Free task management tools really do exist! And not just that. You can actually find some great apps that will help you with your productivity without charging you a dime (although many of them do offer paid options). Here is a list of the top 10 free task management apps for 2018.
One of the best ways to accomplish this is by using task-management tools. If you are looking for the best task management software free download, you will find matching options listed in our blog entry. The following overview will also help you to choose the right software that will match your needs. It’s worth mentioning that these task-management tools are different from regular to-do lists.
Nutcache
Nutcache is an all-in-one project management tool that includes time tracking and invoicing features. It was built for small teams that bill their clients on a project basis.
Top features:
- Project management and tasks
- Time tracking and time billing
- Expense management
- Linking projects and finished tasks to clients
What’s interesting about this tool: Nutcache has a good-looking user interface, excellent for team collaboration, and simple project management.
Pricing: Free up to 20 users (limited features), $6 user/month for project management features
WORKetc
WORKetc has integrated CRM, projects, billing, helpdesk, reporting, and collaboration.
Top features:
- Link timesheets, documents, discussions, and more to your projects
- Manage complex project budgets
- Automatically capture and invoice all revenue activities across all departments
- Use live support, web forms, and email to capture support tickets
What’s special about this tool: By integrating support cases directly inside all areas of WORKetc, you can ensure the customer is always looked after.
Pricing: From $78 month (first 3 users $65/month)
Check out this WORKetc alternative!
Cage
Cage is all about improving the way creative teams collaborate and work. It helps your team to manage projects and have active discussions.
Top features:
- Manage and create projects
- Make notes and comments under tasks
- Keep track of all revisions
- Get approvals from clients
- Have video conversations
- Password protection for your projects
What’s special about this tool: Cage combines project management and efficient collaboration. You can plan projects and organize video calls by using this one PM tool.
Pricing: From $49/month for teams
Paymo
Paymo offers a simple yet powerful tool bringing together project management, work reporting, and time billing.
Top features:
- Tracking the time spent on tasks and projects
- Thorough work reports
- Dashboard to see your team’s performance
- Billing customers for completed tasks
- Integrated project accounting
What’s interesting about this tool: With Paymo Plus, you can automate your time tracking completely. All you need to do is download the desktop app, let it track your PC usage, and at the end of each day, categorize all your time entries.
Pricing: Free and paid plans from $9.56 user/month
Brightpod
Brightpod is a web-based project management & time tracking software for digital marketing & creative teams.
Top features:
- Projects with tasks, priorities, and milestones
- Editorial calendar
- Logging time under each task
- Individual dashboards for team members
- In-app communication and file-sharing
What’s special about this tool: When creating a project, you can use pre-set Pod templates for a faster set-up and customized project experience.
Pricing: From $29/month for 10 users
LiquidPlanner
LiquidPlanner is a collaboration tool that combines project management and time-tracking.
Top features:
- Estimating a realistic range of time to complete tasks
- Commenting on tasks and schedule
- Task-specific collaboration boards
- Adding notes to projects
What’s special about this tool: LiquidPlanner has an interesting methodology for project management – it helps teams set realistic deadlines based on best-case and worst-case scenarios.
Pricing: From $45 user/month
MindGenius (previously Barvas)
MindGenius is designed for businesses who want to increase personal, team, and organizational effectiveness. It helps you capture and visualize information easily, turning ideas into actionable project plans and tasks.
Dynamic views allow you to switch easily between planning, Gantt chart, and tasks. Identify dependencies, milestones, constraints, and critical path.
Top features:
- Task management with task board
- Mind mapping tools
- Internal communication
- Shared workspace
What’s special about this tool: MindGenius offers a mind mapping feature that includes the fundamental facts, assumptions, and expectations that your stakeholders need to know and agree on.
Pricing: Different subscription and perpetual models.
Weekdone
Weekdone is a weekly reporting and goal-setting tool for small teams that enables managers and leaders to get a clear overview of both short- and long-term progress.
Top features:
- Weekly status reporting
- Quarterly Objectives and Key Results (OKRs)
- Graphical metrics dashboard
- Private 1-on-1 feedback
What’s special about this tool: When most project tools focus on either weekly status reporting or long-term goal-setting, Weekdone covers both. Employees can link their weekly tasks with quarterly objectives, so their work is focused on the right goals.
Pricing: Free for small teams, from $49/month for larger teams
Bitrix24
Bitrix24 offers a complete suite of social collaboration, communication, and management tools for your team.
Top features:
- Social intranet for internal communication
- Gantt charts
- Employee workload management
- Customer relationship management
- Telephone integration
What’s special about this tool: Bitrix24 has a large set of features, from traditional project management to integrated telephone and HR system or internal email.
Pricing: Free plan, paid plans with more storage from $24 user/month
Check out this Bitrix24 Alternative!
Redbooth
Redbooth lets you manage your projects the way you want, with kanban boards or lists to organize tasks and time tracking to see where your day goes. Or, if you’re not sure where to start, there’s a library of project templates to start your projects out in a click.
