The 17 Best Project Management Tools

Revised April 26, 2023
Revised November 9, 2022
Revised October 11, 2021
Revised June 22, 2020

Effective digital marketing is a team sport. It requires collaboration between skilled writers, graphic designers, content strategists, SEO experts, PR professionals, social media specialists, and marketing analysts. Every individual on the team needs a clear view of their deliverables, deadlines, and all the information they need in order to complete their tasks.

Such coordination can be challenging even when all team members work in the same office. It’s far more so in the more common situation today where team members include employees, contractors, and agencies, spread across multiple locations and even time zones.

That’s where online project management tools provide value. While specific feature vary among tools, most offer task management, scheduling, real-time communication, and a document repository. Some offer advanced features like alerts, document editing with revision control, integration with email and calendar platforms, time tracking, and project financial reporting.

Check out these seventeen top project management tools to help keep your digital marketing, product development and other project teams on task, on time, and on budget.

1) JIRA Software
Google Review Count: 317

A software development project management tool for agile teams. Use scrum, Kanban, or mixed methodologies, accurately estimate timeframes for project milestones, and prioritize tasks.

Sample review:  “JIRA is a project planning and management application that brings structure and logic to your workflow. JIRA makes it easy for large teams to collaborate on projects by logging tasks, tickets, and other issues – and to assign them priorities. You can attach files and other data to help solve issues quickly and restrict who can and can’t see tasks. For large organizations, JIRA is a very effective project management tool.” — AppStorm

Pricing: $10 or $75 per month

Showcase reviews: AppStorm, SnapApp

2) Basecamp
Google Review Count: 267

A tool to organize projects, internal communications, and client work in one place. Basecamp includes six core tools. To-dos for tracking work, a Message Board for posting announcements and updates, a Campfire chat room for quick casual chats with the team, a Schedule for posting deadlines and milestones, Docs & Files for organizing all the assets and notes everyone needs to do their work, and Automatic Check-ins to keep team members on track.

Sample review:  “While there are many Project Management Tools, Basecamp tends to be the most suited for B2B marketing agencies. With its robust functionality in the cloud, Basecamp is the perfect tool for large marketing teams within an agency.” — Oktopost

Pricing: $99 per month (free for students, 50% off for non-profits and charities)

Showcase reviews: Oktopost, Marketing Insider Group, Robbie Richards

3) Voxer
Google Review Count: 264

A simple voice and messaging app, Voxer lets you talk, send text, and share photos instantly to one person or a group. Recipients can listen live or later. Works with iOS and Android devices and on any cellular or WiFi network.

Sample review:  “These top project management tools will help you grow…(use) Voxer for team communication.” — Marketing Insider Group

Pricing: free or $4 per user per month

Showcase reviews: Marketing Insider Group

4) Slack
Google Review Count: 245

A messaging app for teams. Create channels to organize projects, topics or conversations; send direct messages to individuals or selected team members; launch voice or video calls from within a text conversation; share files; and maintain a searchable archive of team conversations.

Sample review:  “If your company isn’t on Slack, stop what you’re doing and get it now. Right now. Seriously. Slack has brought our distributed team together and become our virtual cafeteria. It’s cut down internal emails to nil and has raised our productivity. It’s just wonderful. We love Slack.” — Hunter & Bard

Pricing: free, $8 or $15 per user per month

Showcase reviews: AppStorm, Hunter & Bard, Katie Lance, Marketing Insider Group, StoreYa Blog

5) MindNode
Google Review Count: 231

MindNode helps you visualize your ideas. Start with a central thought, then brainstorm, organize and share your mind maps. Apple only.

Sample review:  “Ideal for keeping your brainstorm sessions organized and on-schedule, MindNode helps you understand what’s working in your content strategy and what’s not.” — Express Writers

Pricing: $10 (iOS) or $30 (Mac)

Showcase reviews: Express Writers

6) Asana
Google Review Count: 210

Organize project tasks into shared lists or boards for your initiatives, meetings, and programs. Create and assign tasks, add workflows using pre-made templates, upload attachments, comment on tasks, track conversations related to any project, create to-do lists, dashboards, calendars, and more.

