List of the Best Project Management Software With CRM Features

Project management software with CRM are integrated solutions for managing client relationships and project timelines.

In this article, we’ll explore both all-in-one solutions, as well as popular business applications that can be integrated for unified workflows.

Productive is one of the best integrated options for project tracking and CRM in professional services companies.

It’s designed specifically to support project work, teams, clients, and overall agency workflows — including budgeting and resource planning.

The biggest benefit of using Productive is being able to manage all key operations in one platform, which supports efficiency and provides more reliable data.

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

Productive’s Sales CRM feature combines multiple useful functionalities for sales teams.

This includes:

Once you’ve won a deal, you can start managing your project from start to finish with the Project Management feature.

For an overview of your project, you can switch between multiple project views. Productive includes Kanban boards, Gantt chart, Calendar, List, Workload view, and more.

Each individual task can also be expanded with subtasks, to-dos, and dependencies. You can set priorities, assign team members, estimate completion time and deadlines, and add other custom fields for more project details.

With the Client Portal, you can also invite and collaborate with clients in the platform.

Productive also includes a Time Tracking feature, so you can run a timer directly from your tasks, or create your entries manually.

Other useful features include Automations for automated workflows and the Permission Builder for defining user roles and permissions.

With Productive’s Resource Planning, you can get a high-level overview of your project progress by focusing on your employees.

Create bookings for team members based on their working hours, holidays, time off, and previous bookings.

Optimize resource allocation on ongoing projects by getting a quick overview of who can be scheduled for more work, and who is overburdened.

You can also create bookings for unconfirmed projects with tentative bookings. This can be useful if you think you’re winning a sales deal, and you want to get ahead of your planning.

Alongside your projects and sales processes, Productive also supports financial management.

With Budgeting, you can define employee billable rates and bundle your services into agency rate cards.

This data is then used to create proposals for potential clients, and later for building and managing project budgets.

Productive supports budgets of various types, including fixed-price, T&M, retainer, and hybrid. You can also manage your Billing from the platform, or use the Xero or QuickBooks integrations and manage invoices from there.

Budgeting is also integrated with Resource Planning, which means that you can monitor and forecast your key financial metrics: revenue, profit, and budget burn.

Forecasting works by using your resource scheduling to predict how your project will perform in real time. When you update your resource planner, you can immediately view the impact of your changes.

Finally, as an all-in-one platform, Productive uses data from various activities to create visual reports. This includes bugeting, time tracking, sales, resource management, etc.

With Reporting, you can create your report by using one of the 50+ agency-focused templates, or create your own from scratch.

Productive offers various advanced features for customizing your reports: you can filter and group data, add custom fields, and even create custom formulas.

When you’re ready to share your report, you can create dashboards and add elements with widgets, or use Productive’s Pulse to automate your sending at specific time periods.

Additional features: Time Off Management, Revenue Recognition, Purchase Orders, Docs, Productive AI

Productive offers various integrations with HR, accounting, and collaboration tools.

Integrations include Slack, Google Calendar, and Outlook for scheduling and updates; Xero and QuickBooks for accounting; BambooHR, Breathe, and SAP for HRM; Jira and Memtime for time tracking; and more.

HubSpot is a popular CRM software solution, but isn’t intended to be used as a project management tool.

It’s best integrated or combined with another project management platform.

Key features:

Pros: HubSpot is a staple tool among marketing and sales teams in mid-sized to larger businesses. It offers a range of features for supporting marketing automation and sales processes.

Cons: HubSpot may not be worth for smaller teams and businesses that don’t need its comprehensive CRM features. Additionally, you’ll need to use a separate collaboration tool for project management— Productive offers a handy HubSpot integration you can check out.

Source: Reddit

Flowlu is a good CRM with project management, but it lacks resource planning functionalities and is led by a small team, which can impact development speed.

Key features:

Pros: You can get a range of features for customer relationships and project progress management at a fair price.

Cons: Since it’s developed by a smaller team based in Russia, its potential to scale and speed of development is likely slower than with more well-known solutions with 100+ developer teams.

Nimble is a great pick if you’re looking for a CRM-focused solution with lightweight project management capabilities, but it’s not a fully fledged project management application.

Key features:

Pros: Users report that Nimble is a great option for data enrichment and contact management.

Cons: It offers a single pricing tier, which might be pricy for certain teams. On the other hand, it’s not as suitable as a CRM for larger companies, as HubSpot or Salesforce offer more comprehensive features.

Source: Paraphrased from G2

Scoro is a solid all-in-one project management solution with CRM features, but its task management features can be unintuitive for some teams.

Key features:

Pros: As one of the top Productive alternatives, Scoro has a fairly exhaustive list of features for agency management.

Cons: Some users have difficulties with how Scoro treats project tasks — there’s a task bundle feature for creating a task with dependencies, but it can be unintuitive.

