The 9 Best Free Project Management Software Solutions Compared for 2024

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The best free project management software can help businesses strategize, organize, and execute quickly, as it keeps teams on the same page while ensuring seamless collaboration. Effective project management plays a pivotal role in the success of most modern businesses, and choosing the right project software solution can make all the difference.

To help you find the perfect free project management software without compromising on quality, our team of experts has meticulously put together this list of our top picks. We’ve selected these tools based on their reputation, features, compatibility, price to scale, and countless other factors. Read on to make an informed decision on the best one for your next project.

The 9 Best Free Project Management Tools

The market is flooded with project management software which can make it hard to determine which one suits your needs best. Here’s a breakdown of the best free solutions on the market:

1. Monday – Overall, the best free project management solution as it has all the essential features available and a very strong focus on visual collaboration.
2. ClickUp – The best-centralized platform for task management with unlimited free tasks and subtasks, along with an in-built video recording feature.
3. Wrike – Top free solution for complex projects involving multiple decision-makers as it has advanced security and AI-based automations.
4. Smartsheet — The ultimate free spreadsheet-style project tracking solution with a lot of built-in automation capabilities.
5. Zoho Projects – Top choice for visualizing project timelines, potential complications, and more with multiple free visual representation tools.
6. Quire – Best suited for entrepreneurs and small teams with flexible features like nested tasks and flawless, free integration with the most popular tools.
7. Teamwork – Best free tool for agencies and large teams with extensive task delegation needs because of its advanced time-tracking capabilities.
8. Work Otter – Best minimalistic PM software for service-based industries with a simple drag-and-drop interface.
9. Asana – Best freemium plan for Agile project management with rule-based automation and multiple free integrations.

The Benefits of Using Free Project Management Software

In the business world, complexities arise frequently, and managing all the details manually becomes unfeasible and oftentimes does more harm than good. Project management tools are the solution to organizing work efficiently, optimizing resources, and fostering collaboration.

These tools enable businesses to rid themselves of futile endeavors such as manually tracking tasks, projects, and available resources. Here are the key benefits of using free project management software:

Resource Management

The best project management solutions help businesses look at available resources and effectively allocate the right people to the right tasks and projects. These tools facilitate real-time tracking of resource utilization, enabling adjustments to prevent overallocation or underutilization of resources like time, money, and personnel.

With streamlined collaboration and coordination features, these SaaS solutions enhance cross-functional alignment and communication among teams. With insights and forecasting capabilities, you can make informed decisions about resource planning, leading to increased productivity and successful project outcomes.

Decision-Making

Project management software solutions offer comprehensive analytics, providing you with valuable insights into resource utilization, performance, and productivity for accurate data-driven decisions.

With this, you can identify areas of improvement, balance workloads, and recognize high-performing individuals or teams. You can effectively fine-tune resource allocation strategies and align them with your project goals.

Collaboration

Project management software provides a central location for team members to collaborate on projects. This helps improve communication and coordination, making it easier to track progress and deadlines.

Moreover, most project management solutions allow teams to share files and comment on tasks. Besides centralizing all work and communications, this helps teams avoid miscommunications and ensures everyone has access to the latest file versions.

Tracking Dependencies

Project management tools let you track dependencies by helping teams visualize and manage the relationships between tasks. This ensures that tasks are completed in the correct order and that delays in one task don’t impact the completion of other tasks.

Gantt charts and reports help to visualize dependencies. These reports not only show the current status of dependencies but also any potential risks or bottlenecks. With this, you can make informed decisions about how to manage dependencies to ensure that the project stays on track.

Project Planning and Scheduling

Project planning software enables teams to create comprehensive project schedules by defining tasks, durations, and dependencies. These SaaS solutions often have an intuitive interface and collaborative features, making it easy for teams to access and contribute to the project timeline.

This helps in optimizing productivity and ensures that all tasks are completed on time as project planning software provides visual representations of timelines and task dependencies, which is crucial for identifying roadblocks and risks early on, making the planning process smoother.

Customer Satisfaction

Project management software improves communication between the project team and the customer, which leads to fewer surprises and a positive overall experience for a business’s clientele. With tools for tracking, managing, and communicating, you can ensure that customer requirements are met.

