Managing projects in a small business setting can be deceptively challenging. Sure, there are fewer people involved and fewer processes to navigate. But big businesses often have a dedicated project manager for marketing, another for sales, and another for product development. The small business project manager, on the other hand, oversees multiple departments and likely wears lots of other hats.
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It’s important to find project management software that can help you maximize output while juggling everything else on your plate. We waded through over 75 project management software solutions to find tools that have a feature set specifically designed to work for small businesses. Here, we’ll present the best of the best.
1. Airtable: Offers 200+ pre-designed templates
Airtable is a cloud collaboration and project management tool that helps you plan and organize your projects as well as set a roadmap for you and your team.
The tool helps you distribute projects based on use cases and offers advanced filtering and sorting options to arrange unlimited tasks according to your preference. Airtable also contains built-in applications such as a scheduler, webpage designer, and an email marketing tool.
Additionally, you can also automate routine tasks such as sending and approving project requests, scheduling team meetings, and processing bills and invoices.
Airtable offers phone, email, and chat support. The tool has a mobile app for both iOS and Android devices.
2. Wrike
Wrike is thought to be the best project management software by many. You can integrate other essential tools to turn it into a full-fledged project control center.
Wrike can help you to:
- Improve collaboration across departments
- Manage feedback process
- Get timely status updates
- Visualize team progress in real-time
Compatible with: Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS devices.
Wrike Pricing: Wrike has four plans: Free (with limited features), Professional, Business, and Enterprise. The paid plan starts at $9.80 monthly for one user. You can try Wrike for free for 2 weeks.
3. Teamgantt
Teamgantt is the top project management tool to help you create comprehensive Gantt charts to plan, schedule, and manage different projects.
This project management app can also help you keep your budget and expenses in control.
Teamgantt software package comes with these following features:
- Schedule tasks for different teams
- Organize files and conversations
- Time tracking
- Manage project workflow easily
Compatible with: Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and iOS devices.
Teamgantt Pricing: It has four plans: Free (for individual use), Standard, Advanced, and Enterprise. The Standard plan starts at $24.95 per month for one user. You can try this tool for free for 30 days.
4. Monday.com
- Easy to use and has a simple workflow
- Ability to organize projects and tasks using different views (e.g. Kanban, timeline)
- Businesses can only add users in increments of 5 or 10
- Less well-suited for large or complex projects
54% of Monday.com users on TrustRadius are from small businesses.
Monday.com is a team management software that emphasizes collaboration capabilities andis ideal for small businesses. Features include timeline creation, messaging, checklists, task assignment, project level reporting, an unlimited number of project boards, Kanban view, calendar view, forms customization, Gantt charts, and time tracking capabilities.
Monday also provides users with access to project templates for quick set up, and security features like two-factor authentication, Google authentication, and Single Sign-On (SSO). Monday integrates with other communication and collaboration tools such as Slack, Google Drive, Trello, and Dropbox.
5. Jira
Jira is an agile project management software used by development teams to plan, track, and release software. It is a popular tool designed specifically and used by agile teams. Aside from creating stories, planning sprints, tracking issues, and shipping up-to-date software, users also generate reports that help improve teams, and create their own workflows. As part of Atlassian, it integrates with many tools that enable teams to manage their projects and products from end to end. Jira Software is built for every member of your software team to plan,track, and release great software. Every team has a unique process for shipping software. Use an out-of-the-box workflow, or create one to match the way your team works.
6. Mavenlink
Mavenlink is a modern software platform that connects people, projects, and profits. It seamlessly provides project and financial data, so that users always have the needed information and complete view of their operation. Real-time data shows project performance at any given minute, so stakeholders can always make decisions regarding time and budget. They can always on check on costs of delivery, to make sure margins and ROI are on target. It provides overview and details whether it is a single project or a portfolio of projects. Resource management enables users to allocate resources where it is needed, with advanced features such as role-based estimating and business intelligence. Reports include up-to-date view of performance trends, problem areas, upcoming needs, and more.
7. Asana
The next popular small business project tool on our list is Asana. It’s a very flexible tool. And like Monday.com, it comes with multiple ways to visualize work.
You can plan a project schedule or work in Asana using the calendar and the timeline view.
Asana’s task management is flexible and customizable. You can manage tasks from the task list, task board, calendar, or timeline. Besides, you can add subtasks and task dependencies.
Finally, team members can collaborate on tasks via comments and file attachments.
Additional Features
Asana also has the following features:
- Manage team workloads.
- Plan and track organizational goals along with project portfolios.
- Create and share request forms.
- Manage approvals and proof-reading.
- Create custom project dashboards.
Asana Pricing
With the free plan, Asana limits you to up to 15 users. And, you don’t get access to timeline and workload views.
Paid plans start at $13.49 per user per month. Upgrading gets you access to dashboards, timelines, request forms, and milestones.
If you need workload management, you’ll need to upgrade to the Business plan, which costs $30.49 per user per month.
8. ACTIVE Collab
Thanks to its simplicity yet powerfulness, ACTIVE Collab is especially a great option for small businesses. It combines task management, time tracking and billing into one easy-to-use and well-designed app.
With this tool, you can keep all your data in one place, where your team can communicate, get informed and see what they need to work on next.
It also allows sharing files, brainstorming, discussion on important topics and much more. In addition, clients can also be included, while ensuring full protection of your sensitive data. By controlling permissions, you can determine exactly what every user can see and access, making it easier for you to include them, keeping them informed, and sharing what’s important.
This tool runs on the cloud platform which frees up your bandwidth off any clerical, hosting and maintenance work.
Active Collab empowers your team to be more efficient, join forces and never miss an important update.
Looking for a budget-friendly project management app? We recommend Zoho Projects and its affordable plans.
Zoho Projects offers pretty much the lowest per-user pricing out there. If you’ve got a small team (think three users), you might be able to get by on its free plan. But even if you go with a Zoho’s paid plan, you only end up paying a handful of dollars per user―and you still get plenty in return. In fact, Zoho Projects’s low-priced plans get you features other software would charge way more for.
Now, some larger teams may find that flat pricing (like the kind Backlog and Basecamp use) ends up being a better deal than Zoho Projects’s competitive per-user pricing.
But for most teams, Zoho Projects offers an affordable project management tool that doesn’t skimp on the features.
10.Trello
Lots of project management software comes with a steep learning curve. Not Trello though―it’s delightfully easy to learn and use.
Trello’s core project management system uses a drag-and-drop dashboard that’s more or less a Kanban board. Each project card clearly displays the most important information. Plus, Trello uses clean, intuitive icons that take the guesswork out of things like adding a new task or deadline. Even if your creative team has never used Trello before, it should have no problem picking it up within minutes.
Don’t worry, though―Trello’s simplicity doesn’t mean you have to compromise on functionality. You can add “power ups” to your Trello board to get more features, from custom task fields to integrations with other software to Gantt board views. In other words, you can customize Trello quite a bit so that it meets your project needs.
Just keep in mind that you will need a paid plan to make use of those power ups. And some power-ups (ones not made by Trello itself) come with additional fees or subscription costs.
Still, Trello’s easy-to-learn interface makes it a user-friendly software for even complex project needs.
