be able to see it across each of your different platforms. You can set up timelines and tasks as well as managing and monitoring your teams’ workload. While you’re at it, you’ll be able to see everything in a format that works for you and your team.
If you’re not using Asana, you can still get a lot out of this system, including monitoring and assigning tasks, assigning due dates, and evaluating progress. All of these things come in several different price points that will help you work with the team that you have and keep apprised of everything that needs to be done.
Some of Instagantt’s awesome features are:
- Gantt and workload view
- Task and subtasks
- Public snapshot sharing options
- Timelines
- Multiple projects and workspaces
- Dependencies and milestones
- Critical path
- Team collaboration options: notification and task assignment
- Estimated and actual cost
- Custom view and custom fields
- Custom color options for progress bars
- Risk and priority
- Baselines
- Drag & drop
- Diverse exporting options: Excel, image and PDF
2. TeamGantt
With this tool, you’re creating workflows, and you’re doing it in a way that’s simple for people to understand and get a handle on. You can create different projects, milestones, and tasks and even use it on any of your devices. This system works on iOS, Android, Google Chrome, and Web. That means any of your users and team members can access it no matter where they are or what type of device they use. And you can check in to see just what they’re doing through the snapshot view.
You get to assign high, low, and medium priority to tasks, see how your team is doing and even set up the start dates and due dates for everything. You’ll also be able to use Gantt style timelines to keep an eye on everything. And you can try out the whole thing for free for 30 days. Then you pay based on the number of people who are on your team.
Some of TeamGantt Features:
– Drag&Drop
– Guest permission
– Baselines
– Multiple project view in one Gantt chart
– Guest permission
– Baselines
– Tasks & Subtasks
3. Asana
You want to be able to keep track of everything that everyone is working on, and that’s where Asana does well. This program gives you the ability to create the task list you want and then move it as much as you like. You also have a visual project timeline that you can use to see everything you need to get done. You can even set up your progress, note due dates, and make sure that scheduling and rescheduling are simple and easy.
What makes this application even better is that it works with several of your other favorites. You can link it to your Slack, Outplanr, Google Calendar, and Dropbox. All of these links make it easy to integrate, and they also ensure you don’t have to put in information all at once. Plus, you can choose between different fee schedules to find what works for you. From free to enterprises.
Asana Features:
- Document Management
- Project Management
- Time & Expense Tracking
- CRM
- Collaboration Tools
- Portfolio Management
- Resource Management
- Integration with Instagantt
4. Click Up:
If you want to manage tasks efficiently, including managing your more substantial tasks, full projects, small tasks, and notes, you’ll want to check out this service. It’s designed to let you customize everything, so you have a system that works for you. It also enables you to do automatic scheduling with estimated times, and you can choose who gets to see what on the system. That way, when you bring your team into the system, they’re not automatically privy to everything.
You can set goals and see how they’re doing as well as changing up the view that works best for you, check on the status of projects and more. You’ll also have an inexpensive rate because this system is paid based on how many people you have on your team. You only pay $4.99 per person each month.
Click Up Features:
- Task tray
- Notepad
- Assigned comments
- Dark mode
- Integrations
- Assigned comments
- Multiple views
5. Wrike
This tool will give you the ability to communicate with your team through what they call ‘best-in-class’ collaboration. They also have document management tools and different communication features. You can even set up priorities for what needs to be done and make sure that your team is working more efficiently at the tasks that matter. If you already use Outlook, iCalendar, or Google, you can even sync your tasks or your milestones to keep everything working together.
With this system, you can use Gantt charts, which help you to create the timelines you’re looking for. You also get a more straightforward process for staying up-to-date on what’s happening in your projects so you can send the information on to your clients. Pricing is also based on the number of users that you have signed up with the service during the year.
Wrike Features:
- Critical path
- Collaborative team editing
- Folder hierarchy
Project management tools
HeySpace
If Slack and Trello had a baby, it would be HeySpace. It’s one of the best tools for sales because of it’s functionalities and ease of use. HeySpace is a task management software with chat. It helps to communicate and collaborate with your friends. People can manage workflow and monitor the progress of works always up-to-date.
