Free Project Management Tools for Startups

Small businesses are very cash flow dependent, especially startups. Conversely, project management tools are not typically free. Here are some free project management tools designed to make life easier for the cash-strapped startup entrepreneur.

Running a startup is no piece of cake. There is a constant hammer of uncertainty that only adds to the already existing pressures of limited budget and scarce resources. Each week as the business of startup grows, so do the challenges that come with this growth.

As a Project Manager, you can only do so much, monitor and manage the team collaboration, maintain time accountability, and assess the progress of your projects. And even then, things can get clunky and fall out of place. To foster an organized workflow, most organizations acquire the help of a nifty task management tool.

Because why let everything fall on your mortal human shoulders when you have a wide array of automated friends to share your burden.

What is Task Management?

Task management is defined as the process of managing the life cycle of a task.

It stretches right from the task planning to track to execution.

It facilitates the entire team to track tasks from the beginning, setting deadlines, how to prioritize tasks, and assigning the tasks to relevant stakeholders.

Task management involves:

• Planning
• Testing
• Tracking
• Reporting

Essentially, task management can facilitate individuals to achieve their goals or groups of individuals to collaborate for the achievement of collective goals.

What is Task Management Software?

Task management tools allow you to organize, plan and prioritize tasks to complete them efficiently within the desired time frame.

Such tools are specifically designed to address the requirements of project leads and rules out the chance of missing goals and surpassing budgets.

The best part is that you can get accustomed to such apps even if your tech-savvy or not.

Summing up, if you are in a job role where you have to delegate tasks to your broader team then task management software is important for you.

Why Use Task Management Software?

Before we move onto helping you choose the best task management software, let’s skim through the reasons your emerging business could use one.

1. Centralize team workflow and communication on a single platform
2. Maintain and monitor team accountability for a myriad of tasks with just a few clicks
3. Practice efficient time tracking of all your team members, at all times with an automated system
4. Create a central hub for document storage, sharing, and retrieval
5. Avoid time wastage in manually updating and organizing project schedules
6. Schedule and attend virtual meetings from anywhere in the world

If you have never used a tool for task management, you will find yourself swimming in a bottomless sea of software to choose from. Which also means, you are equally likely to find yourself investing in the wrong software, which may sound like a good idea at the start but would turn out to be a big source of disappointment.

What Does the Best Task Management Software Offer?

Here are 6 key criteria you should refer to before investing in one:

1. Are issue tracking and risk assessment available for each task or project that you create?
2. Does it facilitate real-time communication with team members for clear & transparent management?
3. Does it allow users the freedom to customize their workspace according to what best suits their preference?
4. Is it visually simple to understand and flexible to use for all sorts of teams?
5. Does it offer a generous set of features at a low price?
6. Does it consist of time tracking features to ensure on-time project delivery?

• 14 day free trial
• From $17/month for 2 users

Visit Website

monday.com – Best for collaborative creative teams

Monday.com assists teams with setting up and following clear processes, workflows, and time frames.

monday.com may seem like the most popular project management software that players in the big leagues use today. Though that is mostly true, monday.com is also one of the most helpful tools startup teams should consider implementing early on so that they can eventually join the bigger players. As a bonus, monday.com is easy to set up and we know how important it is to stay on track on all of your projects as you grow.

monday.com knows how important collaboration is for creative teams so it lets you connect in a variety of different ways without ever leaving the platform: commenting, file attachment, @-tagging, “liking” posts, and assigning tasks with point-and-click ease. You can also build team-specific dashboards and project boards so that everyone can easily see what is being worked on.

monday.com integrates with the tools you already know and love, making the transition for your startup team hassle free. Integrations include project management apps like Slack, Google Drive, Gmail, Google Calendar, Jira, GitHub, Trello, Dropbox, Typeform and many more, accessible through a paid plan with Zapier.

monday.com costs from $10/user/month and they offer a free forever option for a maximum of 2 seats and limited features.Visit Website

• freemium version
• 14 days free trial
• From $5/user/month

Visit Website

Hubstaff Tasks – Best free project management for startups

Hubstaff Tasks offers project planning that’s simple, collaborative, and visual.

Hubstaff Tasks is a project management software for startups with multiple task tracking and collaboration features. Its interface is based on the Kanban methodology; it lets you organize tasks in different project stages, which are represented by columns. Each task can be categorized using color-coded labels. One of its notable features is custom workflows. These let you automate assigning tasks to team members at different project stages and moving them forward with one click.

You can create checklists within each task and track them from the project view using progress bars. Files can also be attached to task cards, but the free plan only allows up to 100 MB of storage per user. Switching to the sprints view displays all your assigned tasks, organized by sprint. You can move tasks to current or future sprints or to the backlog with a drag-and-drop mechanism similar to Kanban.

Hubstaff Tasks integrates with Active Collab, Asana, Breeze, ClickUp, GitHub, GitLab, Insightly, JIRA, LiquidPlanner, Mavenlink, Paymo, PivotalTracker, Podio, Redbooth, Redmine, Teamwork Projects, Trello, Unfuddle, Wrike, Zoho Projects, Slack, Zendesk, Salesforce, QuickBooks, and other apps. You can boost your integration options with a paid plan through Zapier, unlocking hundreds of other possible connections.

