Are you struggling to manage a team of people working on a project? Or even just a complicated project you’re working on alone? Then you could benefit from using a simple project management tool.
Project management tools aren’t just for professional project managers; they’re for anyone wanting to effectively organise their work and manage projects and tasks. They’re mainly used in business, but they’re also suitable for planning any kind of group activity, including social activities, charity work and so on.
Most of these have a free plan that’s not time-limited, so unless you reach a high level of complexity, you won’t have to spend any more to benefit. (That applies to all the software on our list, except for one, monday.com, which offers a free trial instead.)
However, bear in mind that not all features will be available at the free level, and you’ll be limited in terms of the number of team members and projects, cloud storage and so on.
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How to select the Best Project Management Software?
So how do you go about choosing a project management software? Here are some questions to consider first…
- Which features do you need? These may include planning and scheduling tools; collaboration and communication tools; document editing and file management tools; and evaluation and reporting tools.
- How do you want to visualise all your activities? Kanban board, Gantt chart or timeline view, calendar view, or another type of view?
- Who’s going to use it? Is it just you, or other team members and/or stakeholders?
Best Free Project Management Software
Check out our list of 12 best & free project management software + 5 noteworthy ones below, and choose the one that is best suited to your requirements.
1. Trello
The best project management tool for Kanban boards
Trello is a popular and highly visual task management app based around Kanban boards. Its interface is highly visual and well-ordered, making it easy to learn and use.
Platform: Web, Android, iOS, macOS, Windows
Most suitable for: For personal use and small teams
Supported methodologies: Kanban
Unique and distinctive features:
- Easy drag-and-drop editing: Trello allows team members to edit task lists using a drag-and-drop mechanism that’s simple to use and very intuitive.
- Power-Ups: Trello Power-Ups help you put your Trello board on steroids. As the name says it, power up your boards with additional features of automation, data-sync, design and much more. Automate.io‘s Trello Power-Up helps you automate tasks & get more done.
- Submit multiple cards and checklist items: You can add multiple cards or checklist items all at once. Copy and paste from a spreadsheet column or list to create a new card or checklist for each line in the list.
- Custom fields: Trello’s Custom fields feature provides additional input boxes so you can add more structure and context on a Trello card, such as contact information, status updates, and additional due dates. You can format them as drop-down options, text fields, checkboxes, or calendar dates.
Other defining features:
- Kanban boards
- Group meetings and one-to-one chat
- Progress meter checklist
If you have a list of card titles, for example in an Excel spreadsheet, you can simply copy the title from one column and each cell from the sheet will become a card in a Trello list.
2. Asana
Best project management software for group communication
Asana is a task management tool with strong communication and customisation features.
Platform: Web, Android, iOS
Most suitable for: Someone who manages multiple teams
Supported methodologies: Agile, Scrum, Kanban
Unique and distinctive features:
- Focus Mode: Focus Mode allows you to see one task at a time, without feeling tempted or overwhelmed by all the other tasks in your window.
- Smart Inbox: Asana’s Inbox provides a unified place for everyone involved in a project to communicate and share files. Filters help you focus on the notifications that matter the most to you.
- Advanced Search: The Advanced Search feature lets you search your project archive based on criteria such as completion date, assignee, custom fields and task creator.
Other defining features:
- Customisable Dashboards
- Email integration
- Project permissions to allow your freelancers, clients and any external party to view project progress.
3. MeisterTask
The best project management tool for customising Kanban boards
MeisterTask is a task management app based around Kanban boards and aimed at Agile project teams.
MeisterTask is based on Kanban boards in a similar way to Trello.
Platform: Web, Android, iOS
Most suitable for: Small businesses with agile projects
Supported methodologies: Kanban
Unique and distinctive features:
- Time-tracking: A time-tracking widget allows you to record the time spent on a particular task. It enables you to track the amount of time spent on tasks, generate reports and view statistics on your team’s productivity.
- Customisation: MeisterTask offers lots of customisation options that let you adjust the appearance of your dashboard and project boards.
- Relationships feature: Using the task relationships feature, you can add relations to your tasks to indicate dependencies or blockages.
- Automations: The Automations feature allows you to automate recurring steps in your task management workflow. Once you’ve configured specific automation for a section in your project, it will automatically be applied to all tasks moved to or created in this section.
Other defining features:
- Kanban boards
4. Wrike
Best project management app for complex projects
Wrike is a project management software geared towards business use due to its powerful reporting feature. Gantt Chart is one of the main views of your projects offered by Wrike.
