Are you looking for project management software, but don’t have the budget? There are several free online tools for project management available to help you manage your projects. Online software for project management can help you plan, track and communicate with colleagues to deliver projects on time and within the budget.
Looking for free online tools for project management? Need advice on software options for your next project? I’ve collected the best free online tools to manage projects, track time, and create presentations. Whether you want to complete your next project alone or create a team collaboration, here’s a list of tools that will help you stay organized and make the most of any project. Let’s go!
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.
Check out our in-depth Smartsheet review if you want a deep-dive into the tool or to watch our short tutorial video of some basic features.
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
Trello
Trello is known for visualizing project tasks on a cardboard-like dashboard that’s great for managing short and quick everyday assignments.
Top features:
- Simple task management on a cardboard
- Creating unlimited task lists
- Image and file sharing
- Organizing lists by dates or priority
- Commenting and collaboration
What’s special about this tool: From startups to Fortune 500 companies, Trello is the most visual way for teams to collaborate on any project.
Pricing: Free for personal use, $9.99 user/month for businesses
nTask
New on the market, nTask is still in its burgeoning state of development, with new features and AI that are being introduced as the tool matures. Its intuitive software design that is easy on the eyes as well as easy to adopt, is one of the many reasons why start-ups, solopreneurs, and even enterprises will readily switch to this newcomer pm tool.
Features
- Task & Project Management: Simple task & project creation using task checklists, updates, progress meter.
- Risk Management: Use a risk matrix to identify and assess potential risks and their frequency of occurrence.
- Issue Management: Create and manage issues with customizable severity, priority, and status options.
- Time Management: Beautifully designed weekly timesheets with manual hours linked to a suitable task or a project.
- Resource Management – Manage resource allocation, project budget, and currency using the Project Planner.
- Meeting Management – Schedule multiple meetings at a time with a clear concise agenda, discussion points, and follow-up actions
ProofHub
ProofHub gives a centralized workspace for task lists, workflows, Gantt charts, discussions, calendars, and documents. It helps you plan, organize, and keep track of your team’s tasks. It also makes collaboration easy within teams as well as with external clients. There are plenty of reports like workload and resource reports.
With an emphasis on simplicity, ProofHub has very few integrations and very limited task management. It’s good for both freelancers and businesses of all sizes.
Pricing: ProofHub has no cap on the number of users and offers a flat fee irrespective of the number of users. There are two plans: the Essential plan is priced at $50 per month while the Ultimate Control plan costs $99 per month.
Airtable
Airtable puts the best features of spreadsheets and databases together. It’s customizable and easy to use and works well for businesses of all sizes. It lacks robust reporting features which might problematic for some users.
You can store information in the database which can be used for task management and project planning. Many users love the versatility of data organization that’s possible with Airtable’s spreadsheets. There are multiple views like Kanban, list, grid, and calendar.
Pricing: Airtable has a free plan that supports essential features like rich field types, multiple views, and collaboration. Paid plans start at $10/user/month for companies with higher data storage requirements. Their Pro plan offers advanced features like custom branded forms, personalized views, and domain restricted sharing.
Deskaway (Brightpod)
Brightpod is a specialized project management system for marketing teams that uses flexibility, visualization, and simplicity to optimize performance. Being designed for marketing project management does not mean that Brightpod can’t work in other industries. For small businesses, the ability to adapt quickly and communicate effectively are paramount for success.
A project management tool like Brightpod can help you achieve that with the following features:
- Excellent visualization
- Task delegation and tracking
- Workflow automation
- Specialized widgets for content and social media strategy
- Task and project management
The pricing structure of Brightpod is also favorable for small businesses. Instead of paying for additional features depending on your requirement, Brightpod allows you to pay one flat rate for all services. You’ll pay for the number of users and projects you can run. Here are the 4 plans they offer:
- Professional ($29/month) – All the features with 5 users, 15 projects, and a maximum 10 GB storage.
- Studio ($59/month) – All the features with 12 users, 50 projects, and 100 GB storage.
- Agency ($99/month) – Unlimited projects for 25 users with 250 GB storage and advanced insights.
- Agency Plus ($199/month) – Unlimited projects for unlimited users with 500 GB storage and multiple add-ons.
Blocksted
Blocksted is a small business project management tool that focuses on minimizing clutter by focusing only on the important things. This tool is specially designed for small businesses and allows managers to keep an eye on all ongoing processes in only a few clicks.
Here are a few key features of Blocksted:
- Task and project management
- Kanban boards
- Reporting analytics
- Task delegation
- Timelines
Unlike many other options, Blocksted offers a very simple pricing structure. There are only two plans:
- Personal ($0) – Absolutely free for up to 10 users and 10 clients. You have 3 projects and storage of 1 GB
- Business ($76/month) – Unlimited users, projects, and clients. This plan offers 500 GB storage space along with access to priority support at any time.
monday.com
monday.com is an award-winning project management software used across diverse industries by companies like Hulu, BBC Studios, Coca-Cola, L’Oréal Paris, Adobe, and Deezer.
monday.com features for managing projects include resource and project management, time tracking, collaboration, and reporting features. For example, users can upload and attach files to cards, make comments, mention teammates, and more. It also offers a great project reporting dashboard that can collect data from multiple boards, allowing better tracking abilities of progress. And while monday.com doesn’t offer a complete set of tools for project accounting and invoicing solution as other tools, you can use monday.com to track hours, timelines, and invoices.
Overall, it’s a highly customizable tool that lets you work in whatever methodology—Kanban or otherwise—that fits your project and team. You’ll also find some useful workflow tools for automating parts of your process. Read our in-depth monday.com review for a complete overview of the tool, as well as a short video tutorial of basic features.
monday.com’s integrations include project management apps like Slack, Google Drive, Gmail, Google Calendar, Jira, GitHub, Trello, Dropbox, Typeform and many more, accessible via Zapier.
monday.com is free to use for up to 2 users. Paid plans start from $11/user/month and come with a 14-day free trial.
Pros
- Huge focus on collaboration
- Long list of supported integrations
- Easy to customize a workflow or Board
- Helpful visual/color coding customization
Cons
- Complex pricing rubric
- Gantt charts locked to mid-level plan
- May be too robust for small teams
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/user/month and offers additional functionality.
Pros
- Free forever plan allows unlimited members
- Unlimited file storage on all paid account tiers
- Can email (set-up) a task directly from Outlook
Cons
- Read-only guest permissions are limited to paid account
- Reporting suite is limited to paid plans only
- Granular customization options results in a time consuming set-up
Conclusion:
There are quite a few options available when you’re looking to find online software for project management. An online tool for planning and managing projects is crucial in any type of online business. Online Project Management Tools is used by top companies around the globe to manage their projects. These tools will provide you with a fast and efficient way of working in project teams, with an overall increased project profitability.