You’ve just wrapped up a lengthy client meeting and need to update your project management tool with everything discussed. As you open the software, you discover several missing critical documents and task assignments from the past week.
Data loss and synchronization issues have struck again, confusing your work status.
Fret not—it happens to the best of us.
While no software is immune to technical glitches, we firmly believe that a robust and dependable tool ensures your team’s work isn’t disrupted.
Rally Software is a popular choice for project management, especially for teams practicing Agile methodologies. But should you choose it, or are better options available on the market?
In this article, we’ve tested the top ten Rally project management alternatives to help you find the one that best suits your workflows. We evaluate each tool based on its features, cons, and pricing so you can easily decide the best project management platform for agile teams.
Let’s get started.
- What You Should Look for in Rally Project Management Alternatives
- The 10 Best Alternatives to Rally to Use in 2024
- 1. ClickUp (Best for multi-purpose project management requirements)
- 2. Asana (Best for team collaboration and comprehensive project oversight)
- 3. Teamwork.com (Best for managing multiple teams and projects)
- 4. Confluence (Best for knowledge management and team collaboration)
- 5. Smartsheet (Best for spreadsheet-driven project management)
- 6. Wrike (Best for creating dynamic workflows in a simplified manner)
- 7. Jira (Best for Agile project management and software development)
- 8. Monday.com (Best for teams, preferring a user-friendly interface)
- 9. Planview AgilePlace (Best for scaled agile management and visualization)
- 10. Digital.ai Agility (Best for managing the complexities of software delivery)
What You Should Look for in Rally Project Management Alternatives
- Collaboration and communication: Opt for Rally alternatives that facilitate smooth teamwork with features like real-time document editing, chat, shared calendars, easy file sharing, and shareable screen recordings.; The tool must keep everyone connected during sprint planning and the complete devsecops lifecycle
- Customized dashboards and reports: The chosen software must allow you to create personalized project dashboards and generate detailed reports that fit your project management style. It should enable tracking key metrics, monitoring task progress, and accessing relevant information and data-driven analytics at a glance within the agile environment
- Seamless tech integration: The software should integrate with your existing tech stack, such as communication apps like Slack and file-sharing platforms like Dropbox, enabling a seamless and error-free data flow between all your systems
- User-friendly interface: A steep learning curve can hamper your team’s productivity—the Rally alternatives you consider should provide the necessary project management features with simple, logical navigation and onboarding support
- Secure data storage: Prioritize deploying software that ensures the security and privacy of your data; look for high-security data protection and storage features to prevent accidental deletions or lost files while maintaining stringent privacy controls
- Scalability: Consider whether the platform can grow with your team; it should support increasing projects, users, and data without compromising performance or usability
The 10 Best Alternatives to Rally to Use in 2024
Let’s look at the top 10 project management tools that are great Rally alternatives for agile teams.
1. ClickUp (Best for multi-purpose project management requirements)
It’s a no-brainer that ClickUp snags the first spot on this list as the top alternative to Rally. But we’re not the only ones who think that. This year, G2 announced ClickUp as the #1 collaboration and productivity software product for a good reason.
ClickUp’s Project Management Software suits all teams, from startups and agencies to large enterprises, hybrids, and remotes. Its user-friendly design and customizable key features empower you to transform ideas into action and structure project roadmaps around key milestones.
ClickUp equips users to create a unified workspace for all project planning needs. It offers many project management templates to start with projects instantly, eliminating the need to develop project management workflows from scratch.
You could choose and apply a template and easily:
- Visualize and track all project management resources
- Add team members, define dependencies and user stories, and set deadlines
- Assign, manage, and prioritize tasks with multiple workflow views
Using the ClickUp Project Management Template mainly, as a project manager, I was able to drive significant, cross-functional, and complex projects or programs from conception to execution and ensure everyone was on the same page and not working in silos.
