We all know that project management software plays a key role in managing projects throughout their lifecycle. What I didn’t know prior to looking around was how many different options there are out there. The best project management app out there is going to depend on your business needs, but suffice it to say that there are cost-effective solutions out there to suit nearly every occasion.
Back in the old days of desktop and laptop PCs, some project management software already existed. In the recent years, as more and more people are switching to smartphones and other mobile gadgets, many project management software have now been re-developed as mobile apps. Whether you are looking for top project management apps or best software for project managers , this list will definitely help you out.
Airtable (Web, iOS, Android)
If you’ve tried other project management software and haven’t found the one, Airtable will let you build it. The app is ready out-of-the-box with a default view similar to a spreadsheet, and it suggests a handful of templated projects based on your team within the company. You can start from one of the suggested templates, browse the rest, or build your own project (called a “base”) from scratch.
But the real power of Airtable happens when you customize it. It will take some upfront effort to tailor Airtable to be exactly what you need—but if you’re willing to spend the time, the sky’s the limit. You can customize everything from the methodology and view type to column headers, field types, data validation, and more.
Head over to the Marketplace to choose from over 80 apps that help you integrate, analyze, and enrich your projects, or build your own custom apps. Airtable also integrates with Zapier, so you can do things like automatically track important information in Airtable, get notifications for activity in your Airtable base, and more.
Monday.com
Best for Simple Requirements Management
Monday.com is ideal for keeping track of all your project tasks when no one’s in the office anymore.>> Start Your Free Trial
Monday.com is the project management tool for the post-pandemic world, where business is booming but no one wants to come back to the office. It’s a prominent tool in the project management market due to how easy it is to implement no matter where in the world your team is.
It’s no wonder more than 100,000 teams across a number of industries— including Hulu, NBC, Universal, and BBC Studios— already use it.
Highly visual and intuitive, Monday.com lets you create workflows in a matter of minutes with tried and proven templates based on real-life teams. And there’s no long and overly complicated training or onboarding process required for anyone on your team to start using it successfully.
Your team can plan, track, and execute great work remotely with tools like timelines, custom automations, data maps, task assignment, data driven dashboards, and time trackers that are adjustable to time zones.
And there are plenty of integrations your remote team can take advantage of to make sure everything you need for your projects is gathered and accessible in one place.
Monday.com breaks down their prices by number of seats. For the sake of simplicity, the prices I listed are based on a three-seat scenario.
I recommend you visit their pricing page to look at each custom price point once you adjust the number of seats you think you’ll need.
Here’s a breakdown of Monday.com’s prices based on their three-seat deal:
- Individual – Free forever for up to two seats
- Basic – $8 a seat per month billed annually
- Standard – $10 a seat per month billed annually
- Pro – $16 a seat per month billed annually
- Enterprise – Contact its team for more details
You can take Monday.com for a test drive with their Individual free forever plan to get familiar with their tools and dashboards which is great for a one or two person team. Here’s how the rest of the tiers measure up:
Basic: Perfect for teams that want to start getting a handle of all their projects in one central place with a limit of 5 GB of storage.
Standard: Better for teams that want more control of their project views and that want to collaborate externally.
Pro: Best for teams that constantly manage complex workflows, need automations, and plenty of integrations to work successfully.
Enterprise: Do you need extra security, control, and advanced support for a large and growing team that manages complex projects? You’ll want to contact its sales team for a personalized Enterprise plan.
Get started with Monday.com here.
Smartsheet — The Best For Marketing Teams
Smartsheet
Best for Marketing Teams
Smartsheet is where project management meets marketing, integrating with all your marketing apps and tools.>> Start Your Free Trial
If you’re a marketing team looking to streamline your project management and increase productivity, Smartsheet is a cloud-based solution that helps you tackle it all with ease.
You can gather, track, and execute all your creative projects with integrations to the Adobe design suite, share marketing templates, and create custom task forms. Smartsheet is designed to carry you all the way through from concept to execution with tools that enable you to see the progress of your team.
You’re also empowered to effectively manage a team with different skill sets and availability with its task assignment features.
