Best Free Project Management Software
Whether you're a working project manager or a student who aspires to become a project manager, there are apps that can help you organize your projects to maximize efficiency. The good news: free project management software can give you the flexibility you need to manage tasks, communicate with stakeholders, and maintain project visibility – without paying a cent. The best project management software offers affordable plans, robust features, customizable tools, and an easy-to-use interface.
In this article, we’ll highlight the top options and help you find the best free project management software that will fit your team, your personality, and your needs, no matter what task you need to accomplish!
1. Trello
Trello is a popular free project management software for visually managing projects. Trello is a simple way to organize your projects with Kanban boards. And with a free plan that allows for unlimited boards and users, it's a tool that anyone can use.
Freelancers can use Trello to plan their assignments on a personal board, and teams can use Trello to build a complete project workflow with visibility at every stage. Trello will help you and your team easily track project plans, tasks, and progress.
Top Features:
- Simple task management on cardboard
- Organizing lists by dates or priority
- Commenting and collaboration
Great things about this tool: From start-ups to Fortune 500 companies, Trello is the most visual way for teams to collaborate on any project.
Available on: Web, macOS, Windows, iOS, Android
2. Asana
Asana is one of those unique project management tools that prioritize the team as well as the project manager. While some project management software options focus only on streamlining the management experience, Asana incentivizes every member of the team to use the software for their own benefit through worker-centric features and a simple user interface.
Top Features:
- Goal visualisation, Member chat rooms and Time trackers
- Task prioritisation and comprehensive dashboards
- Integration with 100+ other software products including Slack, Salesforce, Microsoft Office 365, Zapier and TimeCamp.
Great things about this tool: From the mind of Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, you can imagine how intuitive and elegantly simple Asana is. It’s focused on helping team work cohesively and keeping a clear goal for their project at the forefront.
So if your team needs a collaborative-focused project management tool with very little ramp-up time, Asana is a fantastic choice.
Available on: Web, iOS, Android
3. EdrawMax
EdrawMax is a powerful project management tool with a user-friendly interface that allows users to create Gantt charts with simply mouse clicking. The software enables project managers to make schedules, allocate resources, track progress, manage budgets and analyze resource status and allocation for ongoing projects.
EdrawMax helps users schedule and manage projects. It gives an overall picture of project hierarchy and task reporting relationships so that managers could get insight for budget planning and resources allocation.
Top Features:
- Project management templates collection
- Easy to use interface
- Time trackers
- Task prioritisation and comprehensive dashboards
Great things about this tool: Impressive range of templates, large variety of export formats
Available on: Web, macOS, Linux, Windows
4. Zoho
Zoho Projects is one of the best-known tools for simple project management that can help teams streamline their upcoming work and tasks. It also includes customer relationship management (CRM), IT management, event planning, accounting, and email.
Zoho Projects is for anyone looking for a tool that will do any of the project management basics like task creation, issue tracking, or task tracking through Gantt charts. Zoho could be a good solution for companies that want to organize all their functionality in one place and are willing to trust a third party with providing the organizational platform.
Top Features:
- Reporting with 50 pre-made templates
- Integration with Google Drive and Dropbox
- Timesheets, Bug Tracking, Gantt Charts, Forums
Great things about this tool: Zoho is an intuitive tool that makes every step of the project seamless, from setup to completion. They’ve also done a good job at tackling complex needs.
Available on: Web, iOS, Android, Mac and Windows
5. ClickUP
ClickUp is a project management software with powerful features for managing and completing all your team’s projects in one platform. Users can plan projects, schedule tasks, and manage resources in a centralized workspace, as well as communicate and collaborate with team members and guests.
Top Features:
- 52 customizable features for each project (Statuses, Assignees, ClickUps)
- Tools like ‘Smart Search’ and ‘Smart Estimates’ make you more productive over time
- 3 different views (Board, Box, List)
- Native integrations with Slack, G Suite, Dropbox, and many more tools, as well as over 1,000+ integrations through Zapier.
What’s special about this tool: ClickUp’s beautiful design and unprecedented user experience in an otherwise dull space echo what Slack did to communication.
