Best Project Management Software in 2025 (Basic & Advanced)

Looking for a guide to the best project management software in 2025?

In this comprehensive article, you’ll find: detailed pros and cons of various project management software, a list of software by type, and key definitions to support your research process.

Productive is a comprehensive tool designed to handle multiple aspects of your business workflows.

Productive’s main features include project and task tracking, resource planning, budgeting and billing, and advanced reporting — all of the features you need to keep projects and business operations on track.

Productive’s range of features and pricing plans makes it a suitable choice for smaller, mid-sized, to larger businesses.

Whether you’re looking to improve collaboration or you want to get a full grasp on your financials and resources, Productive can help you.

Let’s explore Productive’s key features in more detail.

Productive offers a variety of project views, including Kanban, List, Workload, and Gantt charts, allowing teams to manage their workflows in the way that works best for them.

These flexible views make it easy to visualize progress and stay on top of deadlines.

Task management is another area where Productive supports team collaboration.

You can organize individual tasks with dependencies, subtasks, and to-dos, ensuring that all project elements are accounted for and well organized.

The platform also includes no-code automations that you can customize to streamline the repetitive parts of your workflows. These automations can be customized to address specific business needs.

For example, a specific status on a task can trigger a notification to be sent to a group on Slack.

Integrated time tracking allows project managers and their teams to accurately track and monitor time spent on tasks and projects. The benefits of time tracking include accurate billing, better estimation, and a clearer understanding of profitability.

Keep your communication in a centralized location with Productive’s tasks and comment fields. Additionally, to maintain your knowledge and documentation, you can use Productive’s Docs.

Within Docs, you can create documentation and edit it in real-time with other team members, create tasks from pages, and ensure that relevant documentation is easily accessible.

Docs include Productive AI for supporting easier content creation.

The platform also includes a Client Portal, which allows clients to access relevant information, comment on tasks, and open new ones.

Productive’s budgeting tools are designed to give businesses complete control over their financial outcomes. You can build budgets, track spending, and see how your costs and scheduling impact your bottom line.

With Productive, you can also account for overhead costs and external expenses to get more accurate profitability calculations across clients.

Forecasting is another key feature that helps businesses monitor their financials and support growth. Forecasting allows teams to predict budget burn and profit margins during project execution.

This helps businesses make better decisions to resolve potential issues before they impact their workflows.

For invoicing and financial planning, Productive provides integrated Billing, so invoices can be created and sent from the platform. Productive also offers integrations with popular accounting tools like Xero and QuickBooks.

Efficient resource management is crucial for maintaining balanced workloads and maximizing team productivity.

With Productive, managers can easily prioritize crucial projects by creating a resource planner. They can schedule employee time while taking into account employee capacity (hours available to work) and availability (time off scheduled or holidays).

Productive also includes Time Off Management, so time off requests can be processed directly from the platform. There’s also a wide range of HRM integrations to sync your workflows.

With Productive’s resource planning features, you can also visualize and monitor your utilization across employees, departments, seniority levels, and more. This helps businesses spot inefficiences and guide hiring decisions with reliable data.

Productive’s Sales and CRM feature enables seamless customization of pipeline stages, managing client communication, and streamlining sales collaboration.

Each deal can be treated as an individual task — you can assign sales reps, leave comments, and update task statuses.

Key functionalities include building and sending client proposals, forwarding emails directly to an inbox within Productive, sales performance monitoring, and revenue forecasting.

You can also convert a won deal to a project within Productive and continue managing it from there.

Productive offers detailed reporting capabilities that provide insights into every aspect of your business.

From task completion, resource utilization to financial health, Productive’s real-time reporting with visualizations helps teams identify trends, measure success, and make data-driven decisions.

With Productive, you can customize reports by switching between different types of charts, grouping or filtering data differently, or using custom formulas.

To share your reports, you can create custom dashboards, or set up automatic sending with Pulse.

Productive offers a range of integrations for a more seamless tech stack.