Platform: Web, Android, iOS, macOS, Windows
Most suitable for: Medium-size businesses
Supported methodologies: Agile, SCRUM, Kanban (Gantt Chart is one of the views of your projects offered by Wrike
Unique and distinctive features:
- Variety of views: Every business is different, so Wrike allows a high degree of customisation over how your projects are presented. Available views include List, Board, Stream, Timelog, Gantt Chart, Table and Workload.
- Three-pane interface: Similar to the interface of many popular email clients, Wrike’s three-pane setup makes it easy to navigate between the live overview of project updates, details of a particular task and the project structure.
- Wrike Reports: Wrike Reports are customisable reports which you can build to quickly gather specific data. Each time you open or refresh your report, it automatically updates to include the most up-to-date data which meets your report’s criteria.
Other defining features:
- Workload management
- Document collaboration
- Time tracking
5. Podio
Highly-customizable Project Management Software
Podio is a task management app that is highly customizable via Podio Apps, and with special features for sales and marketing professionals.
In Podio, everything is organised around Workspaces, within which you can create and assign tasks and deadlines.
Platform: Web, Android, iOS
Most suitable for: Large and diverse teams
Supported methodologies: Agile
Unique and distinctive features:
- IM and chat: Podio has advanced collaboration tools, including instant messaging and audio or video calling with anyone you’re connected to on Podio. This makes it a great tool for diverse, large and/or geographically spread teams.
- Podio Apps: Team members choose how to organise and track their work by creating their own “Podio apps” – which are basically project templates – using a simple drag and drop interface.
- Formula calculations: Calculation fields can be used to easily manipulate the data added to your apps. This lets you perform mathematical calculations on the numbers in your app, and concatenate the values in certain fields together.Values are added to a calculation field using variables. Use the “@” symbol to search for variables in your app
Other defining features:
- Meeting scheduling
- Customer relationship management
- Data visualisation
6. monday.com (free trial only)
Best project management app for large remote teams
monday.com is a popular communication and collaboration app for teams. Please note that there is no free plan for this app, but a free trial is available.
Platform: Web, Android, iOS, macOS, Windows
Most suitable for: Large businesses
Supported methodologies: Agile, SCRUM, Kanban
Unique and distinctive features:
- Gather ideas via Forms: This feature helps streamline the process of gathering ideas, suggestions or requests onto a single board. Once a new idea has been added via the form, it will automatically be added to the
- Add extra columns: To each task or group of tasks, you can add multiple columns, containing details such as who the task is assigned to, it’s status and due dates, as well as more glandular information such as phone numbers, email addresses, a map or a world clock.
- Add or remove weekends: You can now configure your timeline to either display weekends or not. If you only work weekdays, the latter makes it easier to track the actual dates and duration of your work.
Defining features:
- Virtual whiteboards
- Customisable templates
- Table, Kanban, Chart & Map views
7. Basecamp 3
The best project management app for web design projects
Basecamp is project management for distributed and global teams that are popular within the web design community.
In Basecamp 3, your schedule is designed to keep all the milestones, deadlines, and stuff with dates neatly organized and tidy.
Platform: Web, Android, iOS, macOS, Windows
Most suitable for: Web design and development teams
Supported methodologies: Agile, SCRUM
Unique and distinctive features:
- Hills Charts: Hills Charts are an original way to view project progress that has been originated by Basecamp. They’re based on the idea that every project reaches a point where there aren’t any more unsolved problems (the ‘top of the hill’).
- Automatic check-in questions: Automatic check-in questions such as “what are you working on this week?” and “what did you work on today?” give managers a quick, easy way how everyone is progressing.
- Decide what clients see: Everything is private to your team by default and clearly labelled as such until you choose to share it with a client.
Other defining features:
- Project templates
- Document management
- Real-time chat
8. KanbanFlow
The best project management app for lean teams
KanbanFlow is, as the name suggests, a task management app based on Kanban cards. It is a purposely lean and minimal project management app.
Platform: Web, Android, iOS, Windows Phone
Most suitable for: Startups
Supported methodologies: Kanban
Unique and distinctive features:
- Work-in-progress limits: To avoid project bottlenecks, you can limit how many tasks you are allowed to have in a specific column. Like in the below image, you can only choose to view the tasks marked in blue.
- Swimlanes: Swimlanes means you can split your board horizontally into teams, products, business areas or something else that will help you manage your tasks.
- See the completed tasks by date: When you move tasks to Done, they are grouped by the date that they were completed. This makes it easy to, for example, keep track of how much work you finished last week.
