Best Project Management Software – 2022 Reviews

After extensive testing, we found that the best project management software you can choose is ClickUp. ClickUp's paid plans are great value for money when compared to competitors – it's ideal for small companies thanks to a rich set of genuinely useful task management features, excellent data visualization tools, and the fact it's incredibly easy to use.

But while ClickUp topped our testing as the best all-around “work OS”, it won't be the perfect solution for all teams. For instance, we concluded from our research data that:

• monday.com offers a highly customizable user experience to suit your exact needs
• Smartsheet will be the smoothest transition, especially if you're upgrading from spreadsheets
• Asana has the best automation builder, which is ideal if you're looking for an efficiency boost
• Jira is the best for engineering and tech teams, or any agile team who works in sprints

Technology has seriously improved project management over the last few years, and each of the below options has different virtues that may help suit different business needs. If you're not sure what you need most, there's nothing to lose by signing up to a free trial or two.

Best Project Management Software Reviewed

We've logged the hours needed to test, research, and review each of the project management software providers listed below. We looked at the interface, infrastructure, standout features, ease of use, and pricing and plan tiers, in order to determine the strengths and weaknesses of each.

While some of these brands stand out from others, all of them are valuable for their own reasons. We've ranked them according to the overall benefits we found they had to offer for small businesses, but your business might find the perfect fit for its exact needs a little farther down the list.

Click each of the names here to jump directly to our review, which lists that vendor's pros, cons, and core features. Otherwise, simply continue scrolling to read about them all.

• ClickUp – best overall “Work OS”, with a great free option
• monday.com – best for customization
• Smartsheet – best for ease of use (and spreadsheet fans)
• Asana – best for building automations
• Wrike – ideal for complex task management
• Favro –  best for customer support
• Teamwork– best for collaboration
• Jira – best for digital and tech teams
• Zoho Projects – great value plans
• Trello – best for basic task management
• Celoxis – another simple, easy-to-use choice

About Our Research

Before we head onto reviews of the best project management software providers, below is a little bit of need-to-know information about our research team and what they do – including our project management software testing criteria.

Tech.co's research team

Often, it can be hard to tell which sites have actually used the products and services they review, and who's providing accurate information. Project management software is complex, and creating both a research framework and testing a whole market of top providers takes a fair amount of time and resources.

Here at Tech.co, we take our research very seriously – and we're lucky enough to have a research & insights team that dedicates its time to road-testing the software and services we spend all day talking about. If we don't have the data, we can't write about it – it's as simple as that. Ultimately, it's time well spent if it means we're providing better, more useful information for you.

Project management testing criteria

Before testing the project management software tools reviewed in this article, Tech.co's researchers created a unique research methodology, consisting of 5 central criteria with which each provider was tested. The five criteria are:

• Usability – how easy is the software to use, including during setup?
• Pricing – considering what each provider offers, is the software good value for money?
• Customer Support – what avenues of contact does the provider offer, and how useful are they?
• Features – what features are included in the software, and how do they work in practice?
• Customer Score – how do real customers rate these products?

To arrive at a “Features” score for each software solution, our research team looked at 4 feature sub-categories and combined the score: Task Management, Project & Workflow Creation, Data Visualization, and Collaboration. All of these criteria will be referenced at multiple points in this article when we talk about software test performance.

It's important to note that not all of these criteria hold equal weight in our testing methodology. This is best practice, and based on what businesses have told us is essential, compared to what's simply “nice to have”. Because of their central importance to project management, usability, pricing, project & workflow creation, and task management scores had more of an impact on overall provider scores than other criteria.

ClickUp

Best overall project management software
Pricing from: $5/user/month

Created in 2016, ClickUp is a relative newcomer to the world of project management software, but it's already moving the industry on and was the best project management software solution we tested. ClickUp sees its platform as being far more than a task management dashboard – the company is leaning into the concept of a “Work OS” that lets all employees organize their working day around a common central point.

The interface's hierarchy starts with teams, and includes spaces, projects, lists, and finally, tasks. This structure functions to keep different projects siloed from each other, reducing confusion while staying flexible enough to work in a range of different contexts. ClickUp performed well across the board during testing and was our top-rated software tool, finishing with an overall score of 4.8/5. ClickUp excelled when it came to task management (4.9/5), data visualization (5/5), and features in general, whilst remaining one of the easiest to use (4/5).

