Categories   >   Task Management Software
Last Reviewed: November 26th, 2024

Best Task Management Software Of 2024

What is Task Management Software?

Task Management Software is a tool designed to simplify project organization, streamline workflow, and promote team collaboration. It aims to mitigate common issues such as task overload, disorganization, and missed deadlines. The software is essential in enhancing productivity by ensuring tasks are prioritized, delegated, and tracked to completion. Its key features typically include task creation, assignment, prioritization, status updates, and progress tracking. User-friendly interfaces and integrations with other systems are emerging features making this software more versatile. Industries such as marketing, software development, and event planning significantly benefit since task organization is crucial to their operation. Possible limitations may include the effort needed for setting up, learning curve for complex systems, and potential over-dependency. Overall, Task Management Software cultivates a structured work environment, fostering efficiency, improving team communication, and ultimately driving business success.

What Are The Key Benefits of Task Management Software?

  • Improves task organization
  • Enhances team productivity
  • Promotes team collaboration
  • Streamlines workflow processes
  • Facilitates task prioritization
  • Ensures deadline tracking
  • Enhances communication efficiency
  • Integrates with other systems
  • Simplifies project delegation
  • Accessible work overview
Read more

Overall

Based on the latest available data collected by SelectHub for 87 solutions, we determined the following solutions are the best Task Management Software overall:

Wrike
Wrike
Start Price
$9.80
Per User, Monthly
Company Size
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Deployment
Cloud On-Premise
Platform
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Why We Picked Wrike

Wrike, a cloud-based project management platform, has attracted significant attention for its comprehensive features and ability to streamline workflows. Users frequently highlight its intuitive interface, robust functionality, and scalability as key strengths. The platform's customizability empowers teams to tailor their project management processes to their specific needs, enhancing efficiency and productivity. Wrike's Gantt charts, for instance, provide a clear visual representation of project timelines and dependencies, enabling project managers to track progress and identify potential bottlenecks. Additionally, Wrike's automation capabilities, such as automated workflows and custom request forms, free up valuable time for teams to focus on high-impact tasks.

However, some users note that Wrike's extensive features can lead to a steeper learning curve compared to simpler project management tools. Navigating the interface and discovering all the functionalities may require some initial investment of time and effort. Additionally, while Wrike offers various pricing plans to accommodate different team sizes and requirements, some users find the cost to be relatively high compared to other options in the market. Despite these considerations, Wrike remains a popular choice for teams seeking a powerful and versatile project management solution. Its ability to adapt to diverse workflows, coupled with its robust features and scalability, makes it particularly well-suited for larger teams and organizations with complex project requirements. Wrike's comprehensive reporting and analytics capabilities further enhance its value proposition, providing valuable insights into team performance and project progress.

Pros & Cons

  • User-Friendly Interface: Approximately 60% of users mention Wrike’s user-friendly interface and features in addition to easy installation.
  • Collaboration: According to 90% of users, it's easy to share files and collaborate with internal and external team members, stakeholders and business partners.
  • Support and Learning Materials: Wrike offers helpful customer support to help with implementation questions and any other concerns that arise as stated by 65% of users.
  • Customizable and Flexible: Approximately 75% of users say Wrike has a customizable and flexible system to fit their business needs.
  • Organization: There are plenty of folders and labels to keep files and projects organized, as reported by 85% of users.
  • Notifications: Wrike delivers various project notifications and alerts as stated by 61% of users.
  • Helpful Tools: Approximately 71% of users appreciate Wrike's various dashboards, Gantt charts, reports and other distinct modules.
  • Steep Learning Curve: Of the users who describe Wrike's user interface, 39% say the interface has a steep learning curve and is hard to understand.
  • Training: Approximately 35% of users iterate that implementation training and support is available but is difficult to learn.
  • Alerts: Of the users who discuss Wrike's alerts and notifications, 38% of them say there's no way to adjust how many they receive.

Key Features

  • Gantt Charts: Zoom out to see the full view of a project’s tasks, dependencies, timeline and scope. The drag-and-drop interface makes it easy to adjust task dates and add dependencies. It’s also easy to toggle between different views (day, week, month, etc.). Wrike facilitates data transfer for users switching from Microsoft Project, ensuring all elements are imported for MPP, MPX and XML formats. 
  • Task Management: Wrike brings together all aspects of your project — tasks, schedules and team communications — into a single location for more efficient project management. The platform connects with Gmail, Apple Mail and Outlook, allowing you to manage tasks directly from your inbox. It also facilitates time tracking and reporting. 
  • Project Templates: A range of pre-built templates allow teams to start with key elements already in place. Specific template types include agile teamwork, project scheduling, event management, product launches, Kanban projects, ticketing and helpdesk, sprint planning, and product roadmaps. 
  • Reports: Wrike offers reporting capabilities to users with business and enterprise accounts. The report builder takes you through the four-stage process of creating a report, with inputs for type, source data, filters and layout (table or column). Report topics include weekly project status, unassigned tasks, active tasks by assignee and others. 
  • Wrike Resource (premium add-on): This feature provides resource management and is available with Business, Wrike for Marketers and Enterprise plans. A visual, intuitive interface facilitates workload planning and changes, providing full visibility of team performance. You can also customize resource utilization analytics tools to track KPIs for better insight. 
  • Wrike Proof (premium add-on): Streamline feedback processes and review cycles with visual tools and a centralized system that keeps version control in check. You can assign approvers internally as well as invite external reviewers. The software also connects with Adobe Creative Cloud tools, letting creatives review feedback and make updates from the app they work in. 
  • Wrike Lock (premium add-on): Wrike provides cloud security and privacy with encryption keys. Both your data and the keys are encrypted, letting you determine who can access and edit the information stored on the platform. You have full control over the individual keys via a master key that’s stored by the Key Management Service from AWS. 
  • Wrike Publish (premium add-on): This feature enables digital asset management (DAM). Integrations with DAM platforms provide a range of capabilities, including stakeholder collaboration and file proofing. You can also attach files to tasks, quickly search your workspace for the right asset and gain brand consistency across campaigns. 
Asana
Asana
Start Price
$10.99
Per User, Monthly
Company Size
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Deployment
Cloud On-Premise
Platform
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Why We Picked Asana

Asana is a work management platform designed to help users organize and streamline operations with a user-friendly, customizable interface, automation and AI. Key features include the ability to create custom fields, deadlines, and subtasks, utilize various project views like Kanban boards and timelines, and leverage AI for summarizing tasks and drafting workflows. During my test of the software, I liked how easy it was to create a task by email and create project and task summaries using their AI tool.

Customization was also a win. I built a task template for my Content Creation project with custom fields, relative due dates, assignees and a bulleted checklist. However, head’s up, adding task templates to existing tasks requires creating a new task with the template and merging it. Hands down, workflow management was one of my favorite parts of testing Asana. Adding in new sections (without having to go to the list view) and creating custom rules for transitions with a little help from their version of prompts was a breeze.

Collaboration is another plus, with in-card comments and mentions, an inbox, group and individual messaging in platform and guest accounts with custom permissions for external users.

On the downside, if you don’t have access to a free trial of the paid version (like I did), the free version may not be as effective. You won’t be able to access AI features, certain project views and resource management. The setup also isn’t exactly intuitive, and you may need training plus multiple visits to the help center to conceptualize your project and pick the right template.

Overall, Asana is a fantastic all-in-one project management solution for users looking for a flexible tool with AI assistance and don’t mind springing for one of the paid plans.

Pros & Cons

  • User Friendly: Reviewers appreciated that the system is easy to use and intuitive with a clean UI, even if you’re new to projects.
  • Overall Functionality: Workflows and automation, task management and collaboration are everything you’d look for in a project management system, according to users.
  • Customization: Users liked the customization options for unique team needs, projects and workflows.
  • >Cost: Users mentioned Asana’s paid plans were too expensive for smaller businesses making it difficult to upgrade from the limited free version.
  • Set-Up: Getting started can be overwhelming with so many customizations and task options. Users said you may need extra time to implement it effectively.
  • Advanced Features: Reviewers noted some features like AI, advanced project views, resource management and multiple task assignees require expensive plan upgrades.

