17 Best Project Management Software and Tools (2023)

Project management can often feel boring and difficult.

That’s why you need to perfect project management software manage a team with ever-changing tasks.

Software that can create, track, and close a project with great deliverables is the key.

If you don’t want to get stuck on any project or task, I wrote this ultimate guide to the best project management software to help you make smart decisions.

Juggling multiple projects is a pain in the neck. According to survey, 59% of project managers juggle between 2 and 5 projects at a time. 11% run 6 to 10 projects, and 15% run more than 10 at a time.

With a project management tool such as Monday.com, Wrike, Teamwork, ClickUp, and Todoist, you’ll feel more confident in your ‘next’ projects.

In this guide, you’ll discover:

• What the best project management software tools are
• What to consider when choosing project management software
• How to never waste money on project tools with hard-to-use features and expensive plans
• The benefits of using a project management tool to collaborate with your team, efficiently manage tasks, and avoid the back-and-forth emails.

Let’s dive right in.

What Is the Best Project Management Software?

Here are my picks for the best project management software for 2023. After the list, you’ll find an in-depth review of each tool. Enjoy!

1. Monday.com
2. ClickUp
3. Teamwork
4. Todoist
5. TimeCamp
6. Asana
7. Nifty
8. Zoho Projects
9. Trello
10. Airtable
11. Notion
12. Hive
13. Wrike
14. ProofHub
15. BaseCamp
16. Jira
17. MeisterTask

Alright, let’s dive right in. Here’s a breakdown of the 17 best project management software for 2023:

1. Monday.com

Best overall project management software

Monday.com is an all-in-one marketing platform, with project management solutions.

It helps you to manage projects, leads, and budgets with ease. You can also track teams and automate follow-ups.

As one of the leading project management tools available today, Monday’s solution is known for its versatility.

Its affordable price tag and robust feature set make it an excellent choice for sales and marketing teams.

You can also try out Monday Pro 14-day free trial before you make a final decision.  

Monday offers a tiered pricing structure with higher-priced tiers.

The free tier allows users to use the basic project management features, but the cost increases when you add collaboration permissions and advanced features.

Key Features

• Create and customize workflows to fit your needs
• Centralize all your work into one Work OS
• Visual boards that let you manage projects and departments
• Project and Portfolio management
• Manage and collaborate on creative projects

Pros

• A clean and intuitive dashboard environment
• Ideal for larger organizations and teams
• Powerful integrations with your favorite tools (including ActiveCampaign)
• It’s beginner-friendly (easy to learn with lots of resources)
• The time tracking and budget tools are quite easy to use

Cons

• There’s no chat function for team members to interact with (except you integrate Monday with Slack)
• Creating workflows take time (especially in your first attempt)
• The mobile version of Monday.com sometimes gets slow (this could cause the screen to freeze for a few seconds)

Pricing

Monday’s plans and pricing are based on seats (i.e., users). By default, it uses 3 seats as the minimum benchmark for all its paid plans. Here’s a breakdown:

• Individual ($0/free forever): Begin with this forever-free plan and get unlimited plans, unlimited docs, and more. Up to 2 seats allowed.
• Basic ($8/seat/month): Manage all your teams’ work in one place, with unlimited items, unlimited free viewers, etc.
• Standard ($12/seat/month): Collaborate and optimize your team’s processes.
• Pro ($27/seat/month): It’s time to run your teams’ complex workflows, create private boards and docs, chart view, and more.
• Enterprise: You’re expected to contact sales support to get a custom quote. This plan is ideal if your organization is seeking enterprise-grade features.

Note: Save 18% with this annual payment. If you opt to pay monthly instead, expect to pay more.

2. ClickUp

Best all-in-one project management software

ClickUp is an innovative project management software, which allows you to track, manage, and share information between departments and team members.

The platform’s feature set allows users to create to-do lists and assign tasks using a top-down approach.

For example, when a team member has a project that requires several employees to complete, a to-do list will help him to prioritize the work.

The user can also create a notepad to record ideas for future projects.

In addition, a ClickUp notepad can be used for shopping lists, errand lists, and even organizing crazy thoughts.

The best way to maximize productivity with ClickUp is to block out distractions.

With ClickUp, you can organize your work into different workflows.

You can easily manage tasks — by creating rich-text docs. Then, you can attach those documents to projects and collaborate on them in real-time.