Hubstaff Tasks is free for up to 5 users and 10 projects. The premium plan starts at $5/user/month.Visit Website

• 14 days free trial
• From $29/user/month

Visit Website

Forecast.app – Best for managing your projects, resources, and finances in one

Forecast’s auto schedule feature turns a rough list of tasks into a comprehensive project plan

Forecast is a project management software for startups that unites your projects, resources, and financials in one AI-powered platform. Project managers can leverage Forecast’s workflow automation capabilities to create smart schedules, estimate timeframes and budgets, and populate timesheets instantly. Forecast is currently used in over 40 countries by an assortment of agencies, consulting companies, SMBs, and enterprises.

PMs can control the workflow by building out detailed task lists and flagging clear priorities. Task cards allow every team member to easily comment, share files, and register time spent. Everything related to the specific task appears in one place, including dependencies and subtasks. You can put together projects for any type of work: fixed price, time and material, or retainer.

Forecast’s AI learns from previous work and suggests the number of hours you normally register on similar tasks to help you log time faster. You can monitor time registrations from a team perspective and notify each member if they forget to enter something in. Time tracking utilization on a company-wide level is calculated for you for easy alerts, estimates, and reporting.

Forecast integrates with Slack, Microsoft Teams, iCloud Calendar, Google Drive, Google Calendar, Outlook, Harvest, Trello, Asana, GitLab, Github, and dozens more using a paid plan through Zapier. Higher-tier subscriptions include native integrations with Timelog, Xero, QuickBooks Online, JIRA, Azure DevOps, Salesforce, Okta, OneLogin, and Azure Active Directory.

Forecast cost from $29/user/month with a minimum of 10 users and offers a 14-day free trial.Visit Website

• freemium version
• 14 days free trial
• From $7/user/month

Visit Website

Kissflow Project – Best for customizable form building

Kissflow Project allows users to plan their team’s work, see who’s working on what, and deliver great results with minimal tracking. It ensures 360º visibility into projects with Kanban, list, and Matrix views.

Kissflow Project is a collaborative project management software that gives users the ability to keep track of progress and see everything at a glance. Make use of Kanban, list, and matrix views to gain insight on your projects in the best way that works for you and your small team.

What makes Kissflow Project great for startups is their easy to use customizable form builder that comes with more than 25 field types that you can simply drag and drop into place. You can use forms to standardize and optimize task or content requests so that all necessary information gets collected in one go. This is great for small teams who don’t have time for a lot of back-and-forth.

Kissflow integrations include native Microsoft and Google Workspace integrations, and the platform offers a REST API and webhooks.

Kissflow Project costs from $7/user/month and they offer a 14-day free trial.Visit Website

• freemium version
• 14 day free trial period
• From 1.49/month/user

Visit Website

Freedcamp – Best mobile app

Teams can view upcoming tasks on calendars and schedules.

Freedcamp is a project management software that comes with something that most startups today consider as the industry standard: a robust mobile app that’s available on iOS and Android. This means that startups without an office or with limited available computers can access project management data on their personal smartphone device or tablet.

Freedcamp lets users save passwords, create invoices, back up and edit files—all this on top of the project templates, CRM features, and white labeling capabilities you would expect from a solid project management tool. Freedcamp also has calendars, discussion boards, milestones, a team/process wiki builder, issue tracking, and a time tracker too.

Freedcamp integrates with thousands of solutions through Zapier (which requires a separate paid plan of its own).

Freedcamp is free to use with some feature limitations. Their paid plans cost from $1.49/user/month, which you can try through their 14-day free trial.Visit Website

• freemium version
• From $5/user/month

Visit Website

Trello – Best for Kanban boards

View tasks and projects on side-by-side Gantt charts and Kanban boards for increased visibility.

Trello is a project management solution that is most known for its Kanban boards. It offers startup teams a comprehensive tool that can be quickly set up and understood with its intuitive drag-and-drop interface for customizing boards and a no-code workflow automation builder. Their free plan lets you run 250 automated command runs per month, which is noteworthy because many PM tools limit automations to paid subscription plans. Startups take note!

Trello is great for startup teams thanks to a feature-packed free plan that Kanban board cheerleaders in particular will appreciate. You get unlimited cards, unlimited members, up to 10 boards per workspace, a list of free integrations with other PM tools (Google Drive, Slack, etc.), unlimited activity logs, mobile app access, and 2-factor authentication for log-ins.

Trello integrates with Confluence, Slack, Dropbox, Google Drive, Evernote, and other third-party apps you typically find in a modern tech stack.

Trello is free to use. Paid plans cost from $5/user/month and come with a 14-day free trial.Visit Website

Conclusions

You’re ready to deliver the world’s best burrito, but finding project management software shouldn’t get you down. There are several free project management tools out there specifically for startups. Here are 8 of the best free project management tools for startups I could find.