Available on: Web, iOS, Android
6. Basecamp
Basecamp is the preferred tool for thousands of project management teams, who enjoy its modern social media-like interface and carefree team collaboration features. This new free version named “Basecamp Personal” is available to anyone but they emphasize that it is perfect for freelancers, students, families, and other personal project needs.
Top Features:
- Projects to manage multiple users’ work
- Email and desktop notifications
- Reporting on project performance
What’s special about this tool: Compared to some other project management alternatives, Basecamp doesn’t charge you per person, and it’s free for teachers and students!
Available on: Web, iOS, Android, Mac and Windows
7. Jira
A popular tool for agile project management, JIRA combines Scrum and Kanban boards to help plan agile project work, monitor team progress, and move projects forward in real-time. Project facilitators, also known as scrum masters, can easily ask questions, join discussions, and pinpoint relevant users to contribute to important conversations. Visual data reports help scrum masters gather important information, while custom workflows and schemes support team collaboration.
Top Features:
- Ability to create, delegate, transition, and arrange these tasks with one tap on their smartphone or tablet.
- Receive important notifications for assignments
- Curated feed of tasks list
Available on: Web, iOS, Android
8. Wrike
The Wrike platform is noteworthy for its simplicity. It is a cloud-based collaboration and project management system offering bunches of useful features as well as iPhone and Android mobile apps. Wrike features time tracking options, support for Gantt charts, sprint tasks and more.
Top Features:
- Real-time activity stream and reports
- Task management and time tracking
- Gantt charts and one-button conversion of emails into tasks.
- Integration with Google Drive, Google Apps, iCal, Microsoft Excel, Dropbox and many other platforms
Great things about this tool: Wrike is one of the better-known project management tools on the market, and for good reason. It’s a well-rounded and comprehensive software that still retains a level of simplicity practically anyone can learn.
Available on: Web, iOS, Android, Windows, Mac
9. LiquidPlanner
LiquidPlanner's mobile apps are designed to help you manage your IT projects remotely. Both Android and iOS versions are available. The LiquidPlanner platform allows you to track both the time and budgetary aspects of your project, including both billable and non-billable costs. Advanced analytics capabilities are incorporated into the software. A free trial of LiquidPlanner is available.
LiquidPlanner can manage and track work for a variety of teams, including project managers within IT, product development, and marketing.
Top Features:
- Tracking and managing resources, along with drag and drop simplicity
- Alerts/Notifications
- Calendar Management, Customizable Dashboard
Available on: Web, Windows, Mac
10. Instagantt
Project managers often turn to Gantt charts when they need to clearly and easily communicate a task list and its corresponding timeline to their team members. One hallmark of a usable project management app is that it needs to have some way of prominently incorporating Gantt charts into the system. This objective is a primary focus of the Instagantt web app. There's a standalone version of Instagantt and a version that integrates with Asana, which is the next app on our list.
Top Features:
- Change Tracking
- Workload management
- Scheduling milestones, dependencies, start and due dataes to build a perfect timeline
Available on: Web, Windows, Mac
11. OrangeScrum
OrangeScrum is a customizable and versatile project management system that integrates with Slack, Dropbox, and Google Drive. Features include easy marking of billable hours; invoice generation capabilities; task labeling, categorization, and allocation; and more. A free trial is available.
Top Features:
- Task progress tracking, resource planner and task board
- Kanban view and Gantt charts,
- Integrates with Google Drive and Dropbox
Great things about this tool: OrangeScrum is one of the most versatile tools on the market; jam-packed with a number of organisational tools, capable of integrating with major platforms like Google Drive and Dropbox—and it’s super customisable.
Benefits of using project management software:
- Enhances communication and builds teamwork across an organization
- Allows leadership to have a macro-level view of project progress
- Helps teams keep tasks in perspective and understand priorities
- Assists in controlling costs and managing budget
- Helps with resource allocation and prevents team-wide burnout
There are countless project management tools and productivity apps to help you hone in on tasks and projects like a pro. Are there any project management softwares or tools you love that we didn’t mention here?
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