What is Project Management Software?
Project management software aids project managers in managing their tasks effectively while keeping track of time and budget. Managers may also use these automated tools to conduct administrative tasks, ensuring that all workers are performing results-oriented work. For teams of all sizes, project management software has become a requirement that plays a crucial role in managing a project systematically. Project managers must account for three very critical aspects of projects: cost, time, and resource management. With too many details to remember, project managers and even team members can’t solely depend on their memories. This is why many organizations nowadays use free project management software and tools in achieving a higher success rate. To become an expert, you should join the PMP training online course today.
Today’s systems have far too many layers, so it’s important to pay attention to the finer points. Project management consists of five steps that must be completed to achieve the goal. Initiating, planning, implementing, monitoring and controlling, and closing is the processes. All of these processes should be covered by any project management software. A good free project management software also includes several features and functions such as real-time collaboration, schedule and planning the priority tasks and resources, monitoring tasks of the team members, resource management, as well as budget management. This is very convenient as it assists in managing the productivity of a project without the need to invest money for it since the software is available for free. This project management software has numerous advantages, particularly when properly selected to meet an organization’s needs.
Still, free project management tools best fit small or mid-size companies looking for lightweight project management capabilities. Enterprise-wide project management software, providing full-scale resource management, project and program planning and monitoring, project portfolio reports and analytics, will be the right solution for large organizations with an extensive portfolio of projects.
Top 10 Free Project Management Software & Tools in 2021
Project management software and tools are essential tools to improve an organization’s productivity as a whole. Project management systems are increasingly widening their functions and crossing boundaries with their combination of functionality, making the user’s decision-making process more difficult. This highlights the need to be critical in choosing good software or tools that can assist the performance of a particular project management task. Listed below are the 10 best project management software and tools that are available online. All of these tools are free for basic use, however, if one wants to explore the premium or advanced options, one may upgrade to a paid version with more additional features.
1. Zoho Projects
With over 200,000 users worldwide, Zoho Projects is a cloud-based project management software. It assists users in planning and executing projects flawlessly. Users can easily delegate assignments, interact effectively with the team and stakeholders, stay up to date on all project changes, receive regular feedback on job progress, and produce projects on time, every time, using Zoho Projects. This software is usually recommended for small businesses. When it comes to setting it up, it’s simple and straightforward.
Zoho Projects is a full-fledged project management software where it can cater to the needs of organizations of all sizes and industries. Zoho will help users to organize papers, work with their team more efficiently, and monitor bugs with an issue tracker. The key features of this software include the use of timesheets, a ton of customization capabilities, Gantt Charts, Blueprints, and Timesheets. It is one of the most integrated project management software where it offers integration with Zapier, Dropbox, Slack, Zoho CRM, etc.
2. Airtable
Airtable is a project management software that serves as a one-stop center for collaboration. Buzzfeed, Slack, and Time Inc. are among its high-profile customers. Although this free project management tool has a steep learning curve and can be difficult to understand at first, there is plenty of support and guidance available. Airtable’s free version includes unlimited users, unlimited projects, a 1,200 record limit per project, a 2GB attachment limit per project, and even email support.
Airtable particularly suits the project manager with an innovative inclination who also appreciates the flexibility of a spreadsheet. This platform integrates visually appealing task management features like task galleries, grids, calendars, and kanban boards with the versatility of spreadsheet views to create comprehensive task lists and budgets. It is made up of bases, each of which is a separate project. Users may access these bases, which can be organized into workspaces. This software also has an array of templates that are beneficial to be chosen based on users’ preferences and needs.
3. Wrike
Wrike is a project management platform with several high-profile customers. This platform is used by companies such as Hootsuite, Google, and L’Oreal. When it comes to setup, Wrike has a user-friendly framework that makes it simple to get started with. This tool is best suited for organizations with large teams, mostly medium to large enterprises. It also integrates with a variety of file formats, including OpenOffice, PDF, JPG, PNG, Adobe Creative Suite, and Microsoft Office.
This software integrates geographically diverse teams and ensures that their entire companies are integrated, flexible, and adaptable, with over 20,000 customers and over 2 million users. Wrike is easy to set up for any department, team, or work style, allowing everyone to prepare, manage, and complete outstanding work at scale. It is a digital workplace that integrates all of an organization’s diverse structures and applications.
Wrike describes the next generation of job management worldwide, with customized strategies for marketing and innovative departments, project management teams, product teams, professional services teams, and more. It is equipped with Gantt charts that can be dragged and dropped for a visual representation of the project schedule. This software also provides drag and drop dashboards that can be customized according to what the user prefers to view. It is recommended for those looking for a straightforward interface.
4. Jira
Jira is a project management software that is popular among agile teams and is one of the most highly rated programs on Finances online. It has a great mobile app, which is why it is recommended for large and distributed teams operating in different locations. It is commonly utilized by the development team in planning, tracking, and releasing software. Jira Software Cloud can be customized to meet the needs of any project. Teams may use a project template as a starting point or build their own custom workflow. Jira problems, also known as tasks, keep track of any piece of work that needs to be done through the workflow steps.