Key Features

• Manage simple or complex projects with handy tools
• Communication tools to streamline sales
• Sales pipelines management
• Account and contact management
• Work smarter with clients with real-time chat
• Centralize customer outreach: Every task from a single hub
• A robust and easy-to-understand dashboard

Pros

• Easily initiate, plan, and execute projects with your team members
• The interface is clean and intuitive to use
• Clever project management features, functionality, and implementation
• Create spaces or folders to manage contacts and files with ease
• Easily integrate with 100s of your favorite apps and platforms

Cons

• Customizing the dashboard could be easier (especially for complex projects)
• It takes time to fully master ClickUp. More hands-on demo videos will be great

Pricing

Here’s a breakdown of ClickUp’s plans and flexible pricing options:

• Free ($0/free forever): 100MB storage, unlimited tasks, unlimited members, and more.
• UNLIMITED ($9/member/month): Best plan for small teams, unlimited storage, unlimited integrations, form view, etc.
• BUSINESS ($19/member/month): Mid-sized teams can benefit from this plan. Get Google SSO, unlimited teams, custom exporting, etc.
• BUSINESS PLUS ($29/member/month): Multiple teams can use this plan for team sharing, subtasks in multiple lists, custom role creation, etc.
• ENTERPRISE: Contact sales to get a custom quote. Get every feature that ClickUp has to offer.

Note: With ClickUp, you save 45% when you pay annually. Get started with the free-forever plan to test the software before upgrading.

3. Teamwork

Best for chat and collaboration

Teamwork is a powerful project management software that lets you create a shared workspace for your entire team.

It also allows you to keep track of client projects and information. It has many features that make it easy to manage multiple projects.

For example, you can organize your team into teams and redistribute tasks. You can also manage a team and assign each member a particular task.

This project management tool has some amazing advanced features.

For example, you can customize your application with as many integrations as you need.

If you have a lot of projects, you can even record the time you spend on each task, which makes it easier to invoice clients.

You can also upload files and comment on tasks. You can also add notes to a task. You can also keep track of all your login and password information.

Key Features

• Get efficient: Custom-built project management tool for client work
• Get organized: Track every billable minute, make it a template
• Get profitable: Everything you need to scale – Help Desk, CRM, Chat, and more
• Set project milestones and see the big picture in your dashboard
• Real-time collaboration tools that keep everyone on the same page

Pros

• It’s easy to use and intuitive (especially when I used it for the first time)
• Easily prioritize urgent projects
• Team collaboration through messaging
• Planning for events and activities is easy
• You can easily make adjustments in your timelines

Cons

• No PDF or image markup is supported
• It doesn’t work in offline mode
• Kanban automation could be improved to give more functionality

Pricing

Teamwork offers 4 pricing packages:

• Free Forever ($0/free): Basic project & task management tools, milestones, 5-user maximum, and more.
• Deliver ($12.5/month or $10/user/month billed annually): 20 project templates, time tracking & invoicing, 3-user minimum, and everyting in the free plan.
• Growth ($22.5/month or $18/user/month billed annually): Maximum of 5 users, 50 project templates, plus everything in Deliver.
• Scale: Get everything in Grow, plus profitability report and advanced features to help you scale confidently. Contact sales for a custom quote.

4. Todoist

Best for efficient organization

One of the best features of Todoist is its ability to create custom filters and views of your tasks.

By default, you get an overview of your Today’s tasks and upcoming tasks. However, by using the advanced filtering options, you can choose to see tasks based on specific tags or criteria.

This feature is especially helpful if you are constantly switching between multiple projects at once.

With the new custom filtering capabilities, you can quickly locate the tasks you need to complete and get right to work.

If you’d like to export your projects, Todoist has an automatic scheduler that reschedules tasks that are overdue.

By using your history of tasks, Todoist makes smart guesses based on your preferences and history.

Key Features

• Powerful collaboration tools
• Project management in real-time
• Alerts and Notifications when there’s a change in your tasks
• Efficient file sharing among team members and departments
• Comment and append notes to tasks and projects
• Robust reporting & analytics

Pros

• It’s easy to forward an email to a project and convert it into a task
• Track progress on complex tasks with ease
• Easy to use interface
• Keep an eye on small tasks that are easily forgettable
• Built-in tools to collaborate effectively with team members
• Great sync across multiple devices

Cons

• Viewing files and notes is a bit confusing (it can be more accessible)
• Use of tags is not clear (it can be easier, especially for beginners)

Pricing

Todoist offers feature-rich plans with cheap pricing options:

• Free ($0): Ideal for starters. 5 active projects, 5 MB file uploads, 3 filters, and more.
• Pro ($4/month or $3/month billed annually): Suitable for power users. 300 active projects, 25 collaborators per project, 100 MB file uploads, and more.
• Business ($6/month or $5/month billed annually): Perfect plan for teams. 500 active projects per member, 50 people per project, team inbox, and more.

5. TimeCamp

Best for time tracking

TimeCamp is a time tracking app that lets you measure your team’s performance.

Also, when you are working on a client project, you can use TimeCamp to analyze productivity and monitor project performance.

You can easily review the time spent on each task. You can also track your offline activities.

The free version lets you analyze employee absences and analyze holiday productivity.

You can also generate invoices with the software based on tracked hours. You can even send these invoices directly to clients.