Some options include Xero and QuickBooks for accounting; Slack, Google Calendar, and Memtime for collaboration and time tracking; Breathe and BambooHR for HRM; HubSpot, Jira, Zapier, and many more.

You can also try out Productive with a 14-day free trial.

Trello is a visual project management tool that’s known mostly for its intuitive design and ease of use. It simplifies collaboration through customizable boards, lists, and cards.

Trello is an ideal solution for teams or individuals seeking a straightforward way to organize tasks and track progress.

Key features:

Pros: Trello has a very user-friendly, card-based approach to project management, which means that there’s no steep learning curve during implementation. This makes it accessible to teams of varying tech experience. Trello also offers a free version with fair functionalities, which can make it a good choice for personal use or small teams and startups.

Cons: Trello has limited advanced features for managing complex projects, and isn’t ideal for generating extensive reports or analytics. For example, there’s no integrated time tracking, which limits what you can do.

ClickUp is a versatile project planning solution with extensive customization options for workflows of various types of businesses. It caters to teams of all sizes and industries with features that adapt to diverse needs, including non-professional services businesses.

Key features:

Pros: ClickUp is often reviewed as being very flexible, which can make it suitable for supporting a wider range of workflows and industries. Another thing that a project manager may enjoy are some sprint tracking features, which are suitable for agile teams.

Cons: ClickUp’s most frequently noted downside includes a complex interface, as well as performance issues and bugs. While the platform is customizable, this can make it overwhelming for new users, and can lead to setting up inefficient workflows.

Source: G2

Find out more in our ClickUp review.

Jira is a project management app that is often used among software development teams. It has features tailored to managing agile projects, with issue tracking, and sprint planning.

Key features:

Pros: Jira software is a popular choice for development and IT teams with its range of features for agile project management. Atlassian also offers a knowledge management solution in Confluence, free for limited users, which can be a good way to manage your knowledge base and streamline file sharing.

Cons: While Jira is popular among developers, it’s usually not the preferred solution for creatives such as designers, due to its minimalistic and often complex user interface. Additionally, while it has a solid range of project management capabilities, it’s less suitable for business planning metrics across projects, such as financial health and resources.

Check out our detailed comparison of Jira and competitors to learn more.

Miro is a collaborative whiteboarding platform for brainstorming, visualizing ideas, and supporting creativity. Miro can also be a useful tool for diagrams, prototyping, agile practices, and roadmaps, which makes it a suitable option for diverse project teams.

Key features:

Pros: Miro is an excellent tool for remote teams that need to conduct frequent ideation sessions, such as designers, marketers, architects, or even consultants. With its templates, Miro offers an easy way for different businesses to organize their thoughts and collaborate on dynamic plans.

Cons: While Miro can be a good software for businesses that need a creative environment to develop their ideas (and some may even use it as a simplified alternative to Figma), Miro lacks the advanced suite of project management features that support better client project performance.

LiquidPlanner is a project management app ideal for dynamic scheduling. With its resource allocation and workload balancing features, LiquidPlanner is suitable for businesses that need better prioritization.

Key features:

Pros: LiquidPlanner can be a good option for managing complex and fast-changing schedules. With its automation features, it can support businesses that work in a dynamic environment where plans change quickly and priorities are often shuffled.

Cons: LiquidPlanner is more complex and less intuitive than some simpler alternatives on this list, such as Trello. Additionally, a big downside of LiquidPlanner are its lacking budgeting and billing features.

Source: G2

Notion is a robust workspace for notes, tasks, and databases. It functions as a centralized location for different kinds of business and personal data, creating a synced wikipedia site. Notion is also a popular choice for personal project management and productivity.

Key features:

Pros: Notion is a very versatile database for managing and updating your information easily. It’s often used by individuals due to its user-friendliness and customizability, and can be a good fit for variety of different use cases.

