Running a small business is anything but a walk in the park. Project management entails a complex web of responsibilities, from juggling tasks and schedules to keeping your team on track.
This is where project management tools for small businesses come in handy. They provide a platform that empowers you to structure tasks, foster collaboration, and stick to tight schedules with unwavering precision.
No task goes overlooked, and no deadline slips through the cracks.
In this article, we’ll introduce the top 10 project management software for small businesses to help you find the perfect fit for your team. Buckle up as we dive into their pros, cons, pricing, and distinctive features. 👀
From Startup to Success: The 10 Best Project Management Software for Small Businesses
Summarize this article for me pleaseWhat Is a Project Management Software for Small Businesses?
Project management software is a tool that enables you to meticulously organize and plan your company’s projects and assignments. It creates a virtual workspace for monitoring ongoing projects, observing resource management, and collaborating with your team.
The best project management software for small businesses allows you to oversee small-scale company workflows effortlessly. It’s typically more budget-friendly than enterprise solutions, often featuring built-in calendars and reminders to ensure smooth due dates and task tracking. ✅
You can also expect a light interface with powerful communication features that reduce email clutter and make collaboration within small teams transparent. A quality project management tool has budgeting, time tracking, and billing capabilities to help your team function within financial constraints.
Summarize this article for me pleaseWhat Should You Look for in Project Management Software Tools for Small Businesses?
To choose the right project management tool for your business, look for the following key aspects:
- Ease of use: Prefer an intuitive interface with minimal training requirements so that your teammates start using it quickly and effectively
- Task management: It should help you to create and assign tasks, set project objectives and deadlines, and track progress easily
- Collaboration: Look for a project management solution that facilitates collaboration through file sharing, comment threads, and real-time updates
- Customization: Project and task management solutions should adapt to specific business needs with options like personalized workflows, custom fields, and project templates
- Integration: Check if the project management tool integrates with other software your business uses, like email, customer relationship management (CRM) systems, and accounting software
- Affordability and scalability: Consider the software’s pricing and whether its free or low-cost plans fit your budget. You may also want to see if the tool offers advanced features to support growing businesses and complex projects
Summarize this article for me please10 Useful Project Management Software for Small Businesses to Use in 2024
Elevate your operations and fuel business growth with our list of top-tier project management software for small businesses. Say goodbye to bottlenecks, missed deadlines, and ineffective collaboration—join us as we explore the best features and limitations of these tools. 🧐
1. ClickUp
Searching for an all-in-one tool to create project plans, manage tasks, and foster team collaboration? Your quest ends with ClickUp, a user-friendly and affordable solution ideal for small and growing businesses! ✨
Its powerful Project Management Suite makes tracking your entire project a breeze. It offers 15+ project views to visualize and manage your workflows. For example, you can organize tasks as drag-and-drop cards with Kanban Boards, or easily track milestones and dependencies with the expansive Gantt Chart, Timeline, and Workload views.
With ClickUp Goals, you have the power to set clear delivery targets, performance metrics, and OKRs. Keep your team motivated and productive with weekly employee scorecards and shout-outs.
ClickUp’s task management advanced features cover a variety of functionalities, including real-time commenting and proofing to expedite work approvals and brainstorming through Mind Maps.
Additionally, you can share attachments and engage in real-time conversions on the Chat view to keep task-related discussions in one continuous thread.
Use ClickUp Docs collaboration tools to maintain clean and comprehensive records for your business. You get an AI-powered assistant to generate items like project timelines and user testing studies, summarize meeting notes, and draft engaging client emails.
Looking to boost sprint planning? Leverage the ClickUp Agile Project Management Template. It is ideal for Agile teams, as it lets you:
- Streamline and prioritize backlog requests using Forms
- Execute work across teams when managing projects within Boards or Sprints
- Conduct smooth retrospective meetings for continuous improvement
Small teams will love the 100+ ClickUp Automations that automate routine tasks and free up everyone’s time!
