In my early career as a project manager, I often struggled to create detailed project plans and bring all my team members under one roof. This held me back from establishing clear goals and measuring progress, leading to multiple delays and poor quality of work.
However, by bringing the right project management tools on board, I could help my team deliver its best work at all project stages, from planning and execution to realization and productivity.
Do you want to simplify project planning and collaboration while boosting your team’s productivity? You are in the right place.
In this article, we’ll discuss the 10 best project management software in Australia, which will help you improve planning, scheduling, collaboration, and task delegation.Â
- What Should You Look for in Project Management Software in Australia?
- The Best 10 Project Management Software in Australia to Use in 2024
- 1. ClickUp: Best for project planning and collaboration
- 2. Kantata: Best for data-driven strategic planning
- 3. Monday.com: Best for tracking work progress
- 4. Freshbooks: Best for creating invoices
- 5. Microsoft Project: Best for tracking dependency, costs, and complexity
- 6. Confluence: Best for open communication
- 7. Asana: Best for visual project tracking
- 8. Notion: Best for organizing all your internal and client-facing work
- 9. Jira: Best for real-time visual status updates
- 10. Zoho Projects: Best for integrations and advanced reporting features
What Should You Look for in Project Management Software in Australia?
Many Australian businesses are adding advanced project management software to their tech stack to streamline collaboration, identify potential risks, maximize opportunities, manage project documents, and propel productivity.
The State of Project Management Report’s Australian Edition offers some unique insights into this move toward project management software:
Given the unique challenges in the Australian region, like supply chain disruptions, for instance, you may feel confused about which project management tool to use and how.
I was also in your shoes once and know how annoying it is. So, I want to highlight some essential aspects that you must consider while choosing project management software for your business:
- End-to-end visibility: A robust project management tool offers centralized team communication and a single team workspace to keep track of any challenges early on
- Customization options: A good project management software provides you with customizable templates, custom fields, and different views to visualize work
- Ease of use: You must select a project management tool that you can quickly adopt and implement in your organization without extensive training
- Scalability and pricing plans: Does the platform offer flexible or predictable pricing plans? If yes, it’s a big plus
- Data security: Before choosing the project management tool, look for security features such as admin controls, data encryption, compliance, and privacy permissions so you can comply better with legislations like the Privacy Act 1988 (Privacy Act)
- Integration with existing tools: Always check whether the software you pick can be integrated with popular apps and services such as Slack, Zapier, Salesforce, Dropbox, or any other you use
The Best 10 Project Management Software in Australia to Use in 2024
If you are juggling multiple projects, tasks, and people, an appropriate project management software can help. However, the tool must align with your unique business goals and needs.
To help make your decision process easier, I’ve compiled a list of the best project management software in Australia based on their key features, drawbacks, pricing, and customer reviews:
1. ClickUp: Best for project planning and collaboration
With ClickUp’s Project Management solution, you can customize your workflow according to your business needs. Its Custom Fields allow you to see progress, sort, and filter work according to your team’s needs. This helps you know who is performing well and who needs feedback to improve.
Another good reason to use ClickUp as project management software in Australia is that it brings the entire team together with its connected workflows— including ClickUp Docs, ClickUp Whiteboards, ClickUp Chat Views, and ClickUp Dashboards.
Once everyone is connected, you can easily create tasks and assign them to team members. Other task management features from ClickUp include comment threads, subtasks based on project descriptions, task due dates, and more.
ClickUp best features
- Mobile apps: Use ClickUp’s iOS and Android apps to collaborate seamlessly, update tasks, access dashboards, reply to comments, and much more
- Real-time collaboration: Access ClickUp’s Dashboards to monitor all your team members, brainstorm, add notes, and share your best ideas in real time
- Customized dashboards: Create a dashboard to transform your projects into flexible data, charts, graphs, and lists tailored to your business objectives
- Streamline tasks and projects: Get instant, accurate answers based on context with ClickUp Brain, which uses Agile methodologies to connect tasks, documents, people, and all your company’s knowledge with AI
- Save filters: Get an option to save filters that are high priority and overdue. The best part is you can change the views setting to ‘Me’ or ‘Team’ of these filters
ClickUp limitations
- Guests cannot create Dashboards and Dashboard views
- You may find this platform cluttered and hard to navigate, with hundreds of employees
ClickUp pricing
- Free: Forever
- Unlimited: $7/month per user
- Business: $12/month per user
- Enterprise: Contact for pricing
- ClickUp Brain: Add to any paid plan for $5 per Workspace member per month
ClickUp ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.7/5 (9500+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.6/5 (4100+ reviews)
Pro tip: Not sure where to start? Use ClickUp’s Project Status Report Template to efficiently provide updates on the status of your projects, ensuring that all stakeholders are well-informed.