Cons: While Notion provides simple task planning and collaboration functionalities, it’s overall basic in this regard. Notion is best used as a supplement to a more advanced task management software, or a personal productivity tracker.

Source: Reddit

Hello Bonsai is a platform for small businesses and freelancers offering contract management, invoicing, and tracking tools.

Key features:

Pros: Hello Bonsai’s range of features, from forms and contract signing to CRM, enable freelancers and smaller businesses to run various project stages from a centralized location.

Cons: Hello Bonsai’s client portal features are fairly limited, and function more as an activity overview, instead of a true collaborative space for business professionals and their clients.

Source: Capterra

Asana is a project management tool designed to support businesses in healthcare, retail, financial services, and education industries. Its features are tailored mostly to managing tasks, projects, and workflows.

Key features:

Pros: Asana is a middle-ground type of project management tool when it comes to factors such as complexity and customizability. Its free version can be a good choice for smaller businesses, as it offers unlimited projects and tasks for up to ten team members (but no advanced features such as automations).

Cons: Asana’s pricing tier for full functionalities can be expensive, especially when taking into account that budgeting and billing isn’t included. For a more comprehensive feature set, investing into an all-in-one alternative option might be more cost and time effective.

Microsoft Project is a project management platform designed for project planning, scheduling, and resource planning.

Key features:

Pros: Microsoft Project can be a solid option for users familiar with Microsoft products. Users often recommend it for structured projects, such as those in the construction industry, as it provides support for the waterfall project management methodology.

Cons: MS Project is relatively expensive for smaller teams, and its advanced features come with a steep learning curve for new users. It can also feel inflexible and too complicated for projects with a smaller scope.

Source: G2

If you’re still interested in learning more about tools for project managers and team collaboration, here’s a brief overview of some great alternative options:

11. Basecamp

Basecamp is another lightweight option for smaller teams. Its main features includes a streamlined project page with activities, tasks, and files, visualizations, time estimates, and integrated chat. It can be a good alternative to Trello, as it targets smaller businesses and provides intuitive workflows.

12. Monday.com

Monday.com is a good ClickUp alternative option. Similarly to ClickUp, it provides a very customizable workspace, with features that can be suitable to a wide range of industries. Monday work OS main features include customizable dashboards, automations, and AI. Monday.com also offers separate products for CRM and dev teams.

13. Wrike

Wrike can be a solid substitute to a tool like LiquidPlanner, as it offers a range of features for resource planning. There are also dashboards, automations, Gantt charts, Kanban boards, and other key features for keeping individual projects on track. Wrike also offers some budgeting features, though Productive is a more advanced option if that’s what you’re primarily looking for.

14. Bitrix24

Bitrix24 is a solid option for a CRM-based tool. Bitrix24’s main features include an integrated sales pipeline, basic marketing automation, Gantt charts and Calendar views. On the other hand, there are some issues with the steep learning curve of the software, as well as the interface.

15. HoneyBook

HoneyBook is another solid option for a Hello Bonsai alternative. It provides contract templates, event scheduling, forms, and online payments; these features can help smaller businesses and freelancers manage their end-to-end client workflows.

16. Smartsheet

Smartsheet is a more robust alternative, especially for teams that require advanced collaboration features. It provides a spreadsheet-like interface that makes it intuitive for users familiar with Excel or Google Sheets, though this can also be a downside for other users. Key features include workflow automation, resource planning, and customizable dashboards.

17. Zoho Projects

Zoho Projects is another all-rounder tool for managing projects. It offers Gantt charts, task automation, time tracking, and collaborative document sharing features. Zoho Projects is part of the larger Zoho ecosystem, making it an excellent choice for teams already using other Zoho products like Zoho CRM or Zoho Books.

18. Airtable 

Airtable combines a spreadsheet interface with advanced database features, allowing teams to organize data and tasks in customizable views. It’s perfect for those needing flexible, visual tracking and collaboration. However, it lacks advanced project management tools like resource planning and time tracking. Check out some Airtable alternatives for more options.

