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Project management is an integral part of any successful business. Fortunately, project management software makes this process much more manageable. Project management software ensures everyone on your team has access to the same information and is on the same page. Although free project management software doesn’t offer as many features as their paid counterparts, they provide an excellent starting point.

Check out the top five best free project management software options available today.

Best Free Project Management Software

• monday.com – Best Overall Free Project Management Software
• Freshteam – Best for Recruitment and Onboarding
• Wrike – Best for Customization and Versatility
• Asana – Best for Unlimited Tasks and Projects
• Nifty – Best for Larger Teams

Since all five project management software offer free plans, we compared what types of features and tools each software provides. The best free project management software lets you add multiple users, track many projects and tasks, and see a clear overview of each project’s progress.

monday.com: Best Overall Free Project Management Software

Star rating: 4.92/5

Monday.com is the best overall free project management software because it offers the most features out of every free plan on today’s list. In addition to comprehensive project management tools, monday.com also provides HR tools that let you organize and view other team members’ availability. The free plan provides unlimited docs, three boards, over 200 templates, and up to two team members.

Pros:

• 24/7 customer service
• App integrations with Trello and Google Docs
• Provides easy team collaboration

Cons:

• Slow updates to the mobile app
• Slight earning curve for the user interface
• Limited reporting functions

Pricing:

Monday.com carries four unique pricing plans:

• Individual: $0 free forever
• Basic: Starts at $8 per seat per month
• Standard: Starts at $10 per seat per month
• Pro: Starts at $16 per seat per month

Your specific price point depends on your team’s size and the length of your subscription term. An annual subscription offers more savings compared to the monthly plan. Furthermore, each of the paid plans offer a free trial you can use to test out if monday.com is the right project management software for your business.

Free Plan Features

Monday.com’s free plan offers up to three boards and unlimited docs. You can use your boards to organize all your work and data, such as projects, clients, and processes. Furthermore, you can create and collaborate on unlimited docs in real-time with your team through monday.com.

In addition, the free plan offers over 200 customizable templates for every niche and industry. You can also build your boards the way you prefer because there are over 20 column types available. Monday.com has mobile apps for Android and iOS devices as well.

The activity log, where you can track all changes to your work, goes back up to one week with the free monday.com plan. Also, you only get one board per dashboard with the free plan. On the other hand, the Pro plan lets you combine up to 10 boards.

Maximum Number of Users

Unfortunately, the primary downside of monday.com’s free plan is you only can have up to two users on the plan. For this reason, the Individual monday.com isn’t suitable for businesses with over two people. However, monday.com is perfect for small startups looking for a way to organize their projects as they continue to expand. Then, you can opt for a paid monday.com plan once you hire more employees.

App Integrations

The free monday.com plan does not provide app integrations. You must opt for the Standard plan if you want to integrate the project management software with apps such as Zoom, Slack, and Outlook.

>> Manage your project with ease with monday.com

Freshteam: Best for Recruitment and Onboarding

Star rating: 4.86/5

Freshteam is a free project management software with HR tools such as hiring, onboarding, time-off, and various HR workflows. In fact, Freshteam claims to lower workload by up to 75% through its automation tools, such as the ability to reject applicants who do not meet certain requirements. For this reason, Freshteam is the best free project management software for recruiting and onboarding.

Pros:

• Robust project management tools
• Customizable career page
• Feature-rich mobile app

Cons:

• Slower customer support
• Overwhelming amount of features
• Limited third-party integrations

Pricing:

Freshteam has four unique packages for its project management software:

• Free: $0 free forever
• Growth: Starts at $1.20 per employee per month, and a $71 platform fee per month
• Pro: Starts at $2.40 per employee per month, and a $119 platform fee per month
• Enterprise: Starts at $4.80 per employee per month, and a $203 platform fee per month

The annual plan offers a reduced monthly rate compared to the monthly plan. Furthermore, each of the paid plans have a free 21-day trial without needing to provide your credit card information.

Free Plan Features

Freshteam is an extensive HR tool that’s perfect for small organizations. The free plan lets you list up to three published job postings and provides a recruitment team inbox. You also get access to a Kanban board for application tracking and an organization chart to track different projects and charts.

In addition, you get basic time off management tools and access to the iOS and Android mobile apps. In terms of the job postings, you can customize each hiring process and use Freshteam’s interview scorecards to rate each applicant. Freshteam’s free plan also provides an integrated email inbox, canned responses, follow-up emails, and task management.

Maximum Number of Users

Freshteam’s free plan lets you add up to 50 members into your team’s workspace. Furthermore, you can have a total of 15 departments and 30 teams with the free plan. If you opt for a paid plan, you can add unlimited members, departments, and teams. Therefore, we recommend investing in a paid plan if you want to implement an extensive job recruitment plan for your company.

