The Ultimate List of the Best Free and Paid Project Management Apps

Recently, we surveyed entrepreneurs to find out if they could only use one Slack app for their day to day workflow, what it would be and had a great response. So, this time we set out to find out what project management software entrepreneurs are using and swearing by and why.

Here's what we found:

Proofhub

“As the SEO manager of a company, our company uses ProofHub to manage our daily workflow and it is highly recommended for any company looking for workflow management software. It is an intuitive project management software that delivers flexibility to the way project managers and teams go about their work. It is without a doubt one of the most versatile software solutions for project management and team collaboration. The software comes with a long lot of features such as chat, discussions, Gantt, custom workflow, online proofing, time tracking, Kanban boards, measuring progress, task management, multiple tasklist views, and much more.”

Daniel Foley - SEO Team Manager at HomeTree

Trello

“Trello is a basic project managing software that allows you to visualize project tasks on a cardboard-like dashboard that’s great for managing short and quick everyday assignments. It is free for personal use but for businesses you have to pay $9.99/month. It has several features like simple task management on cardboard, image & file sharing, commenting & collaboration, real-time actions & updates. Above all, it is a user-friendly platform.”

Adam Garcia - CEO at The Stock Dork

See how Workast compares to Trello here.

Flock

“We are using Flock to collaborate with our entire team. Flock has different channels for different teams with the one-on-one group conversation facility. We can share files, messages, and links over the software. The software has the option to make audio or video calls and also allows the users to share the screen while calling. The software has some amazing features like polls, note sharing, and reminders. It also has task assigning options for the members. Flock is free to use with limited searches to 10,000. The software offers 5GB storage and integration of the third party is permitted to five in number. The Pro plan of the software offers unlimited searches, 10GB of storage per user, and admin controls. The enterprise plan of Flock offers 20GB of storage and much more.”

Bishal Biswas - CEO at Word Finder

Notion

“We are using Notion as the project management software. It is a perfect management tool that facilitates team collaboration by offering multiple features and functionalities including project management, file sharing & collaboration, instant messaging, and much more. It focuses on transparency and saving time, ultimately increasing the productivity of teams. The software contains blocks for comments, todos, and notes. The comment feature is excellent and useful in case of an increased workload. Its dashboard is organized, smooth, functional, and clean from the distractions. Tags and notes are visible quickly.”

 Andrea Kuznak - Marketing Manager at GoVisaFree

nTask

"This project management software has been a great help for my team, from creating tasks, monitoring team productivity, setting meetings, and organizing projects. There's no need to worry about any learning curve since it is spontaneous and easy to use. The best part of it is, the majority of its features are free. By using this software, you are making the most out of your productivity, time, and resources all in one." 

Jake Smith, Managing Director of Absolute Reg

ClickUp

"My favorite project management tool is ClickUp. What I love about ClickUp is that it allows you to break large tasks into smaller goals. This is fantastic for my team's motivation, and it allows me to properly drill down into what aspects of projects we are succeeding with and what we need more work on.

ClickUp also has the handy feature of letting different users visualize tasks in different ways, be it a Gantt chart, calendar, or simple list. What makes a good UX depends on the working style of the user themselves, so having this flexibility is fantastic."

Mike Skoropad - Co-Founder and CEO of Utires

See how Workast compares to ClickUp here.

Workast

Of course we couldn't go without mentioning Workast, but don't just take it from us:

"We decided to move from Trello to Workast because of Workast's endless integration options, with our remote workforce increasing - we wanted to have all our important tools in one place.

During the implementation period, it took a while to figure out how to customize the platforms to our specific needs but after a  few tries we got there and we were thankful we'd moved over! Workast has been great for organizing everyone's priorities in an easy and trackable manner and because of its integration to Slack, it's been easy to spot a deadline and chase it up with the right member of staff - our productivity has increased.

While similar to many modern project management tools in the sense of, it's intuitive and easy to understand - Workast has taken the experience further by allowing for tasks to flow easier. Middle of a conversation with a team member in Slack? No problem, I can add a task while the conversation is rolling."

Jenna Carson - Marketing Manager at Music Grotto

Looking to get started with Workast? Check out our tutorial video here.