Sample review:  “A collaborative tool designed to streamline the operations of your marketing team. Asana is task-centred, with each project being split into specific tasks. The software lets you create tasks and assign specific personnel to run and manage them. Dashboards provide an overview of your marketing projects, with facilities to log and track goals and milestones, as they’re met. Collaboration is assisted by discussion streams which are associated with each specific task.” — 201 Digital

Pricing: free; $8 per team member per month; or enterprise pricing by quote

Showcase reviews: 201 Digital, Marketing Insider Group, PR Daily, SnapApp

7) Wrike
Google Review Count: 188

A flexible collaboration and project management tool for teams of all sizes. Create projects, request forms, manage and edit files, produce Gantt Charts, manage resources, keep track of time and budget, collaborate, create to-do lists, and sync with popular calendar and email systems.

Sample review:  “Wrike is all about better project management and getting an idea from paper to production as quickly as possible. Wrike is powerful but easy to use allowing you to organize projects logically and efficiently. You can breakdown large goals into manageable pieces and then label, attach files, set due dates, track progress and track the contribution individual members are making so that you can make better use of your team resources.” — AppStorm

Pricing: free; three levels from $10 to $35 per team member per month; or enterprise pricing by quote

Showcase reviews: AppStorm

8) MindMeister
Google Review Count: 180

A collaborative online mind mapping tool that lets you capture, develop, and share ideas visually. Discuss changes using integrated chat, convert mind maps to presentations, and manage projects. A very useful too for event planning, taking meeting notes, brainstorming, project planning, or visualizing conference/class notes.

Sample review:  “If you need to brainstorm ideas, but creating a list just isn’t for you, then this solution is for you. Go back to the 90s and map out your ideas so that you can get a clear (and visual) understanding of your ideas.” — StoreYa Blog

Pricing: free or three levels from $6 to $15 per team member per month

Showcase reviews: StoreYa Blog

9) Scrumy
Google Review Count: 170

Scrumy is a project management tool for software developers, loosely based off Scrum. It’s basically an online sticky-notes project management application with a few extra features. Their About page (and video) is worth visiting even if your role has nothing to do with software development.

Sample review:  “Organising a group of people to work on a project can be complex, difficult, time-consuming – or you can just use Scrumy. There’s no registration involved, just enter a project name and you’re off. Scrumy is basic, but also simple to use and very effective. You have to be careful about what you put on your page, though – it’s public and can be viewed by anyone who enters your URL. If that’s a problem, check out Scrumy Pro, which adds password protection and a number of other useful extras for $7 a month.” — TechRadar

Pricing: free or $7 per month

Showcase reviews: TechRadar

10) Mavenlink
Google Review Count: 139

A unified project management tool for project accounting, resource management, task assignment, time management, business intelligence, project financials, and team collaboration.

Sample review:  “Mavenlink is an online project management solution that’s designed to integrate with multiple other platforms to extend its functionality. Mavenlink integrates with platforms such as Google, Salesforce, JIRA, NetSuite, and more. Mavenlink uses a Gantt timeline to schedule and monitor projects and provides several templates to help structure your first few projects.” — AppStorm

Pricing: $19 or $39 per month; enterprise pricing by quote

Showcase reviews: AppStorm

11) Teamwork
Google Review Count: 137

With Teamwork Projects, your team members will know what they have to do, when it must be done and who needs to do it. They’ll also know where to find and store project-related files and documents (and so will clients). It can be accessed from any desktop browser as well as Android, iPhone, and iPad apps, so your team can do their work wherever they are.