Plus, ClickUp integrates with over 1,000 other work tools for free, including Slack, Google Drive, Jira, Zoho projects, Github, Trello, Figma, Loom, and more. Thanks to its scalable hierarchy framework, even the most complicated projects can be neatly organized into manageable tasks and subtasks.
Then, there’s ClickUp Brain, which leverages Machine Learning (ML) capabilities to streamline tasks, automate repetitive actions, and smartly analyze data for actionable insights. Think of it like an AI-powered assistant specifically designed for you.
For instance, I get all the project management hacks I need from this AI-powered tool in minutes—from summarizing meeting notes or project updates, generating action items from ClickUp Tasks, or writing content like a blog post or sales email.
ClickUp’s project management tool is available on both web and mobile apps, which allows me to get updates on tasks and view the big picture via the visual workspace on the go.
ClickUp best features
- Assign comments: Do you often feel your comments or notes for your team do not have the impact they should? Assign ClickUp Comments as a task and set up specific dates and time slots to follow up—this is especially a boon if you’re managing a remote team
- AI capabilities: Generate action items, summarize content, provide instant recaps, and extract next steps and milestones from text with ClickUp’s AI tools
- Customized views: Visualize your work using 15+ ClickUp Views ranging from Kanbank Board View, Gantt Chart View, Timeline View, and more
- Centralized wikis: Create collaborative documents and knowledge repositories to manage your project’s information and related data on a single cloud-based platform using ClickUp Docs; embed bookmarks, add tables, and edit documents in real-time
- Workload management: Create a ClickUp Workspace for your project and group all tasks and subtasks into folders and spaces; add team members, adjust timelines and priorities to run a smooth sailing ship
- Timesheets and reporting: Transform client work with an intuitive ClickUp Dashboard—track every hour, create clear visibility, and simplify billing; also, access real-time reports packed with sprint velocity, burn up, burn down, lead time, and flow charts
- Brainstorming and strategy: Visually collaborate with your team in real-time with ClickUp Whiteboards; you can literally brainstorm, add notes, and bring your best ideas together on a creative canvas
ClickUp limitations
- Not all ClickUp features are currently available on the mobile app
- ClickUp Brain isn’t included in the Free Forever plan (limited free trial access coming soon)
ClickUp pricing
- Free forever
- Unlimited: $7 per month per user
- Business: $12 per month per user
- Enterprise: Custom pricing
- ClickUp Brain: Add to any paid plan for $7 per Workspace member per month
ClickUp customer ratings
- G2: 4.7/5 (9,500+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.6/5 (4,100+ reviews)
From limited visibility across teams and leadership to global standardization, here’s how VMWare implemented ClickUp to achieve 8X faster project setup and reporting:
- Increased focus on high-value work by automating tasks
- Consolidated 5+ tools to bring work and reporting into one place
- Used ClickUp Dashboards to visualize performance and align teams on KPIs
2. Asana (Best for team collaboration and comprehensive project oversight)
The Rally alternative Asana offers a clean UI and simplified project management features, such as tagging team members, setting priorities, and drag-and-drop functionality.
You don’t have to navigate through clunky menus or overwhelming dashboards, which is quite a time-saver. Each layout element on the visual project management tool is intentional, making it easy to start.
Asana is also robust enough to maintain communications within teams, including project management, development, and operations teams. For easier task management, you can add anyone to a workspace and collaborate with them using comments. It has all the essentials to any perfect project management checklist.
Asana best features
- Get a summary of what’s happened in a portfolio, project, or task to stay up-to-date—minus the meetings—with Asana AI
- Personalize project sections and switch between layouts: list, Kanban board, Gantt, calendar, or timeline
- Custom fields allow you to add labels to tasks to sort, filter, and automatically report on work and progress
Asana limitations
- It doesn’t allow for more complex numerical fields to be created in a project
- Asana AI is available only on paid plans
Asana pricing
- Personal: $0
- Starter: $10.99 per user per month
- Advanced: $24.99 per user per month
- Enterprise: Custom pricing
- Enterprise+: Custom pricing
Asana customer ratings
- G2: 4.4/5 (10,000+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.5 (12,000+ reviews)
3. Teamwork.com (Best for managing multiple teams and projects)
If your project requires input from external stakeholders, Teamwork is a collaborative project management software designed for you.