Top features:
- Simple project & task planning
- Shared virtual team workspaces
- HD video conferencing for collaboration
- Productivity reports for managers and team leaders
- iOS or Android applications
What’s special about this tool: Unlike most PM tools, Redbooth’s business package gives you everything you need to see and hear your team members. You’ll get the tools for unlimited high-definition video conferencing, direct messaging, voice calling, and business chat to stay on top of everyone’s schedule.
Pricing: From $9 user/month
Microsoft Project
Microsoft Project helps to streamline the project, resource, and portfolio management.
Top features:
- Project scheduling & costing
- Resource management
- Reporting & business intelligence
- Built-in project templates
- Project timelines
What’s special about this tool:
Pricing: From $30 month/user for cloud platform, from $620 for on-premise software (for one PC)
Easy Project
Easy Project is easy, visual, and intuitive project management software.
Top features:
- Gantt chart
- Risk management
- Portfolio management
- Project templates
What’s special about this tool: Easy Project is a fit for many different industries, from IT & software development to education or voluntary projects.
ProWorkflow
ProWorkflow is another project management solution that makes it a breeze to assign staff, track time, or reschedule projects.
Top features:
- Dashboard for an overview of your workload
- Allocate tasks
- View workload across teams
- Manage contacts and share files
- Send invoices and quotes
What’s special about this tool: Convenient mobile application lets your track time, communicate, and complete tasks on the move.
Pricing: From $22 month/user for teams
Check out this ProWorkflow alternative!
Smartsheet
Smartsheet is an online work execution platform excellent for managing and automating collaborative work.
Top features:
- Project plans and schedule
- Program rollups
- Resource management
- Budget tracking
- Strategic planning
What’s special about this tool: Smartsheet has a useful conditional formatting tool that lets you define parameters fill-in-the-blank style.
Pricing: From $25 user/month for teams
Check out this Smartsheet alternative!
Celoxis
Celoxis is an all-in-one platform for project portfolio & work management.
Top features:
- Advanced scheduling
- Gantt charts
- Project tracking
- Financial management
- Reporting analytics
What’s special about this tool: Celoxis offers both SaaS and On-Premise options.
Pricing: From $22.50 user/month for a cloud solution, $450 per user for an on-premise solution
Insightly
Insightly is a powerful CRM with a project and business management feature set.
Top features:
- Manage leads, contacts, partners, vendors, and suppliers
- Track project activity and performance against milestones
- Task dashboard, activity sets, reports, and more
What’s special about this tool: Insightly CRM is tailored for any level of experience – from first time CRM users to sales experts.
Pricing: From $15 month/user for teams
Copper Project
Copper Project simplifies work processes as an affordable and invaluable executive tool, from Large multi-national projects to small home-based ventures.
Top features:
- Collaborative project and task views
- Project templates
- Task timers
- File sharing
What’s special about this tool: Copper offers simplicity in project resource management and communication.
Pricing: From $41.5 month
Clarizen
Clarizen is a cloud-based collaborative work management solution that enables your team to view and execute a project plan for projects big and small.
Top features:
- Unlimited number of projects
- Automated and repeatable processes, alerts, and workflows
- Social collaboration
- Budget tracking & expense management
What’s special about this tool: Clarizen offers configurable workflows – customize Clarizen to fit how your enterprise does business, not the opposite.
Pricing: Price available on request
ProjectManager.com
ProjectManager.com is a project planning software fully integrated with Google Apps, Microsoft Word, Excel, and Project. From planning to tracking progress and reporting, it provides a full suite of tools for you to meet your project goals and manage your team.
Top features:
- Task management tools
- Gantt charts
- Project planner
- Timesheets
What’s special about this tool: ProjectManager.com is useful for remote teams as it lets you share and discuss projects online, create group discussions and invite team members to chat online or by mobile.
Pricing: From $15 user/month
Ravetree
Ravetree is a robust platform built for agile organizations that include project management, time expense tracking, resource planning, and digital asset management. It’s a suitable choice not just for software teams but also for engineering, nonprofits, higher education, and more.
Top Features:
- Intuitive interface
- Excellent support system
- Agile tools are built directly into the platform
- Easy collaboration and communication between teams
- Time and expense tracking
What’s special about this tool: Ravetree has Agile tools built directly into it, including the ability to create Scrum and Kanban teams, plan sprints, epic and user stories, and story point sizing.
Pricing: from $29 user/month
Highrise
Highrise is the just-right, more thoughtful way to keep track of the people, conversations, and tasks that are the lifelines of your business
Top features:
- Store important emails
- Attach documents and files
- Control who sees what with accessible privacy settings
- Keep track of important tasks
- Assign tasks to team members
What’s special about this tool: Highrise was designed to simplify your workflow, no more, no less – as simple as that!
Pricing: From $24/month for small teams, from $49/month for larger teams.