19. TeamGantt 

TeamGantt offers intuitive Gantt chart-based project planning, allowing teams to visualize timelines, track dependencies, and manage resources. It’s ideal for teams focused on deadlines, but it lacks advanced agile or resource planning features, which may limit its usefulness.

20. Toggl Plan 

Toggl Plan offers a simple, visual way to manage tasks and collaborate. With timelines, task assignment, and resource planning, it’s great for smaller teams. However, it lacks in-depth features like detailed reporting or time tracking, making it less suited to more complex projects.

Here’s an additional overview of popular project management software according to specific use cases:

If you’re looking for simple to use software, you can consider streamlined solutions such as Trello or Basecamp. While these tools are known to be user-friendly and intuitive, this comes mainly out of a lack of more advanced features. These include budgeting, resource planning, and real time reporting, all which are key features to scaling business operations.

If you’re looking for software with more advanced features but a modern user interface, you can consider Productive.

When considering free project management tools, there are two big distinctions to make. There are project management tools that are usually paid but have free versions for limited users, projects, or with scaled down features.

A project management platform with a free version includes Asana, which offers collaboration for up to 10 teammates. Another option is Trello with unlimited cards and up to 10 boards per workspace.

Another option is to use fully free, open-source software. A popular example of this type of software for project management is ProjectLibre.

For agile projects, important features include tracking duration and task progress with specific types of views, such as Kanban or Scrum boards.

Another useful feature includes agile-specific reporting or integrations with development-oriented third-party tools, such as Github. Jira is a popular type of software with these specific features.

Productive offers some features for goal tracking and sprint planning, such as task dependencies, assignments, and color-coded status progress. It also includes a Kanban-based board for organizing and managing task lists.

Check out our review to find out more about agile project management software tools.

Simple project management usually includes features for organizing your project workflow and team collaboration.

Advanced project management usually includes everything from the ability to handle complex workflows (with customizable dashboards, views, and automation) to more advanced capabilities such as budgeting, billing, and financial forecasting.

For features that help businesses handle their broader financial health and performance, Productive is a great best pick.

For more advanced project management capabilites, there are tools such as ClickUp or Monday.

For large businesses, project management platforms will need to offer advanced features and support for complex workflows.

This includes features such as creating and maintaining budgets across projects, resource allocation and workload balancing, and real time analytics.

For complex workflows, features like workflow automation as well as advanced user permissions support businesses in maintaining efficiency and keeping their data secure.

An example of a software that offers the features mentioned above is Productive. It’s designed as a comprehensive solution for managing your budgets, employees, and granular project elements such as timelines and tasks.

For personal project management, the best tools should focus on simplicity, flexibility, and good user experience. Features like task organization, reminders, goal tracking, and calendar integration are crucial for keeping individual projects on track. Additionally, these tools should ideally provide free pricing plans. The best example of this type of software is Notion.

Project management software is a type of digital tool designed to help project managers and their teams plan, execute, and monitor projects.

Its most common benefits include: centralizing communication, streamlining workflows, and providing visibility into progress. These platforms are used across industries to manage tasks, deadlines, budgets, and resources.

With key features like tasks and dependecies, project stage tracking, collaboration tools, budgeting and resourcing, a project management app ensures teams can deliver projects on time and within budget.

Project management software can be differentiated by multiple factors. Some of them include:

Examines the software’s feature set, from tasks to time tracking. Software in this category is usually differentiate by how simple or robust it is.

Simpler tools offer more collaboration-based features, while robust software usually covers high-level capabilities such as budgeting or resource planning (we discuss this topic more in the next section of the article).

When it comes to terminology, all of these tools can be defined as project management software. Other terms can also be used, such as task management software for simpler tools, or professional services automation tools, usually used for more advanced types of software.

Categorization by industry categorizes software based on which particular business sphere they’re catered to.