With Jira, users may also produce reports that help develop teams and build their own workflows in addition to writing articles, organizing sprints, monitoring problems, and releasing up-to-date apps. It integrates with several tools as part of Atlassian, helping teams to handle their projects and products from start to finish. With all project information in place, reports can be created with all project information in order to monitor progress, efficiency, and ensure nothing is overlooked. Jira Software Cloud also includes strategy and roadmap tools to help teams handle stakeholders, budgets, and feature requests right away.
5. Trello
Trello, which introduced the Kanban board method to the masses in recent years, has become a common free project management solution. Users can use it even though the project management methodology isn’t Agile or Scrum. Trello focuses on what it does best: provide a basic workflow framework that anyone can pick up in under ten minutes and use to manage tasks and track project progress.
With Trello, there is no lengthy on-boarding process to complete, making group participation easy. Users can automatically log in, join a team, and see progress on all of the team’s projects. Users can create unlimited personal kanban boards, cards, and lists in the free version, which also includes a 10MB file attachment limit, 50 automatic commands per month (for repeatable tasks), and two-factor authentication for protection. In a free software package, that’s a lot to offer.
6. Asana
If you’re serious about meeting deadlines, Asana is one of the best free project management software solutions for you. It also has high-profile clients such as Avon, Spotify, Delliote, Sephora, Allbirds, and Viessmann that utilize this software in managing the company from company objectives to digital transformation, product launches, and marketing campaigns. From small tasks to strategic campaigns, Asana helps teams coordinate their work. Asana, which is headquartered in San Francisco, has over 93,000 paying customers and millions of free organizations distributed across 190 countries.
Users like Asana because it’s a visually appealing tool that uses tasks and sections to coordinate work and give the team clarification about who’s in control of what during project planning. In contrast to most other project management software solutions, this project management software is easy to use. With their drag-and-drop functionality, users can easily shift their tasks and delegate work. The free version of Asana includes unlimited tasks, projects, and conversations, a basic dashboard, as well as a basic search.
7. ClickUp
ClickUp is more than just a task manager; it also includes docs, notes, priorities, schedules, and an inbox. It is fully flexible, allowing all types of teams to schedule, coordinate, and collaborate using the same app. The main goal is to make the world more productive by eliminating the friction that comes with using so many different apps. ClickUp is completely customizable and proprietary features make it a must-have for every team who wants to keep anything from design to production in one place. It’s built for teams of all sizes and industries.
Deep modularity is offered by the framework in the form of add-ons known as ‘ClickApps,’ which allow for rich flexibility for each team individually. ClickUp lets users build custom views that users can save and share with others, and it’s packed with proprietary features like Delegated Comments, LineUpTM, and Box view for unprecedented people management. The Free Forever plan gives users access to an infinite number of users, activities, and product features. Users can use as many task management options and project management features as they want.
8. Teamweek
Teamweek is a simple team planning platform that is suitable for teams that want to concentrate on process planning and collaboration. Users can use a drag-and-drop interface to create and schedule work, as well as create a color-coded timeline of tasks to complete.
Additionally, users can also label work as completed to gain a better understanding of task success and improve team accountability.
Teamweek provides a straightforward picture from two perspectives: team members can see all of the tasks that must be completed within the framework of a single project, or they can get a sense of the projects that their partners are actually working on. As a result, the software is ideal for team management as well as project planning. Teamweek is an excellent free project management program because it is very intuitive and easy to use, and it offers excellent workflow overviews with the aid of colour coding.
9. Paymo
Paymo is an all-in-one project management software that allows users to organize, schedule, monitor time, collaborate, manage resources, manage finances, and much more. Paymo allows users to see each resource’s availability and workload in real-time, as well as monitor resource use by looking at a calendar. It also allows users to receive an hourly price for a specific resource object, monitor the budget, and much more.
With Paymo, users can monitor anything they do on their computer and the entries can be connected to the ongoing projects. Paymo free plan is a good resource management tool for single users. It also includes Kanban boards and time tracking, allowing freelancers to conveniently keep track of time spent on each client. The free version of Paymo can cope with one user, 1GB space, reporting, time tracking, and API.
10. OpenProject
OpenProject is software with a wide range of features that can help users complete their projects from beginning to end. Project preparation, time tracking, bug tracking, expense monitoring, and budgeting are all included in this free project management program. It is an open-source project management program with advanced features that are particularly useful for agile teams. There’s also no chance of losing data if users switch to a different tool.
This project management software includes shared timelines for smooth collaboration, getting feedback on the product roadmap by sharing it with clients and stakeholders, and the availability of Kanban board, agile board, as well as scrum. OpenProject is also good at bug tracking, providing a forum for QA managers and testers to capture, classify, and prioritize bugs.