Key Features

  • Task Management: Create tasks with custom fields, deadlines, tags, subtasks, dependencies and descriptions during setup, adding tasks to the section you want when you create your first project or forwarding an email to [email protected]. Save time by converting your custom tasks into a template you can apply to new tasks and using AI to summarize tasks and draft subtasks. Switch between list, board, timeline, calendar and Gantt views to optimize visualization and drag-and-drop tasks between sections.
  • Project Planning and Scheduling: Kick your projects off with a plethora of templates ranging from product rollouts to hiring pipelines, or import your project from a spreadsheet. Convert tasks into milestones on the card and add details about why it’s a milestone. Add tasks to multiple projects and organize strategic initiatives by creating a portfolio where you can track the updates of all your projects.
  • Resource Management: Keep track of what’s on everyone’s plate by switching to the workload view. Drag and drop tasks to manage timelines and assignees and assign custom values like hours or points to tasks to accurately factor in employee effort.
  • Sprint Management: Hit the ground running by applying the sprint template to a new project. Add custom fields, use the timeline tab to map out sprint tasks and deadlines and set start and finish dates in the project view.
  • Collaboration Features: Add updates, questions and notes into the description. Comment on cards with mentions, files, lists, code blocks and even AI assists. Send messages directly to individuals or teams using the inbox. Keep your clients in the loop by creating guest accounts and sharing specific tasks and projects with them.
  • Reports and Insights: Tap into a bird’s eye view of your project by clicking on the dashboard tab where you can monitor overdue, complete and incomplete tasks and burnup charts and create custom charts with their AI tool. Visit the reporting tab to view trends, progress, resourcing and work health.
  • Custom Automations and Workflows: Build a workflow that’s a perfect fit for your project in the workflow tab by adding sections for each step in the process with custom transitions and rules when tasks are moved. Add custom automations and rules from scratch, use the options provided as a starting point or get a helping hand from the AI studio. Check out the automations we built in depth below.
Jira
Jira
Start Price
$10
Per User, Monthly
Company Size
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Deployment
Cloud On-Premise
Platform
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Why We Picked Jira

Jira is an agile-based project management platform that caters to a vast range of industries thanks to its all-in-one functionality, customization and flexibility. It allows users to fully customize workflows, issue types, fields and automations.

After watching a few tutorials, I personally found it quite simple to create my own projects using the templates and modifying it to meet my needs. Although some of the automation actions and issues have some programming language involved, it’s not a huge roadblock and I created and tested multiple automations successfully.

Task (or issue) management was on point, with multiple views, custom workflows, task assignment, in-card collaboration and time tracking and custom fields. It offered comprehensive (but not overly advanced) reports and a helpful summary dashboard.

Sprints were intuitive and easy to execute, and I especially appreciated the drag-and-drop feature for planning. Some users mentioned a learning curve, and I would agree, as I relied on videos to guide me through some parts of the setup lest this test take weeks not days.

Overall, Jira is a match made in heaven for agile enthusiasts and users who want a flexible, customizable project management platform and don’t mind getting into the weeds with learning courses and tutorials.

Pros & Cons

  • Functionality: Users appreciated the ability to customize workflows, issue types and fields and the flexibility to navigate complex projects and problem-solve.
  • Collaborative: The system helps users collaborate with other teams, projects, and stakeholders and efficiently bridges gaps between remote teams, noted reviewers.
  • Integrations: Reviewers liked the extensive integrations with most third-party modules like Slack, Bitbucket and more to complete workflows and processes.

What Users Like

  • Customization: “We were able to tailor the workflow to fit our specific needs, which greatly enhanced our efficiency. For instance, we created custom issue types that aligned with our unique project phases, making it easier for team members to understand their tasks at a glance.” - Balázs Keszthelyi, Founder and CEO at TechnoLynx
  • Project Visualization: “[Jira’s robust roadmapping and dependency tracking capabilities are] invaluable for coordinating multiple product launches. Also, the premium version's Advanced Roadmaps feature lets us visualize our entire product pipeline so that's from sourcing to launch, but you've got to invest time in learning the system, and I think for smaller operations, it might be overkill.” - Dennis Sanders, Founder and CEO of Burning Daily
  • Task Management: “Jira has given us the structure to break down our complex workflows into clear, manageable steps, which was exactly what we needed as we expanded our customer base. With Jira, we can create specific 'boards' for each client’s SEO campaign, where every task is detailed and assigned to the right team member. Each board has phases, like keyword research, content writing, and on-page optimization, with clear deadlines. Having this setup has helped us catch any bottlenecks early. If the content team takes longer to deliver, for instance, we can adjust the timeline for the next steps right away instead of rushing it.” - Mushfiq Sarker, CEO of LaGrande Marketing
  • Lags: Reviewers noted that the system sometimes lags and takes time to load, especially for multiple projects and large data sets.
  • Learning Curve: Its UX can feel complex, and it takes time to set up, customize and use to its full ability. An internal Jira expert may be required, according to some users.
  • Administration: Users mentioned that the system is difficult to administer, and its back-end is hard to manage.

What Users Dislike

  • Slow Loading Time: “Its interface moves like molasses.” - Dennis Sanders, Founder and CEO of Burning Daily
  • Learning Curve: “We had some initial challenges with team members who were not familiar with the platform, which required additional training sessions to ensure everyone was on the same page. However, once they became accustomed to the interface, the benefits outweighed the initial hurdles.” - Balázs Keszthelyi, Founder and CEO at TechnoLynx

Key Features

  • Agile Boards: Manage your tasks, or issues using Scrum and Kanban boards with custom statuses, fields and transitions. Create new issues using the button below each status. You can view projects using a list, board or timeline view.
  • Reports and Insights: Get insights into where your team is at throughout every stage of the project by generating custom reports like the average age report, created vs. resolved issues report and sprint report. Manage workloads with the time tracking report, user workload report and version workload report. Use the summary view to monitor activity, status overview, priority breakdown and related projects.
  • Collaboration Features: Communicate with team members and assignees directly on the issue card with comments and mentions. Attach files, view card activity and add descriptions for additional instructions. Integrate with Outlook, Slack and other communication tools.
  • Custom Automations: Build custom automation rules by setting a trigger with the option to add an action, a condition or a branch. Get a helping hand by searching for triggers related to what you want to automate and selecting recommended actions and conditions.
  • Sprint Management: Use the Scrum option to run sprints. Fill in project details like name, duration and scope and add tasks and drag and drop them to your sprint using the backlog. Complete your sprints and auto-add pending tasks to the backlog or to a new sprint and run a sprint report for insights.
  • Task Management: Manage tasks by creating customizable issue cards under each status or by importing issues from CSV files. Add assignees, due dates, time tracking, comments, descriptions, teams, labels, status and priority to issues. Move tasks from status to status using transitions and workflow automation.
  • Customizable Workflows: Create custom workflows for your tasks and subtasks by going to project settings and clicking on issue types. Set statuses based on the type of task you’re completing or from the project template you select. Automate actions by setting rules for transitions from one status to another.
monday.com
monday.com
Start Price
$9
Per User, Monthly
Company Size
Small Medium Large
Deployment
Cloud On-Premise
Platform
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Why We Picked monday.com

monday.com is a cloud-based project management platform that caters to a wide range of industries thanks to its customization, user-friendly interface and templates. It allows users to build boards from templates or from scratch and view projects through multiple views like list, calendar, Ganntt and Kanban. During our test, we enjoyed using the platform's pre-built templates and drag-and-drop feature to set up projects and reorganize tasks.

