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The crunch of project deadlines puts a lot of pressure on project assignees.
While project managers and leads struggle to keep a symphony between teams, executives are disarrayed and uninformed on what to do and what not to do. The scenario is similar to a commotion right before a seminar, where neither the audience nor the hosts know how to calm the chaos.
Project tasks are acclimated based on work assignments, resource bandwidth, and team productivity. A mixture of all these processes makes up for good project management software.
Check out this list of free project management software that helps you visualize and solve project needs without any hefty payments.
* These are the leading free project management software solutions at G2 as of May 2023.
Each project is divided into smaller chunks of sub-tasks. A task has an assignee who completes a piece of work and forwards it to a reviewer in the next stage of the task workflow. The reviewer provides feedback, approves, or rejects. From there, the project moves to the next cohort or rolls back for reconsideration.
Here is a list of the best software for project management to consider if you are looking out for free alternatives.
The list below contains real-user reviews from the best project management software category in G2. Please note that solutions offering a free trial are also free.
To be included in this category, you need to:
* This list is based on G2 data collected on April 2023. Some reviews may have been edited for clarity.
Smartsheet is next generation spreadsheet that allocates resources, prioritizes urgency, and delegates tasks accordingly. Organizations use Smartsheet to calculate their project cost, assign work and optimize resources across small-scale and large-scale sprints.
It comes with distinctive task management capabilities, time tracking, and more, enabling you to organize and manage your projects easily, even under thin deadlines. It allows you to manage projects from start to finish.
“I've recently started using Smartsheet for project management, and I have to say, I'm impressed with its capabilities. The interface is simple and user-friendly, which makes it easy for me to dive right in and use it effectively. The automation and collaboration features are fantastic — they've helped streamline our processes and save a ton of time.”
- Smartsheet Review, Shourag K.
“Firstly, there's a risk of data overwriting when multiple users are working on the same sheet simultaneously, which can be challenging to manage and control effectively. Additionally, once a sheet contains a large volume of data, performance issues can arise, particularly in terms of speed and row limits. This can sometimes necessitate the creation of new sheets or switching to alternative tools like Excel."
- Smartsheet Review, Shyamily K.
Trello's project management solution is as simple as organizing sticky notes on the wall. You have complete freedom to move around the tasks using the drag-and-drop feature. The ease of collaboration is further enhanced by transparency. The data on Trello is arranged in perfect order so you don't lose yourself in a sea of information and email clutter.
"The thing I like most about Trello is its easy to use project management dashboard. It's drag drop based feature makes it very easy tool for all types of user regardless of their previous experience. Furthermore, the task board is visually appealing and can be shared with multiple team members for better collaboration and productivity."
- Trello Review, Bikash P.
"I like how simple this tool is but it can be a double-edged sword. For huge or very complex projects, it can be a bit lacking in the functions, and on the other hand the more information there is on the cards the more overwhelmed the board becomes."
- Trello Review, Gustavo C.
Asana is an all-in-one project management tool that keeps tabs on your submitted tasks, manages user permissions, and controls activity as your work moves down the queue. From daily tasks to strategic project sprints, it creates an “ironed-out, template-based” workflow where you can communicate with nametags, upload documents, and set timelines to complete your work assignments on time.
"Asana is designed to adhere to the foundational principles of productivity (personal triage, single-list, automation, keeping track of open-loops, etc.) , while giving your teams the customization and automations that are needed to build systems and manage big projects. The end result is that work gets done faster (more seamlessly / more easily / with less frustration), which is better for everyone. Asana is the every-day tool."
- Asana Review, Zak G.
"The only downside I can think of is there is a learning curve with it. At first, users may find it daunting and confusing. That's only because there is SO MUCH you can do with it. Once you learn how it works and how you can use it to its full potential, it is an absolute game changer."
- Asana Review, Katie D.
If Asana's features fall short of your project management requirements, then you should look for a more powerful alternative to Asana.
monday.com is a pioneer in project management, HRMS, and project collaboration. It offers the best in-house services, absolutely free of cost. It’s a customizable platform that helps track project progress and dashboards to visualize timelines and add integrations to align data from various sources onto a unified database.