Sample review:  “Teamwork is a project management software solution built to scale with your organization. By assigning tasks and multiple projects to you and your team, you’re given the opportunity to see all of your deliverables in a checklist type format, keeping your daily, weekly, quarterly and yearly deliverables on track.” — SmartBug Media

Pricing: $49, $149 or $249 per month (unlimited users); enterprise pricing by quote

Showcase reviews: SmartBug Media, StoreYa Blog

12) Dapulse (now monday.com—see below)
Google Review Count: 115

A project management and communication tool that lets you message individuals or teams, provides real-time updates for important tasks and status changes, lets you save important updates, and search for any project-related item.

Pricing: four levels from $5 to $24 per user per month

Showcase reviews: SnapApp

13) eXo Platform
Google Review Count: 110

A unified platform for an employee/project portal, calendar, project dashboard, wiki, internal social network, and communication forum, with document management capabilities.

Sample review:  “eXo Platform is a business collaboration tool that includes a very capable content management system. eXo is based around a social dimension that provides a platform to bring together companies both big or small. eXo Platform is open source and so you can plug it into several other major business applications to extend its functionality and improve efficiency, communication and productivity in your enterprise.” — AppStorm

Pricing: free; $96 per user per year (minimum 25 users); enterprise pricing by quote

Showcase reviews: AppStorm

14) Kinetic Response
Google Review Count: 91

A special-purpose project management tool for creating a “virtual war room” in crisis management situations. Ideal for bringing together ad hoc groups of internal experts and outside resources to resolve time-sensitive issues like network outages, security breaches, or supply chain disruptions. Includes online chat (web and mobile), document uploading/storage, task management, and archiving of resolved issues.

Sample review:  “Kinetic Response is a virtual war room tool focused on collaborative multi-vendor incident management. Stakeholders can assemble and share information online to more quickly solve complex problems.” — ForwardGeek

Pricing: contact vendor for quote

Showcase reviews: ForwardGeek

15) Alertful
Google Review Count: 90

Reminds you of important events by email: birthdays, tasks, meetings, renewals, calls–any event you’d like to set an alert for.

Pricing: free

Showcase reviews: Siasat

16) TagMyDoc
Google Review Count: 90

A simple document management tool that adds a “smart layer” to existing documents which can include version control, notifications and real-time alerts, notes and comments, permission management, encryption, and activity reporting.

Pricing: free

Showcase reviews: Siasat

17) Slope
Google Review Count: 41

One of the newer tools in the market, Slope is a collaboration, workflow, review and approval platform for producing business content. It helps content marketers, creative managers, agencies, graphic designers, and video producers plan, manage, monitor, and deliver collaborative projects.

Sample review: “The video creation process can often be complicated…There are a multitude of project management and workflow challenges that put a premium on having an efficient collaboration mechanism in place. Unfortunately up to now there has not been a single online software program that can handle this for video creation…(Slope makes) the video creation collaboration process more efficient and cost effective.” — Video Marketing 2.0

Pricing: $30 per month or $300 per year

Showcase reviews: Video Marketing 2.0

More Tools

ProofHub
Google Review Count: 180

Comprehensive project management software with features like task assignment and management, time tracking, Gantt charts, team chat, file sharing, scheduling, and project status reporting.

Pricing: four levels from $18 to $135 per month

Deskun
Google Review Count: 159

A Gmail-based help desk system which includes project management capabilities for creating projects, assigning agents, and controlling access rights. The tool also provides for ticketing, prioritization, team collaboration, task delegation, and alerts.

Pricing: free, or paid plans starting at $1/month

ClickUp
Google Review Count: 149

An all-in-one tool for project management, document sharing, and team collaboration chat. Features include task management; the ability to create documents, Wikis, and knowledgebases; goal setting and tracking; and integrations with a wide range of apps including Slack, GitHub, Google Drive, Dropbox, Outlook, Vimeo, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Zendesk, and many more.

Pricing: free; $5/$12/$19 per user per month; enterprise pricing by quote

monday.com
Google Review Count: 136

A full-featured project management platform for task management and team collaboration. Features include a sales CRM with lead capture, pipeline management, contact management, and performance tracking; dashboards; Kanban and Gantt visualizations; workflow automation; file management; and integrations with Outlook, Teams, Slack, Zoom, Google Apps, LinkedIn, and more tools. Tailored versions are available for marketing, sales, project management, and software development teams.