Besides the usual project management software features like built-in chat and custom reporting, it enabled me to track time spent per project. You can create invoices for client projects based on billable hours logged and relevant expenses. In addition, export this information in other formats (spreadsheets, PDFs) and to your billing software for effortless time tracking.
The Notebook feature is also a standout. It stores detailed research or reference material easily accessible and viewable within a specific project.
Teamwork.com best features
- Gather feedback, requests, and key details regarding any project or task from your clients or team members using custom forms
- Establish transparency at work by adding filters to see who’s logging their time regularly, who needs reminding, and who’s drowning in work and deadlines
- Create an invoice for a client’s project based on billable hours logged and other expenses undertaken
Teamwork.com limitations
- The extensive range of features can be overwhelming, making it challenging to optimize the use of the platform fully
- Developers might find the API somewhat restrictive, which could hinder the integration of Teamwork with other tools and systems they use
Teamwork.com pricing
- Free: $0 (Up to 5 users)
- Deliver: $10.99 per user per month
- Grow: $19.99 per user per month
- Scale: Custom pricing
Teamwork.com customer ratings
- G2: 4.4/5 (1,000+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.5/5 (80+ reviews)
4. Confluence (Best for knowledge management and team collaboration)
Confluence is a remote-friendly project management tool that enables you to create anything and everything—from project plans and product requirements to meeting notes and collaborative documentation.
Some of its features make it one of the top alternatives to Rally: instant workspace previews, automatic versioning, and full-text search.
Confluence has advanced functionalities to organize content and knowledge that’s easily findable and always up-to-date.
Its video walkthroughs, product guides, and use cases are helpful for first-time users. Since it’s a part of the Atlassian family, you also gain access to its expansive community forums.
Confluence best features
- Organize information across teams, projects, and objectives in the form of structured page trees; set customizable permissions to protect sensitive data
- Manage recurring tasks in a project and summarize extensive content using rule-based automation
- Reference work across other integrated tools, such as Google Docs, Figma, and YouTube
Confluence limitations
- The current grouping feature can be challenging to use effectively: it often requires a lot of experimentation to properly organize similar pages, which can be frustrating for new users
- It does not support simultaneous editing by multiple users; only one person can edit a document at a time, hindering real-time collaboration
Confluence pricing
- Free forever: For up to ten users
- Standard: $4.89 per month per user
- Premium: $8.97 per month per user
- Enterprise: Custom pricing
Confluence customer ratings
- G2: 4.1/5 (3,700+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.5 (3,300+ reviews)
Read more: Best Confluence Alternatives & Competitors in 2024
5. Smartsheet (Best for spreadsheet-driven project management)
If your team is comfortable working on spreadsheets but needs a solid project management solution that does not detract from this style, consider giving Smartsheet a test drive.
From automated workflows and Gantt charts to real-time dashboards and project scheduling, you can work on many tasks—all within the spreadsheet environment.
Requesting, gathering, and organizing stakeholder input and enabling reviews through pinned comments is also possible. If your team is trained in Excel or Google Sheets, using Smartsheet will work.