ClickUp Pricing and Free Tier

The free tier offered by ClickUp is the best free project management software available. It offers unlimited users, unlimited projects and spaces, and most essential features, though storage is capped at 100MB in total. The next tier – the Unlimited Plan – up costs $9 per user, per month, or $60 per user, per year when billed annually. This unlocks unlimited storage, integrations, and features, along with advanced reporting.

Additional tiers cost $12 per user, per month (Business Plan), $19 per user, per month (Business Plus Plan) and an enterprise package. While ClickUp's free version isn't perfect (despite the fact that its users aren't capped is great news for large teams who may not need a lot of functionality) the Unlimited Plan is an excellent option for just a few extra dollars.

Read our full ClickUp Pricing Guide

monday.com

Best for a highly-customizable user experience
Pricing from: $8/user/month

Perhaps the most famous name on the list, monday.com provides a flexible project management tool with plenty of customizable features, thanks to a drag-and-drop functionality, editable columns, and an infrastructure with multi-use rows. In fact, it scored 4.4/5 for “features” on our last round of testing, meaning it was only narrowly beaten by overall winner ClickUp (4.5/5).

“monday.com takes the highly customizable approach to project management, enabling users to add as much or as little detail as they want” one of our researchers commented. “Most of what you create on a monday ‘board' can be edited in a matter of clicks”

The simple, modern interface makes it easy to use software for even the freshest of beginners, so you can get your whole team on board without too much trouble. If you do need some help though, monday offers 24/7 phone and email support across all tiers. You might miss some third-party integrations, as they are a little limited, but the ease of use (4.1/5) more than makes up for any lack of functionality.

monday.com pricing

monday's pricing plans come in five tiers: Individual (which is free), Basic, Standard, Pro, and Enterprise. However, once you get to more than 50 users, you'll have to contact monday.com directly for a personalized quote for your business.

The Basic Plan on offer from monday is $9 per user, per month when billed annually or $12 per user, per month when billed monthly. The Standard plan is $12 per user, per month on an annual billing plan, whereas it's $14.50 month-by-month. The Pro plan starts at $20 per user, per month (or $25 per user, per month if you're paying monthly). The Enterprise package, on the other hand, has bespoke pricing and you'll need to contact sales.

Read our full monday.com review

Smartsheet

Best for ease of use
Pricing from: $7/month for a single-user plan; $25/user/month for multiple users

You know how sooner or later, everything ends up in a spreadsheet anyway? Well, why not begin your project management with the best spreadsheet possible, instead? Smartsheet lets you take Excel or Google Sheet-based tracking to the next level – it relies on a spreadsheet-like interface combined with a wealth of handy project management tools that are very easy to use.

Users can create tasks, sub-tasks, and task dependencies, attach files where needed, and use a calendar or Kanban board view (Although Smartsheet can be used to facilitate Scrum and Kanban methodologies). The interface shares a few abilities with other services well-known to web natives, too. For example, users can be tagged in the comments with the same “@mentions” feature used by Twitter and Slack, and can highlight essential bits of text just like in a Word or Google doc.

Smartsheet performed very well in our last round of testing, finishing just behind ClickUp and monday.com with an overall score of 4.6/5. It scored higher than all other providers for ease of use (4.3/5), narrowly beating Celoxis (4.2/5). “Smartsheet features a sidebar with some useful tools. One of these was called ‘Conversation' which enables users to quickly send a communication to the team” a member of our research team said. “I found this to be a faster method of communication than commenting on specific tasks to send updates.”

In terms of features, Smartsheet's project & workflow creation score was among the best we tested (4.3/5), and aside from customer support (2.5/5), it was a great all-rounder.

Smartsheet Pricing

Smartsheet's pricing used to be much higher than the project management software standard, and its first plan used to be exclusively for individuals. They've recently changed those pricing plans, however – and they're much more accessible for businesses.

Now, there's a Pro plan with a user limit of 25, and you'll pay just $7 per user, per month for that on the annual plan. If you have a team larger than that, you'll need to pay $25 per user, per month for the business plan. That's pretty pricey, but considering Smartsheet is an intuitive, feature-rich software service that offers plenty of integrations and performed incredibly well on testing with an overall score of 4.6/5, the return on investment is higher than you may get with other providers.