Pricing: free; $8/$10/$16 per user per month; enterprise pricing by quote

TimeCamp
Google Review Count: 135

Visual time and task tracking tool for individuals, teams, and project managers that supports automatic time tracking, online invoicing, productivity analysis, timesheet approvals, attendance / time off, and numerous integrations to other project management, calendaring, CRM, email, and other applications.

Pricing: free, or $7/$10 per user per month

nTask
Google Review Count: 126

nTask is a free online project management tool that offers seven modules providing functionality for task management, project planning and reporting, meetings, risk management, bug and issue tracking, and more. Tasks and projects can be created using task checklists, updates and Gantt charts. Allows timesheets to be linked to tasks or projects and meeting scheduling with agendas and follow-up actions.

Pricing: free; $3/$8 per user per month; enterprise pricing by quote

Chanty
Google Review Count: 125

A simple team chat collaboration tool that enables users to communicate (via text, voice, or video); coordinate through screen and file sharing; search, filter, and browse team activity; and set up smart notifications to stay current on projects and activities.

Pricing: free or $3/user/month

ProjectManager.com
Google Review Count: 107

A robust project management toolset that includes functionality for dashboards to keep your team on track, interactive Gantt charts, project planning, team task scheduling and management, reporting, auto-filling of timesheets, resource management, product portfolio management, support for Kanban and waterfall methodologies, and integration with a wide range of tools including Google Apps, Salesforce, Quickbooks, Dropbox, and Slack.

Pricing: $15/$20/$25 per user per month

Taskade
Google Review Count: 106

A suite of five team collaboration tools, including an AI content writer that compares to Jasper or ChatGPT; task and project management with lists, boards, org charts, and more features; notes and docs for collaborative editing (similar to Google Docs); mind maps; and a video chat and screensharing application that can replace Zoom, Slack, and Teams. Manage multiple teams and projects with separate, secure workspaces.

Pricing: $19/$49/$99 per month

MeisterTask
Google Review Count: 104

Create projects, add any number of team members, assign tasks, and monitor progress. The “day at a glance” dashboard lets you see what’s been done in each project, review your open tasks, and decide what to focus on that day. Each task can include an instant message stream plus uploaded files, and the tool integrates with popular file sharing, software development, and customer service applications.

Pricing: free; $8/$21 per month; enterprise pricing by quote

zipBoard
Google Review Count: 101

A visual bug tracker for websites and special-purpose project management tool for website development. Annotate and add comments directly to websites or elearning courses, collaborate with your development team, assign tasks, track bugs, and test appearance and performance across device simulators and screen resolutions.

Pricing: free; $29/$59 per month; enterprise pricing by quote

Deskle
Google Review Count: 98

A visual collaboration platform for teams, Deskle is a tailored workspace for visual thinking, research, and collaboration.  It enables groups to arrange and rearrange ideas using digital Post-It style notes, and link these in flow chart style. Create unique storytelling experiences by adding interactive features to your content.

Pricing: free or $6/$12 p;er user per month

ProProfs Project
Google Review Count: 98

An easy-to-use online project management tool featuring project calendars, team collaboration, task assignments with dependencies, file sharing, chat, progress tracking, recurring tasks, time estimates, reporting, and invoicing functions.

Pricing: free or $19/$49/$199 per month

Milanote
Google Review Count: 97

Milanote is an easy-to-use tool to organize your ideas and projects into visual boards. Write notes and to–do lists on boards for task management; save images, links, and files; upload notes and photos from your phone; and collaborate with your team to keep everyone organized and on-task.

Pricing: free or $10 per month

TeamGantt
Google Review Count: 95

An easy-to-use yet powerful and richly visual project management tool loaded with features like  workloads and team availability; collaboration with internal and external team members; project portfolio view for keeping projects on track; reusable project plan templates to avoid “reinventing the wheel;” dependencies; file storage; time tracking; spreadsheet import; sticky notes; planned versus actual reporting; and more.