Its task management features are stellar. We liked how easy it is to custom groups for tasks, assign them to specific team members, and leverage various communication tools like comments, mentions and board discussions. The updates feature means everyone is on the same page and the view option boosts accountability. On the automation front, we successfully used the built-in automation engine, which comes with both pre-made templates and no-code customization options, to build a custom automation for status changes with little to no difficulty.

On the flip side, monday.com may have a slight learning curve for users who aren’t familiar with project management tools. Additionally, some advanced features, such as custom notifications and time tracking, require upgrading to a higher pricing tier, which could become expensive for larger teams.

All in all, we thought monday’s intuitive interface, customization options and no-code automations make it a great option for users without a ton of technical expertise and a flexible budget.

Pros & Cons

  • Task Management: Users appreciated how easy it is to monitor tasks with customized views, an activity feed and task updates.
  • Collaboration: Instant messaging, integrations, board discussions and easy scheduling and planning were a plus for reviewers.
  • User-Friendly: Reviewers said it was simple to set up and use for less tech-savvy users, and liked the attractive, colorful interface with helpful templates.

What Users Like

  • Project Tracking: "The ability to customize columns and task dependencies lets us create a clear, tailored workflow." - Jeffery Zhou, CEO and Founder of Fig Loans
  • Interface: "The timeline and calendar views were particularly useful when we had multiple projects running alongside each other, helping everyone stay aligned without a lot of back-and-forth." - Rob Stevenson, Founder of BackupVault
  • Notifications: “The automation features were especially useful in notifying different people responsible at different steps of the journey while maintaining transparency and accountability with the rest of the team and building a frictionless and trust-based culture.” - Alok Jain, CEO of Reveal
  • Cost: Reviewers noted that advanced features like customized notifications or time tracking required a plan upgrade which could become expensive.
  • Learning Curve: It takes time to get used to the navigation and features according to users.
  • Mobile App: Some users said the mobile app doesn’t have all the features available.

What Users Dislike

  • Complexity: “[monday.com] lacked some flexibility in handling complex, multi-step tasks that needed a lot of customization, which sometimes left us manually tracking those details elsewhere.” - Rob Stevenson, Founder of BackupVault
  • Time-Based Automations: “Creating an automation to notify a user three days after a certain date, for example, was more complex than it needed to be. We had to set up custom date columns to drive these instead of just being able to calculate it as a part of automation.” - Alok Jain, CEO of Reveal

Key Features

  • Custom Dashboard: Build your own custom dashboard using built-in widgets and third-party integrations. Get a bird’s eye view of your boards and teams along with individual team member and board views. Monitor workload, timelines, feed activity and custom charts, like in-progress tasks, from a central location.
  • Multiple Views: Toggle between different views to track your projects using Gantt charts, Kanban boards, calendar views, project reports and custom filters like task owner, status and timeline.
  • Task Management: Create tasks under custom groups like To-Do, In-Progress, On-Hold, and Complete and add personalized fields, assignees, due dates, labels, statuses and priorities. Mention assignees, add comments, files, links and tables directly in the tasks using the Updates tab. Drag and drop tasks and groups to reorganize things.
  • Automations: Streamline workflows with no-code automations using templates or building custom automations from scratch using conditions and actions. Apply automations to specific boards and save your custom automations as a template to use on other boards.
  • Templates: Create boards suited to your project needs by accessing the template center and choosing from a range of templates, including marketing, project management, sales and CRM, design, software development, and HR.
  • Workflow Management: Organize your processes by creating custom workflows. Search for the trigger you’re looking for and add it as a starting block. Build on those blocks by choosing from several options: action, if or else or delay. Select the board where you want the action to happen, add conditions and edit blocks. View active workflows and pause or edit workflows as processes change.
Smartsheet
Smartsheet
Start Price
$9
Per User, Monthly
Company Size
Small Medium Large
Deployment
Cloud On-Premise
Platform
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Why We Picked Smartsheet

Smartsheet is a cloud-based work management platform that helps users streamline and organize processes with a spreadsheet-esque interface, flexible templates, multiple views and team collaboration. Apart from the grid view, you can visualize projects using a Gantt chart, Kanban board, calendar view, card view or timeline view. No-code automations are another note-worthy feature, where you can build from templates or scratch.

It streamlines project creation with templates suited to different industries and end goals, so you have a jumping-off point instead of going in blind. Team collaboration is another area where Smartsheet shines, with comments, conversations and file and sheet sharing (even with people outside your organization). It also offers a customizable dashboard view, although I did find some of the chart widgets a little tricky to work, without training.

Highlights for me were definitely the familiarity of spreadsheet formatting (but with more views and automations), robust collaboration capabilities and guided explainers throughout the setup. However, user reviews noted limited filters and integrations, lags and expensive add-ons as downsides.

Overall, Smartsheet is a great option for teams familiar with spreadsheets but are on the lookout for more visualization and collaboration, along with the budget to spend on advanced features.

Pros & Cons

  • Automation: Reviewers appreciated the no-code automation and said that it helps to eliminate productivity killers and saves time.
  • Collaboration: Users liked the sharing option with level-based permissions that allow collaboration with non-users and help coworkers and external stakeholders stay up-to-date on projects and processes.
  • Ease of Use: A user-friendly interface and templates make it easy to set up, customize and access multiple views, according to reviewers.

What Users Like

  • Customization: “We can customize it to fit various projects, whether we’re tracking client cases, managing document revisions, or planning team tasks. For instance, I created a project tracker for a major client contract negotiation. The ability to set deadlines, assign tasks, and update statuses in real time has streamlined our communication and kept everyone on the same page.” - Russ Johnson, Founder of Linx Legal
  • Collaboration: “We had this one job in a high-rise condo that put Smartsheet to the test. The sliding door system was an older model with custom-sized panels that aren’t easy to source, and it needed specific adjustments due to the unique structure of the frame. Typically, coordinating the right parts, tools, and technician experience for something like this would require several phone calls and a lot of back-and-forth. With Smartsheet, we were able to set up the job details to track not only the special parts needed but also assign a technician who was experienced with that model. When the parts came in, the technician was notified directly through Smartsheet, so he knew the moment everything was ready. It saved us from potential delays and kept the customer fully updated on when the work could be done.” - Gal Cohen, Business Development Leader and Field Area Manager JDM Sliding Doors
  • System Integration: Limited integrations and complex configurations were an issue for reviewers.
  • Premium Add-Ons: Reviewers noted that advanced features come with a price tag that can be prohibitive for some businesses.
  • Slow Loading Time: Users reported it takes time to display screens export formats occasionally.

What Users Dislike

  • Integration: “Despite its many benefits, integrating Smartsheet with other systems posed some challenges. Initially, we experienced issues with data syncing between Smartsheet and our CRM software, leading to discrepancies in our financial reporting. Recognizing this, I allocated specific time for thorough testing before our full implementation, allowing us to identify and resolve any integration issues early on.” - Austin Rulfs, Founder of Zanda Wealth Mortgage Brokers
  • Learning Curve: “While Smartsheet is powerful, it can feel a bit overwhelming at first. I found that investing time in training sessions helped bridge that gap, making it easier for everyone to adapt and use the tool effectively.” - Russ Johnson, Founder of Linx Legal