Other defining features:
- Kanban boards
- Easy filtering of information
- Real-time collaboration
9. ClickUp
Best project management app for marketing projects
ClickUp is an intuitive project management app with a strong appeal to marketing professionals.
Platform: Web, Android, iOS, macOS, Windows, Chrome, Amazon Fire, Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, Notepad, Gmail, Outlook
Most suitable for: Marketing professionals
Supported methodologies: Agile
Unique and distinctive features:
- ClickApps: ClickApps are programmable widgets that enable you to completely customise your team’s interface within each Workspace.
- Time estimates: Time Estimates is a ClickApp that uses machine learning to generate realistic estimates and timeframes for your activities.
- Me Mode: Me Mode allows you to drown out the noise and focus only on the tasks assigned to you, in one click.
Other defining features:
- Multiple views (List, Calendar, Board, Gantt, Wiki & Doc View, Conversation, Embed)
- Image mockups
- Collaboration Detection
10. Teamwork Projects
Project Management Software with Billing & Time-Tracking
Teamwork Projects is a work and project management app that’s packed with features.
Platform: Web, Android, iOS, Chrome
Most suitable for: Complex projects
Supported methodologies: Agile, SCRUM, Kanban
Unique and distinctive features:
- Customisable Kanban Boards: If you prefer the Kanban approach, you’re able to create Kanban boards in a way that’s much more customisable than most project management apps.
- Built-in time logging: There are many time tracking features, including an in-app timer which you can launch which doing particular tasks. Any time logged on a project can be viewed in the project’s Time tab.
- Billing tools: Built-in expenses and invoicing tools help you keep track of the financial side of projects, and generate client invoices automatically.
Other defining features:
- Simple structure
- Bird’s eye view of all projects
- Interactive Gantt Chart
11. JIRA
Project Management Software for IT & Scrum
JIRA is a bug tracking and project management app geared towards technical staff.
Platform: Web, Android, iOS
Most suitable for: IT departments, software developers, web developers, open-source projects
Supported methodologies: Agile, SCRUM, Kanban
Unique and distinctive features:
- Scrum Boards: Scrum Boards enable software teams to manage complex projects by creating a culture of collaboration. (Kanban Boards are available as an alternative). Jira’s Scrum boards unite teams around a single goal and promote iterative, incremental delivery.
- Issue tracking: Bug and issue tracking features help software teams find, record and track bugs in their software.
- Integrates with Github: Linking your GitHub account to Jira gives your team the ability to see their branches, commit messages, and pull requests right in the context of the Jira tickets they’re working on.
Other defining features:
- Service desk
- Code integration
- Agile, Scrum or Kanban
12. Toggl Plan
Best Project Management App for Toggl Users
Toggl Plan (formerly Teamweek) is an easy to use, highly visual project management app.
Platform: Web, Android, iOS
Most suitable for: IT, design, marketing and financial departments/companies
Supported methodologies: Agile, Kanban
Unique and distinctive features:
- Quick setup: Compared to other project management apps, Toggl Plan offers a lightweight and minimal feature set that’s easy to set up and use. Instead of being forgotten, you can also add the tasks to the “Icebox” tab, so they can be completed in the future
- Highly visual interface: The interface offers a quick visual overview of who’s doing what and when based on clear and customisable colour-coding. Toggl Plan makes great use of colour to help aid comprehension.
- Shortcuts: Toggl Plan has a wide range of shortcuts to make it faster to use. For example, you can switch to the weekly view by typing W, monthly view with M, and annual view with A.
Other defining features:
- Drag & drop interface
- Kanban boards or Timeline view.
- Job scheduling
Interesting & Noteworthy Project Management Tools
13. Notion
Notion is a collaborative note-taking app that is based around a wide variety of project management based templates.
14. nTask
nTask is a cloud-based free task management app that’s geared towards small businesses and individuals.
15. Freedcamp
Freedcamp is a user-friendly and low-cost project management software with good collaboration features.
16. ZenTao
ZenTao is an open-source project management software for users of both the Scrum and Agile methodologies.
17. Outlook Spaces
Coming Soon, Outlook Spaces, is a new workspace tool from Microsoft Outlook, aimed at helping teams to collaborate over meetings, documents, and notes.
Final thoughts on choosing a Project Management Software
That’s a wrap on the free project management software & tools available to cater to a wide range of teams. Understand what your team goals and style of working is, what kind of projects you typically work on and who all will be utilizing the project management app. We’ve listed down the best options for individual, agile, lean & large teams. From this list, you can select your team’s next favourite project management software based on the criteria your team falls into.