ClickUp best features
- Dozens of free project management templates
- 1,000+ ClickUp Integrations with popular work tools like Slack and Dropbox
- 360° project visibility with ClickUp Dashboards for complex projects
- Calendar view for tracking schedules and milestones
- Chat collaboration tools view for quick team communication
- ClickUp Hierarchy to organize your Workspace and customize access levels
- Advanced features like built-in time tracking with custom Reminders and notifications
- 35+ ClickApps to tailor workflows without coding
- Real-time project management goal tracking
- Feature-rich web, desktop, and mobile apps
- Simple visual collaboration and mind mapping with ClickUp Whiteboards
- Loaded free plan
- Helps with budgeting and invoicing
ClickUp limitations
- The range of features can be a lot to digest for new users (but ClickUp’s extensive guides and tutorials make it easy)
- AI features are limited to paid plans
ClickUp pricing
- Free Forever
- Unlimited: $7/month per user
- Business: $12/month per user
- Enterprise: Contact for pricing
- ClickUp AI is available on all paid plans for $5 per Workspace member per month
*All listed prices refer to the yearly billing model
ClickUp ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.7/5 (8,000+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.7/5 (3,000+ reviews)
2. Asana
Elevate your small business project management with Asana—the ultimate platform for seamless cross-functional teamwork. 🙌
With Asana, you can customize your projects and tasks to your liking. The default List view offers a clean display for tracking due dates and assignees. Effortlessly switch between board, timeline, calendar, and dashboard views to enjoy flexible task visualizations.
Use Kanban boards to prioritize project tasks and spot roadblocks to delivery. Improve workflow transparency through labeled columns, equipped with a drag-and-drop interface to update the status of task cards.
Reduce manual tasks by automating assignments, due date adjustments, and stakeholder notifications using the Rules feature. You can even craft task and project templates—unleash your creativity by adding descriptions, organizational tags, due dates, assignees, and custom fields (available with paid plans).
Asana best features
- Integrates with 200+ tools like Slack, Gmail, and Zapier
- Intuitive interface
- Real-time reporting
- Kanban boards for task visualization
- Task automation feature
Asana limitations
- The interface may appear somewhat cluttered
- Limited customizations for advanced reporting features
Asana pricing
- Basic: Free forever
- Premium: $10.99/month per user
- Business: $24.99/month per user
*All listed prices refer to the yearly billing model
Asana ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.3/5 (9,000+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.5/5 (12,000+ reviews)
3. Zoho Projects
Discover the power of Zoho Projects, your online project management ally that lets you plan, track, and collaborate with ease. This scalable software is capable of handling both basic and complex projects. Plan ahead, break work into manageable tasks, track progress systematically, and meet every deadline head-on.
This tool flaunts capabilities for managing flexible work hours, schedule baselines, team-driven task allocation, and reminders. Time tracking and resource management come to the rescue to keep team workloads balanced. 🧰
Elevate your workflow further with task automation and streamlined transitions. Use advanced reports to track progress and manage budgets easily with expense tracking. Remote teams can stay connected through interactive feeds, built-in chat, discussion forums, and file-sharing spaces.
Zoho Projects best features
- Gantt charts to visualize project journeys
- Integrates with Google and Microsoft apps
- Handy mobile app
- Task automation
- Multiple task views
Zoho Projects limitations
- Certain features may be missing or difficult to locate
- May not support all browsers
Zoho Projects pricing
- Free: up to 3 users
- Premium: $5/month per user
- Enterprise: $10/month per user
*All listed prices refer to the yearly billing model
Zoho Projects ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.3/5 (300+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.3/5 (400+ reviews)
4. Trello
Trello is a visual project management tool famous for its Kanban boards. They display tasks as cards, each customizable with due dates, assignees, labels, attachments, and comments. Drag and drop the cards for effortless reorganization and easy visual collaboration. 📊
Trello’s praised for its user-friendly interface, making it ideal for small businesses with limited training resources. Choose from a treasure trove of templates spanning marketing, sales, design, and team management, or create a new board from the ground up.
The platform caters to diverse project needs by offering other layouts besides Kanban boards. Whether you need a calendar for deadline tracking, a timeline for scheduling, a table for structured data display, or even a map for location-based tasks, Trello has you covered.
Trello best features
- Diverse project views
- 100+ templates
- Integrates with Slack, Jira, Miro, etc.