Read our guide to Smartsheet pricing

Asana

Best for building automations
Pricing from: $10.99/user/month

One of the most well-known names in project management, Asana delivers an easily-navigable software solution and plenty of essential features. These include customizable task fields, task dependencies, and a timeline view for a broad look at projects' histories and projected performance – which helped the provider achieve an overall score of 4.5/5.

What was particularly impressive about Asana was how easy and useful its automation builder was – a stark contrast to ClickUp's, which our researchers found unnecessarily complicated.

Indeed, Asana scored the same as Smartsheet when it came to project and workflow creation (4.3/5) and also scored full marks (5/5) for data visualization – although it's important to note that none of those tools are available on the provider's free plan. It also has a strong app marketplace for integrations, which can't be said for every provider on this list.

The only downside worth knowing about Asana is that users may run into difficulty if there's not a dedicated feature for it, whilst other providers often have “workarounds” that suffice for the task at hand.

Asana Pricing

Asana has a decent free plan, although as mentioned above, it lacks a number of important features such as data visualization tools. There's a premium tier available for $10.99 per user, per month (billed annually), which is a very reasonably priced plan but is missing that custom automation builder that makes Asana's priciest plans stand out from competitors (however, pre-built automations are available).

The next tier, the Business tier, costs $24.99 per user, per month – billed annually – does have that famed automation builder, which was incredibly easy to use and the best one we tested. There's also a decent range of collaboration tools too. The Enterprise plan, Asana's final plan, has bespoke pricing and you'll need to contact the sales team.

See our full Asana Pricing guide for more information

Wrike

Best for complex task management
Pricing from: $9.80/user/month

Wrike, in short, provides a great user experience for standard to advanced task management, and project tracking – and was awarded a final score of 4.5/5 by our researchers. It might not be quite as versatile as some of the other software on this list, but it's straightforward and won't take you too long to get to grips with, even if your goals are complex.

For example, Wrike users can use the spreadsheet-style view called ‘Table' to make project amendments easily – users just have to update the spreadsheet and won't need to dive into different menus to reallocate tasks or make timeframe changes.

Aside from achieving a good usability score (4/5), Wrike scored particularly well on data vizualisation (5/5), with a strong selection of preset chart and widget options, although avenues for customization in this regard weren't as vast as ClickUp. It also scored higher than monday, Smartsheet and Asana for task management (4.6/5). Features in Wrike's plans include task dependencies, Gantt charts, customizable calendars, and a Document Editor that tracks edit histories. Plus, at higher-paying tiers, a time-tracking feature.

Wrike Free Tier

Wrike also offers a great free tier, though it doesn't include key features like budget management tools, custom fields or task dependencies. It's still a good option for businesses that really don't want to pay for project management software, but that ability to manage complex tasks is significantly quelled.

The Basic tier comes at an industry-average cost of $9.80 per user, per month, and includes a couple more task management features (including task dependencies). The Business Plan adds Custom fields, custom automations, a calendar, and a resource management tool too.

Wrike is the only project management software solution we tested to offer industry-specific plans – there's Wrike for Marketing Teams and Wrike for Professional Services, both of which have bespoke pricing plans – the same goes for the Enterprise and Pinnacle plans.

Read our full Wrike pricing guide

Favro

Best for customer support
Pricing from: $5.10/user/month

Favro is a project management tool suitable for teams organizing themselves around an Agile framework, as well as other teams who want to take their planning and project collaboration to the next level. Favro is the customer support king on this list, with the highest score (4.3/5) achieved by any provider Tech.co has tested. There's onboarding assistance for larger businesses as well as live chat and email channels, and phone support for Enterprise plan subscribers. 

As project management tools go, Favro is excellent value for money (4.3/5) – only Zoho projects and ClickUp were more impressive in that regard. All in all, Favro's plans are a lot cheaper than the average project management software and you get a lot of features for what you pay for. Favro also is popular with customers using it, with a 4.3/5 average customer score, the highest on this list. 

