The Best Project Management Software & Tools 2023

Managers can use nifty tools such as Gantt Charts and Project Timeline Calendar to stay on top of the planning process. These tools directly pull data from the task lists to create a visually perceptible project planning environment. With so many project management software options to choose from, it can seem daunting to find the right one for your projects or company.

Project management software helps individuals and companies organize tasks, projects and sets of projects. These tools increase visibility for all team members and stakeholders and ensure tasks don’t get neglected in the shuffle.

While project managers and IT professionals use project management apps most frequently, the software should be accessible and easy to use for all team members of different tech backgrounds.

What is project management software?

Project management software is the on-premises or cloud-based solution developed to enable the planning and execution of project tasks for various teams and functions.

Most project management solutions today are available through a cloud-based platform for teams to create and modify projects, tasks and workflows through collaborative spaces and views. Project managers are most hands-on in configuring the software to set team use guidelines, integrate critical applications and optimize the project management life cycle.

Project management software features

While various project management platforms offer a range of potential productivity, collaboration and process improvement opportunities, there is a standard set of features that threads the market together.

Project data views and visualizations

Tenured professionals probably know their way around a spreadsheet, but the project management market shows how far collaboration and project visualization software has come in almost four decades. Teams can collaborate with their project view of choice from several different perspectives. The most common project views offered include:

• Table, grid or spreadsheet separated by columns and row field values.
• List usually shows the primary column and its field values.
• Kanban board divided by lanes representing a condition and cards for field values.
• Gantt chart or timeline showing dependent tasks and the timeline available for each.
• Calendar with a standard calendar reflecting project data.
• Dashboards break down project data with configurable widgets.
• Workloads showing team member tasks against a timescale

Web-based spreadsheets like Google Sheets and Excel via Microsoft 365 remain popular solutions and the primary predecessor application to adopting project management software. As a result, most project management solutions offer a similar starting point (e.g., table view) to deliver a clean onboarding experience.

Top project management software

monday.com

monday.com is a reputable project management brand with a flexible platform for teams of all flavors. While initially intimidating, the monday work management interface is packed with features and offers extensive configuration management capabilities. While other solutions lean into a few views of project data, monday work management gives users the most flexibility in adding and configuring valuable visualizations.

Though I ran into hiccups using monday work management, the project management software excels in configurability, giving teams the expected control to optimize workflows.

Smartsheet

Smartsheet’s project and work management platform is one of the safest bets in the project management software market. From onboarding to using the platform, I was impressed by the interface’s user-friendliness and the features’ extensibility. Smartsheet offers an upgrade from traditional tools by adding accessible user experience features, needed integrations, robust configurability and no-code capabilities to a spreadsheet interface.

Smartsheet pricing is among the highest in the market, and there is no unlimited free plan. Still, It is believed that the platform’s benefits more than justify consideration for small teams up to enterprise organizations.

ClickUp

The fastest mover in the project management software space is ClickUp. Only five years after its founding, the San Diego-based startup has grown into one of the top project management solution providers. ClickUp far exceeded my expectations with a stack of project views and tools to enable productivity and collaboration for a wide variety of functional teams.

Add in that ClickUp offers a handful of affordable subscriptions for different team sizes, and it’s difficult not to consider the market’s budding project management software.

Teamwork

Teamwork is project management software that enables team and workload management. The Ireland-based platform offers a similar range to other top project management solutions but excels in time tracking, budgeting and stakeholder management. Whether it’s personnel or a third-party contractor, Teamwork is fit for optimizing the globally distributed workflows of tomorrow. While a few actions during my experience with Teamwork didn’t seem as intuitive as other platforms, the platform and its potential to organize team projects are impressive.

Wrike

The newest subsidiary of Citrix, Wrike was already one of the biggest names in project management software even before its backing by the cloud computing giant. With the capacity to manage entire project portfolios, Wrike’s feature set includes custom request forms, risk predictions, invoicing software and enterprise-grade security.

I found the platform incredibly powerful, with clear use cases for small businesses, enterprise organizations and various team functions. Upon first glance, the user interface is busy, and Wrike’s learning curve is likely the steepest in the project management software space. That said, few vendors offer the same extent of enterprise capabilities.

Asana

One of the most popular project management software solutions, Asana is the work management platform started by former Facebook developers in 2008. The Silicon Valley-based company has grown dramatically in that time, and the platform’s extensibility affirms why so many businesses choose it.

From viewing team member workloads to adding strategic goals and setting user security policies, I believe Asana has something for every team. Though some actions were less intuitive, Asana made up for them with the documentation and resources to guide platform projects efficiently.

Wrapping Up

The best project management platforms stand out with the intuitiveness of their UX, advanced features and integrations critical to team processes. Like most software choices, it’s easy to sign up, and all featured solutions offer a free trial without a credit card to avoid unnecessary expenses. Teams must ultimately ask how the platform will replace legacy tools like Excel spreadsheets, improve project management, and lastly if the cost and utilization will justify those benefits.