- Visual collaboration features managing projects
- Butler, a no-code task automation assistant
Trello limitations
- It’s more suitable for smaller tasks involving 3-5 people
- Users could benefit from more built-in reports and analytics compared to some of the best project management software on this list
Trello pricing
- Free
- Standard: $5/month per user
- Premium: $10/month per user
- Enterprise: $17.50/month per user
*All listed prices refer to the yearly billing model
Trello ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.4/5 (13,000+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.5/5 (22,000+ reviews)
5. Hub Planner
Hub Planner is the ultimate resource scheduling and management software, aiding teams in project coordination, budget monitoring, PTO tracking, and efficient timesheet management, all within a single platform.
Looking to master project spending and gain insights into project profitability? Hub Planner’s Billing Rates Extension helps you to take full control of your billing management with nifty functions for project budgeting and spending calculations. 👩🏻💻
Moreover, this handy tool features an intuitive drag-and-drop resource scheduler, offering swift insights into resource availability and utilization, streamlining project scheduling. Plus, it allows you to compare actual timesheet data with scheduled forecasts to learn more about your team’s performance.
For real-time analytics, leverage the user-friendly dashboard to examine individual resources and project performance effortlessly.
Hub Planner best features
- Project budget control
- Timesheet management
- Data-centric reports
- User-friendly resource scheduler
- Smooth time off and vacation requests
Hub Planner limitations
- A real-time task tracker would be a useful addition
- It could use more software integrations
Hub Planner pricing
- Plug&Play: $7/month per user
- Unlimited: $18/month per user
- Business Leader: Contact for pricing
*All listed prices refer to the yearly billing model
Hub Planner ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.2/5 (15+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.2/5 (100+ reviews)
6. Wrike
Wrike is a project and resource management software for small businesses on a tight budget, as it has a generous free plan for unlimited users.
Enjoy peak project management efficiency with Wrike’s cross-functional collaboration features. The platform’s super adaptable—it lets you tweak workflows, views, and workspaces to align with your team’s needs and preferences while maintaining a 360° view of your project. 🔄
Its automation features increase productivity by streamlining repetitive tasks and reducing duplicate work. With automatic approvals, request forms, and repeatable blueprints, your team gets more time to handle important tasks when they manage projects across teams.
Personalize your Wrike dashboard with widgets tailored to your workday, allowing you to stay up-to-date with selected tasks or priority items.
Wrike best features
- Versatile project views like Kanban boards and Gantt charts
- Custom request forms
- Proofing and automatic approvals
- Real-time dashboard analytics
- Integrates with tools like Airtable, Gmail, and Dropbox
Wrike limitations
- Tracking changes on large projects may be challenging
- Some users experience a steep learning curve
Wrike pricing
- Free: Unlimited users
- Team: $9.80/month per user (2–25 users)
- Business: $24.80/month per user (5–500 users)
- Enterprise: Contact for pricing (5 to unlimited users)
- Pinnacle: Contact for pricing (5 to unlimited users)
*All listed prices refer to the yearly billing model
Wrike ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.2/5 (3,000+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.3/5 (2,000+ reviews)
7. Notion
Notion’s flexibility, affordability, and task-tracking features make it an excellent choice for small business project management.
Like ClickUp, Notion’s AI assistant lets you craft high-quality project documentation quickly. Let AI generate an initial project plan in a matter of seconds, or write it yourself and watch AI polish it to perfection. ✨
Say goodbye to time-consuming tasks with customizable AI Autofill. Use it to add key results and updates to each project deliverable effortlessly.
Notion also offers ready-to-go workflows for engineering and product teams that help groom backlog, organize sprints, and track bugs.
Plus, the platform offers a variety of views for all project types. Use the table view for meticulous task tracking, switch to the Calendar view to stay on top of deadlines, or simply assess progress in the Timeline view.
Notion best features
- Automated sprints
- Integrations with tools like GitHub, Figma, and Slack
- AI assistant
- Wiki feature to centralize all knowledge
- Pre-designed templates
Notion limitations
- Tends to be slow on mobile devices
- The lack of instructions may hinder page creation for some users
Notion pricing
- Free
- Plus: $8/month per user
- Business: $15/month per user
- Enterprise: Contact for pricing
*All listed prices refer to the yearly billing model
Notion ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.7/5 (4,500+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.7/5 (1,500+ reviews)
8. monday.com
monday.com helps small businesses manage projects efficiently and save money while doing so. The platform offers free and affordable entry-level plans and is user-friendly, reducing expenses associated with training and onboarding. 💰
Empower your team by easily assigning and prioritizing tasks. Create project schedules, monitor your team’s progress, and manage your entire project in one place.
