More and more startups and freelancers are choosing to go remote. And while working remotely can have a lot of benefits, it can feel like you’re out of the loop at times. How do you stay on track with your numbers? How can you ensure that your employees are always on the same page? How do you know if someone is slacking off when you’re not looking over their shoulder? A good remote management tool would both help alleviate some of these headaches and make managing a remote team easier. To find the best of the best, we’ve taken a look at some of the top task and project management software for startups and freelancers.
This article will provide you with a list of tools similar to Asana, which you can use as an alternative to it. These tools are free, and perfect for small business owners who don’t need advanced features.
nTask
nTask is a free, online project management tool designed and developed for teams. Although created for teams, it has a simplified workable user interface that can be used by individuals for personal use or freelancers in multiple industries.
It works well with teams of all sizes and industries. As one of the top free Asana alternatives that made it to this list, nTask comprises a wide range of features that facilitate collaboration and helps streamline projects and work processes.
nTask can help you manage multiple projects related to software development, marketing, human resources, design as well as legal.
Key Features:
Some of the features and modules of nTask include:
- A simple user interface with access to a wide range of modules.
- Team specific workspaces that can be managed and monitored simultaneously.
- Create, assign, organize, prioritize and share tasks
- Create and assign projects
- Comment on and assign tasks to projects or structure them independently
- Convert comments to tasks using Slack
- Select from multiple statuses for a task
- Kanban Boards with custom statuses and industry templates
- Gantt charts, project reports, and project timelines to manage and monitor project progress
- Timesheet management with the option of creating and managing team-specific sections for employee task efforts and payroll.
- Meeting management helps you keep your teams in sync with arranging and scheduling meetings. You can set one time or recurring meetings along with sending invites to attendees, added meeting details, and specifying follow up procedures.
- Issue management module facilitates in identifying and listing down issues related to multiple tasks. You can list down the issue along with the Issue owner and relevant details to track issue maintenance.
- Risk management module helps you identify and keep track of potential risks. You can list down the risk and assign a risk owner in order to track risk management.
- Powerful search and filter tools that help you search for tasks, projects, meetings, issues, and risks.
- Alerts, notifications, and reminders to keep teams on track.
- iOS and Android mobile apps
Pricing Plan:
- nTask offers a free and Pro pricing plan.
- Premium Plan: $3 per month per user with an annual billing plan.
- Business Plan: $8 per month per user with an annual billing plan.
- Looking for a perfect Asana alternative?See for yourself why Asana users are switching to nTask. Create unlimited, tasks, meetings, risks, issue & more.
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Free Features:
Here are some features you can get with a free subscription:
- Unlimited workspaces
- Up to 5 team members per workspace
- 5 MBs file attachment size
- 100 MBs of storage space
- Unlimited tasks & meetings
- Team timesheets
- Issue tracking
- Time tracker
- Calendar management
Quire
Quire is another free asana alternative you can adapt to your project management practices. It is a free app that facilitates task management for creative teams.
This app is selected as one of our top free Asana alternatives especially for teams who need to manage complex, laborious and time-consuming projects.
Quire helps you achieve this by breaking down tasks into smaller and easily manageable components. You can then prioritize the tasks as required. One of its key features is its organized and easy-to-navigate interface. Plus, it does not restrict the number of manageable tasks and subtasks.
Some of the key features this tool can offer you include:
- Unlimited tasks and subtasks
- Organize and prioritize tasks
- Assign and comment on and set the status for each task
- Easy to use and transparent all-in-one workspace
- Instant and real-time collaboration channel
- Exclusive third-party access
- Integrations with Siri and the camera for iPhone
- Team roles and permissions
- Smart folder + Filter feature
- iOS and Android mobile apps
Pricing Plan:
Quire is entirely free-to-use and offers no enterprise pricing plans for now.
MeisterTask
This free Asana alternative is an online task and project tool. Like other tools, MeisterTask also helps teams collaborate more efficiently while helping project managers have complete control of the projects. Teams can monitor a project’s progress in a simple to use application.
One of the key features of MeisterTask includes Kanban project dashboards. The tasks are organized and transparent for teams to view, monitor and stay notified. It also integrates with other tools to make a project and task management easier such as BitBucket, Dropbox and Google Drive.
Key Features:
Here is a comprehensive list of features you can avail with Meistertask:
- Kanban Project Boards
- Custom Dashboards
- Tasks and sub-tasks
- Notes and comments
- File attachments and information sharing
- Organizing tasks and placing tags and stars
- Task Relationships
- Automations
- Integrations
- Mobile Apps (iOS, Android, Windows)
Pricing Plan:
Meistertask comes with free, Pro, Business and Enterprise payment plans.
Paid Plan: Meistertask Pro charges $8.25 per user per month.
Free Features:
Some of the free features you can get in the free plan include:
- Unlimited projects and tasks
- Unlimited project members
- Customizable dashboards and project boards
- Two integrations with your favorite apps
- File attachments up to 20 MB per file
- Mobile apps
Freedcamp
Freedcamp is another Asana alternative, which is a cloud-based collaboration and project management created teams and individuals. This service comes with a broad list of capabilities with reference to task assignment, communication, time tracking, scheduling and more.
All this without making expensive purchases. Some of the core features include setting up task lists and setting them up as sticky notes on Kanban boards.
Key Features:
The key features this service brings you to include:
- Task and subtasks management
- Multiple statuses for tasks
- Team member addressing
- Project templates
- Kanban boards
- Gantt Charts
- Messaging and discussion boards
- Team milestones
- Calendar
- Invoice management
- CRM
- Issue and time tracking
- Time tracking
- Document and shared file management
- Read-only guest access
- Data backups
Pricing Plan:
Freedcamp offers free, Lite, Business and Enterprise Plans.
