13 Best Project Management Software [Industry Favorites]

monday.com has gained tremendous popularity recently. And there is a reason for it. With over 245 ready-made templates for marketing, sales, PMO, design, HR, real estate, construction, CRM, startups, operations, and nonprofits, it serves everyone from small to medium-sized businesses.

Use monday.com work management platform to manage projects, tasks, business operations, resources, workflows, portfolios, assets, marketing content, campaigns, and digital assets. You can visualize projects and tasks in 10+ views, including Gantt, Kanban boards, charts, and tables.

What I like about monday.com is the ease of use, intuitive dashboard, no-code automation, and AI workflow. With monday AI, you can sort massive data in seconds, summarize content, translate to communicate with your international team, understand the sentiments, and get actionable suggestions. Only caveat is, the AI feature is available on the Pro or higher plan.

monday.com Pricing

– Free: good for up to 2 users with basic features.

– Basic: starts at $9/user monthly, recommended for micro businesses.

– Standard: starts at $12/user monthly, recommended for startups, small businesses.

– Pro: starts at $19/user monthly, recommended for small to medium businesses and agencies.

monday.com has more than 225,000 customers, which is a great sign of trust, and I don’t see any reason for you not to try.

Wrike is an enterprise-ready work management platform to manage workflows, resources, events, campaigns, product lifecycles, and projects. With the help of AI and automation, you can automate routine tasks, get suggestions on what to automate, get reminders, change status, and get insights. I was amazed by the AI mobile feature, which lets you delegate actions through voice commands.

Wrike has 75+ ready-made templates for marketing, creative agencies, agile development, operations, professional services, HR, finance, legal, and PMO teams to get you started quickly. And you can visualize projects in standard views like boards, tables, Gantt, calendars, charts, or create your own custom view.

You can integrate Wrike with your favorite apps like Microsoft Teams, Salesforce, Google Sheets, Miro, QuickBooks, and more. And if needed, you can extend the integration using Wrike API.

Wrike Pricing

– Free: good for solopreneurs who need basic task management and reporting.

– Team: starts at $10/user/mo, best for startups and small teams with up to 15 users.

– Business: starts at $24.80/user/mo, best for small to medium businesses with up to 200 users.

– Enterprise: best for global large businesses that need advanced security, automation, and unlimited users.

Smartsheet offers comprehensive project and resource management tools, such as Gantt chart, timeline view, grid visualization, workflow transformation, task automation, proofing, and more.

With the help of inbuilt dashboard features, you can build powerful widget-based displays and customizable reporting to share actionable data with stakeholders. The best part is it can source live data from external sources like Tableau and Google Docs.

Smartsheet has 95+ templates in English, French, German, Spanish, Russian, Portuguese, and Japanese language for strategic transformation, planning, product development, IT operation, marketing, and finance teams.

I really like custom workflows that allow you to automate business processes across sheets. One thing I hope Smartsheet catch up on soon is by making AI features available in the Pro plan.

Smartsheet Pricing

– Pro: starts at $9/user/mo, suitable for micro businesses.

– Business: starts at $19/user/mo, suitable for small businesses.

– Enterprise: custom pricing, best for large businesses that need AI, company-wide security, WorkApps, etc.

ClickUp is fairly new in the project management market but has become popular among startups and small businesses as one app to replace many. I like their powerful packed features, which allow you to track team time, create tasks, collaborate on documents, have real-time chat, create whiteboards, maintain wikis, run sprints, and visualize entire projects in boards, Gantt, or Kanban boards.

I like the idea of using a single work platform for easy licensing and management. Ex, you can use ClickUp to replace the following tools:

Slack for real-time chat

Google Docs for document collaboration

Notion for task management

Miro for whiteboards

Loom for screen recordings

Clockify for team time tracking

To set the right expectation, you can replace the above only if you use their basic features. Since they offer a FREE plan, I would strongly suggest you start with that or take a FREE trial of the paid plan.

The Unlimited plan, which is best suited for remote startups and small businesses, starts at $7 per user, monthly. However, if you need Google SSO and advanced automations, you can go for the Business plan, which starts at $12/month/user.

Trello was founded in 2011 and is now owned by Atlassian. You can use Trello to visualize your tasks on Kanban boards, lists, and cards.

While Trello’s free plan used to offer unlimited users, as of April 2024, it now allows a maximum of 10 boards per workspace. However, it still retains core features like Kanban visualization and a calendar view. Trello also offers various templates for customizing workspaces and allows file/folder attachments within cards.

What I don’t like is that AI features are only available on the Premium and Enterprise plans. And overall, the platform lacks advanced features when I compare to Monday.com or Wrike for example. I would recommend Trello FREE plan or Standard plan to small teams that need basic task and project management.

Notion offers an all-in-one workspace to manage team tasks and supercharge collaboration. Founded in 2013 by a team of innovators, Notion has become a go-to solution for teams looking for a unified platform to manage docks, tasks, wikis, and projects.

Notion stands out with its robust task management and rich collaboration features. Easily tag team members in pages and cards, track page analytics for data-driven insights, and organize information. Enjoy a vast library of free templates and versatile visualization options like calendars, lists, and boards. You can embed tables, images, Google Drive, and other elements within the page for a truly customizable workspace.

Notion’s free plan allows up to 10 guests, while Notion Plus expands to 100, and Notion Business caters to larger teams with up to 250 guests. If you are a solopreneur, the FREE plan should be sufficient, and as you grow, you can upgrade to the Plus plan, which starts at $10 per user, monthly. The Business plan starts at $15/user/month, which allows you to integrate with SAML SSO, have private teamspaces and have a 90-day page history.