With our template, you can:
1. Organize your day-to-day using labels, filters, and task views
2. Monitor progress using automated charts and graphs
3. Share the latest updates on tasks, due dates, and budget
Find this and more industry-specific templates at our templates repository.🌻
2. Kantata: Best for data-driven strategic planning
Kantata is an excellent platform that organizes all the different parts of your project in one place. It ensures you stay within budget and on the right track to drive better outcomes for your customers.
I find its project estimation and forecasting tools helpful, as they allow me to plan precisely and minimize risks. With all the project portfolio information in one dashboard, you can use it to streamline operations and improve resource allocation.
Kantata best features
- Get real-time information on the actual cost of every project using its project accounting feature
- View all project changes in real-time and surface best-fit matches for more competent staffing
- Generate 60+ services-centric reports
- Provide a complete picture of the projected demand, forecast revenue, margins, and resource capacity
Kantata limitations
- It can be challenging to see the number of hours spent on billable vs non-billable tasks on a project
- It does not provide information on how many hours a team member has spent on a project.
Kantata pricing
Custom pricing based on business size and industry.
Kantata ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.2/5 (1400+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.2/5 (600+ reviews)
3. Monday.com: Best for tracking work progress
Monday.com provides numerous project templates and tools to optimize business operations, track work progress, and review each team member’s performance.
If you’re a visual organizer like me, you will find the boards and customizable columns much more helpful in segregating tasks and planning project timelines. The drag-and-drop feature makes it easy to make changes on the fly.
Moreover, Monday.com offers users an intuitive, centralized workspace across the organization. You can get complete visibility on all your projects to reach business goals, deliver better results, and ensure overall project success.
Monday.com best features
- Get instant information about the project status and manage the team resources required for project completion
- Use collaborative tools like @mentions and comments to centralize communication within each task or project
- Build custom dashboards with diverse widgets, like the battery widget, for a visual representation of your progress
- Automate everything from task assignments, notifications, and workflow integrations with your favorite tools, such as Slack or GitHub
Monday.com limitations
- The inability to customize board settings for different user demographics is a notable drawback
Monday.com pricing
- Free: 14-day trial
- Basic dev: $12/month per user
- Standard dev: $14/month per user
- Pro dev: $24/month per user
- Enterprise dev: Contact the sales team
Monday.com ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.7/5 (10,000+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.6/5 (4,700+ reviews)
4. Freshbooks: Best for creating invoices
Freshbooks is an all-in-one project management system built exclusively for small-business owners and their teams to increase productivity.
It offers a web-based centralized space for file storage. So you will not have to dig through email chains to find attachments.
What stood out to me is its client collaboration capabilities. The tool allows you to easily give clients access to the files by simply inviting them to a project. This can help make the feedback process easier, especially for digital marketing agencies and similar small businesses.
Freshbooks best features
- Use its profitability widget to get a breakdown of revenue, cost, and unbilled hours
- Get control over what data and files your team can access
- Help you see all invoices and expenses for a specific project
- Send invoices automatically on a schedule; you do not have to spare time making similar invoices for the same client
Freshbooks limitations
- Extra cost per month to add a new team member
- It is not suitable for large companies looking to customize the platform and reports
Freshbooks pricing
- Free: 30-day trial
- Lite: $12.00/month
- Plus: $18.00/month
- Premium: $25/month
- Select: Contact the sales team
Freshbooks ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.5/5 (700+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.5/5 (4,300+ reviews)
Did you know? More than 44% of Australian project managers use AI to automate repetitive tasks. From summarizing meetings and conversations to automating project updates, an AI-powered work management platform can help you increase productivity by a whopping 40%.