Pricing: free or $20/$25 per user per month

Hygger
Google Review Count: 90

While Hygger offers features like timelines and task lists that can be used to manage any type of project, it’s ideal for software development teams using Agile, Scrum, and Kanban methodologies. It offers functionality not found in many other PM tools such as Kanban boards, Sprint boards, swimlanes, weighted scoring, and RICE/ICE prioritization. Hygger integrates with Jira, Slack, and GitHub among other tools.

Pricing: free or $7/$14 per user per month

Moqups
Google Review Count: 88

A design-centered project management web app that helps you create and collaborate in real-time on wireframes, mockups, diagrams and prototypes. This online design platform helps creative teams design (envision, test and validate your ideas with quick wireframes and detailed mockups); plan (capture concepts and give direction to your projects with our professional diagramming tools); prototype; and collaborate on designs.

Pricing: $16/$49 per month (no per user fee)

Hive
Google Review Count: 85

Your design team might love Kanban, and your engineering team might love Gantt. Hive has one possible answer, letting you switch between Gantt, Kanban, calendar, and table views for flexibility. Hive Mail lets you pull your Gmail or Outlook inbox into Hive, enabling you to open and then attach email messages to new or existing tasks.

Pricing: $12 per user per month; enterprise pricing by quote

Troop Messenger
Google Review Count: 85

A Slack-like unified business communication platform that provides one-to-one and group messaging; HD video calling and screen sharing; integrations with GoogleDrive, DropBox, and LDAP; the ability to add vendors and suppliers with restricted access; team collaboration; and end-to-end encryption to keep conversations secure and private.

Pricing: $1/$5 per user per month

Zenkit
Google Review Count: 84

A simple yet powerful project management tool with features for task assignment, task and activity tracking, team collaboration, notifications, checklists, to-do lists, global search, drag-and-drop task organization, file sharing, calendar syncing, and user roles. Integrates with a wide range of other tools through Zapier.

Pricing: free; $9 per month; enterprise pricing by quote

Parabol
Google Review Count: 82

From estimation through retrospectives, Parabol is a tool for managing your agile development meetings more effectively. It integrates with Atlassian Jira, Slack, and GitHub to go beyond a Kanban board or digital whiteboard to help teams connect and make progress. Features include team check-ins, pre-built templates, icebreakers, timers, meeting summaries, and a Sprint Poker.

Pricing: free; $6 per user per month; enterprise pricing by quote

Kissflow Project
Google Review Count: 79

Create and assign tasks, monitor work in progress, and track time. Use Kanban boards to get visual task tracking. Collaborate with your team through real-time activity tracking, file sharing, and alerts when tasks are added or completed.

Pricing: free

Avaza
Google Review Count: 78

Avaza is an all-in-one platform for running productive teams. It integrates project management, time tracking, expense reporting, resource scheduling, quoting, invoicing, and detailed reporting. It provides the ability to toggle between Kanban, Gantt, and list views of tasks, and eliminates the need to have subscriptions for five separate products.

Pricing: free; $10/$20/$40 per month

Ziflow
Google Review Count: 67

Ziflow’s online proofing software for agencies and brands is designed to help deliver marketing projects faster by streamlining the review and approval of creative content. Features include annotation and commenting; team collaboration; automated reminders; file conversion and sharing; version comparison; and integration with other project management tools, digital asset management platforms, and other martech tools.

Pricing: $9/$18/$45 per user per month; enterprise pricing by quote

SmartSuite
Google Review Count: 66

SmartSuite provides a collaborative Work Management platform that enables teams to plan, track and manage any workflow – whether it be a project, an ongoing process or routine everyday tasks. Create a unified project management system with all the tools you need on a single platform, and automate repetitive tasks. Manage tasks, milestones, owners and resources for each project, staying on top of current status with flexible reports and timeline views to see how everything is lining up.