Different project management processes can be implemented in monday.com to design your project layouts and delegate them accordingly. An excellent project management software, it allows team leaders to easily assign ownership, set deadlines, organize milestones, and track time.
Having been consistently ranked as one of the best global software companies on G2, monday.com has what it takes to bring your teams together.
"One of the most important elements when choosing monday.com is the customization of the website. Each gaming table can be adapted to the particularities required. Other tools used by our organization are impervious to change and are difficult to use. monday.com is simple to set up for those with a full license or free access. Everyone has the capacity to see the position of duties and components, and also collaborate on a single program. It can be as easy or difficult as it needs to be. It is very straightforward and, if needed, a spreadsheet import can be done and it transforms into a Cloud solution instantly. If you want a very simple entry with a few connections, you may be able to do that. If you need an extremely complicated system that spans many boards with automation, then you can do that."
- monday.com Review, Lorenz L.
"It could be a litte more user friendly in that I would like to be able to make changes to the 'My Work' board so I can add in things on the go."
- monday.com Review, Pooja P.
ClickUp offers reminders, goals, calendars, and an inbox for your unique needs and expectations. Your team can quickly adapt to the software and collaborate while ensuring all are on the same page. The company's mission is to make the world more productive by removing friction caused by many applications. Built for teams of all sizes and industries, ClickUp's fully customizable and proprietary features make it potentially important for teams to centralize information and not run into multiple streams.
"Click Up has a diverse set of project management and collaboration tools. One key feature that is useful to my design team and I are the custom dashboards. I can set up custom filter instances and track projects for the whole team, or filter down by individual, and look at a pie chart of request, in progress, and in-review items all in one view."
- ClickUp Review, Muhamed.
"ClickUp has prioritized the release of new features and UI/UX (ClickUp) 3.0 over stability and load speeds. Although they have touted a completely new technology overhaul for 2024, there are times where the load times are awful and even requires a page refresh at times."
- ClickUp Review, Hunter N.
Basecamp is a global workflow management tool that builds agendas and budgets and lets you interact with teams across borders. It builds the exact project schedule with required resources, documents, teams, and expenses to save you time and manual effort.
It includes real-time communication with team members on assigned goals, data interactions, and content documentation to lift the burden off your shoulders.
“Since I started using Basecamp for my work, project management has been much more efficient. The team is informed in real-time of assigned tasks, deadlines, and related updates. Basecamp also offers several tools for organizing and sharing files, which makes teamwork much easier.”
- Basecamp Review, Venkat T.
“The drawback of Basecamp is its limited adaptability and lack of flexibility to meet the specific needs of each team or project. In some cases, other tools had to be integrated to complement project management.”
- Basecamp Review, Tiffany E.
Wrike aims to increase productivity and eliminate lethargy amid team members by centralizing their tasks and agendas on a unified platform. It doubles down on the rate of task delivery and submissions by setting unique milestones and sending intuitive reminders from time to time. It is the preferred free project management tool for more than 20,000 happy IT, e-commerce, and marketing clients, including Estèe, Hootsuite, Nielsen, Ogilvy, Siemens, and Tiffany and Co.
"Of all the project management tools I have used, Wrike is by far the best. They have so many useful tools built right into the platform, as well as integration options available to enhance your team's efficiency. The tool is very intuitive and really allows you to customize your processes to your team. I have used Wrike across multiple organizations, and although there are many things done similarly, I was able to fully customize the way the teams I supported worked from group to group based on their specific needs."
- Wrike Review, Megan B
"The ability to put comments on the Project level and to comment on the individual Tasks of the project can result in updates and information getting lost in the shuffle. I wish there was a way to restrict certain aspects of the tool so that users couldn't put information in the wrong place. The tool is incredibly flexible, which is GREAT, but there's no way to enforce conformity with our business procedures."
- Wrike Review, Shawn J.
Tired of frantic note-taking during conferences? Switch to Notion, a connected workspace app, to stay in touch with your peers and their feedback. It also creates project decks, docs, and other resources or assets to optimize content workloads.
The notion.ai tool also understands spoken commands and dictation and writes them in a document through voice recognition. Whether discussing numbers or taking updates, leave the tedium of writing to Notion.