Key Features

  • Dashboards and Reports: Customize your dashboard by adding widgets like reports, project-specific charts, shortcuts, images and text. Consolidate data from multiple sheets into a summary view using system reports. Track sheet changes using bi-directional functionality. Send reports via collaborative tools and change statuses to recur.
  • Multiple Views: View your tasks using the grid view, akin to a spreadsheet, a Gantt view as an add-on to your grid view, a Kanban board where you can drag and drop tasks and group them by assignee or status, a timeline view, a card view with customizable lanes and a calendar view that displays your tasks across its duration or by start dates only.
  • Task Management: Add your tasks and subtasks into each cell and use the indent and outdent buttons to divide tasks into groups that can be minimized to provide a project overview. Create or modify custom fields with your own text, dropdown lists and symbols to show status, assignees, priority, dates and latest comment. Attach files and proofs, write comments and mention users and set reminders for tasks.
  • Automations and Workflows: Save time with custom processes and workflows you can build by modifying templates for reminders and alerts, document generation, row changes, sheet changes and updates, and approval requests. Build your own workflow automations from scratch by choosing your trigger, setting conditions and adding actions. Manage automations by deactivating, deleting, duplicating or unsubscribing.
  • Templates: Use pre-built templates ranging from event management to HR workflows and marketing to streamline project creation. View complexity, task management and process before you apply a template. Build and save your own templates by customizing pre-built templates or creating them from scratch.
  • Integrations: Drive productivity with integrations like Office 365, Dropbox, DocuSign and Google Workspace and use iCal or Google Calendar to track project statuses.
  • Team Collaboration: Communicate with team members by commenting and mentioning users in individual tasks, adding files for additional information and chatting via the conversations tool where everyone with access to the sheet can see your comments. Integrate with Slack or Microsoft Teams to receive updates about your sheet and send messages to channels.
Microsoft Project
Microsoft Project
Start Price
$10
Per User, Monthly
Company Size
Small Medium Large
Deployment
Cloud On-Premise
Platform
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Why We Picked Microsoft Project

Microsoft Project remains a robust project management software, praised for its intuitive interface and comprehensive feature set. Users appreciate its Gantt charts, resource management capabilities, and integration with other Microsoft products. However, some find its advanced features overwhelming and its reporting capabilities limited compared to specialized project management tools.

Project differentiates itself with its ease of use and integration with the Microsoft ecosystem. Its intuitive interface makes it accessible to users of all skill levels, while its integration with tools like Microsoft Teams and SharePoint streamlines collaboration. These strengths make it an excellent choice for teams heavily reliant on Microsoft products.

Microsoft Project is best suited for small to medium-sized businesses and teams that prioritize ease of use and Microsoft integration. Its intuitive interface and comprehensive feature set make it a valuable tool for managing projects effectively, while its integration with other Microsoft products enhances collaboration and productivity.

Pros & Cons

  • User Friendly: The platform’s functionalities are intuitive and easy to use, as noted by approximately 80% of users who mention the system’s usability.
  • Project Scheduling: Approximately 81% of the users find its project scheduling capabilities helpful.
  • Feature-Rich: Approximately 81% of the users who mentioned features said the system provides everything required for proper project handling. It can handle complex projects, create Gantt charts, project timelines and reports.
  • Customization: Nearly 61% of users who mentioned customization said its customization options were helpful. It integrates with ClearQuest seamlessly and 67% of users find its integrations helpful.
  • Support: Support is responsive, knowledgeable and helpful, as reported by 100% of reviewers who mention support.
  • Templates: Approximately 80% of users who mentioned templates find them to be helpful as they display data in an organized manner.
  • Learning Curve: Nearly 96% of the users that mentioned accessibility think that the software has a steep learning curve.
  • Efficiency: About 72% of users that mentioned efficiency said the software improved their process optimization.
  • Collaboration: Close to 83% of the users who mention collaboration said that Project does not facilitate collaborative processes well.
  • Cost: Approximately 94% of the users who mention cost think that its price is prohibitive and that the software is very expensive for the features it offers.

Key Features

  • Resource Management: Set up teams for success by requesting resources. Heat maps help identify overworked or underused resources. Lets managers project usage, monitor progress and address issues using analytics.  
  • Portfolio Optimization: Models different scenarios using tools like analysis scatter charts. Weigh project proposals against strategic business drivers with organizational cost and resource constraints in mind. 
  • Reports: Offers a number of reports that include a dashboard, progress and cost that provide insight into project metrics. Individual reports include burndowns, project overviews, critical tasks, cash flow, earned value, late tasks and more. Create a customized report from four template types: blank, chart, table and comparison.  
  • BI Capability: Connect with business intelligence apps like Power BI Pro to gain visibility across portfolios. Supports data aggregation to gain comprehensive insights. 
  • Proposal Evaluation: Gather project ideas, use standardized processes to evaluate them and funnel project charters and business cases to management for review and approval.
OpenAir
OpenAir
Start Price
$399
Per User, Monthly
Company Size
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Deployment
Cloud On-Premise
Platform
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Why We Picked OpenAir

OpenAir, a project management software solution, has received positive feedback from users for its ability to streamline project management processes. Users appreciate its user-friendly interface, flexibility, and comprehensive features that enhance efficiency and organization. The software's task management, resource management, collaboration tools, and reporting capabilities have significantly improved project outcomes for many businesses.

Compared to similar products, OpenAir stands out due to its ease of use and adaptability to various project types and sizes. Users have highlighted its intuitive design, which allows for quick adoption and minimal training time. Additionally, OpenAir's flexibility enables businesses to customize workflows, dashboards, and reports to align with their specific needs. This adaptability is crucial for organizations with diverse project requirements and evolving processes.

OpenAir is well-suited for businesses of all sizes seeking to enhance their project management practices. Its scalability and comprehensive features make it an ideal choice for small teams, large enterprises, and everything in between. The software's ability to centralize project information, facilitate collaboration, and provide real-time insights empowers teams to make informed decisions, optimize resource allocation, and deliver projects on time and within budget.

Pros & Cons

  • User Friendly: The system is easy to use and intuitive, as noted by approximately 86% of users who mention the system’s usability.
  • Time Tracking and Expense Reports: Approximately 90% of the users reviewed think this feature increases their productivity and effectiveness.
  • Customization: Nearly 75% of the users reviewed find this feature to be quite robust.
  • Reporting: About 57% of the users reviewed find its reporting capabilities to be helpful and informative.
  • Support: Nearly 67% of the users reviewed think the support offered by OpenAir is helpful.
  • Cost: Nearly 100% of users who mentioned cost reported that OpenAir’s offerings were too expensive for smaller businesses or prohibitive.
  • Implementation: The physical implementation process misses the mark, and can be difficult according to 70% of reviewers who mention implementation.
  • Intuitive Interface: Nearly 65% of the users reviewed think that the interface is not intuitive and that administrative tools are limited.
  • Bugs: Approximately 100% of users that mentioned bugs or slowdowns think that the system is clunky and disrupts work.
  • Integration: Nearly 60% of the users who mention integration think that integration between OpenAir and NetSuite is not seamless. Also, Microsoft Projects importing is not smooth.

Key Features

  • Time Tracking: Customizes timesheet approvals by client and project, supports multi-level and project-based approvals and lets users track leave and vacation time. View who is in or out of the office to schedule meetings and appointments. Add notes and descriptions to each input, and sort time by billable and non-billable hours.  
  • Project Management: Users can view the complete status of a project to keep tasks on-track and reduce the potential for errors or incomplete deliverables. Develop “what if” project planning scenarios to adjust margins, billing rates, pricing and staffing. Also supports Gantt charts, project status summaries and exceptions reports.  
  • Reporting/Dashboard: Dashboards reflect KPIs on initial login. Present profit margins, resource utilization and projected vs. actual budgets as graphs to make development of actionable insights faster and easier. Build reports using drag-and-drop tools. 
  • Resource Management: View labor resource allocation and deploy staff members to different projects based on experience, skills, availability and more. using the resource management tool. Deploy labor resources from across the globe, attribute work back to the correct project teams and bill labor resources in the appropriate currency.  
  • Expense Tracking: Integrates with workflows like project accounting and invoicing to expedite the expense management cycle, including expense submission, approval and reporting. Expenses are tied directly to projects, eliminating confusion regarding where an expense came from and who should be billed.  
  • Invoicing: Supports multi-currency and multi-taxation requirements such as PST, VAT and GST. Manages finances from the time a bid is prepared to the time an internal charge-back is issued. Project profitability is tracked on a case-by-case basis due to the complexity of measuring ROI for diverse projects. Revenue recognition is conducted separately from project billing. 
Trello
Trello
Start Price
$5
Per User, Monthly
Company Size
Small Medium Large
Deployment
Cloud On-Premise
Platform
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Why We Picked Trello

Trello includes robust workflow management and organizational capabilities for users to efficiently manage a project lifecycle. Its intuitive UI and clean dashboards simplify task delegation and monitoring, along with streamlining workflows. Its collaborative tools foster team communication and information sharing, while flexible integration capabilities help complete workflows. However, it lacks enterprise-grade project management abilities and is not suitable to handle large projects that require bulk movements. Additionally, the system provides limited features in its basic plan, and its mobile application lacks several functionalities offered by the desktop version.