5. Microsoft Project: Best for tracking dependency, costs, and complexity
Microsoft Project is one of the popular project management platforms, making complex projects easier to manage. It offers dynamic scheduling that lets you plan your projects easily according to the effort required, project duration, and allotted team members.
I like its interactive dashboards, which let me view the overall status and details of the projects and programs using Power-BI visualization.
While its visual interface and some features may seem complex compared with the alternatives, Microsoft Project is a reliable tool that is best for large-scale or enterprise project planning. It can easily track intricate dependencies using the links feature.
Microsoft Project best features
- Check for any upcoming due dates, progress, and roadblocks using the Gantt timeline view
- Use its project portfolio management feature to plan, prioritize, and manage projects and portfolio investments
- Request and lock in resources so that your projects are always adequately staffed
- Offer heat maps, which can be used to identify overused and underused resources quickly so you can optimize them accordingly
Microsoft Project limitations
- It is only optimized for individual projects
- Limited integrations outside of Microsoft
Microsoft Project pricing
- Microsoft Planner: Included in Microsoft 365
- Planner Plan 1: $10.5/month per user
- Planner Plan 3: $29.5/month per user
- Planner Plan 5: $54/month per user
Microsoft Project ratings and reviews
- G2: 4/5 (1,600+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.4/5 (1,800+ reviews)
6. Confluence: Best for open communication
With Confluence, you can keep your team aligned on project plans from start to launch. Confluence whiteboards provide teams with a collaborative space for brainstorming, visualizing, and turning ideas into actions in real time.
This AI-based platform helps you find contextual, reliable information and swiftly translate or define company-specific jargon and acronyms.
You can also use the Confluence mobile app to access project plans, knowledge articles, insights on project progress, and much more.
Confluence best features
- Provides end-to-end project management features making it easy for project managers to share information and track progress in real-time
- Invite users and change permissions so that spaces and pages are shared with the right people
- Enable team members to collaborate in real-time by creating and editing pages and tagging others
- Integrate with Atlassian products, Google Drive, Microsoft Teams, Slack, Google Analytics, Lucidchart, and Draw.io
Confluence limitations
- Its native time-tracking feature is quite basic
- It does not offer Kanban board or budgeting tools
Confluence pricing
- Free: Forever for 10 users
- Standard: $4.89/month per user
- Premium: $8.97/month per user
- Enterprise: Contact the sales team
Confluence ratings and reviews:
- G2: 4./1 (3,700+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.5/5 (3,300+ reviews)
7. Asana: Best for visual project tracking
Asana is an excellent tool that breaks down your projects into sections and subsections, along with dashboards so you can see the project updates in real time. It is a multifaceted tool designed for businesses of all sizes, offering numerous work organization features, resource management tools, and an attractive interface.
This tool also allows you to create to-do lists and reminders so you never miss any deadlines. Furthermore, you can add upcoming due dates, the names of your colleagues, instructions on different tasks, and comments on items.
I particularly like Asana’s integration feature, which lets me create requests from emails or communication channels like Slack and Microsoft Teams.
Asana features
- Create custom reports to see which goals are on track or off track instantly
- Link reporting data from Salesforce to see real-time updates on deals, leads, and more
- Use AI (Asana Intelligence), to easily spot blockers and find the most efficient path forward
- Calculate how long the work will take so you can take initiatives based on data, not guesswork
Asana limitations
- It does not offer time-tracking features
- The platform only allows files to be exported in JSON and CSV formats.
Asana pricing
- Free: Forever
- Starter: $10.99/month per user
- Advanced: $24.99/month per user
Asana ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.3/5 (9,000+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.5/5 (12,000+ reviews)
8. Notion: Best for organizing all your internal and client-facing work
With Notion, you can add a calendar view to any project so that you do not miss any meetings or deadlines. This platform enables users to create their own priority labels and status tags so that every team can have the perfect workflow without any roadblocks.