Most project management tools also enable customers to track progress for regular updates. This transparency prevents back-and-forth email threads and enhances customer satisfaction by assuring them that their needs are being met.

Budget Management

Project management software helps businesses stay on budget by being a one-stop destination where they can track project costs.

They can also help to identify potential budget overruns early on so that corrective action can be taken and managers can allocate resources effectively. Lastly, project management tools help to ensure that project budgets are aligned with organizational goals.

Is a Free Project Management Solution Enough?

A free project management tool can be a great way to get started with project planning, especially for small teams or personal projects. Once you’ve decided on a product that best suits your needs, a free solution can be a great way to test the tool’s suitability.

They typically offer a basic set of features, such as task management, project visualization tools, and collaboration functionalities. However, free PM tools have limited storage space, user limits, and features, so they’re best suited for small businesses that don’t require the functionalities that larger teams do.

If your business requires more users, extensive features, and more storage space, there are ample solutions that offer affordable paid plans to scale when the need arises.

Paid plans also tend to have wider customer support capabilities and better integrations with other tools like CRM software and accounting solutions to streamline the workflow and get the most out of the project management software.

The Market’s Top Free Project Planning Software Reviewed

Here are our in-depth reviews of the best free project management software solutions on the market. In the reviews, we’ll be delving into the specialty, compatibility, and pricing of each option to help you make an informed decision.

1. Monday – Overall, the Best Free Project Planning Tool

Monday’s free version has all the essential features of the software. Since Monday has an extremely strong focus on visual collaboration, it offers over 200 professional templates to help teams visualize their workflows, even in the free plan.

At no cost, Monday also allows you to enjoy the offerings of its Monday Apps Marketplace, a unique offering of apps developed by third-party developers and their in-house team that allow you to visualize and collaborate in different ways.

Monday also offers view options like forms and Kanban view on their free plan, and the variety of views only multiplies as you scale to paid plans. Unlike most other options, Monday’s key free offering, Workdocs — a centralized place for teams to brainstorm ideas — has no limit on the number of docs you can create.

As with all most free tools, Monday only lets you onboard two users on the free plan, which is sufficient for individuals or to see how it works.

As part of the free version, you can also use the filter on each Monday.com board to find specific tasks or information to save time. To filter data across your entire Monday.com account, you’ll need the Search Everything feature that’s available on the starter paid plan.

If you need more, the first paid plan gives you unlimited seats, boards, and free viewers. Beyond this, you’ll get added functionality, like custom reports and workflows, that make it worth the investment for businesses of all sizes.

Overall, Monday.com’s free version is a solid option for those who want to try the platform risk-free or if you don’t require the nifty extras on offer with the paid plans. Plus, with pricing starting as low as $9/month, it’s the go-to option if you’re after an affordable, scalable solution.

Pricing

Here are all the pricing options available with Monday.com:

Considering the price of the starter paid plan, and the added value you’ll get with it, we recommend trying Monday for free and scaling to a paid plan if you find it works well for your needs.

2. ClickUp – The Most Versatile Project Management Platform With The Best Centralized Task Management

ClickUp is a versatile and user-friendly project management software that offers a wide range of features on the free version to help teams of all sizes stay organized and productive.

The one thing that sets ClickUp apart from other free PM software is that it allows unlimited tasks and members at no cost to you. Beyond this, you don’t have to scale to a paid plan to get view options like the Everything view, Kanban, and even Calendar view.

ClickUp has a unique in-app video recording feature that’s available on the free plan for teams to collaborate on projects or share information visually. With it, you can record videos on your screen or webcam and even annotate said videos with text, images, and links.

Beyond this, ClickUp’s free plan lets your team collaborate on docs, and it boasts a built-in chat functionality for seamless real-time collaboration. Unlike most free versions, ClickUp also offers Two-Factor Authentication for added security and native time-tracking, so you won’t have to integrate with third-party apps for this.

The project management software even offers extensive support to its free plan users. Besides webinars, one such unique offering is ClickUp University, which contains free foundational learning paths for guests, members, and admins to learn the basics of ClickUp.