Software can be tailored towards professional services agencies, or industries such as retail, healthcare, education, construction, etc. In each case, they’ll need to provide specific features and type of support to encompass the particular metholodogy of each industry.

Certain types of tools can go even more granular, and offer solutions specifically for marketing, consulting, or development companies, though it’s more frequent for the professional services sphere to be treated as a whole.

To see some examples of specialized tools, check out our article on consulting CRMs or architecture project management software.

Categorizing project management software by business size helps tailor solutions to the needs of different organizations.

As businesses grow, their project management needs evolve. Small businesses will often needs tools that balance simplicity with scalability, allowing for more complex workflows and team collaboration.

Medium-sized businesses will often look for software that supports advanced features such as real-time budget tracking, reporting, and integrations with other business systems.

Larger enterprises need robust, enterprise-level tools capable of managing multiple projects, departments, and resources across regions. These systems often include predictive scheduling, extensive analytics, and tighter security.

Growing businesses will often have a larger tech stack to manage every part of their workflows. There are also comprehensive solutions, such as Productive, that can help streamline your tech stack.

Check out our detailed guide on project management software types to learn more.

Project management features can differ significantly depending on the tool and its intended audience. However, most tools offer a combination of essential, advanced, and specialized features to meet varying needs.

As essential features, we can consider those that enable the tracking of tasks and team collaboration. Clear and efficient communication is the cornerstone of any project, which is why the best project management tool should provide these features as a baseline.

Overview of features:

Advanced features are those that go beyond documentation or collaboration, but instead help businesses improve process efficiency and resource tracking (which includes both finances and employees).

Depending on how robust they are, popular project management software may or may not have these capabilites — but it’s always useful to seek out advanced tools, especially if you’re expecting your operations to grow.

Overview of features:

Integrations are also often a differentiating factor — simpler tools will usually offer few native integrations, frequently for time tracking or collaboration apps, while more advanced software often provides accounting or HRM integrations.

Specialized features are designed to cater to a specific type of business or project type. This can include, for example, Kanban boards or sprint management for agile project management.

Or, it might concern integrations with industry-specific software. For example, design tools for creative agencies or accounting systems for finance teams.

Capabilities like portfolio management and client portals also support businesses that manage multiple projects or need to maintain transparency with stakeholders.

If you’re interested in a more detailed breakdown of this topic, check out our article that discusses project tools and their key features.

Research by Panorama Consulting has found that businesses that use software for managing their projects experience the following top three benefits: increased productivity and efficiency (73%), reduced operating and/or labor costs (56.8%), and access to real-time data (49.2%).

Other relevant benefits include standardization and removing silos.

Let’s go through how and why this is achieved:

One of the basic advantages of modern software is its ability to improve team collaboration and communication. In workplaces where teams are often spread across different locations or time zones, managing all communication face-to-face isn’t possible.

And even for in-office teams, in-person communication that doesn’t include a short summary of what was said in a centralized location can lead to misunderstandings.

This is why it’s a good idea to use project management tools. They can provide a centralized hub where team members can share information, files, and comments, ensuring that everyone stays aligned.

The ability to access updates at all times also means that team members that join the project retroactively will be able to get relevant information on past tasks.

Software that can also incorporate client communication with a portal can be very handy for businesses that work closely with clients on projects.

Managing tasks effectively is crucial for the success of any project.
Instead of writing down notes or handling deadlines and timelines on sheets, software can help streamline this process.

It allows teams to break projects into smaller, more manageable chunks, assign responsibilities, and set deadlines. With clearly defined roles and priorities, team members can focus on their individual contributions without confusion or overlap.

Visual tools such as Kanban boards or Gantt charts further improve task management by providing a clear view of workflows and timelines.

These features make it easy to monitor progress, identify potential delays, and adjust plans as needed. The structured approach offered by project management software ensures that all tasks are accounted for and that projects remain on track.

Software for project managers helps teams work more efficiently by automating repetitive tasks and simplifying workflows.