This tool offers different filters. Using them, you can choose only tasks assigned to you or items marked as urgent. Its easy-to-use interface makes it seamless for creative teams to brainstorm, execute, track, and organize everything from one platform.
Notions template libraries are especially helpful for busy project managers like me, who don’t like to start from scratch every time. I also tried Notion AI to generate project outlines and summaries and it didn’t disappoint!
Notion best features
- Allow to link to other pages easily; just need to type @ to link your notes or roadmap in a doc
- Keep content automatically updated in multiple places by using its Synced Blocks feature, and the changes will appear everywhere
- Using AI, it can write in numerous languages, such as Japanese, German, Spanish, and more
- Hide or expand extensive project data using the Collapsing Arrows feature
Notion limitations
- Its free plan allows you to upload images, videos, and file attachments up to 5MB, which is less and lacks some of the advanced project management features
- Export options are extremely limited
Notion pricing
- Free: Forever
- Plus: $8/month per user
- Business: $15/month per user
- Enterprise: Contact sales
Notion ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.7/5 (5,000+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.6/5 (15 reviews)
9. Jira: Best for real-time visual status updates
Jira is an umbrella platform that comprises Jira software, Jira core, and Jira work management. When combined, it provides work management assistance for businesses of all sizes.
The tool enables teams to create and customize workflows based on their particular requirements.
Jira’s standout feature is that it allows teams to prioritize and track issues throughout the development process, especially bugs and other errors. Its tracking features let you add descriptions, attachments, and comments within bug reports for clear communication and context.
Using its robust reporting and analytics features, you can visualize project health, identify trends, and track team performance.
Jira best features
- Organize work into a single list view where you can easily update, sort, and prioritize with their in-line editing feature
- Visualize work over time and project deadlines using Jira’s Calendar view
- Use project boards to track the status of your team members’ tasks at each stage of the workflow
- Analyze the order in which the project needs to be done so you can get to know the issue before it becomes a roadblock with its Dependency Management feature
Jira limitations
- It struggles to support the waterfall methodology
- Over-customization may lead to complex workflows, impacting ease of use
Jira pricing
- Free: Forever
- Standard: $7.16/month per user
- Premium: $12.48/month per user
- Enterprise: Contact the sales team
Jira ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.1/5 (2,600+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.4/5 (60+ reviews)
10. Zoho Projects: Best for integrations and advanced reporting features
Zoho Projects is one of the best project management software in Australia that enables you to streamline your project workflows with automation, customization, as well as integration. It can handle projects of all sizes and levels of complexity.
Its Gantt chart feature enables you to break big projects into small, manageable sections and actionable tasks and create task lists to help you plan more thoroughly. The platform also has a built-in feature that allows you to record every minute of your hard work, either manually or with timers.
I like its built-chat functional functionality called the Discuss module, which keeps all the project conversations nestled within the connected workplace, keeping all the information connected in one place.
Zoho Projects best features
- Use Zoho Invoice to capture project duration and generate invoices from your timesheets automatically
- Use its drag-and-drop interface to make new automation easier to visualize and deploy
- Define dependencies between tasks and assign them to the right people using Zoho Projects
Zoho Projects limitations
- Zoho does not offer access to the most-needed software, including Google and Microsoft
- Limited custom fields
Zoho Projects pricing
- Free: 10-day trial
- Premium: $3.5/month per user
- Enterprise: $7.5/month per user
Zoho Projects ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.5/5 (700+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.5/5 (4,300+ reviews)
Streamline Project Management with ClickUp
Choosing the best project management software in Australia helps accelerate project plans and execution. Moreover, these tools empower businesses to work flexibly, even amid challenges, without compromising productivity and communication within teams.
With ClickUp, you can streamline the team’s workflow by enabling end-to-end visibility across your projects. From setting the right goals to charting a project roadmap and monitoring KPIs, ClickUp has all the tools you need to stay productive. To sum up, incorporating a tool like ClickUp will help you never lose sight of priorities and deliver more projects faster and on budget.
Sign up on ClickUp for free and streamline your project management for a clearer view of the business!