Paid plans start from $ 3.99 per user per month.
Free Features:
Here are the features you can avail for free with Freedcamp:
- Unlimited users, projects, and storage
- 10 MB file upload size
- Calendar
- Messaging and discussion boards
- Passwords Manager
- Personal Task Manager
- Shared file management
- Tasks and subtasks
- Team milestones and time tracking
- Support response within 3 business days
Best for easy onboarding: Jira
I was recently reminded just how much I loved the onboarding process with Jira while reviewing another product. While the competitor did nothing to tailor the experience to the user’s work, Jira goes above and beyond to fit the software to its users.
As soon as you sign up for this software, Jira walks you through a step-by-step setup process that’ll help you choose the correct management style for your project, and it also instructs you on how to use that setup. This onboarding process is combined with an exceptional selection of support content, from user guides to an extensive knowledge base.
Like Asana, Jira is more of a collaboration tool. It focuses on streamlining your project execution experience, and because of that, Jira offers lots of different task planning and management styles. These styles include kanban boards, critical path methodology, Scrum methodology, content management templates, and many more.
Jira’s task management capabilities have significantly improved over the years, probably thanks to Trello.
Jira even beats out Asana’s paid options with two tiers:
- Standard: $10/month flat fee for up to 10 users
- Premium: $14/month, per user
Finally, while both Jira and Asana are lacking in financial management capabilities, the former has the upper hand in reporting. Asana doesn’t have any solid reporting capabilities, while Jira has one of the simplest and most user-friendly reporting functions I’ve ever seen, earning it a place on any list of Asana alternatives.
Best for critical path methodology: TeamGantt
This might be a strange accolade to give on a list of Asana alternatives, but when it comes to creating Gantt charts, tracking task dependencies, and all-around task management, TeamGantt is a fantastic option.
This software even made it into my recent piece as one of the top project management software options for using critical path methodology, one of the most crucial project management techniques.
What I love best about TeamGantt is the simplicity of planning out the project management steps and the scheduling of your project.
TeamGantt doing what it does best: Gantt charts.
Its Gantt charts and shared team calendars are clear, concise, and don’t require tons of technical knowledge to master. TeamGantt even offers an easy-to-use workload management feature, and although it isn’t as visually appealing as Asana’s, it’s extremely helpful for averting team burnout.
However, all of this simplicity comes at a price that’s difficult to justify unless TeamGantt is exactly what you’re looking for. It does offer a free version of the software, but it only allows up to three users.
Fortunately, that free option comes with all of the features listed above as well as phone support for the first 30 days. After that, the pricing starts at $49.75 per month for five users with an increase of nearly $10 for each additional user.
Trello
Trello, a subsidiary of Atlassian, focuses on the Kanban-style of project management. Each project is presented as a “board,” and broken up into “lists” and “cards.” Cards can be dragged between lists as they reach different stages. Trello makes the list of Asana alternatives because if you are looking for a step down in functionality, Trello is for you.
Pros: Trello is a simple, user-friendly tool that can be attractive for new teams managing small, simple projects. Its clean visual layout separates it from other project management software. It’s easy to transition between the mobile and desktop interfaces, and you can even create cards via email.
Cons: Trello is best for smaller, simpler projects. Trello is a weak option for project managers concerned with estimates, budgets, and dependencies. Also, if you like being able to see your project in a Gantt Chart, then Trello isn’t the tool for you. To see a list of Gantt Chart software options, click here.
Pricing: Free – $20.83/user/month
Scoro
Scoro is an all-in-one work management software that combines project planning, time tracking, contact management, and billing. You can also find a broad suite of products ranging from project management to CRM within Scoro.
Pros: Scoro’s largest advantage is if you want to keep your CRM with your project management tasks. It also excels at handling client work, as the software combines time tracking, billing, quoting, and invoicing.
Cons: When compared to standalone project management software or CRMs, “comprehensive” productivity suites like Scoro aren’t as robust in each module. With as many integrations as there are today, having an all-in-one solution isn’t as attractive as it once was.
Pricing: $22-$55/user/month
ClickUp
ClickUp is an online application that enables users to tackle all of their work in one place. Their slogan is “one app to replace them all.”
Pros: ClickUp is a simple and intuitive project management platform for managing projects and teams of any size. It features a hierarchy of different project views and boasts an easy to navigate user interface.
Cons: ClickUp is an all-in-one solution. All too often, “all-in-one” solutions try to do too much at one time. This level of functionality can be overwhelming to new project software users. Some people find the number of functions and integration options make it too difficult to adopt successfully.
Pricing: Free – $9 user/month for Business, Enterprise plan quoted.
Proofhub
Launched in 2011, Proofhub is an “all-in-one” project planning software.
Pros: The main draw to Proofhub is its proofing capabilities. You can proof and add comments right on creative work and documents. Proofhub also offers a wealth of project management features, including Gantt charts, Kanban boards, calendars, Timesheets, Request Forms, Timers, Custom Roles, Chat, Discussions, and more.
Cons: Proofhub is one of the more expensive options on this list. Proofhub does not come with a free version, which may make it out of reach for small teams with tight budgets. Also, some users complain about the lack of integrations offered, and that the user interface could be improved.
Pricing: $45-$150/month
Conclusion
ntask has gained enough popularity that many people do not believe it is a free tool. It seems like the developers are trying to hide their product behind $0 price tag. But if you look through the right channels you will see that it is one of the most cost-effective project management tools. And this is before ntask review has happened.