If you’re reading this, then chances are you need help with software for project managers and employees. And I’ve got your back. I want to help make your life easier by providing you with a list of some of the best project management software free out there today.
Nowadays with the project management software available online, there is no reason that you should be wasting time managing your projects in a spreadsheet, word document or worse email services like Yahoo, Gmail, AOL etc. Managing a project in the cloud is much easier with the proper tools and if you are one of those people who think they don’t need access to these tools – you might want to think twice.
Kissflow Project
Best for ease of use
Kissflow Project allows users to plan their team’s work, see who’s working on what, and deliver great results with minimal tracking.
Kissflow Project is a lean project management tool for small businesses that focuses on hyper-customization over clutter when it comes to feature prioritization. It’s designed to be simple to use and navigate for digital project managers and non-PMs alike. You can access multiple project views—like list, Kanban, and matrix—according to your organizational preference.
Kissflow lets you design tasks, flag priorities, and assign items to team members with simple status labels for assignments that are on hold, in progress, or done. Managers can build a personalized dashboard to grab a quick view of where different tasks stand, what’s coming due, and where roadblocks have appeared. A centralized communication hub with chat and commenting ensures you can solicit updates and provide feedback without departmental silos blocking your way.
Kissflow lets you attach files to your projects and tasks for basic digital asset management and document management; up to 10MB per file for most plans. Their easy analytics suite lets you build visual reports according to flow, time, or tasks. However, they don’t yet have dependencies/linked items (quite a hiccup) but it’s on their future roadmap.
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 for up to 3 projects.
Wrike
Best for remote schedule management
Each team member has their own dashboard showing overdue tasks, upcoming deadlines, progress, conflicts, and more.
Wrike is a project and resource management tool with a generous free plan (unlimited users!) that will appeal to small businesses on a tight monthly budget. Upon logging in to your account, you’ll have straightforward access to your inbox, recent and pinned items, your spaces, and the administrative menu bar. Your personalized dashboard lets you add widgets to see the most pertinent information for your workday—items like To-Do Today, My Overdue Tasks, Due: Next 7 Days, and/or Tasks Created by Me.
Wrike lets you snooze inbox notifications to be re-reminded of them later at a more convenient time. Default settings snooze for 3 hours, 1 day, or 1 week but you can use the custom menu option to pick your own date and time. You can also instantly order your task lists by priority, date, status, importance, or alphabetically within a simple dropdown menu. Workspace themes let users easily swap between color schemes.
Businesses of all sizes will appreciate Wrike’s work schedule management feature (business plan and above) lets you group and flag employees according to what a typical weekly schedule looks like for them. Wrike will take this into account when planning your project timeline.
Wrike offers 400+ pre-built native integrations, including integrations with the most popular file management software from Microsoft, Google, and Dropbox, along with sales and marketing software from Salesforce and Marketo.
Wrike is free to use with some feature limitations. Paid plans cost from $9.80/user/month and come with a 14-day free trial.
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
nTask
The Best Affordable Project Management Tool
More details about nTask:
- Pricing: Free, or $2.99 per user per month on the Premium plan
- Website: ntaskmanager.com
Pros:
- Cheap
- Solid features
- Good tutorials
Cons:
- Navigation is a bit annoying
- Privacy policy is a bit iffy
nTask is a little tricky to place: we like a lot about it, but it falls a tiny bit short in a few places, keeping it from the top spot. However, if you need a solid project management system that will cost you very little money, then nTask is probably the best choice out there. Read the details in our full nTask review.
nTask is filled to the brim with all kinds of features, some of which may come off a bit weird, such as the grid and gallery views — we have no idea what they’re supposed to achieve. Other than that, though, nTask offers a comprehensive set of tools that allow you to track and manage projects even with larger teams.
These include a kanban board, a Gantt chart, a list and a few other doodads. nTask also comes with built-in Agile functionality, which will come in handy for any team working within that methodology (though it’s no match for our honorable mention, Jira). The only drag to this excellent functionality is navigation, which can quickly become a clickfest.
Affordable Business Project Management
As we mentioned, though, nTask’s biggest draw is its price. At less than $3 per user per month for the Premium plan, there’s no cheaper alternative out there, especially considering it’s a pretty comprehensive plan. There’s also a free plan for up to five users, though it’s unsurprisingly a bit sparse. We recommend trying it out to get a feel for nTask.
Airtable
Spreadsheet-Based Project Management
More details about Airtable:
- Pricing: Free, or $10 per user per month on the Plus plan
- Website: airtable.com
Pros:
- User friendly
- Excellent free plan
Cons:
- A bit light on features
- Advanced plans are very pricey
We close out our top five with Airtable, an interesting program because it’s old-school without looking that way. At its very essence, Airtable is a spreadsheet-based tool, but unlike, say, Wrike, it looks as fresh and modern as Asana or Trello, thanks to a very well-executed reskin.
Unlike the top contenders on this list, the main input in Airtable is a spreadsheet and all views flow from there. While at first this may remind you of Wrike or Asana and the way they operate, there are some key differences. For one, there’s less room to add custom information; for another, the kanban board isn’t as responsive as those of dedicated tools.
Teamwork
Best PM app for client work
Teamwork allows users to view tasks on Kanban boards, as well as see status, due dates, and other assignees.
Trusted by over 6,000 businesses and 20,000 agencies, Teamwork provides tons of project management features, as well as offering a free project management system with some feature limitations. Track your team’s workload capacity in the app to avoid bottlenecks based on overloaded scheduling; you can easily drag-and-drop items to re-prioritize or re-assign blocked work.
Teamwork boasts plenty of self-lead training materials, which can be a huge help to SMBs who lack time and resources for 1:1 onboarding of new tools across the company. You can access prerecorded and live webinars, the Teamwork blog, a downloadable software guide, a detailed wiki/resource center, and feature videos.
Teamwork grants you unlimited “client” accounts to best include external stakeholders in your planning and execution processes. You can tailor client access and permissions within the admin menu, so that they can only see and touch items and reports that are relevant to their projects. Clients can add tasks, leave comments, and even log time from their guest account.
Teamwork integrates with Google Drive, Box, OneDrive, Dropbox, Slack, Microsoft Teams, MS Office, Harvest, Quickbooks, Xero, Hubspot, SharePoint, Microsoft Project, SoftSync, and hundreds of others using a paid plan through Zapier.
Teamwork has a free plan for basic task and project management. Paid plans cost from $10/user/month and come with a 30-day free trial.
Conclusion:
Ever since the dawn of time, or at least the dawn of the workplace, project management has been around. When I say it as an old-timey kind of guy, “since the dawn of time, or at least the dawn of the workplace” makes it sound like a long time ago. Man have I been alive for a long time! Anyway, project management software is something that I really enjoy and work with on a daily basis. There are plenty of different vendors out there who offer their own flavor of project management software. But each one will give you unique tools to aid in more effectively managing your projects.