"It is quick and easy to setup and has pre-defined templates to use.It has its own docs for making gen-notes and docs and has in-built made wikis for searching anything and hence everything is built under one roof. It allows to manage projects without any chaos. Best platform ever and helps to create the best written texts through its AI Capability. It also provides analytics features and helps to gain a lot of insights and overall very easy and comfortable to use it."
- Notion Review, Samruddha S.
"I wish the database feature had some similar abilities like excel, where specifc entries can be selected to perform mathematical functions on. Also the fact that there is no end to end encryption and no offline mode is another major downside that I hope they address in the future."
- Notion Review, Shay D.
Airtable provides a task management platform where the entire team can collaborate and sync up in real-time. The software helps you in staying organized all the time. No matter what you throw at it, the fields can handle any attachment, like long notes, links to records in other tables, and even barcodes, enabling you to organize and manage everything. You can design easy apps for data sharing with other teams on top of the platform.
The software enhances agility by providing transparency to the team and the managers, ensuring all collaborators are on the same page.
“You can work more efficiently with this platform. Not only can you quickly build collaborative applications, but you can also integrate your favorite ones. What I love most about this platform is its robust end-user database. I can easily import comma-separated values files of my contacts/database and color code them based on my desired categorization.”
- Airtable Review, Allen E.
"I could probably adjust these settings, but on some projects where I am a member, I receive an email for every single change, which can be a lot. Still, it hasn't bothered me enough to research and change it."
- Airtable Review, Stevan J.
Teamwork is a great tool to categorize your tasks, share data files, and import or export project data from multiple team ERPs into a single application. As the name suggests, teamwork brings stakeholders, clients, and everyone else into one space and prompts real-time updates on deliveries. It helps you track your goods through each and every stage of the project strategy and delivers 100% satisfaction.
“I enjoyed those offering a comprehensive suite of project management tools, including task assignment, progress tracking, time tracking, and file management, enabling teams to manage projects and tasks from start to finish efficiently.”
- Teamwork Review, Yugant P.
“Learning documentation is not available, so you have to go through each and everything to be an expert on the teamwork platform.”
- Teamwork Review, Hassan R.
BigTime helps companies worldwide do their best work — no matter where their employees are. With over a decade's experience empowering teams to manage work better, the software defines the next generation of work management.
BigTime project management tool allows you and your team to stay on schedule and inform stakeholders about the project's current status and progress. It enables you to focus on tasks that contribute the most to your company's goals instead of spending time on redundant activities using critical path management software. The software uses automation to streamline the process to eliminate repetitive tasks like reminders, e-mails, and so on.
“BigTime is a great improvement on our old Excel timesheet, for sure. Our staff is so much happier logging their time in BigTime. Ongoing customer service through their live chat system works well, and help is quick and useful.”
- BigTime Review, Carla C.
I don't like that you have to get into code to customize some invoices. Sometimes when you make an error, the system doesn't tell you what the error is. IT JUST SAYS ERROR. And I have to guess.
- BigTime Review, Holly S.
TeamGantt is a waterfall-based Gantt chart management tool that categorizes your tasks stage-wise, urgency-wise, and team-wise. Create private and public groups, save data in the cloud, and collaborate openly with peers or clients. The availability of Gantt Charts helps visualize the project timeline and work assignments together to maximize favorable returns. Keep in check productivity with team-wise efficiency tracking and work-in-progress (WIP) tasks with Kanban view. If nothing works, you still have a drop-down view or list view.
The software enables users to generate reports on status, financials, and more, enabling you to provide accurate reports quickly.
“Lots of reasons to select TeamGantt - not the least is easy adoption by non-project managers. Visualization of workflow and project progress to goal is awesome, and checklist and detail features are awesome.”
- TeamGantt Review, Nic W.
“When scrolling across a typical laptop screen, it is difficult to see larger time projections. I also would like to see different formats available for the bar charts for different tasks than just color changes only!”
- TeamGantt Review, Mario M.
Navigating through project deliverables isn’t easy, but that’s what tests your real resilience and managerial skills. By building connections with your cohorts and solving recurring challenges, you’re promoting a highly diverse and empathetic workforce. Deploy a free-to-use project management app today and get started on the ultimate road to project automation.
How do implicit budgets and team availability affect project success? Go to the depths of traditional project management and compare it with your organization’s way of executing tasks.
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