TMetric

“TMetric has been my time management solution for more than 2 years already. I use it to log my work hours, monitor activity, and measure efficiency. As an employee, I like the monthly balance option: On the Time page, I can always see the number of hours I have to work a day. And, the biggest advantage of using TMetric for me is having a flexible schedule as the app enables me to work whenever and wherever I prefer.

Since all my projects and tasks are stored in JIRA, I have connected it to TMetric to have a more productive workflow: I don’t need to spend time to create projects and tasks in TMetric, I just start the TMetric timer in JIRA and the data is synced which works seamlessly.

Also, our time off is managed in TMetric, and this saves me much time too because I don’t need to send any letters via email to inform my PM about a day off and to wait for confirmation. I do it all in TMetric by clicking just a few buttons.”

Kate Gondarovskaya - Marketing Manager at TMetric Time Tracker

Monday

“It's taken the team at The Loop Marketing some time to find a project management software that really works for us and our flow. As a small agency (less than 10 employees), we needed one that wouldn't overwhelm us but at the same time allow us to see a clear picture of where every project we're working on stands. We've used Asana in the past, but have switched to Monday in the last year and have seen our productivity increase while our need for direct communication (e.g. checking in and repeatedly asking for status updates) has decreased. Our process has been streamlined due to Monday's visual component and easy-to-use update buttons.”

Kylie Moore - Content Manager at The Loop Marketing

See how Workast compares to Monday here.

Asana

"Asana is my personal preference among project management software tools. I really enjoy how flexible it is when it comes to having tasks live in multiple places at once. You can have subtasks of subtasks, or multi-home tasks in many different projects. When you're trying to keep track of personal tasks, team tasks, organizational initiatives, and specific cross-functional projects, the ability to have tasks existing in multiple projects and views is a lifesaver."

Evan LePage - Senior Content Manager at Unito

See how Workast compares to Asana here.

BaseCamp

“BaseCamp has all the features we need to manage our teams, including to-do lists, communication, announcements, content storage, scheduling, reminders, and the latest activity. The To-do list is the core feature of this software, like any other project management platform. 

Managers can assign the task to desired team members and set a deadline. The comment section is present to talk about the specific job. The message board is another feature of the announcement. For example, a new team member joined your team or you want to announce something or give feedback urgently could be extremely helpful. Managers would not have to switch to emails for this purpose. Several announcement categories are present such as “announcement,” “pitch,” “question,” or something else. Employers or announcers could choose the one accordingly. Additionally, you can set the specific members if you do not want it to be delivered to the whole team.”

Kate Gross - Marketing Manager at Fix the Photo

Nifty 

“Well, Nifty is another wave project the board apparatus that diminishes project advancement cycles and improves group profitability by joining the entirety of the significant highlights of venture the executives into one programming. The final product is achievement-driven advancement that keeps groups enlivened, safeguarding hierarchical objectives to stay on time. Nifty's product permits you to oversee errands through both kanban or rundown see, has an underlying schedule that can be incorporated with Google, just as record and report sharing. Working together on Nifty is normal in light of the fact that each undertaking has an individual conversation string empowering project explicit correspondence. Clever additionally has a reconciliation with Github that really makes Nifty extraordinary by empowering cross-departmental cooperation like no other.”

Holly Zorbas - Assistant Editor at CreditDonkey

 Airtable 

“Organization has never been my forte and so I rely heavily on project management tools. My favorite tool which helps keep me stay efficient and on track is Airtable. 

I love that I can integrate it directly with my email marketing platform and with my calendar for maximum productivity. Being able to upload documents, images, and videos within Airtable spreadsheets is a gamechanger.

Having both a desktop and app version is also incredibly useful. Whenever I have a brainwave, I can quickly document it in the app so I don't lose my best ideas and strategies written on scraps of paper!” 

Leanne Scot - Founder of Passive Income Superstars

See Airtable alternatives.

Google Suite

"Arguably the most important one is the Google Suite. The company has a shared account that everyone can access filed with folders that are compartmentalized into the different departments. Each folder contains all of the documents we use to serve our clients so no matter where we are if we need to collaborate it happens in real-time. It's made everything MUCH MORE efficient."