Pricing

As with Monday.com, ClickUp has several plans to meet various needs and budgets, in fact, the starter plan is a few dollars cheaper than Monday’s. Here are your options:

3. Wrike – The Best Free PM Software for Complex Projects Involving Multiple Decision-Makers

Wrike is the best PM tool for complex projects as it offers a wide range of features that are specifically designed to help users manage large projects with multiple working parts.

Many of these features, like task and subtask management, folder hierarchy, and account-wide work schedule management, are available on the free plan.

Wrike allows collaborators, custom work views (including Table and Kanban), and email integration on its free plan to allow the effective deployment of resources in an organized and efficient manner.

The most unique offering of the software has to be its Work Intelligence suite. It uses AI to automate the creation and management of tasks and subtasks within a particular project which enhances productivity, collaboration, and communication.

The best part is that all the features of the suite, besides the risk prediction feature, are available to free plan members. With these features, you can track project progress, identify potential bottlenecks, and make informed decisions throughout the project lifecycle.

Plus, as with ClickUp, Wrike allows you to onboard unlimited users on the free plan. The tool is also easy to use, as all the relevant documents and discussion threads related to a particular project are stored in a centralized location.

However, unlike most other free solutions, it also has integrations with Open RESTful API and cloud storage platforms coupled with enterprise-grade security. Unfortunately, features like time tracking, budgeting, and proofing and approval workflows are all on paid plans.

Pricing

Wrike has multiple pricing plans for you to choose from. The cost of scaling isn’t a lot, and the deals you get are well-packaged in terms of offerings you can expect. Here are your options:

While essential features like project and task management coupled with various view options are available to users on the free plan, be it on the web, a laptop, or a mobile app, more advanced features like integrations and time and resource tracking are reserved for users on the paid plans.

4. Smartsheet — The Best Free Spreadsheet-Style Project Planning Tool

Smartsheet offers a wide range of features that are specifically designed to help users manage projects using a spreadsheet-like interface. The free version comes with multiple pre-built templates and a variety of options for the visual representation of a project’s timeline.

The free plan allows you to choose from a variety of views, including Gantt, Grid, Card, and Calendar, so you do have the means to tailor it to your specific needs and preferences. This makes Smartsheet an incredibly versatile and adaptable solution.

Smartsheet is also a powerful tool for tracking project performance and making data-driven decisions as, regardless of your plan, it ensures you have access to essential reporting features.

Smartsheet’s free version also gives you up to 100 automations a month, making routine and repetitive tasks, like notifying a team member of a new project, a breeze. This feature empowers users to focus on more critical aspects of their projects while letting the system handle the rest.

All plans support convenient integrations, too, with Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, and Apple ID Credentials that simplify the authentication process and ensure a smooth user experience.

Depending on your needs, the attachment storage limit can be a downfall, as it’s limited to 500MB on the free plan. For comparison, Wrike’s free storage cap is 2GB/user. Overall though, Smartsheet is a top-rated free project planning tool, and it’s easy to see why. It includes various project views, automation, and ample more, for $0.

Pricing

Smartsheet has straightforward offerings with its four reasonably priced plans, with each plan bringing something new to the table. Here are your options:

While the free plan allows up to two editors, unlimited viewers and editor access can be attained by up-scaling to a paid plan. Advanced automations, reporting, and many integrations also become available to paid plan users.

5. Zoho Projects — The All-in-One Integrated Project Collaboration Solution

Zoho Projects is a powerful tool that offers a host of unique features in its free version to simplify project planning, streamline processes, and create a flawless workflow. This includes the simple drag-and-drop interface, task cloning, and vast integration with other Zoho apps.

Zoho is known for its user-centric design and options for visualizing project timelines and dependencies that allow you to identify critical tasks and potential bottlenecks.

It offers a free custom status feature that lets you create custom statuses for your projects, tasks, and issues, which helps to better track the progress of your work and to communicate more effectively with your team.

Zoho also boasts an issue-tracking feature on its free plan that allows teams to track and manage issues associated with projects, which is popular for tracking issues such as bugs, defects, and errors. However, it can also be used to track the issue resolution progress and assign issue resolution duties to specific team members.