TimeCamp is very versatile. You can create reports for individual users or teams.

You can also generate reports for individual users or entire teams. You can even view the progress of your projects or employees.

Key Features

• Automated time tracking
• 30+ integrations with your favorite apps
• Unlimited users and projects
• Track a team’s performance for a given project or task
• Easy and insightful reports in one place

Pros

• You can track how many hours a team member spends on a task
• Invoicing is easy with TimeCamp
• Great user interface with visual cues
• Easily accessible on Google Docs
• Seamless integrations with most of the project management tools out there

Cons

• No scheduling and task comparison features (yet)
• It lacks timer notification (this would be a great feature to add)
• The website is a bit slow (it takes more than 5 seconds to load at times)

Pricing

TimeCamp has plans and pricing to suit both small businesses and large organizations:

• Free ($0): Unlimited users, project templates, bulk edit, one integration, etc.
• Basic ($7/user/month): Everything in Free, plus time rounding, custom report, and more.
• Pro ($10/user/month): Get everything in Basic, plus custom user roles, billing rates, invoicing, and timesheet approvals.
• Enterprise: Everything in Pro, plus private cloud implementation, personalized training, and self-hosted server.

Note: Get 10% discount when you pay annually.

6. Asana

Best for small business

Asana is a project management tool that allows you to collaborate with colleagues in the same project.

As a collaborative tool, Asana lets you monitor the progress of individual project components.

Tasks can be created, assigned, and due dates set. You can also share documents with team members.

The platform sends notifications about task statuses, so you can stay on top of all the work. It’s easy to manage projects with Asana.

Asana is flexible enough to work with different teams and types of projects.

The system is easy to customize and allows you to specify the exact tasks you want to track.

This makes Asana different from other project management tools.

Key Features

• Task management tools
• Scheduling and tracking options
• Budget and Expense management
• Integration with accounting software programs
• Gantt Charts, Document management, OKRs

Pros

• Asana reminds you of tasks in a nice way
• Easily communicate with your team members and share files (all in one place)
• You can quickly customize the dashboard to suit your project needs
• The calendar is super easy to use
• Stay on track with tasks (and never miss a deadline)
• The drag-and-drop feature makes it easy upload photos and documents into a task

Cons

• It takes time to learn how to fully use Asana
• It can be a little overwhelming (for new users)
• Limited customization on the “My Tasks” view (it could be improved)

Pricing

Let’s quickly breakdown Asana’s plans and pricing:

• Basic ($0/free forever): Unlimited tasks, unlimited projects, unlimited messages, etc.
• Premium ($13.49/month or $10.99/month billed annually): Everything in Basic, plus Timeline, workflow builder, and more.
• Business ($30.49/month or $24.99/month billed annually): Every feature in Premium, plus Portfolios, Goals, Workload, and more.

7. Nifty

Best for creating project workflows

Nifty is a project management tool that lets you create a clear plan of action for your projects and automate your progress tracking.

The benefits of Nifty project management software are many.

It focuses on team productivity and remote collaboration by centralizing your work on one platform.

With Nifty, you can easily track your progress and ensure transparency. The intuitive interface and UX allow you to create feedback and notes on the fly.

Its powerful project management tools can help you complete a task before its due date, and you can even create time-tracking reports with ease.

Projects can be organized with ease, and teams can collaborate on any task.

The collaborative workspace makes it easier to manage documents, track time, and share ideas.

Key Features

• Set achievable Goals and Timelines
• Collaborate on tasks with your team
• Create docs & wikis for your projects and share with anyone
• Access automated progress reporting across all projects
• Seamlessly import projects, tasks, and data from ClickUp, Asana, Wrike onto Nifty
• Time tracking tools to stay in the loop (never miss a deadline)

Pros

• Managing projects and timelines is easy with Nifty
• Easily break down projects and tasks with multiple variables
• They’re constantly improving the software and adding new features
• It’s easy to set up (especially when you watch demo videos)
• Basic scheduling option to kickstart your project or task

Cons

• It doesn’t support Expense management and purchase order management functionality as Monday does.
• Time Expense could be improved (it’s impossible to edit the previous/past time logs entered)

Pricing

Nifty Project Management solution comes with different plans based on how many team members you’re working with.

• Free ($0/forever): 100 MB, 2 Projects, Unlimited team members, and more.
• Starter ($39/month billed annually): 10 team members, 100 GB storage, 40 projects, unlimited guests & clients, and more.
• Pro ($79/month billed annually): 20 team members, 500 GB storage space, unlimited active projects & guests/clients, and more.
• Business ($124/month billed annually): 50 team members, 1 TB storage, and unlimited projects and guests.
• Unlimited ($399/month billed annually): Contact support to get custom quotes. Unlimited features, and priority support.

Note: Annual plans receive up to 20% discount. Monthly pay-as-you-go plans cost more, keep that in mind.