59% of U.S. workers say communication is their team’s biggest obstacle to success, followed by accountability.
Managing multiple projects at once, delegating tasks, and collaborating across teams is difficult on a good day — but can become downright impossible when unforeseen obstacles get in the way.
Miscommunication and inefficiencies in your project management process can lead to confusing and stressful experiences for your employees, and hinder your company’s ability to satisfy your clients’ needs or hit end-of-year goals. This can lead to major losses over time.
Fortunately, there are plenty of free project management software options to keep your team on-track without breaking the bank. To streamline your process and ensure everyone on your team is on the same page, take a look at these ten exceptional free project management tools.
1. Project.co
Project.co is a client-facing project management system that connects your team with your clients’ teams in one place. Each piece of work you do can be setup as its own project, with its own discussion feed, notes, tasks, team, and payments. You can also record time spent on each project.
A variety of different task and project views are available including calendar, scheduler and Kanban view — to give you the ideal overview of the work that’s happening within your team.
Features include:
- Ability to quickly add/invite both internal and external users
- Discussion feed for each project – with email alerts (and the ability to reply by email without logging in)
- Variety of task views – which can be filtered – giving your whole team, each department and even individual users their daily/weekly task lists
- Reporting tools that measure your most/least profitable/efficient projects
- Ability to integrate payment solutions and quickly, securely take card payments through the system
Pricing:
Free for up to five active projects and five internal users, with paid options starting from $7 per user per month.
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2. Toggl Plan
Toggl Plan is an effective project management tool to automate your task delegation process and visualize which project tasks have been completed, and which haven’t. If your team often collaborates with other departments on projects, this might be a useful tool for you.
Features include:
- Gantt-chart visualization to track important deadlines and projects
- Integrations with Slack, Github, Evernote, and others
- Team collaboration option through shared calendars and task notes
Pricing:
Free for an unlimited number of projects for up to five team members
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3. Freedcamp
Freedcamp is a feature-rich project management tool that’s designed for personal and professional use. Each project has its own tasks, milestones, files, discussions, time, issue tracker and calendar. The dashboard gives you a clear, concise overview of what’s going on in your team including activity, projects, and tasks.
Features include:
- Message board style discussion feed, with the ability to create and carry out discussions on any topic
- Powerful calendar view laying out all upcoming events
- 3rd party integrations including Google Drive, Google Calendar, Dropbox and more
Pricing:
Free forever. Paid plans are available with additional features, starting from $1.49 per user per month.
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4. Asana
Asana, one of the most popular project management solutions used by millions of people across 192 countries, has a clean and user-friendly interface. The all-in-one tool lets you create boards to visualize which stage your project is in, and use reporting to keep track of finished tasks and tasks that need your attention.
Features include:
- The ability to create templates to automate mundane tasks
- The ability to collaborate and share information across the team, privately and securely
- The option to set security controls and designate admins
- Over 100 integrations for a more efficient start-to-finish process
- Custom project fields, share documents, and filter tasks
Pricing:
Free for unlimited projects for teams up to 15 people. Paid plans starting at $10.99 per user per month.
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5. Teamwork
Teamwork, a project management tool that specializes in bringing together remote workers, allows you to create team member status updates so your remote and flexible teams know their coworkers’ schedules. It also provides customer service functions, including the option to assign tickets or view customer emails in one place. (Teamwork is a HubSpot integration partner).
Features include:
- Customizable navigation to prioritize your team’s needs
- Gantt chart for visualizing due dates and project timelines
- Private messaging, and option to make project details private
- Team member status updates for remote or flexible team members
Pricing:
Free for up to five users. Paid plans start at $9 per user per month with a minimum of 5 users.
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6. Wrike
Wrike stands out as an exceptional project management tool for teams who want the option to customize workflows and edit and revise projects from within the platform itself. The tool offers the ability to color code and layer calendars, and its mobile form allows colleagues to update project information on-the-go. You can add comments to sections, videos, or documents, and create custom fields to export data most relevant to your company.
Features include:
- Security measures to ensure only authorized personnel can access information
- Activity Stream to allow project managers to micromanage small tasks, see activities in chronological order, and tag team members
- The option to unfollow activities to declutter your own personal Stream
- Email and calendar synchronization
- Built-in editing and approval features
Pricing:
Free for five team members. Paid plans start at $9.80 per user per month with a minimum of 5 users.
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7. Paymo
Paymo’s free version only allows access for one user, but if you’ve got a small team or you’re a freelancer, this could be an efficient option for tracking billable hours and invoicing clients. Along with tracking finances, Paymo also allows you to organize project timelines, create to-do lists, and stay on top of your budgets for multiple projects at once.
Features include:
- Kanban Boards
- Time Tracking
- File Sharing and Adobe CC Extension
- Reporting
- Three Invoices
Pricing:
Free for one user. Paid plans start at $11.95 per user per month.
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8. ClickUp
ClickUp provides a few impressive features to customize the all-in-one project management tool to suit your team members, including the option for each user to choose one of three different ways to view their projects and tasks depending on individual preference. If your marketing team overlaps with sales, design, or development, this is an effective solution, as it provides features for all of those four teams.
Features include:
- The ability to organize your projects based on priority, and assign tasks to groups
- The option to set goals to remind teams what they’re aiming to accomplish
- Google Calendar two-way sync
- An easy way to filter, search, sorting, and customize options for managing specific tasks
- Activity stream with mentions capability
- Image mockups
- 57 integrated apps
Pricing:
Free forever, with unlimited users limited features. Paid plans start at $5 per user per month.
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9. Trello
Trello is a drag-and-drop tool that lets you move projects – personal, or professional – through workflow stages, all the way to completion.
You define what those stages are – whether it’s work project statuses like ‘On Hold,’ or personal project categories like ‘Things to buy!’ – with tasks represented as ‘cards.’ Each card can be given a name, assigned to an individual, given a due date – and have files, such as images, attached to it.
Features include:
- Templates for a range of different types of project, from business to education through to personal productivity.
- Ability to add attachments such as images to any card on any board.
- Customise your workflow stages to reflect your actual process.
- Simple drag-and-drop movement of cards through workflow stages.
Pricing:
Free forever for unlimited personal boards, cards and lists – with 10 team boards. Paid plans start at $9.99 per user per month.
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10. Todoist
Todoist is a simple but powerful tool that lets you create powerful, interactive to-do lists. To-do items can be assigned priority levels, assigned to people in your team and flagged – with customisable reminders (although these are a premium feature.) Actionable items can also be categorised into different projects, making a simple, easily understandable structure where each ‘list’ has a title (project name) and a series of actions. This all makes it an extremely flexible, customisable tool to get work done.
Features include:
- Template lists to inspire and guide you.
- Recurring due dates for regularly recurring tasks.
- Productivity visualisations and ‘Karma’ points for completed tasks and streaks!
- Labels, notifications and discussion feeds to keep you organised.
Pricing:
Free, with an upgrade to premium (with extra features) available from $3 per user per month.
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