Source: G2

For team collaboration, you can consider some Scoro alternatives, or check our comparison of Scoro vs Accelo vs Productive.

Teamwork is a good choice for managing your business processes, but its CRM and Desk products are separate tools.

Key features:

Pros: Teamwork is a well-known software for project planning and collaboration, and project teams looking for these functionalities won’t be disappointed.

Cons: Teamwork’s CRM and customer support tool are separate products that need to be purchased additionally, so it’s not a true all-in-one integrated option.

To learn more about Teamwork, check out our in-depth comparison of Teamwork vs Wrike vs Productive.

Zoho offers a suite of products for customer relationships, sales processes, and project status management, but can be overwhelming or unnecessary for certain businesses.

Key features:

Pros: Zoho offers a very wide range of features and can serve as a single source of truth for various business operations.

Cons: While Zoho One integrates multiple applications for business owners, the pricing can be inaccessible, and certain teams might not need all the project management apps included. It can also be difficult to learn to use to its full potential.

Source: Reddit

Like Teamwork, Monday offers a separate CRM solution that can be integrated with Monday work management, which can be more expensive and less user friendly than a unified platform.

Key features:

Pros: Monday has a lot of use cases and can be used effectively across a variety of industries and business types and sizes — it’s a very solid work management tool.

Cons: Similarly to other modular solutions like Teamwork, it can be difficult and time-consuming to make two different products work together, even when they belong to the same vendor.

Find out more about how Monday work OS compares to similar project management apps: Monday vs Trello vs Asana vs ClickUp.

Bitrix24 is a single platform for CRM and project management, but it has overall low user rating on Capterra, mainly due to user experience and performance issues.

Key features:

Pros: Bitrix24 fits the bill as a unified platform that can handle client work and the end-to-end sales process.

Cons: Users report mutiple issues with the software on Capterra, including a cluttered interface, slow loading times, and lacking reporting options.

Source: Capterra

Check out some Bitrix24 alternatives to find a more modern solution.

Trello isn’t a CRM platform in any shape or form, but it’s a user-friendly option that can be used for sales team collaboration with the right templates and powerups.

Key features:

Pros: Users of all levels of experience enjoy using Trello due to its simplicity and visual design.

Cons: It’s the most lightweight solution on the list, and the customer service and relationship features it has are workarounds, rather than a fully fledged functionality.

Learn how Trello compares to other visual project management software: Trello or Asana or Jira.

CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is focused on on managing customer relationships.

CRM for agencies mainly include sales pipeline management, creating and sending proposals, contact management, sales team scheduling, collaboration, and performance management.

There are also marketing CRM tools, which offer email marketing, automation, marketing campaign management, lead capturing, and more — learn more about software for marketing.

Project management software is focused on supporting the end-to-end project management process.

It includes collaboration features, task management, visualizing project progress, financial management and invoicing, reporting, and other features that support project teams and clients.

Both of these tools are important for professional services companies.

CRMs with project management are hybrid tools that combine the functionalities of both systems. We can distinguish them as tools that primarily offer CRM features with lightweight project management capabilities, and vice versa.

Additionally, there are options that provide a unified platform with a seamless integration of these features into one. An example of this type of tool is Productive.

Alternatively, some vendors offer them as distinct products that can be purchased separately but work with each other to certain degrees. An example of this type of tool is HubSpot or Monday.com.

Some benefits of using CRM for project management solutions include:

To summarize, here are some things you should consider when finding your CRM forproject management:

If you’re looking for a tool with robust project management functionalities and lightweight CRM features in one platform, modern design and out-of-the-box functionalities, Productive is a great choice.

Book a demo today to learn more.

How are CRMs and project management CRMs different?

Standard CRMs focus on managing customer relationships, sales processes, and marketing automation, whereas project management CRMs offer additional features to handle project workflows like task assignments, timelines, and team collaboration.

What are some best CRM software options?

Some top CRM software options include HubSpot, Salesforce, Freshsales, and Pipedrive. For businesses interested in integrated sales funnel and team collaboration tool, Productive is a great option.

Can you integrate CRM software with project management tools?


Yes, some project management solutions and CRM software offer one or two-way integrations. For example, Productive offers a HubSpot integration for syncing deals, companies, and contacts from HubSpot to Productive.

Which businesses benefit most from project management CRM tools?

Project management CRM tools support both customer-centric and project-heavy workflows. This usually includes different types of agencies that prospect new clients and deliver projects, such as marketing and digital agencies, consulting firms, production companies, and software development companies.

What features to look for in CRM project management?

Some key features of CRM project management software include sales pipeline management, sales team collaboration and scheduling, contact management, task and project tracking, time management, and advanced reporting.

What are free CRM project management software examples?

Some free project management software with integrated customer relationship management features include Bitrix24, Flowlu, and Trello.