Smartsheet best features
- Build a branded widget display combining live data from various sources, such as YouTube, Google Docs, and Tableau; share information with stakeholders in real-time
- Store, manage, and share assets across hundreds of formats, including documents, 8K video, 3D renderings, and more
- Optimize the review cycle; maintain version control and track changes and feedback history for audit purposes
Smartsheet limitations
- The current pricing structure for add-ons seems outdated, and the Early Access Program (EAP) does not provide significant value
- The document repository within the platform cannot be synced automatically with other cloud storage services
Smartsheet pricing
- Free: $0
- Pro: $9 per month per user
- Business: $19 per month per user
- Enterprise: Custom pricing
Smartsheet customer ratings
- G2: 4.4/5 (15,100+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.5 (3,200+ reviews)
Read more: 20 of the Best Smartsheet Alternatives & Competitors for Project Management 2024
6. Wrike (Best for creating dynamic workflows in a simplified manner)
If you’re like me and love to simplify things, Wrike’s project management platform is for you.
Want to see who’s working on what? An activity stream dashboard can help. Want to track issues in real-time? Wrike allows that, too.
Wrike has several project scheduling templates that break large projects into actionable items, assign due dates, and track team progress, making software adoption much more convenient and quick.
Another feature called ‘cross-tagging’ helps track departmental milestones.
Wrike best features
- Create custom statuses for your team to track every project stage, from ‘In Progress’ to ‘Completed’
- Use pre-built widgets or add custom ones to build and tailor your dashboard and monitor tasks and various project schedules
- Give full-context feedback with built-in proofing tools; minimize the number of cycles in your review processes
Wrike limitations
- The List View’s lack of multi-select or bulk edit options when working with multiple people further slows down the management of large-scale tasks
- Wrike’s generative AI is not available on the free plan
Wrike pricing
- Free: $0 per user per month
- Team: $9.80 per user per month
- Business: $24.80 per user per month
- Enterprise: Custom pricing
- Pinnacle: Custom pricing
Wrike customer ratings
- G2: 4.2/5 (3,700+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.3/5 (2,600+ reviews)
Read more: We Tested the Best Wrike Alternatives & Competitors in 2024
7. Jira (Best for Agile project management and software development)
IT teams widely use Jira for project management in software development projects. This agile project management tool allows setting up a collaborative development space, orchestrating sprints, and tracking issues and bugs.
Users get various customizable Agile templates for bug tracking and issue tracking, sprint planning, project progress reporting, and more.
The drag-and-drop functionality also helps streamline any project process in minutes.
Using the roadmap view, you can plan sprints by prioritizing tasks, mapping dependencies, and getting a picture of your project’s timeline. Jira offers 12+ default reports with real-time, actionable insights for project managers and integrates with most development tools.
Jira best features
- Create timelines with project tasks and their details, such as start and end dates, status, and dependencies
- Pull in data and information from popular third-party apps, such as GitHub, Figma, and Slack
- Visualize your workflow using Gantt Chart views, Kanban boards, Backlog Views, and more
Jira limitations
- Compared to other Jira alternatives, the UI can be challenging for users from a non-software development background, and setting up projects and workflows may involve a steep learning curve
- While there are numerous extensions and third-party tools available, many come with high costs
Jira pricing
- Free: For up to 10 users
- Standard: $7.16 per user per month
- Premium: $12.48 per user per month
- Enterprise: Custom pricing
Jira customer ratings
- G2: 4.3/5 (5,800+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.4/5 (14,000+ reviews)
8. Monday.com (Best for teams, preferring a user-friendly interface)
Monday.com is a project management, tracking, and collaboration platform that provides a high-level overview of ongoing projects and their status across teams and departments.
Whether a high-growth startup or a well-established enterprise, Monday.com can fit your evolving requirements with features like custom workflows, task lists, and project timelines.
This software is handy for planning, scheduling, and allocating resources.
You can choose from over 200+ pre-built automation examples to improve efficiency across the project. Identifying and strategizing company-level goals and creating a detailed action plan to achieve them was also a breeze.