Smartsheet makes Iterative projects manageable by enabling your team to give feedback, track workload progress, and collaborate on project details with plenty of templates that ease your team into a manageable workflow.
And of course, it integrates with all your top marketing tools and apps like Marketo, Microsoft, Slack, Gsuite, and more.
Smartsheet doesn’t list their prices outright. So if you’re really interested in using it you’ll have to contact them.
For starters, you can always take advantage of their free demo. Or you can try them for free and start a 30-day trial here.
GoodDay (Web)
GoodDay is flexible enough to satisfy a team with diverse project management needs. The app supports a number of methodologies and views, including Gantt, Agile, Scrum, Kanban, and waterfall. All are available to use on the free plan, making it the most generous and flexible free plan we tested.
Every project you create can take a different approach, and you can add additional views of the project at any time. Beyond those views, each project has a Summary tab with an overview of tasks, events, users, and burn down. We also love the My Work view, which rolls up work, tasks, calendar, and individual projects assigned to you.
When you first set up your GoodDay account, you can choose from a number of different modules, like time tracking, client portals, and billing to make the app do even more for you. For example, the Clients & Customer Portal module includes an extra project type called client projects, while the HR module includes a custom Vacations calendar view.
Take GoodDay.work’s free plan to another level with its Zapier integration.
GoodDay Price: The free plan includes unlimited projects and tasks, custom workflows, and up to 15 users; upgrade to the Professional plan for $4/user/month for advanced views (like Gantt), up to 250 users, and more.
Jira (Web, iOS, Android)
While the app also offers a Kanban view, Jira is built for Scrum and Agile workflows. When you first sign up, the onboarding flow asks a few questions about your team’s projects, level of experience with different methodologies, and deadlines—then it recommends a methodology and project template for you.
For Scrum projects, you’ll add epics to the Roadmap page. Then you can add issues to your backlog individually, filling in details and assigning them to sprints. Project tracking happens on a Scrum board, the homepage for each project—you can customize column headers and edit task details and status.
Jira’s catering to developers and engineering teams doesn’t stop there: the app also integrates with other development tools like GitHub, GitLab, Sentry, and Jenkins to make quick work of updating and tracking your backlog. And while you can’t control user access on the free plan, it does include up to 10 users, so it’s ideal for self-contained or smaller dev teams.
You can get more out of the free plan by using Jira’s Zapier integrations to automatically create new issues in Jira based on Slack messages or GitHub issues.
Jira Price: The free plan includes unlimited projects on one site, up to 10 users, and both Scrum and Kanban boards; upgrade to the Standard plan for $7/user/month for more granular user permissions, 250 GB of file storage, and more.
Originally published in May 2017 by Matthew Guay, this post has had contributions from Jessica Greene, Maria Myre, and Kiera Abbamonte.
Wrike (Web, Windows, Mac, iOS, Android)
If it were up to you, would you manage your projects in a spreadsheet? If so, you might like Wrike. Wrike offers the same flexibility of a spreadsheet—with columns for every bit of info you want to track about tasks. (If you like spreadsheets but need even more customization, head down to our review of Airtable.)
Wrike lets your team update the status of tasks at various intervals—in-progress, on hold, canceled, or completed. Additionally, you can set the status of projects to green, yellow, red, on hold, or canceled, making it easy to create your weekly project status reports.
While you can do a lot with Wrike’s free plan, its best features—including time tracking, Gantt charts, and custom dashboards—do require a premium plan. If you’re running a small operation now but planning to scale in the future, Wrike grows alongside you, giving you all of the tools you need to run both a single small project and many concurrent large ones.
If you’re interested in the free plan, Wrike’s Zapier integrations can help you do more with the project management app, like automatically creating tasks in Wrike from other tools.
Wrike Price: The free plan includes unlimited projects for unlimited users; upgrade for $9.80/user/month (billed annually) to the Professional plan that includes Gantt charts, shareable dashboards, and more.
Conclusion:
Over the years, I’ve used loads of software for project management. And later I’ve tried several more tools and software for managing projects. If you’re a manager, you know how important it is to track every detail about current projects, tasks, and all the upcoming deadlines. That’s why we decided to share our experience with you, so you can choose the right product for your needs when it comes to managing projects.