Pros & Cons

  • Functionality: Trello offers robust organizational tools that simplify task delegation and streamline workflows, as reported by nearly 88% of the users who mention the product’s functionality.
  • Easy to Use: The system is intuitive, user friendly and doesn’t require a steep learning curve to understand its features, as noted by approximately 82% of users who referred to its usability.
  • Collaborative: Approximately 79% of users who talked about collaboration noted that project collaborations are a breeze with Trello as it shares information with team members and clients in an organized manner while adding specific members to project cards.
  • Customizable: The system is highly customizable with numerous display choices and features to adapt to users’ requirements, as reported by nearly 74% of reviewers who referred to customization.
  • Scalability: Nearly 75% of reviewers who mention scalability note that it is cumbersome to scale the system to a company’s growing needs and cannot manage complex projects.
  • Cost: Trello offers limited functional and storage capabilities in its basic version, and advanced version requires per-user licensing, making it expensive for large teams, reported nearly 83% of users who mentioned cost.
  • Mobile Application: The system doesn’t perform well on mobile platforms, and its mobile application cannot perform all the functions of the desktop version, as reported by nearly 71% of users who mentioned mobile accessibility.
  • Installation: Trello is challenging to install and can overwhelm new users with its host of features, as reported by nearly 69% of users who talked about product set-up.

Key Features

  • Boards: Create multiple boards for different projects, workflows or other needs. Keep all related information organized in a single location. 
  • Cards: Build processes, follow progress and manage all aspects of a project. Foster collaboration and organization within teams. 
  • Task Management: Represent tasks on each card and move them through the workflow. Set up and manage task dependencies by creating checklists and linking associated cards to one another. 
  • Templates: Create real-world boards from the inspiration section for teams. Use pre-built or custom templates to create boards, lists or cards. 
  • Power-Ups: Integrate it with apps like Slack, Zapier, Google Drive, MailChimp, Salesforce, Dropbox, SurveyMonkey and Zendesk to complete workflows. Choose from over 130 modules for file management, reporting, automation and developer tools.
  • Mobile Apps: Access it through iOS and Android devices, including smartphones, iPads, smart watches and Kindle fire tablets. 
Zoho Projects
Zoho Projects
Start Price
$4
Per User, Monthly
Company Size
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Deployment
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Platform
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Why We Picked Zoho Projects

Zoho Projects offers comprehensive solutions for its customers to tackle multiple business needs with ease. Users have full control of their projects as they can manage every stage of project progress, allocate resources, manage tasks, record timesheets and automate workflow processes for standardization. It offers an extensive knowledge base and fosters team collaboration for efficient project completion. However, its UI is clunky and difficult to use, it requires a steep learning curve to make optimal use of its full capabilities, comes with limited features in its basic version and offers sluggish customer support.

Pros & Cons

  • Functionality: Zoho Projects offers robust tools to manage multiple business needs, including project management, resource allocation, efficient collaboration and timesheets, as reported by approximately 90% of the users who mention the product’s functionality.
  • Flexible: The system is highly flexible and can be configured for different purposes like marketing and other business requirements, noted nearly 85% of customers who talked about its flexibility.
  • Integrations: Approximately 75% of the reviewers who mentioned integrations observed that the solution offers multiple APIs and seamless integration with other Zoho suite products and popular external modules for project planning and implementation.
  • Centralized Communication: The system centralizes all project communication between teams, which makes it easy to search and fix issues, noted nearly 72% of the users who talked about its communication capabilities.
  • Not Intuitive: The system is not user-friendly with a clunky and unintuitive UI compared to its competitors, reported 88% of reviewers who mentioned the system’s usability.
  • Cost: Nearly 92% of the users who mentioned cost remarked that Zoho Projects is expensive for small teams looking for more features on a limited budget, doesn’t offer options to customize functionality and its package price is a costly investment for bigger teams with more users.
  • Data and Reporting: Data generated by the system is difficult to comprehend, and it doesn’t allow report customization using different fields and visuals, observed by about 86% of customers who mentioned reporting.
  • Support: Customer support is slow and doesn’t offer enough support documentation or tutorial videos to exploit the system’s capabilities fully, noted 80% of reviewers who talked about support.

Key Features

  • Task Management: Control important task details, add important information such as priority or duration with tasks and subtasks. Link tasks to create dependencies. Highlight each project phase with milestones. Organize tasks using drag-and-drop Kanban boards and custom layouts. 
  • Social Project Management: Communicate and collaborate for effective project management. Create public or private chat rooms, pages for team knowledge base and forums to engage in discussion. Centralize project updates with feeds. Create new posts while adding comments to existing posts. 
  • Charts and Reports: View project details and metrics using a variety of charts. Get a high-level view of project tasks and dependencies through Gantt charts while resource utilization charts break down each team member’s workload by day. Gain insights into project performance across a wide range of KPIs with over 50 out-of-the-box reports and dashboards. 
  • Time Tracking: Let employees log their hours on a timesheet automatically or manually while allowing managers to view reports based on personnel, time or project. Transform a timesheet to an invoice with a few simple steps. Compare the expected task duration with the actual time spent on a task. Track each member’s availability, issues and milestones using calendar views. 
  • Issue Tracking: Report issues with all the relevant details and assign them for attention. Importing issues in bulk keeps them all in one place, and you can then export them as an XLS or CSV file. Track all issues according to criteria using filtered views. View committed changes with all changeset details included. 

COMPARE THE BEST Task Management Software

Select up to 2 Products from the list below to compare

 
Product
Score
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SelectHub’s Analyst Rating is based on data from our 400+ point analysis of Task Management Software, user reviews, and our own crowd-sourced data from our free software selection platform. Scores are periodically updated via ongoing selection projects and user activity within our platform.
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Wrike
$9.80
Per User, Monthly
Yes
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Wrike
Asana
$10.99
Per User, Monthly
Yes
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Cloud On-Premise
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Asana
Jira
$10
Per User, Monthly
Yes
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Cloud On-Premise
Mac Windows Linux Chromebook Android
Jira
monday.com
$9
Per User, Monthly
Yes
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Cloud On-Premise
Mac Windows Linux Chromebook Android
monday.com
Smartsheet
$9
Per User, Monthly
Yes
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Cloud On-Premise
Mac Windows Linux Chromebook Android
Smartsheet
Microsoft Project
$10
Per User, Monthly
Yes
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Cloud On-Premise
Mac Windows Linux Chromebook Android
Microsoft Project
OpenAir
$399
Per User, Monthly
No
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Mac Windows Linux Chromebook Android
OpenAir
Trello
$5
Per User, Monthly
Yes
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Cloud On-Premise
Mac Windows Linux Chromebook Android
Trello
Zoho Projects
$4
Per User, Monthly
Yes
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Mac Windows Linux Chromebook Android
Zoho Projects
Mavenlink
$45
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Yes
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Mavenlink

All Task Management Software (87 found)