Monday.com best features
- Deploy hands-on task management with work breakdown structures, universal add, reminders, task lists, and recurring tasks
- With no-code building blocks, create automated workflows for any part of your work to match business rules and logic
- Coordinate with teams, stakeholders, and clients using feeds, chat, mentions, forums, emails, and documents
Monday.com limitations
- Unlike other Rally alternatives like ClickUp, setting up recurring tasks on Monday.com is not easy and requires you to use automations
- Consumes large amounts of data, which impacts performance and causes the platform to lag
Monday.com pricing
- Free: $0 (Free Forever)
- Basic: $9 per seat per month
- Standard: $12 per seat per month
- Pro: $19 per seat per month
- Enterprise: Custom pricing
Monday.com customer ratings
- G2: 4.7/5 (12,000+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.6/5 (4,800+ reviews)
Read more: We Tested the 20+ Best Monday Alternatives in 2024
9. Planview AgilePlace (Best for scaled agile management and visualization)
Formerly known as Planview LeanKit, Planview AgilePlace enables teams and organizations to use enterprise-grade Kanban boards to track and manage project workflows visually. Keep tabs on all project aspects, from strategy to delivery.
Creating custom workflows within each board to plan, organize, and prioritize upcoming work was smooth. Use Planview AgilePlace to keep card comment threads and @mention in context and attach docs for easy sharing and workplace collaboration.
The platform utilizes parent-child card connections to break down work, track associated delivery items, and maintain strategic alignment. There’s also functionality to monitor roll-up statistics regarding delivery problems or challenges.
Planview AgilePlace’s best features
- Connect and collaborate with your team in real-time using a built-in virtual whiteboard experience and support Lean Coffee, incremental planning, retrospectives, and agile development
- Use built-in metrics to assess team performance, make sound strategic decisions, and promote continuous improvement without disrupting team productivity
- Create unique views based on status, progress, and other data-oriented use cases to prioritize tasks to do, issues to address, and risks to mitigate
Planview AgilePlace limitations
- The reporting feature lacks detailed, actionable insights, limiting its robustness
- Lacks AI capabilities
Planview AgilePlace pricing
- Custom pricing
Planview AgilePlace customer ratings
- G2: 4.1/5 (350+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.5/5 (40+ reviews)
10. Digital.ai Agility (Best for managing the complexities of software delivery)
Digital.ai Agility is a project management tool that provides a unified environment for enhancing collaboration across all levels. From marketers to developers to executives, this versatile tool can be used by everyone.
It offers a comprehensive suite of features, including real-time visibility into pre-defined goals, customizable dashboards, and project management KPIs. Its intuitive interface lets you easily plan, track, and manage tasks, ensuring projects stay on schedule and within scope.
Digital.ai Agility integrates seamlessly with other tools and platforms, facilitating efficient communication and coordination across all project stakeholders.
Digital.ai Agility’s best features
- Streamline the adoption and integration of Agile practices while managing projects—consolidate planning, execution, and delivery under a unified framework
- Build, nurture, and execute innovative concepts that prioritize customer-focused products and services using the IdeaSpace
- Visualize and track dependencies across teams and portfolios, up and downstream
Digital.ai Agility limitations
- Tasks need to be added individually, as there’s no option to add multiple tasks at once
- The process of compiling all the data and setting up integration points could be more intuitive and logical
Digital.ai Agility pricing
- Custom pricing
Digital.ai Agility customer ratings
- G2: 3.7/5 (60+ reviews)
- Capterra: Not enough reviews
Be More Efficient With a Project Management Tool of Your Choice
Whatever Rally alternative you choose, ensure it best aligns with your project management goals. Start by exploring free trials and product demos to find the perfect fit. This exercise may take some time, but in the end, your hard work will be worth it.
However, remember that most Rally alternatives focus on only one aspect—task management, project scheduling and tracking, resource management, or workflow simplification. Develop best practices and improve team performance with project management examples.
On the other hand, ClickUp offers all the core features to bring your entire team or organization’s activities into one platform. It’s highly scalable and enables you to gain additional features and expand your daily operations with time.
Make ClickUp your strategic partner in your quest for peak productivity.
Try ClickUp for free today.