Want to learn about top project management tools? Or about best project management tools free? Check out these free online project management tools. You will find a list of the top online project management tools for small business, startups and big companies. The last thing you want is disorganized team. Being a small business owner, there are so many things at play, the biggest problem being the control over your employees and employees’ accountability. In such a scenario, it becomes quite difficult to manage people without any automation or tool.
You probably know most of the best project management tools by now, but if you don’t, they will save your butt and make your work a lot easier. These online project management tools save you hours of time and they help you improve productivity and reduce costs.
ProofHub
ProofHub is a versatile project management software used by leading organizations like NASA, Disney, Taco Bell, and many more. This all-in-one tool comes packed with powerful features to eliminate the need of depending on tens of different tools to run your project.
Whether you’re a team of 10, 50, or 500 project members, ProofHub is an extremely scalable solution for managing project activities. Managers can use it to take charge of all kinds of project tasks, side-by-side full control on project communication. One of the highlights of ProofHub is that it brings must-have project tools such as files, time tracking, team chat, calendar – everything you can imagine in a neat web portal.
The latest release is ideal for work-from-home teams and outsourced projects because it’s 100% cloud-enabled. Team members can log in to a single project management tool for all their project needs. Using the secured IP feature that lets you restrict IP addresses accessing your ProofHub account, you can truly ensure data security and safe telecommuting.
Another useful highlight of ProofHub is its digital proofing feature. Cross-functional teams that work on web design, social media, advertising projects can greatly streamline their creative process. Organize project flows into “pending”, “in-review” and “approved” stages with all the key stakeholders chiming in seamlessly.
Features:
Task Management
Managers can hand out tasks in a detailed and organized way. Each task comes with useful context points such as due date, billed time, assignees, files, and comments. This ensures that the team members always know what to do and how to do it.
Time Management
ProofHub comes with its own timesheets feature that lets team members record time spent on tasks. This is very useful when the project is billed by the hour as the managers can accurately plan the project ahead. It makes client communication much more transparent, enabling teams to never struggle while getting bills cleared.
Project Communication
ProofHub offers three tools for communication – Discussions, 1:1 Chat, and Group Chat. Alternatively, team members can also share ideas and thoughts in task comments.
Discussions are Slack-like shared talk boards wherein everyone can post updates for the entire team to take note of. Best for holding discussions, openly sharing feedback, and making topical announcements. Discussions can be subscribed to, just like a Slack channel.
1:1 Chat is meant for personally reaching out to team members. It supports emojis, file attachments and works smoothly in the mobile app.
Group Chat lets teams of all sizes create their own chat groups for sharing internal updates. Any three members can create a group of their own for a more focused discussion experience.
Collaboration
As ProofHub brings all kinds of Project Management Tools under one umbrella, it makes collaboration a breeze. Team members can simultaneously work on the same document, send messages, and update tasks without changing the window. The proofing tool, which comes with in-file annotations further enhances the collaboration experience.
Project Planning
Managers can use nifty tools such as Gantt Charts and Project Timeline Calendar to stay on top of the planning process. These tools directly pull data from the task lists to create a visually perceptible project planning environment. This contributes to fewer missed deadlines, and timely actions whenever there is a roadblock.
Project Reporting
Managers also get insights into critical parameters such as team productivity, time spent on tasks, tasks completed in a week, and so on. These reports make it easy for the manager to make well-informed decisions. If the team is underperforming or if a certain member is off-schedule, the manager will always know. This improves both the quality and timeliness of their decisions.
Pricing: ProofHub and all of its Project Management Tools come with a flat fee of $89 per month, regardless of the number of users. A free trial is available for new users.
ClickUp
ClickUp is a project management software tool with powerful features for managing and completing all your team’s projects in one platform. Users can plan projects, schedule tasks, and manage resources in a centralized workspace, as well as communicate and collaborate with team members and guests.
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 Wikis and documents. 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.