ClickUp
ClickUp is a project management platform that’s focused on efficient task management. Built for teams of all sizes and industries, ClickUp’s fully customizable features make it a must-have for agile teams that want to keep everything from design to development in one intuitive place.
Top features:
- 3 different views (Board, Box, List)
- Assign comments
- 52 customizable features for each project (Statuses, Assignees, ClickUps)
- Elegant hierarchy to keep projects simple as they grow
- Tools like ‘Smart Search’ and ‘Smart Estimates’ make you more productive over time
What’s special about this tool: ClickUp’s beautiful design and unprecedented user experience in an otherwise dull space echoes what Slack did to communication.
Pricing: Free for up to 100MB, Premium for $5 user/month
Avaza
Avaza is a simple project management tool that lets you collaborate on projects with your team and customers. Besides, you’ll be able to track your time and bill your customers.
Top features:
- Task management on a cardboard-style interface
- Automatic task reminders
- Flexible time tracking and timesheet approvals
What’s special about this tool: Each project in Avaza has a user-friendly email address. Simply forward emails from your Avaza-registered email address to instantly convert these into tasks.
Pricing: Start free with up to 5 projects, $39.95 for unlimited projects
Read on: 16 Best Employee Timesheet Software for Efficient Time Management
Toggl Plan (previously Teamweek)
Toggl Plan is a timeline-based project management tool that lets teams schedule their upcoming tasks and meetings into a shared calendar.
Top features:
- Simple project management
- Gantt-chart interface
- Drag-and-drop task management
- Scheduling work hour by hour
- Overseeing your team members’ availability
What’s special about this tool: Toggl Plan offers a Chrome extension that enables you to add tasks directly into Toggl from your favorite web tools.
Pricing: From $8 user/month
10,000ft Plans
10,000ft Plans is a visual project management application with robust features in resource planning and forecasting.
Top features:
- Resource management
- Project and task management
- Task delegation
- Project and resource matching
- Detailed project reporting
- Time tracking
What’s special about this tool: 10,000ft gives a broad overview of every project, making it easier to schedule, plan, and estimate the outcome. With a beautiful interface, this tool is suitable for creative agencies of all sizes.
Pricing: From $10 user/month
Teamwork Projects
Teamwork Projects solution enhances team collaboration and helps creative teams to organize their work and tasks.
Top features:
- Gantt charts
- Time tracking
- Task lists with sub-tasks
- Milestone management
- Comprehensive user permissions
- Reporting
What’s special about this tool: Teamwork Projects integrates seamlessly with Teamwork.com’s other two products; Teamwork Desk and Teamwork Chat.
Pricing: From $12 user/month
Freedcamp
Freedcamp is a project management solution ideal for businesses and freelancers ready to get organized with ease.
Top features:
- Task lists & status management
- Shared team calendar
- Project templates
- Issue tracker
What’s special about this tool: Like sticky notes? You’re in luck! Freedcamp uses a kanban board with sticky notes to manage tasks.
Pricing: Free plan, paid add-ons
Advantage
Advantage is a project management software designed for a great user experience – a clean interface and simple functionality.
Top features:
- Manage time, tasks, and expenses
- Automate and expedite work
- Manage media
- Manage prospect and client activities
- Get thorough reports and forecasts
What’s special about this tool: Advantage’s ad agency software is constantly updated with new and enhanced features to help your agency reach its optimum potential.
Pricing: Upon request
ProofHub
ProofHub is an all-in-one project management app and team collaboration software. It comes with all the features you require to stay in ultimate control of your teams, tasks, projects, and communications.
There are powerful team collaboration features to keep your distributed team members connected. You can share company-wide announcements with ease. ProofHub also integrates with third-party apps like Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, and Box to give you a central place to access all your files and data.
However, it may not suit larger teams, and you may be bothered by a ton of notifications since they lack custom notifications. 🔔
In ProofHub, users get:
- To-do lists
- Custom workflows and kanban boards
- Gantt charts
- Online proofing tool
- In-built chat app
- Dedicated space for real-time collaboration
- Timer and timesheets
- Custom reports
- File sharing
- Mobile app (both iOS and Android)
Price: $89 per month (unlimited users)
Visit Proofhub
Basecamp
Basecamp is a quality task management software who’s core really focuses on efficient team collaboration and communication.
What isn’t core to the software is making itself feel like it’s made for you. For example, you can’t customize each specific task status.
What’s been approved? What’s in progress? Guess you’ll never know!
Check out these 7 Basecamp alternatives and our comprehensive Basecamp review.
In Basecamp, you get:
- Real-time communication (campfires & pings)
- Simple task management
- Auto check-in questions
- Project progress tracking (Hillcharts)
Pricing: Free to $99/month
Visit Basecamp
Conclusion
People often say they can’t do their work because they don’t have time to concentrate on what they are doing. But this is not the problem; however, it is one of the most basic misconceptions about time management. You can make more time to do your work if you know how to prioritize your different tasks effectively.