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Infolio

by Infolio
Infolio
Infolio is a rising software platform that ranks 81 among all Task Management Software according to our research analysts and 9 crowd-sourced reviews from 2 sources. Starting from $4.99, Infolio is priced for those with smaller budgets, has offered a free trial in the past and is most fitting for small-to-mid-sized businesses with less than 1000 employees. Infolio can be deployed in the cloud. Similar alternatives to Infolio include TaskQue, BizApp and Checkvist.
User Sentiment User satisfaction level icon: excellent
Cost Breakdown
$10 or less
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Deployment
Cloud On-Premise
Platform
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Intelocate

by Intelocate
Intelocate
Intelocate is an up-and-coming software platform that ranks 82 among all Task Management Software according to our research analysts and 2 crowd-sourced reviews from 1 source. Intelocate is most applicable for any sized company. Intelocate can be deployed in the cloud. Similar alternatives to Intelocate include Futuramo, Invoicera and KeyedIn.
User Sentiment User satisfaction level icon: excellent
Cost Breakdown
$10 - $100
Company Size
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Deployment
Cloud On-Premise
Platform
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Aligned

by Team Aligned
Aligned
Aligned is a sophisticated software solution designed to streamline task management and enhance productivity. It is particularly well-suited for professionals in industries such as project management, marketing, and software development, where efficient task coordination is crucial. The platform offers unique benefits like real-time collaboration, customizable workflows, and advanced analytics, which help teams stay organized and meet deadlines effectively. One of the standout features of Aligned is its intuitive interface, which allows users to easily assign tasks, set priorities, and track progress. Additionally, the software integrates seamlessly with other tools, providing a cohesive work environment. Users have praised its robust functionality and user-friendly design, noting that it significantly improves team productivity and communication. Pricing for Aligned varies based on the number of users and specific features required. For detailed pricing information, it is recommended to contact SelectHub for a tailored quote that meets individual business needs.
User Sentiment User satisfaction level icon: excellent
Cost Breakdown
$10 - $100
Company Size
Small Medium Large
Deployment
Cloud On-Premise
Platform
Mac Windows Linux Chromebook Android
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TaskQue

by TaskQue
TaskQue
TaskQue is a rising software solution that ranks 84 among all Task Management Software according to our research analysts and 2 crowd-sourced reviews from 1 source. Starting from $5, TaskQue is priced economically, has offered a free trial in the past and is most advisable for medium sized companies. TaskQue can be deployed online and on-premise and is accessible from a limited set of platforms including Windows and Linux devices. Similar alternatives to TaskQue include BizApp, HiTask and Wellsite.
User Sentiment User satisfaction level icon: excellent
Cost Breakdown
$10 or less
Company Size
Small Medium Large
Deployment
Cloud On-Premise
Platform
Mac Windows Linux Chromebook Android
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Futuramo

by FUTURAMO
Futuramo
Futuramo is an up-and-coming software product that ranks 85 among all Task Management Software according to our research analysts and 1 crowd-sourced review from 1 source. Starting from $7000, Futuramo is priced more economically, commonly offers a free trial and is most suitable for mid-to-large-sized businesses. Futuramo can be deployed in the cloud. Similar alternatives to Futuramo include Intelocate, Invoicera and KeyedIn.
User Sentiment User satisfaction level icon: great
Cost Breakdown
$1,000 or more
Company Size
Small Medium Large
Deployment
Cloud On-Premise
Platform
Mac Windows Linux Chromebook Android
Request with no obligation:
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BizApp

by NovaLabs
BizApp
BizApp is a rising software solution that ranks 723 among all CRM Software according to our research analysts. Starting from $6, BizApp is priced for those with smaller budgets, offers a free trial on occasion and is most suitable for small-to-mid-sized companies with less than 1000 employees. BizApp can be deployed online and is accessible from a fewer number of platforms including Windows and Linux devices. Similar alternatives to BizApp include Skyward CRM, Billage Software and OBS.
Cost Breakdown
$10 or less
Company Size
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Deployment
Cloud On-Premise
Platform
Mac Windows Linux Chromebook Android
Request with no obligation:
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Shortcut

by Shortcuts Software
Shortcut
Shortcut is a promising software application that ranks 87 among all Task Management Software according to our research analysts and 121 crowd-sourced reviews from 1 source. Starting from $8.50, Shortcut is priced fairly, offers a free trial on occasion and is most advisable for businesses large and small. Similar alternatives to Shortcut include Yanado, TimeHero and SignTracker.
User Sentiment User satisfaction level icon: great
Cost Breakdown
$10 or less
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Buyer's Guide

The Best Task Management Software Is All About Collaborative Project Execution  

By Pragya Singh, Technical Writer and Market Analyst at SelectHub

Task Management Software BG Intro Header

Projects are a collection of different tasks. From conceiving ideas to timely completion, you have to plan, track, test and report on it all. Task management software comes in handy to complete project management assignments.

Task management is more than checking off to-do lists. It involves tracking and delegating tasks throughout a project lifecycle while ensuring initiatives meet their timelines. This guide will give you a general introduction to task management software and its unique capabilities and advantages.

Executive Summary

  • The top task management software systems streamline creating, managing, delegating, prioritizing and completing project assignments on time.
  • These solutions predict problems and opportunities while helping you reorganize tactics and resources accordingly.
  • Your buying process is incomplete without conducting a detailed comparison.
  • Vendor evaluation includes asking questions to understand the solution's characteristics.
  • You need to prepare your team for the learning curve involved in adopting a new system.

What This Guide Covers:

What Is Task Management Software?

Task management software streamlines planning, creating, testing and reporting tasks from start to finish. It gives project managers additional control over teams to collaborate effectively and complete tasks within deadlines.

Technopedia defines task management as “an activity wherein an individual or manager monitors a task throughout its entire life cycle. According to the progress, the individual or manager makes decisions to complete the task at hand.”

Effective task management involves:

  • Monitoring task progress
  • Delegating work
  • Setting task priorities, deadlines, automation, dependencies and budgeting
  • Fixing deadlines
  • Adjusting job schedules and scope
  • Delivering the final product and modifications
Task Management Software Categories

Task management applications offer flexibility and scalability to construct workflows while satisfying company and market needs. They reduce data loss, promote teamwork and enhance overall productivity by centralizing jobs.

You can prioritize tasks according to business needs while setting timely reminders to ensure their completion. Businesses can delegate work, manage daily operations and generate in-depth reports anytime, anywhere with a stable internet connection.

In short, task management solutions help you:

  • Set deadlines in advance
  • Standardize recurring processes
  • Customize and edit tasks as per situations
  • Delegate work to teams and external partners while creating subtasks
  • Create alerts and notifications for upcoming responsibilities
  • Track time spent on every task
  • Design to-do lists for team visualization while tracking progress
  • Organize tasks using labels, tags and channels for specific teams or groups

Deployment Methods

Your software implementation’s success will depend on the deployment strategy you choose. Depending on your business requirements, industry, and type, you can host your desired application on the cloud or deploy on-premise. Here are the factors you should consider while selecting an appropriate strategy.

Cloud-Based

Cloud-based programs deploy on the web while providing accessibility from anywhere. All you need is a stable internet connection. You can choose a monthly or an annual subscription plan, and you are good to go.

This deployment strategy makes sense for small and mid-sized businesses looking for faster implementation, lower upfront costs, automatic updates and no investment in maintenance. It is also scalable as per your company’s growing needs.

On-Premise

On-premise solutions are installed directly onto your proprietary hardware and are exclusively available to your network. Your employees have full access to organizational data irrespective of an internet connection. They provide complete control over your company data with flexible maintenance and upgrade schedules, storage expansion and downtime.