Pros
- Free forever plan allows unlimited members
- Unlimited file storage on all paid account tiers
- 50+ widgets to customize your dashboard
- Great interface on both web and mobile app
Cons
- Read-only guest permissions are limited to paid account
- Reporting suite is limited to paid plans only
- Freemium plan limits use of maps, charts, dashboards
monday.com
The leader of this list and best-rated project management app in our database is monday.com. It is well-known for its collaborative nature and for simplifying task management and scheduling. There are many great things about monday.com, foremost of which is its capability to streamline discussions and contributions, and keeping all team members on the same page to ensure highest-level performance. It offers a modern suite of scheduling tools for project, task and team management, effectively eliminating arcane paperwork and minimizing the risk of human errors.
You will also appreciate its flexibility, as monday.com follows each change in your item’s status, appoints and modifies dates, and preserves the spotlight over the agent in charge of completing a particular action. You can try out all the key features of the software with a free trial version they offer.
What is unique about Monday.com?
- A unified dashboard for all projects, tasks, and team members. With monday.com, you can add projects, tasks, to-dos, and milestones on the very same dashboard, and observe instantly who’s doing what, and how your work is progressing. The interface is very intuitive and leaves no room for confusion, which helps you plan workload much ahead that you’d do with other tools.
- Easy communication with mentions and notifications. monday.com will make it easy to communicate with team members in context. With it, you can add communication rows to your board (called pulses) and mention and engage individuals and entire teams in real-time.
- Visual planning and evaluation of the team’s bandwidth. monday.com’s highlight is definitely visual planning, as the system makes it possible to visualize all of your team’s work on a single screen, and instantly evaluate their bandwidth and make blitz decisions. This way, you will be able to assign the right tasks to the right people, and hence meet all of your deadlines.
- Client invitations. With monday.com, you will not only engage and involve team members but also external parties and clients directly concerned by the success of your project. The system will first invite clients as guests, and then share the progress and stats of the project via email, phone calls, or even online meetings.
- Fully searchable database. You will have just enough labels and filters to search for anything you want, including recent file versions and updates, images uploaded by your colleagues, and new assignments. Basically, whatever file/info enters Monday.com, it will immediately be stored in the database and turned into operable intelligence.
Scoro
Scoro is known as one of the most comprehensive business management software for professional and creative services. For those who wish to bring structure to your work, Scoro is the right pm tool for you.
Features:
- A single place for projects, clients, and teams
- Be organized in every aspect of your business with seamless workflow
- Get a real-time overview and automated reports
- Can be integrated with tools like DropBox, Mailchimp, Outlook, and more
Pricing: Premium plan starts at $33/user/month
Smartsheet
Smartsheet is a spreadsheet-like project management tool. It has won a few awards for quickly becoming a favorite business app. It’s a nice project management software if you’re comfortable working in Excel but wants a break from complicated formulas—Smartsheet performs all the calculations for you across multiple sheets. You can also add customized brand logos and set color themes for individual projects.
Smartsheet has useful project management features such as workflow automation and visualization of tasks in Gantt, calendar and card views. Team members get notified of critical changes in real-time, and the tool provides shared views, detail history, activity logs, automated alerts, reminders, and status reports to keep everyone aligned and informed. The Critical Path feature highlights all the tasks which directly impact your project completion date to keep an eye on important milestones. Reporting is a strong feature of this tool, with editable summary reports that you can easily export to Excel.
Smartsheet integrations include Microsoft and Google apps, as well as development essentials like Jira, and useful business apps like Salesforce, ServiceNow, Slack, Box, and Tableau. The platform is extensible through a REST API and webhooks.
Smartsheet costs from $7/user/month, with a minimum of 3 users and a maximum of 25 users. They also offer a 30-day free trial.
Pros
- Sheet-to-sheet linking
- Many project templates & resources
- Ease of sharing
- Easily customizable dashboards
Cons
- Jira, Salesforce, Dynamics connector limited to Premier plan
- Changes don’t update in real-time
- Can’t customize chart colors
Conclusion:
Project management tools play a fundamental role in organizing your projects. Whether you are just getting started with project management or have been doing it for quite some time, there are tons of project management tools you can use to improve the way your company handles its projects.