Favro, therefore, represents a great option for smaller businesses that have some sort of a budget for project management software but don’t want to fork out on the most expensive providers like Celoxis and Scoro.

Favro Pricing

Favro keeps it simple with three pricing plans – Lite (from $5.10 per user, per month), Standard (from $6.80 per user, per month), and Enterprise (from $12.75 per user, per month). None of Favro’s plans have a cap on the number of users who can work on projects nor the number of projects you can create on one subscription. 

The customer support options are pretty extensive and the same on every plan – bar a phone option on the Enterprise package – and there’s onboarding assistance if you have 100 or more users. Favro scored higher than any other software we tested for customer support.

Relative to competitors, Favro’s has a broad range of task management tools available on all its plans, including Gantt Charts, Kanban Boards, Milestones, and Custom Fields. There are not many features that will facilitate data visualization, but there are automations and project templates to aid with the management of different workflows. Guest Access and Slack Integrations are available on the Standard and Enterprise plans, but aside from that, all the plans are very similar. 

Teamwork

Best for collaboration
Pricing from: $12.50/user/month

Teamwork offers a great service and is particularly strong when it comes to collaboration (4/5) – no provider scored higher on this aspect than Teamwork. It's also great for task management (4.9/5) – meaning it was awarded the same score as ClickUp, our best project management software.

Teamwork comes with Gantt charts, calendars, and Kanban boards, while personal dashboards allow users to track work without bringing in the entire team. Milestones, sub-tasks, and notes can all be recorded when needed, allowing users to build a deep bench of resources (such as links and comments) that they can refer back to at the right time. Third-party integrations are available, but not in as large a quantity as other leading project management tools, and some require a higher price tier to access.

However, one thing its important to remember is that ClickUp comes with no automation features, so shouldn't be your choice if your businesses' main need is to streamline your workflows.

Teamwork Project Management Pricing

A free tier is available, though it caps teams at five users, 100MB of file storage, and two active projects at a time. However, it does have a wide range of tools for a plan that won't cost you a cent, including a Gantt Chart and Kanban board.

The $10 per user, per month “Deliver” plan is a great package, and a number of useful third-party integrations, guest access, sub-tasks, and custom fields. There are also burndown charts provided on this plan, so this is the plan Scrum teams will be best suited to – although there's a 300-user cap. This plan has a huge range of collaboration tools including an instant messenger tool, task comments, document editing, and a calendar.

An $18 per user, per month tier – the Grow package – is also available, promising two-factor authentication, custom domain usage with SSL, and even more integrations. The collaboration features. Teamwork's enterprise-targeted tier, called the Scale plan, requires a custom quote, and offers single sign-on and a dedicated customer service rep.

Jira

Best for digital and tech teams
Price from: $7.50/user/month

Initially developed by Atlassian as a tool for software development, Jira has become a popular general project management software service. If your IT department already uses it to report bugs, upgrading the rest of your team to its project management services is tempting – but it's not quite as well suited to industries beyond engineering, software development, and IT more generally.

The Jira name refers to a suite of services (Jira Core, Jira Software, Confluence, and Jira ServiceDesk), most of which can be mixed and matched to suit a business' unique project management needs. The core interface uses a category-based system: Users can easily drag and drop tasks into categories including “To Do,” “In Progress,” and “Done.” Jira also supports almost 2,000 third-party integrations, which help it address all the needs that its basic service can't.

Jira, however, doesn't provide the best experience possible for simple project management – for instance, it doesn't provide a good experience when it comes to team collaboration. There are better solutions for task management, such as Wrike, and better collaborative platforms like Teamwork.

Jira Pricing

All of Jira's pricing plans can accommodate an unlimited number of users and you can build an unlimited amount of projects too. Jira has a free tier, which is one of the only free tiers with a full set of data visualization tools. However, aside from task comments, there are very few ways of actually collaborating on the platform.

Jira's first paid tier, the Standard Plan, is $7.50 per user, per month. Feature-wise its not a whole lot different to the free plan, although you get 100x more storage (200GB vs 2GB). The Premium plan is $14.50 per user, per month and a resource management tool is they only feature of note to be added. Jira also provides a Premium plan,

There's also an Enterprise plan, which is reserved for companies with more than 800 employees, and can cost hundreds of thousands of pounds per year to get a hold of.