Primary Benefits

Benefits of Task Management Software

Implementing task management software individually or as part of teams brings systemic changes to your organizational workflows. Below are some primary benefits:

Centralize Activity

These applications integrate all project activities in one place, eliminating the need for different accounts and passwords. Centralization reduces information erasure and data loss, allowing your teams to function efficiently. You can organize project tasks in the form of tickets, cards, calendars and notes for easy access.

You can also track customer activity across teams to avoid work duplication while promptly handling complaints and inquiries. The software saves precious work hours while promoting a paperless and sustainable work environment by monitoring essential tasks and deadlines.

Prioritize Tasks

Prioritizing tasks is crucial to meeting deadlines and keeping projects on track. Poor task management and getting stuck with low-priority jobs can lead to missed deadlines and project delays. CRM task management applications help you avoid such situations by prioritizing tasks based on their importance.

The software tracks meetings, deadlines and other activities while avoiding overlaps to manage your time better. Employees can also alert management about possible concerns for better job delegation and segregation.

Improve Data Accessibility

Isn’t it frustrating if you can’t complete your pending work outside office premises? Software solves that problem by providing you the flexibility to access work data anytime, anywhere. You can supervise teams, manage customer requests and retrieve up-to-date information while working remotely.

These programs help you transition to a digital workplace by providing access to vital workplace data on-the-go. You just need a stable internet connection and login details to resume work.

They also provide a platform to track remote employees and their work progress effectively. Employees get real-time access to updates and important announcements, making it easier for organizations to keep everyone on the same page.

Track Time

These applications help you track the time your employees spend on each task. This information is crucial for providing additional resources and support if a particular job takes longer. You can also monitor individual employee work progress for assessment and review meetings.

Once you know how long a job takes, you can bill your clients accordingly. This information is also helpful in analyzing your team’s strengths and weaknesses while recognizing the most productive employees.

Foster Teamwork

These applications promote the spirit of working together by centralizing information exchange and activity. Employees can exchange ideas with their peers and collaborate while learning from each other.

Continuous idea exchange strengthens teamwork and participation. When employees feel valued during brainstorming sessions, they encourage their coworkers to participate, enhancing overall team productivity.

Implementation Goals

It’s crucial to create a list of goals you hope to achieve during a program's successful implementation. If you've shopped for software before, you know how quickly the process can go over budget or out of control. Having a set of pre-defined goals can simplify things.

Goal 1

Simplify Task Delegation

Task delegation is crucial for managing multiple activities in a defined period. The best programs assign tasks to suitable employees while tracking their progress.

You can optimally utilize your workforce while avoiding overworking. Assigning an equal amount of work to everyone also sets accountability and encourages responsibility.

Goal 2

Centralize Document Sharing

Efficient applications centralize document sharing processes, making it easy to locate files associated with every task. This feature helps with data organization while saving precious work hours.

Organizing scattered documents from various files in one location speeds up processes while enhancing operational efficiency. Single-point access to all crucial data boosts your ability to address client and project requirements.

Goal 3

Notify Overdue Tasks

Missing important tasks can wreak havoc on your project progress. Large and complex projects often comprise multiple tasks, which are tedious to manually highlight.

These solutions simplify setting task reminders and important notifications. They automatically remind relevant employees about upcoming deadlines and overdue jobs.

Goal 4

Automate Recurring Task Creation

When working on projects, you have to create some tasks repeatedly, which is rather inconvenient. The software automates recurring task creation so you can focus on essential business activities.

Automation also frees managers from unnecessary administrative hassles to focus better on project progress and delivery.

Goal 5

Create Subtasks

Handling complex projects is challenging due to the multiple tasks associated with them. It isn't easy to describe every component of a large assignment to team members manually.

The software breaks down big tasks into smaller subtasks for easier management. You have the flexibility to add as many subtasks as you like for better organization and management.

It also provides visibility into high-impact tasks that have a significant effect on your business so that you can prioritize their completion.

Goal 6

Boost Productivity

Enhancing productivity is paramount to improve profit margins. If your employees have to scout for work during office hours, they will delay executing that job.

These systems simplify locating tasks while displaying assignments with their due dates and priority metrics. Automating such administrative processes reduces employee idle time while boosting overall productivity.

Key Features & Functionality

Once you decide to implement a program, how do you evaluate its merits? Most programs offer similar basic capabilities, while you can opt for advanced ones for specialized expertise.

The following are some crucial things to look for while searching for software.

Task Scheduling

The fundamental idea is to organize work for streamlined processes. You can design and manage schedules that suit your organizational workflows.

Scheduling tasks weeks or months in advance helps you manage them efficiently while reducing the risks of missing them. It also simplifies accurate work progress tracking through notifications and reminder settings.
Task Tracking

This module is a primary feature of an online solution. Tracking multiple tasks is a cumbersome process via traditional means. The software helps you track various assignments in real time at every project stage.

You can define tasks in terms of priority, project and team members working on them. It simplifies planning while reducing the risk of rework and time spillage.
Collaboration

Modern solutions enhance team communication by offering effective collaboration channels. They facilitate seamless information and document exchange for files, attachments, images or videos. Employees can share work data while collaborating.
Task Planning

Effective initiative management starts with proper resources, budget and timeline planning. These programs break down work into smaller chunks with discrete milestones for better execution.

You can organize and prioritize activities to speed up project progress and resource availability.
Resource Management

The best platforms manage project resources, including workforce, materials, equipment, machinery, etc. They plan and schedule resources for optimal utilization while accurately computing usage costs.

Effective resource management ensures that projects have adequate availability while avoiding overuse. You have the flexibility to assign resources to specific tasks while preventing conflicts.
Calendar Management

This capability supports due date monitoring. You can specify task deadlines and sync important dates with Google and Outlook calendar apps.

You can manage and schedule work while planning project timelines and meetings. A calendar is also essential to track project developments and meeting schedules.

Advanced Features & Functionality

While most solutions provide basic functions, you will get additional capabilities, depending on your chosen platform. These functions will usually go beyond planning and assigning tasks.

Third-Party Integrations

Your business is dependent on various third-party modules to complete processes. Your solution should allow integration with external CRM or ERP applications for seamless data transfer.

More advanced solutions offer open APIs to connect with external payroll, HR and inventory management systems. They also help collaborate with remote teams spread across locations.
Reporting and Analytics

These solutions provide comprehensive visibility into project progress through insightful reports and KPI dashboards. You can track progress using dashboards that update data in real time.

Dashboards also include crucial metrics like actual and planned project values, schedule variances and task completion percentages.

Top task organizers generate in-depth reports based on project data. These reports identify successful and underperforming teams and individuals while accurately tracking project progress.
Budgeting

Modern solutions track your project spending and offer a comprehensive picture of all expenses while detailing your budget's performance.

You can accurately monitor expenditures while being aware of your budget's upper limit. Many programs allow you to manually import or build time, cost, spending and revenue budgets.

Upcoming Trends

With changing leadership paradigms and technological innovations, task automation is a buzzword in the business landscape. Integrating task organizers into organizational processes streamlines workflows while reducing inefficiencies due to traditional approaches. Below are some trends to watch.

Task Management Trends

Permanent Remote and Online Teams

In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, task management is no longer an office activity. According to a recent Upwork report, 40.7 million Americans will be working remotely in the next five years. Understanding the rise of the dispersed workforce and remote teams is crucial to measuring project outcomes and goals while communicating effectively.

Today's managers need to find innovative ways to reduce friction between a distributed workforce spread across geographical locations while boosting efficiency. Affordable applications like Slack, Asana and Zoom make collaboration easier while digitally planning and creating schedules.

The report further reveals that 67% of the businesses changed their long-term management practices like leadership structure and strategic planning due to the pandemic. Many companies also altered their onboarding, recruitment, training and performance review processes.

The pandemic brought about significant modification in team communications with greater reliance on technology. Statistics suggest that over 60% of organizations changed their team meetings while over 50% modified their internal communications.