Beyond this, there are mobile apps for Android and iOS on the free plan. This means that you can access your projects and tasks from anywhere. Another unique free feature Zoho offers is its Project Feeds which are automated feeds to notify members working on a project when any updates are made.

Unfortunately, features like advanced reporting only become available on paid plans. That said, the base paid plan is among the most affordable you’ll find, especially considering the added functionality on offer.

Pricing

Zoho Projects has a free plan plus two cheap plans for users with varied needs. Here are your options:

While most essential features of the software are available on the free plan, premium features like the ability to set reminders, automate tasks with a blueprint, and track inter-project dependencies are only available on paid plans.

6. Quire – The Best PM Software for Entrepreneurs and Small Teams

Quire has a simplified, easy-to-use interface with built-in features designed for entrepreneurs and small teams. It allows teams to create projects, assign tasks, track progress, and collaborate with team members.

Quire’s free plan also has robust permission control, which grants users complete control over data access, ensuring efficient collaboration while safeguarding sensitive information.

One of the key offerings of Quire is its infinite nested task list, a unique feature supported by all plans, which allows teams to create an unlimited number of subtasks within a task. This is helpful for breaking down large tasks into smaller and more manageable chunks.

It also helps in visualizing the dependencies between tasks and ensuring that everything is on track. Plus, with Quire’s free plan, you also get iOS and Android apps, plus it has extensive integrations with multiple popular tools like Zapier, Slack, and even Microsoft Teams.

In fact, it even has a Google add-on to convert emails to tasks and sync with Google Calendar. That said, unfortunately, standout features like “Dynamic Timeline” that let you track task progress and identify any bottlenecks are, of course, only on offer with paid plans.

Additionally, time tracking and project views like timelines and calendar views are also locked behind a paywall. Overall though, Quire’s free plan is enough for individuals and even small teams. It all depends on your particular needs, but thankfully, as with all the best free project management tools, scaling is cheap.

Pricing

Here are the various pricing plans for Quire:

While it has features like Nested List, mobile apps, and a variety of convenient integrations on the free plan, storage and customization options on it are very limited. Scaling to a paid plan not only increases this, but it also unlocks unique productivity features like Pomodoro (great employee time tracking software), time reports, and multiple assignees.

7. Teamwork – Best PM Software for Agencies and Large Organizations

Teamwork’s extensive task delegation and advanced resource allocation capabilities make it a competent project management tool, especially for agencies and large organizations that can use these features to tasks are assigned to the right people and are completed on time.

In its free version, Teamwork offers a plethora of collaboration features such as file sharing, comments, and chat. Beyond this, you’ll also get time-tracking functionalities to easily manage your teams, contractual workers, or freelancers.

The Free Forever plan has all the essential features of the PM software, along with key integrations like Slack, G-Suite, and Microsoft Teams, that you might need. It also offers all Client Work Essentials, that is, everything you need to get your client work in order.

Upon scaling to a paid plan, Teamwork offers extensive easy-to-use automation features that are a must-have for businesses that want to avoid back-and-forth communications or wasting time on insignificant tasks like reminders.

Additionally, it offers a range of add-ons like Teamwork CRM and Teamwork Chat, allowing for a more customizable experience for teams to cater to their specific needs.

Pricing

Teamwork has four pricing options, plus all paid plans come with a 30-day free trial:

8. Work Otter – Best Minimalistic PM Software with a Simple and User-Friendly Interface

Work Otter is a simple, easy-to-use PM software with a minimalistic design and drag-and-drop interface designed specifically for service-based industries specifically, SaaS, as it helps teams manage the lifecycle of their work from ideas to completion.

It offers a variety of features, including Gantt charts, Kanban boards, and Agile views. It also integrates with other popular project management tools, such as Jira, Microsoft Project, and Excel. All are supported on the free plan.

No matter which plan you choose, WorkOtter allows you users to create and track service requests that don’t require a full-blown project, such as password change requests.

It also allows users to receive reports by email, which is helpful to stay up-to-date on the progress of your projects or if you want to share reports with others who don’t have access to WorkOtter.

The free plan also allows you to see the names of users assigned to projects or tasks, and it even lets executives view the progress of projects without having to log in to WorkOtter. But this is as far as the free version goes.