Features such as automated reminders, recurring task creation, and integrations with other tools reduce the administrative burden on team members. This allows them to dedicate more time to strategic and creative tasks that drive success.

Many tools also include time-tracking features, which provide valuable insights into how time is spent across different activities. This data can be used to identify inefficiencies, allocate resources more effectively, and optimize overall workflows.

Efficient resource allocation can be a lifesaver for larger businesses that need to manage resources for multiple projects.

The best project management tool can support businesses with scheduling based on team skills, availability, and workload. This prevents issues such as overburdening certain individuals or underutilizing others.

Budget management is another area where software for project management proves invaluable. Many platforms include expense-tracking features that provide real-time visibility into financial performance.

This helps organizations avoid budget overruns and ensures that resources are used appropriately. With advanced analytics and forecasting capabilities, teams can plan for future resource needs and minimize potential bottlenecks.

While Excel sheets are useful, it’s difficult to manually manage your reporting and get visual overviews that the entire team can understand.

Project management platforms offer real-time reporting and analytics, giving managers an accurate overview of progress and performance.

These tools track key performance indicators (KPIs) and provide insights into trends, enabling teams to identify risks early and make proactive adjustments.

Customizable dashboards allow organizations to create visual interfaces with reports that matter the most for driving real progress, ensuring that decisions are aligned with strategic goals.

This also supports risk management, as it can help a project manager and analysts identify and resolve issues on time.

The ability to generate detailed reports also simplifies stakeholder communication, as it provides a professional way to present project status.

Project management software is not just beneficial for internal teams—it also improves engagement with clients and stakeholders.

By providing shared dashboards and regular updates, software can help promote transparency and trust.

Clients can track project progress in real time, reducing the need for frequent status meetings and ensuring they remain informed.

The collaborative nature of these tools makes it easier to incorporate client feedback seamlessly into workflows. Organizations that use software in project management often enjoy improved client satisfaction, which leads to better overall outcomes.

To illustrate the benefits mentioned above, here are some user stories from different types of companies that use Productive as their software for managing projects:

Project management software is looking more and more towards automation and artificial intelligence for bringing more value to their users.

The goal of increasing automation is streamlining routine tasks like task assignments, progress updates, and reminders. On the other hand, AI can enhance decision-making by analyzing historical data to predict risks and suggest optimizations.

Additionally, features such as AI-driven recommendations for task prioritization and resource planning can help teams get the insights they need to optimize their performance without manually crunching their data.

Another notable innovation is seen in AI chatbots, which can provide efficient support at all times of the day, and use the vendor’s knowledge base to provide answers.

Overall, the main focus is on reducing human error and helping businesses fully optimize their processes.

To make the right decision on your best project management tool, you’ll need to consider all of the factors we’ve mentioned above.

Then, there are some specific questions you’ll need answers to:

Check out our detailed guide on choosing project management software to learn more.

In this article, we’ve covered all of the basics of finding the right tool for your business.

Depending on your specific criteria, there are many different options to consider, from basic tools for collaboration and visual work organization, to more robust options that help manage strategic business concerns.

The right tool can streamline processes, improve collaboration, enhance productivity, and provide valuable insights to support strategic decision-making in your business.

Here’s a quick overview of some of the solutions we’ve covered:

With Productive, you can get a single platform for managing everything from tasks and projects to finances and resources. Book a demo with Productive today to learn more.

1. Does Office 365 have a project planner?

Yes, Office 365 includes Microsoft Planner, a task management tool designed for team collaboration, where you can create plans, assign tasks, and track progress through visual dashboards.

2. Is Microsoft Excel a project management software?

No, Microsoft Excel is not a dedicated project management software, but it is often used for project management tasks like creating timelines, tracking progress, and managing budgets due to its flexibility and customizable features.

3. Is Notion a project management tool?

Yes, Notion can be considered a project management tool, though it’s more often described as a knowledge management tool due to its features for data organization and customizable dashboards.