Pricing: free or $10/$25/$35 per user per month

Kantreee
Google Review Count: 63

A project management tool that enables you to create and customize projects, visual data in various ways, and analyze results using custom reports. Based on “cards” (which can represent anything from tasks to individuals, with each card having a description, assignees, due dates, file attachments, labels, and more), Kantree includes functionality for forms, queries, time tracking, and integration to other applications.

Pricing: $7 per user per month

Mintent
Google Review Count: 62

A marketing-specific project management tool, Mintent enables teams to plan, create, publish, measure, optimize campaigns in one place. It offers typical project management functionality (e.g., team and task tracking), along with content tracking and SEO tools to help maximize conversions and marketing ROI.

Pricing: $500/month for 5 users, $100 per additional user (per GetApp)

Wundamail
Google Review Count: 42

By condensing group thinking into a single daily email, Wundamail simplifies team management, communication, and coordination. It works directly in your team members’ regular email inboxes; no apps, usernames, or passwords needed. Each day, Wundamail emails a question to the team. Team members reply, and the next morning, all the responses are compiled into a single email, which is circulated for all to see.

Pricing: $9 per user per month

Infinity
Google Review Count: 34

Infinity is a highly flexible work management platform that enables you to organize any type of data–tasks, projects, databases, CRM, metrics, files, etc.. The tool offers unlimited storage space; four different views: list, table, columns and calendar; 15+ custom attributes to build any type of data; and team collaboration capabilities.

Pricing: $6/$12 per user per month; enterprise pricing by quote

Hubbion
Google Review Count: 33

Hubbion is simple tool to plan projects, collaborate with your team and monitor your tasks. Tasks can be created and assigned weeks or months in advance. Team members get reminders of upcoming tasks, and project ma mangers are alerted if due dates are missed. Hubbion also offers a free conference room scheduling app.

Pricing: free

Primetric
Google Review Count: 24

A project management and time-tracking tool designed specifically for professional services firms, Primetric enables you to forecast the availability of your people, track the time they spend on projects to compare your plans with reality, and understand your operational and financial performance at a glance. Features include resource planning and skills management; project portfolio management; project accounting; time & expense tracking; and business intelligence.

Pricing: $34 per month and up, based on number of employees

Showcase Reviews

201 Digital
AppStorm
Express Writers
ForwardGeek
Hunter & Bard
Katie Lance
Marketing Insider Group
Oktopost
PR Daily
Robbie Richards
Siasat
SmartBug Media
SnapApp
StoreYa Blog
TechRadar
Video Marketing 2.0

The team over at Time Doctor have come up with their own list of the best project management tools categorized based on what type of team is using them. This was the 27th post in the Best Online Business Tools series.

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#4: The 14 Best Content Planning and Research Tools
#5: The 23 Best Content Ideation Tools
#6: The 24 Best Online Writing Tools and Apps
#7: The Six Best Google+ Marketing Tools
#8: The Four Best Online Education Tools For Business Pros
#9: The 14 Best Marketing Automation Tools
#10: The 17 Best Keyword Research Tools for SEO and SEM
#11: The Seven Best File Sharing Tools
#12: The Five Best Infographic Creation Tools and Services
#13: The 28 Best Influencer Marketing Tools
#14: The Five Best Pinterest and Instagram Marketing Tools
#15: The 24 Best Visual Content Creation Tools
#16: The Six Best Online HR, Payroll, and Employee Scheduling Tools
#17: The 20 Best SEO Rank Tracker Tools
#18: The Six Best Screen Capture Tools
#19: The 15 Best Special-Purpose SEO Tools
#20: The Four Best Online Survey Tools
#21: The 26 Best All-in-One SEO Tool Suites
#22: The 32 Best Twitter Marketing Tools
#23: The 29 Best Web Analytics Tools
#24: The 24 Best Email Marketing Tools
#25: The 28 Best Web Design Tools
#26: The 29 Best Social Media Monitoring Tools
#27: The 17 Best Project Management Tools