Devon - Seven Tree Media

Zoho

"I've been using Zoho Projects for a while now and I'm pleased with the results. Zoho Projects is a project management application that lets users plan, organize, and work on projects using Gantt charts to see progress and schedules in detail. There are also options for document management, time management, and error tracking and correction. There are various integrations available, including Slack, Google, Dropbox, and numerous other Zoho suites."

Shad Elia - CEO of  WeBuyHousesHere.com

Teamwork

"My favorite project management software is definitely teamwork. I've used Jira and Podio before, but teamwork makes managing teams and tasks easy and efficient. It's super helpful to be able to input info for all people in your company to see or certain info for specific employees. Tagging with notifications, sharing files, and keeping up to date on things that need to be done is super simple with teamwork. For companies that are larger, like agencies with multiple teams of employees, teamwork is perfect. It's also useful for smaller businesses looking to keep employees in the loop, as it provides a simple, user-friendly platform for all information to live."

Elizabeth - SEO Specialist for AH Management Group

Samepage

"It provides all the features that small business needs in the collaboration software i.e., project management, internal communications, file sharing, and also the mobile app for real-time engagement. It allows us to keep the project content and assign tasks individually to the team members. Along with it, the managers can track the progress of each job. In one glance, the tasks list and progress can give an overview of the whole project. It is not only restricted to the team members, but even we can include outsiders such as clients to some pages by changing the privacy settings. It has a native audio/video chat feature that lets us communicate effectively."

Grace Woinicz - CEO at The Brilliant Kitchen

Jira

"I may not be the only one who chooses Jira for project management, but so far there are no alternatives on the market that could compete with it in the simplicity of design, usability, and the number of functions and integration."

Joe Terell - Founder at Drifted

Mesitertask

"Our favorite PM Software is Meistertask - it's a highly customizable, highly visual platform that allows for strong collaboration. The workflow can be customized based on what works best for your team!"

Hannah Liskewski - Creative Brand Manager at AbsoluteWeb.com

Azure Dev Ops

"My favorite project management software is Azure DevOps, the tool is a good software project management tool. One of the features that makes it versatile is the option to choose the type of template based on the project management framework you follow. It also provides complete control and visibility of the whole project from high-level items to each individual task, test plans, software code repositories, and continuous integration and deployment solutions. This makes it a holistic project management tool ideal for software development."

Rahul Mohanachandran - Co-Founder at Kasera

Confluence

"My favorite project management software is Confluence (by Atlassian). In particular, we find its knowledge management features incredibly helpful. I like the way it provides a single source of truth and saves time by harnessing our team's collective knowledge into answers that are easy to find for everyone."

Evian Gutman - Ringcommend

Harvest

"My favorite project management software is Harvest. It’s very well-known as a time management tool, but it can also help with a variety of other projects—including billing! It’s clean, sophisticated, and easy-to-use, which helps me focus on tracking my time and billing clients accurately. It even integrates with other project management tools, so I always know how much time I’ve spent on a project, even if I’m working across multiple channels."

Dr. Tzur Gabi - Co-Founder of Caligenix

Plutio

"Plutio allows creating projects, boards, tasks, and much more. It facilitates inboxes and helps manage and communicate with clients for their projects too. We can create professional invoices for the clients and create surveys."

Aastha Shah - Meetanshi

Microsoft Planner

"For small teams, I have found Microsoft planner to be very effective. The planner is not a replacement for advanced project management tools with a lot of functionality, but it can be a pretty good place to get started.

If you assign tasks to your team on a daily basis and there are multiple items that need to be tracked, then the tasks board in the planner is very effective in managing that.

You can create boards based on the state where the task is right now, assign team members and get it done."

Abhijith VM - Claysys

Toggl Plan

"Toggl Plan software automates our tasks process and indicates completed projects. It's valuable with its features of Evernote, Slack integrations, and collaboration with task calendars and notes. It is free of charge for an unlimited number of projects per 5 team members."

Samantha Moss - Editor & Content Ambassador at Romantific

Do you have a favorite project management solution that didn't make the list? We'd love to hear about it. Send us a line or tweet us @workast to have your tool included.