Long Term Organizational Changes Due to COVID-19

With organizational structures undergoing rapid changes, promoting collaboration despite physical barriers will be crucial.

Technology Integration and Cloud-First Approach

Today's businesses are dependent on various technologies to gain a competitive edge. Integrating multiple technologies like SaaS for flexibility, cloud for data storage, computing for big data analytics, and tapping into AI and machine learning developments is becoming the norm.

Organizations need to adopt best practices while bridging gaps between existing infrastructure and integrating complex solutions to address those problems. As projects become dependent on third-party system integrators, you will have to forge strong industry partnerships to cover your bases.

As organizations look for cost-effective ways to expand operations without sacrificing performance or functionality, the need for cloud computing applications is multiplying. Cloud solutions allow employees to work from anywhere while providing accessibility to crucial business activities.

Emotional Intelligence and Soft Skills

The post-pandemic world is quite different, and organizations have to adapt to the new normal. The pandemic increased the demand for emotionally intelligent leaders who can communicate effectively.

Organizations are looking for taskmasters who can develop a deep understanding with fellow employees while displaying empathy in crises. Companies seek leaders who possess adequate skills and leverage emotional intelligence for the greater good.

According to PMI, emotional intelligence improves project performance by creating an environment of unhindered communication between all stakeholders. The ability to empathize and connect with employees and coworkers is crucial due to remote work isolation and shrinking social connection in workspaces.

Task managers also need to possess the right soft skills to manage people effectively while producing successful results. They should be adept at communicating expectations and handling stakeholders. Their decision-making and leadership skills play a vital role in project success.

Software Comparison

Choosing a solution that aligns with your organizational requirements isn’t child's play. It can be daunting to analyze each product's offerings that will match your business needs.

Though seemingly challenging, selecting the right software doesn't have to be a convoluted process. You can refer to our detailed project management software report that offers a meaningful comparison of the top products to help you sift through the clutter.

Cost & Pricing Considerations

When shopping for software, price is a crucial factor. But you don't have to skimp on functionalities to get value for your money. You should look for a system that is economical and customizable.

In addition, the following deployment strategies will affect the cost of your chosen task organizer:

Subscription Based

Software-as-a-service (SaaS) or subscription-based models charge an annual or a monthly fee based on user numbers. Depending on your business size and employees, you can go for basic, standard or enterprise plans.

You save on paying a hefty upfront fee requiring long-term payment obligations. However, you may end up paying a cumulative higher subscription fee in the long run.

Perpetual License

To avoid monthly subscription hassles, you can adopt an on-premise deployment strategy. You would have to make a significant one-time investment with upgrades, maintenance, IT infrastructure and vendor support payments. The method suits large businesses that are sure about their software and can pay for a year's services in advance.

Most Popular Task Management Software

The task management software market is witnessing significant growth, with enterprises looking to manage and streamline tasks centrally. According to Fortune Business Insights, it will grow to $4,535.5 million by 2026, at a CAGR of 13.3%.

Selecting a product that aligns with your business requirements from a booming market can be overwhelming. However, you can access ample resources to simplify your search process. SelectHub analysts conduct periodical reviews of the most popular options in the segment.

ClickUp

ClickUp is a fully customizable work management solution that helps teams organize, plan and collaborate. It offers reminders, docs, goals and an inbox. It centralizes development and design processes for efficiency.

It offers custom views to save and share documents with anyone while collaborating with coworkers. It is flexible and easy to use for organizations in any industry.

ClickUp

ClickUp filters, sorts and groups columns to organize work.

Wrike

Wike is an online collaboration program that provides visibility and control over tasks. It creates project plans, organizes requirements, tracks work progress and provides schedule visibility via Gantt charts.

Employees can work on priorities through personalized dashboards and centralized work updates. It generates customized reports to slice project data and results.

Wrike

Wrike’s customizable dashboards break large projects down into digestible tasks.

Teamwork

Designed specifically for client work, Teamwork helps deliver projects within budget on schedule. It helps streamline customer relationship management and knowledge sharing while fostering team collaboration.

Organizations can manage multiple complex projects while customizing workflows. It assigns tasks, tracks time and measures team performance through project status updates.

Teamwork

Teamwork offers advanced features like Gantt charts, board view, reporting dashboards and more to help you scale.

Monday.com

Monday.com is a cloud-hosted solution that executes complex and large projects. It manages multiple initiatives across teams while assisting in project planning. It fosters a collaborative environment for teams to create knowledge bases while sharing images, documents, files and other resources.

It offers productivity-boosting capabilities like integrated Kanban boards, workflow automation, multiple views, automated notifications and calendar integration.

Monday.com

Monday.com removes communication silos with real-time progress updates.

Jira

Jira is a business process solution that supports Kanban, Scrum, hybrid and unique workflows. Agile teams can track, plan and release products while creating project progress roadmaps. Organizations can use a drag-and-drop interface to manage project details.

Plan sprints, distribute tasks across teams, locate software bugs, and create user stories and issues. It handles complex projects like product launches and events while streamlining onboarding and hiring processes.

Jira

Jira’s roadmaps keep teams aligned with larger organizational goals.

 

 

Questions to Ask Yourself

Task Management Software Key Questions To Ask

Choosing the right task management solution is a crucial organizational decision. Use the following questions to prompt internal discussions:

  • What issues am I looking to address?
  • What are my requirements?
  • What will be my organization's future?
  • Will I potentially need additional capabilities down the road?

Questions to Ask Vendors

Asking vendors honest questions will resolve your implementation queries. Use the following questions to start conversations with vendors:

About the Software

  • How long will it take to implement?
  • Is the product mobile-friendly?
  • Does it integrate with third-party modules?
  • What advanced features does it offer?

About the Vendor

  • Will you be able to handle my unique challenges and future requirements?
  • What pricing plans are available?
  • How frequently do you update your security platform?
  • What training and support services do you provide?

In Conclusion

Task management software is an excellent option for businesses looking to automate creating, delegating, tracking and assigning project work. It helps with timely project completion while enhancing team efficiency.

As more organizations adopt remote and other flexible ways of working, CRM task management improves collaboration and enhances productivity. You can save time and money while helping your teams work faster.

Use this guide as a starting point in your software selection journey.

Additional Resources

About The Contributors

The following expert team members are responsible for creating, reviewing, and fact checking the accuracy of this content.

Kriti
By Kriti Sahay
Technical Content Writer
Kriti Sahay is a Technical Content Writer at SelectHub, writing content for Help Desk and Call Center Software. Kriti is based out of New Delhi, India. When she's not handling Buyer's Guides and other informational articles, she can be found experimenting in her kitchen, street shopping, or painting!
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Joan
Technical Research By Joan Akash
Senior Analyst
Joan Akash, a Senior Research Analyst at SelectHub, holds a Post-Graduate Diploma in Management with a specialization in Marketing. Her expertise as a researcher and reviewer spans diverse software categories, including Project Management, Customer Relationship Management, Live Chat, and Help Desk. Beyond her professional pursuits, Joan is spiritually driven, with a passion for teaching children and a penchant for reading biblical blogs and crafting poetry.
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Manan
Technical Review By Manan Roy
Principal Analyst
Manan is a native of Tezpur, Assam (India), who currently lives in Kolkata, West Bengal (India). At SelectHub, he works on categories like CRM, HR, PPM, BI, and EHR. He has a Bachelor of Technology in CSE from The Gandhi Institute of Engineering and Technology, a Master of Technology from The Institute of Engineering and Management IT, and an MBA in Finance from St. Xavier's College. He's published two research papers, one in a conference and the other in a journal, during his Master of Technology.
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Dianna
Edited By Dianna Dragonetti
Content Editor
As an editor, Dianna Dragonetti leads a team of five writers in writing about a variety of software, with an emphasis on how these tools empower businesses. Categories include accounting, learning management systems, content management systems, supply chain management, and electronic data interchange.
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