While it’s great for reporting, tracking, and supervisory functionalities, the best value is definitely with the paid version.

Pricing

Here are the pricing tiers for WorkOtter:

With a premium subscription, you’ll get unique features like the earned value management feature, which helps teams ensure that a project is on track in terms of schedule and budget, with features for calculating business financials and showing estimates vs. actuals.

9. Asana – Best PM Software for Agile Project Management

Asana is a multifaceted project management tool that aids in keeping teams on track and productive with a wide range of features. Even the free edition includes a multitude of capabilities, such as unlimited storage, project views, and unlike most, automated processes.

It streamlines Agile Project Management and fosters collaboration and adaptability. Beyond this, it’s also very user-friendly, promoting transparency, task visualization, and progress tracking.

As you’d expect, Asana offers a range of project views from Kanban and Calendar to Gantt Charts throughout all its plans. It allows you to create and assign tasks, set deadlines, and create subtasks. It also lets team members comment on ongoing tasks for easy collaboration.

The free version has 100+ integrations with popular tools like Tableau and Zapier. In fact, Asana even allows teams to use Slack for automated notifications about project status.

Beyond all this, Asana’s free plan allows you to collaborate with 15+ teammates and has a unique task dependency feature that allows teams to create relationships between tasks and track assignees and due dates.

Overall, with unlimited projects, tasks, storage, and messages, plus 3 project views, Asana is undoubtedly a worthy name on our list of the best free project management tools. However, features like time tracking aren’t built in, so you’ll need to integrate with a third-party app for this.

Pricing

Asana has three pricing tiers:

The Asana free version has a range of features from unlimited tasks, projects, and 100+ integrations to multiple project views. However, advanced features like setting up private teams/projects and an admin console to custom fields are hidden behind a paywall.

The Market’s Top PM Tools Compared

Here’s a quick head-to-head overview of the market’s best free project management software options:

How to Choose the Best Free Task Management Software Solution for You

All things considered, task management software solutions can be very beneficial for a business, and with the myriad of options available today, choosing the right one becomes all the more difficult. Here are factors to consider when choosing the best free task management software solutions:

• Recognizing limitations – While free plans are an excellent way to get started with project management, they tend to have limits on storage space, users, and features. Depending on your needs, the free offerings may or may not be ideal for your business.
• Scalability – The cost of scaling to the software if/when the team grows is a very important factor to consider. Most free plans are a way to try out a task management solution, and businesses often outgrow them. The cost of upgrading must be carefully assessed beforehand.
• Customization – Flexibility in a task management software solution cannot be understated. When choosing the right software for your business, it’s important to compare the customization options on offer to see if they’ll meet your needs.
• Customer Reviews – Customer reviews do an amazing job of helping potential users know what a PM tool is really like. To help with this, we’ve included the key pros and cons of each one, and as they’re free, you should try them risk-free for yourself before committing to a paid version.
• Integrations – If your business uses a variety of SaaS tools, looking at the integration capabilities of your PM software is a must. Seamless integrations with third-party apps ensure the flexibility of the software and enhanced collaboration.
• User Interface – Project management software solutions all have an intuitive interface for the effective deployment of resources. However, the levels of user-friendliness to track projects can vary from platform to platform.
• Reporting – Reporting features play a critical role in keeping stakeholders up-to-date on progress and obstacles. These functions differ from software to software and are indispensable for businesses that want to improve accountability and compliance.

We’d recommend narrowing down your options based on the features you need and testing them with the free plans before committing to a tool.

Conclusion | What’s the Best Free Project Management Tool in 2024?

In conclusion, there are many free and competent project management tools available, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. The best tool for your business will depend on your specific needs and requirements.

If you’re looking for a tool that’s easy to use, has a wide range of features, and is highly customizable, Monday is the best option. It offers a free plan for teams with up to two users, which includes access to all the basic features you’d need.

It has advanced resource management and time-tracking features, and it’s also highly customizable, allowing teams to tailor it to their specific needs. It allows users to change the look and feel of the platform, add custom fields, and even create custom workflows.

Beyond all this, scaling with Monday is also incredibly affordable, hence why it’s the go-to solution for businesses of all sizes. Get started with Monday for free now.

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