See our full guide to Jira Pricing

Zoho Projects

Great value for money
Price from: $5/user/month

Zoho is a software giant, covering everything from CRM and accounting software to performance and project management software. It's the latter we're here to focus on, and if you'd like a more detailed review of the software package, check out our analysis of Zoho Projects features and pricing. Overall, we awarded Zoho a score of 4.3/5, and it did well when it came to managing tasks (4.8/5 – 2nd overall)

One of the most appealing things about Zoho Projects is there's a genuinely respectable free tier for smaller teams, or for new users to try out to get a feel for the software.

However, for the very best of Zoho Projects, you'll need to step up to a paid plan. These paid plans include time-tracking, resource management, as well as robust automation builders. These automation builders allow for simple automations that can speed up basic processes, while also allowing for more complicated automated processes that can expedite complex workflows.

Zoho actually scored extremely highly for pricing on our last round of testing (4.7/5), making it the best value-for-money provider out of all of the project management software we tested, shrugging off stiff competition from fellow budget providers Trello and Favro.

Zoho Projects Pricing

For the free tier, you're limited to just 3 users, and 2 projects. That's understandably limiting, which means its two other pricing plans are probably your best bet. There is a surprisingly vast feature list though, with quite a few collaboration and task management tools for a free plan.

Zoho's Premium tier is available for $4 per user, per month (billed annually), which includes additional task management features like sub-tasks and time-tracking, the ability to make custom project templates, as well as budget and resource management features. There's still a user limit, but it's upped to 50.

Any team larger than 50 will have to opt for Zoho's Enterprise package, which is largely the same as the Premium plan when it comes to features (par handy add-ons like custom fields), but there's a little bit more storage and an alternative way to build automations (called “Workflow Rules”). This plan is available for $7.20 per user, per month when paid annually.

Try Zoho Projects for Free or find out more about the closest alternatives.

Trello

Best for stripped-down, simple functionality
Pricing from: $5/user/month

Trello offers a “category and task” approach, similar to the one Jira operates on – in fact, it was acquired by Jira's parent company Atlassian in 2017 – but has been designed from the ground up for project management. Each of the movable “cards” Trello uses to track tasks can be used to hold information, including the team members involved, subtasks, due dates, documentation, labels, and comments. Users must rely on a catalog of extensions called Power-Ups, which activate common project management functions like timelines and calendars.

Trello Pricing

Trello has a free tier, but compared to a free tier like ClickUp's, it doesn't really come close. Overall, it's quite limited. The $5 per user, per month tier – Trello's first paid plan, is similarly not going to satisfy you if you need anything beyond simple, straightforward task management. But if that is what you need – this plan could be a cheap alternative that will save you from signing up to a pricier provider.

Read our full Trello pricing guide and review or our Trello vs Jira comparison

Celoxis

Great for simplicity and ease of use 
Pricing from: $20/user/month (3-year subscription)

Celoxis is a nifty piece of project management kit and we awarded it an overall score of 4.1/5 from out last round of testing. Breaking that down a bit, we’d say Celoxis’ unique selling point is how easy it was to use (4.2/5). It was markedly more intuitive than virtually all other software we tried, bar Smartsheet.

Teams that aren’t the most tech-savvy and don’t have the to adapt to a steep learning curve will enjoy the simplicity of Celoxis. It's a task-tracker – project management performance in its purest form, as one of our researchers, put it – and has a wide range of task management features to facilitate this. 

Celoxis is, however, a premium tier project management tool – and by that, we mean it's very functional, but also quite expensive.  Like Teamwork, there’s no automation builder, which will put some businesses off. But Celoxis’ wide range of project and task management tools and the fact there are no user or project limits on its plans means medium and large businesses will find it more affordable. 

Celoxis Pricing

Celoxis is somewhat of an outlier in the project management software market – it only has two plans, “cloud” and “on-premise”. The Cloud plan starts from $22.50 per user, per month when billed annually, but there are other options if you pay for longer, such as $20 per user, per month on a three-year subscription. 

The On-premise plan is a single payment of $450 per user. Aside from the Cloud plan having 2GB of storage and there not being any storage on the on-premise plan. Both plans come with integrations for Salesforce, Mailchimp, Quickbooks, and Slack, a large set of task management features, and some handy collaboration features like a resource management tool, calendar, and project message board. 