Adapt workflows to match your team’s unique style, whether it’s a project, process, department, or customer-specific task. Take advantage of various project views, like:
- Gantt charts
- Kanban boards
- Timeline views
monday.com offers numerous free customizable templates. From marketing campaigns and editorial calendars to event planning, CRM charts, and HR forms, you’ll find many pre-made templates catering to small businesses. Its automation features for time-consuming activities like sending email reminders and processing project approval requests also free up your time.
monday.com best features
- Customizable dashboards
- Flexible and scalable
- Task automation
- Integrates with project management tools like Google Drive, Gmail, and Trello
- Various templates and project views
monday.com limitations
- The initial setup can be time-consuming
- Main screen customization could be more flexible
monday.com pricing
- Free
- Basic $8/month per user
- Standard: $10/month per user
- Pro: $16/month per user
- Enterprise: Contact for pricing
*All listed prices refer to the yearly billing model
monday.com ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.7/5 (8,000+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.6/5 (4,000+ reviews)
9. Paymo
Paymo stands out as a project management solution tailored for startups, small businesses, freelancers, and small teams. It’s an all-in-one platform for user-friendly project and task management, time tracking, and client billing. 🕒
Engage in real-time communication in the Detailed Task View, set up recurring tasks, establish deadlines and priorities, and assign workloads to multiple team members effortlessly.
Your tasks are visible across all projects, and you can group them by priority, progress, or due date. Switch between task views based on your needs—use a Kanban board to check task statuses or open the List view to see details like assignees, due dates, and billing type.
Use Paymo Track to capture time spent on daily activities with great precision. You can start and stop your timer, add time entries in bulk, and try out the Pomodoro feature for focused work. Transform timesheets into comprehensive reports and professional invoices.
Paymo best features
- Mobile app available
- Automatic time tracking
- Drag-and-drop interface
- Customizable timesheets
- Live reporting
Paymo limitations
- Not all features are accessible on the mobile app
- New users may require some training
Paymo pricing
- Free (1 user maximum)
- Starter: $4.95/month per user (1 user maximum)
- Small Office: $9.95/month per user
- Business: $20.79/month per user
*All listed prices refer to the yearly billing model
Paymo ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.6/5 (500+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.7/5 (400+ reviews)
10. Jira
Atlassian’s Jira is the dynamic force behind Agile teams, helping them work efficiently and fostering project collaboration. Small businesses can benefit from its scalability, progress tracking option, and a wide array of pre-configured templates.
The platform offers Scrum boards to visualize large sprints into manageable tasks, helping your team deliver results faster. Its interactive timeline resembles a creative space for adding epics, mapping work items, tracking dependencies, and setting release schedules. 🌚
Jira goes the extra mile with its out-of-the-box reports and dashboards, providing invaluable insights within your work environment.
On top of all this, you can save time, maintain focus, and effortlessly connect your tools through Jira templates. They cover various teams, departments, and categories, including software development, marketing, and product management.
Jira best features
- Project timelines that keep your teams and stakeholders in sync
- Customizable workflows
- 3,000+ app integrations
- Scrum boards
- Detailed reports
Jira limitations
- Beginners may require training to leverage the platform
- Dashboards could benefit from more customization options
Jira pricing
- Free: up to 10 users
- Standard: $8.15/month per user
- Premium: $16/month per user
- Enterprise: Contact for pricing
*All listed prices refer to the yearly billing model
Jira ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.3/5 (5,500+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.4/5 (13,000+ reviews)
Summarize this article for me pleaseBoost Project Efficiency with Top Project Management Software for Small Businesses
Regardless of your budget constraints and training capacity, these 10 project management tools streamline task tracking and teamwork for small businesses, helping make projects successful.
For comprehensive project management, try ClickUp for free. With user-friendly features and cost-effective plans, ClickUp empowers efficient task management across all project stages! 🌞
Everything you need to stay organized and get work done.