Lately, Notion has introduced AI, which works well to search information from Notion databases, but I don’t like getting reminded to use it everywhere within my teamspaces. It is like they are pushing hard, so everyone uses it, but it is annoying to me.

Jira is a preferred choice to manage development projects and popular among IT and software development companies. You can use Jira to track issues, manage IT support, plan resources, and get full visibility across projects.

When you have multiple teams working on a single project, it becomes crucial to know the backlog for prioritization, and Jira does that pretty well. It supports 3000+ integrations, and since it is part of Atlassian, you can extend with Confluence to refer to it as a support knowledge base.

Jira is powered by Atlassian intelligence, and 77% of their users have saved time using the AI search feature. I would suggest using Jira to manage large and complex projects. However, if you are running a small project, you can go for Trello or Notion.

Asana is an enterprise-ready work management platform, used by 85% of Fortune 100 companies like Dell, Accenture, Spotify, Zoom, PayPal, etc. This shows the platform’s credibility and capacity to manage large and complex projects, company-wide.

Asana doesn’t just focus on enterprise but also offers solutions for small businesses.  The Starter plan starts at $10.99/user/mo, which gives you standard features to manage projects and tasks, and you can invite to unlimited guests. If you are into the publishing, media, or other industry where you work with a lot of freelancers or consultants, the unlimited guests feature is as excellent as you don’t have to pay for them to view your projects.

The recent Asana release allows you to automate portfolio workflows, chat with your data, get insights on Slack, and, generate AI-powered charts.

On top of managing projects and tasks, you can use Asana to create a content calendar, manage goals, onboard new hires, plan product launches, manage inventory, track compliance, and much more. To get you started, they got 145+ templates for marketing, HR, IT, customer support, operations, sales, and the design team.

The best thing?

They offer a forever free plan, perfect for individuals and micro businesses.

The bad thing?

Time tracking, portfolio management, proofing, and advanced reporting are only available in the Advanced plan, which starts at $24.99/user/mo.

Zoho Projects is one of the cheapest project management software with decent features to satisfy micro businesses and startups needs. It makes sense to use if you are on a tight budget, require basic work management features, or integrate with the Zoho suite of products.

I’ve used many Zoho products, and one thing that I don’t like is that they offer too many options on the dashboard, which makes the UI look very congested and bloated. First, I thought it was my minimal design likeness, but I see many others in their community and Reddit complaining about it.

I would strongly suggest you try the FREE plan, and if you are fine with the UI, upgrade to the Premium plan, which starts at $4/user/mo or Enterprise at $9/user/mo. The big difference between Premium and Enterprise is Zoho AI (Zia) and custom fields.

Use Zoho Projects for task management, automation, team collaboration, time tracking, project reporting, and integration with Zoho suites of products like Sprints, CRM, People, Books, etc.

What I like the most about Basecamp is simplicity and the Pro Unlimited plan at $299/month, which allows unlimited users. If you have more than 30 users, you will save a lot compared to other products with similar offerings like ClickUp. However, for a small team, you can go for a monthly plan which is $15/user/mo.

Basecamp is popular among startups and small businesses and used by over 75,000 companies, worldwide.

Basecamp is a centralized platform for communication, collaboration, and task management. It is well-suited for small businesses who value simplicity and want an all-in-one solution. It offers essential features like:

– Project scheduling

– Progress meter

– Real-time group chat

– Store files

– Kanban boards

– Run automatic team check-in

If you are a nonprofit, you get a discounted rate and in free for teachers and students.

ProofHub offering is similar to Basecamp, and in fact, pricing also follows the same style, like the Unlimited Control plan is at $89 per month, which lets you manage unlimited projects and have unlimited users. If you need to manage less than 40 projects, you can go for the Essential plan at $45 per month.

Based on the features they offer, I would suggest ProofHub to agencies like marketing, software development, consulting, and helpdesk.

Airtable is not a project management tool, but you can use it to manage tasks and projects if in the marketing, product, or operations team. You will like it more if you are a spreadsheet lover, as the base data resides in sheet view, and from there you can visualize however you like.

You can choose templates for Gantt chart visualization, OKR tracking, event planning, resource allocation, content tracking, SWOT analysis, and more. For collaboration, you need to rely on commenting using @mentions and real-time updates notifications.

To use Airtable to manage projects, you should go for the Team plan, which starts at $20/user/mo. Considering the higher cost compared to Monday.com, Notion, and Smartsheet, I would only suggest Airtable if you need to work on spreadsheets like data, build custom apps, or visualize data from external platforms.

Teamwork is for client services businesses like agencies, professional services, consulting, financial, and legal. Their offering aligns perfectly with what you need to manage your clients. Ex:

Timesheets and native time tracking to bill accurately.

Create invoices to get paid.

Manage workload and schedule resources.

Set milestones, project intake.

Clients view dashboard to get a clear picture of the client’s budget, tasks, and profitability.

Track expenses occurred on a particular project

They also offer other products like Desk to manage support mailboxes, Chat for team communication, and Spaces for wikis and knowledge base.

Bottom line: if you are into client services and looking to manage projects, billings, and expenses, go for Teamwork.

Teamwork Pricing

– Deliver plan starts at $10.99/user/mo, best for micro agencies

– Grow plan starts at $19.99/user/mo, best for agencies with minimum 5 team members

– Scale plan starts at $54.99, best for growing client businesses