HeySpace allows your team to eliminate two or even three different tools – task management software, project management software, and communication software since it combines the key features of these three. No more switching between different apps! You have everything in one place, easy to access and easy to use. Make HeySpace your project management tool
Main features:
- Workspaces – you can create different workspaces for different clients, teams or departments
- Group and individual chat
- Adjustable tasks – you can set date, assign people to it, add tags, description, files, comment on it, add estimates, copy task
- Calendar integration and Google docs attachments
- Kanban board with tasks
- Video calls
In HeySpace you can manage your university projects online and collaborate in groups on different tasks. In free version you can create unlimited projects, so you can use it as your private task manager and also a tool for group collaboration. You can use chat and video calls to communicate with others.
Pricing:
- Free
- Premium – $5/user/month
Slack
Personally, I would recommend Slack. What is the reason behind this recommendation? The communicator is an excellent and powerful, having plenty settings and options at its disposal. First of all, Slack enables real-time messaging. All the team communication is in one place, in the result of which accessing chats and searching them through is as easy as pouring tea into a cup.
The app integrates with numerous external services. The list is continuously broadened. It offers built-in internal and external sharing options as to enable people to get and share files with whoever they want. The tool is equipped with advanced search, filters and sorting as to make getting the right files simpler. The results can be filtered by relevance or file type to find what you exactly need.
Lastly, Slack has fully native apps for iOS and Android at its disposal. What else is worth pointing out? Maybe that Slack provides one with read state synchronization. What does it mean? It means that when you read something on your phone, your laptop will know about it and automatically mark those messages as ”read” ones.
Key features:
- Create open channels
- Desktop and mobile messaging, file sharing and notifications
- Flexible file browsing
- Useful, customizable notifications
- Search inside Word docs, Google Docs, Photoshop files, PDFs
- Private groups and 1:1 direct messaging
- Read-state synchronization
- Search conversations and individual messages
You can use Slack for your group projects. It will help mostly in communication, so you don’t need to meet personally or write e-mails to organize the work. You can also share files there. It lacks some more advanced task management features, but it can be easily integrated with other free tools.
Asana
It is commonly known to be a workflow management tool also for students. What does characterize this software? It is its flexibility. Though figuring out how to set it up for one’s needs may not be easy, Asana offers handy instructions for those who deal with it for the first time in the form of online video tutorials for learning how to start using it and mastering the finer points of Asana. Asana enables students to do basic collaboration stuff such as sharing and editing materials, communicate with other users and designate tasks to specific people. In short, it has all that students who are working on a project need.
Key features:
- The tool helps to create teams which aim is to organize one’s projects and connect teammates with a shared calendar and conversations.
- Teammates can be added as followers. This enables them to, first of all, follow along with work on the task, moreover, to receive relevant notifications with task updates.
- The access to every project can be limited as well as creating hidden teams for sensitive work, or making public teams and projects for access by one’s entire team.
Tasks in Asana can be managed in different views, depending on what you need. You can create simple to-do lists for your assignments, use kanban boards or plan your project in a calendar.
Evernote
It is a program that makes possible the collaboration of many people, which facilitates project management.
First of all, the app is easy to use and it is flexible. What is more, it enables, among others, sharing information and collaboration on various projects, organizing tasks, monitoring finances, digitizing files that are important to the project, and capturing image-centric brainstorms.
Finally, with the app, the material can be easily collected and organized to improve the workflow of one’s team. Use Evernote and have everything is at your hand!
Key features:
- Share notes and collaborate on files
- Save favorite webpages
- Snap photos, record audio, save documents
- Content available on any device
- Edit rich text and sketches
- Evernote Clearly for clearing web content
- Give feedback and share ideas
- Sketch on a page and sync notes to any device
The app is greater for working on research, looking for inspiration, and taking notes. It’s one of the best project management ideas for students. But if you want to coordinate the whole project online you might need something more to communicate and delegate and monitor tasks.
BASECAMP
The management tool is incredibly useful when it comes to managing projects and your team, no matter where your team members live in, Canada or Congo.
Basecamp has at its disposal a wide variety of features that aims is to improve the system of project monitoring and getting things done on time. It is an intuitive and user-friendly tool that can be run in minutes. In addition, tasks are presented in the form of handy to-do lists with due ranges and dates; each user has their own task. All that has been done to avoid chaos and confusion. The next amazing feature of this app is the way how one gets to prioritize and reorder tasks and adjust the system to one’s needs.
Finally, the program is also an astounding medium enabling coworkers to share ideas, proposals, or align reference conversations, which in turn helps you to make sure each team member knows what others are doing as not to double their work.
Conclusion
Project management software helps you accelerate your workflow, promote better communication, save time and money. I hope the above discussed open-source and free project management tools help you achieve these benefits to complete each project successfully.