How To Choose Project Management Software for Your Business

We'll be the first to admit: choosing a new software to install at your business can be daunting. The added costs, the in-depth training, and the over-arching feeling of the dreaded “change” is enough to induce flop sweat on the spot. Fortunately, we can help you make the right decision when it comes to project management software.

Below, we'll go over some criteria you should consider when it comes to choosing the right project management software for your business.

Company Size

One of the easiest ways to narrow down your search for the right project management software is by the size of your company. Many tools cater to smaller businesses without a lot of team members, while others a tailor-made for enterprise-level organizations.

Small Business

If you're a small business looking for project management software, there are a few things you should absolutely look out for before making a decision.

First off, you can likely avoid the more expensive plans and providers right out of the gate. Most of the high priced options are geared towards enterprise-level organizations than need robust analytics, vast customizability, and a whole lot of users. Smalls teams can typically get by with the free tiers or entry-level plans, as long as you don't require those advanced features for something specific.

Additionally, smaller teams should avoid some of the more complicated providers, like Jira, Workfront, and Teamwork, as they can be difficult to figure out due to the massive feature catalogues that you likely won't even end up using. Stick to the easy-to-use options, like monday.com and Trello, so your whole team can enjoy the improved productivity without learning a confusing new platform.

Mid-sized Business

Finding the right project management software for a mid-sized businesses is a bit more difficult than small or large businesses, because the needs can vary dramatically from company to company. Still, there are some guidelines to follow to make sure you end up with a solid platform for your business.

For project management software at a mid-sized business, it all comes down to what you want to use it for. If you just need a simple progress tracking platform, aim for ease of use, which you'll find in Trello or Wrike. If you're looking for more core features like collaboration and discussion, tools like monday.com, Asana, and Basecamp are a great fit. And finally, if you're looking for a robust, analytics-machine that can handle the unique requirements of your business, platforms like Teamwork, Jira, and Zoho will get you there.

Enterprise-level Business

Not to be blunt, but enterprise-level businesses really do need project management software to keep track of everything going on. Fortunately, there are some options geared towards these larger businesses to help you monitor the wide range of metrics you likely want to keep track of.

For one, you'll almost certainly be looking at the more expensive tiers, if not the enterprise-level solutions, provided by each platform. They typically allow for more users, more metrics, and more support, so you can be sure everyone is on the same page.

You'll find enterprise-level solutions available through basically every provider on this list, but there are some that will truly improve your productivity. Zoho Projects, Jira, and Workfront are all geared towards larger businesses, but other mid-tier solutions like monday.com and Asana offer enterprise plans that are great if you need the users, but don't require all those advanced features.

Budget

As with any decision in the business world, cost plays a pivotal role in which project management software will be a good fit. Obviously, measuring return on investment isn't easy with this kind of software, but spending a lot versus spending a little can change what kind of platform you end up with and how well your team works together.

Small Budget

If you don't have a lot of room in the budget when it comes to adding new software, you're in luck. As long as you don't need robust analytics, advanced features, and a lot of users, many of these platforms offer free plans that can handle everything and then some.

If you're looking for a bit more, entry-level plans are typically only a few dollars a month, and they offer great free trials that can let you test them out before you make a decision. Monday.com, for instance, offers a great 14-day free trial of their easy-to-use platform to see if it fits your needs.

Big Budget

If you've got a lot of flexibility in your budget for a project management software, you're all set. Project management software typically doesn't cost too much compared to other business software, so it'll be hard to go overboard when looking for the best fit.

That isn't to say you should just throw money at the most expensive platform you can find. A big budget just means you get to focus on the important stuff, like user counts, feature sets, and support options, so you can get the perfect option for what you need.

Next Steps Choosing Project Management Software

Once you've reviewed all the best project management software services, it's time to take a look at your business needs. Which features do you need? How does the size of your team affect the price you might pay for each service? Will any future expansion bump you into a higher price plan?

We've whittled the top project management tools down to this list of twelve options that are listed in the table that appeared earlier on in this article, and here are 14 project management tips to help you manage projects with ease.

Frequently Asked Questions