App Integrations

Unfortunately, the free plan does not offer any app integrations. However, the paid plans do offer job boards integrations with Glassdoor, Indeed, LinkedIn, Adzuna, and other relevant websites. The paid plans also provide Google Calendar and Office 365 Calendar sync.

>> Get started with Freshteam

Wrike: Best for Customization and Versatility

Star rating: 4.77/5

One of the best PM software with time tracking, Wrike stands out as one of the best free project management software because of its excellent user interface, accurate time management and tracking, and customizable features catered for your business. Best of all, Wrike offers unlimited tasks, users, and projects on its free plan. Furthermore, Wrike offers clear calculations and project overviews to keep track of your team and progress.

Pros:

• Unlimited users
• AI task recommendations
• Custom work views

Cons:

• Bulky user interface
• No storage space
• Cannot add priority to specific tasks

Pricing:

Wrike offers four different plans, depending on your budget and business needs:

• Free: $0 per user per month
• Professional: $9.80 per user per month
• Business: $24.80 per user per month
• Enterprise: Contact Wrike for price inquiry
• Pinnacle: Contact Wrike for price inquiry

If you want to try one of the paid plans, Wrike offers a 14-day free trial for its Professional, Business, and Enterprise plan. This way, you can quickly learn if Wrike is the right long-term project management solution for your business.

Free Plan Features

Wrike’s free plan offers task and subtask management and a live activity stream across global, project, and task levels. Furthermore, you get access to Wrike’s interactive board and spreadsheet views to easily monitor and track project progress. You get 2 GB storage space per account with the free plan and Cloud storage integrations with Google Drive, Microsoft Office 365, Dropbox, and OneDrive.

The free plan also provides access to the Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android apps. In addition, the project management tools offer folder hierarchy and account-wide work schedules. While you can use the free plan’s table view and Kanban board to track project progress, the paid plans offer calendars, pre-built dashboards and widgets, and a dynamic Gantt chart.

However, the free plan does offer Wrike’s innovative Work Intelligence tools, such as AI recommended tasks, AI subtask creation, voice interaction, and smart search. Conversely, the paid plans add on Wrike’s AI project risk prediction feature, which isn’t included in the free plan. Furthermore, the free plan doesn’t provide resource management, asset creation, and advanced admin and security tools.

Maximum Number of Users

Wrike’s free plan lets you add unlimited users into your team account. The free plan is ideal for teams getting started that need a free project management software for centralized task management.

App Integrations

Wrike’s free forever plan does not include app integrations. However, you can add Wrike Integrate, which is the ability to create custom integrations and automations with over 400 cloud and on-premises apps.

>> Check our Wrike’s free plan offerings

Asana: Best for Unlimited Tasks and Projects

Star rating: 4.71/5

Asana is a massively popular free project management software because it’s easy to use and offers a lot of powerful features. This PM software is suitable for small startups to large enterprises. Asana allows you to divide tasks into themes and time-related sections to easily manage your project workflow. Since Asana offers a broad feature set, it’s an excellent choice for agile project management.

Pros:

• Auto-generate excellent graphs and charts
• Intuitive user interface
• Lots of educational resources

Cons:

• No time tracking features
• Relatively steep learning curve
• Assignments are limited

Pricing:

You can pick from three different Asana plans:

• Basic: $0 per month forever
• Premium: Starts at $10.99 per user per month
• Business: Starts at $24.99 per user per month

The prices above are for the annual plans. If you opt for a monthly plan, the monthly rate is slightly higher. However, you can try either paid plan for free with the 30-day free trial. This is the longest free trial offered by any project management software on today’s list. This offers ample time to see if Asana is a good fit for your company.

Free Plan Features

Asana’s Basic plan is one of the best free project management software available because of all the features it provides. With the free plan, you get access to unlimited tasks, unlimited projects, and unlimited messages. You also receive an unlimited activity log and unlimited file storage, except each file is limited to 100MB.

The free plan also lets you collaborate with up to 15 teammates. Furthermore, you can monitor and track your projects with list view, board view, and calendar view. Therefore, you have multiple ways to view your team’s progress.

In addition, the Basic plan comes with a project overview, project brief, and task due dates. Overall, Asana’s free project management plan is one of the most comprehensive tools available without needing to provide your credit card information.

However, the free plan does not offer start dates and times, task templates, milestones, and unlimited dashboards. You’ll need to upgrade to the Premium plan for these tools and other advanced features such as custom templates and task dependencies.

Maximum Number of Users

You can add up to 15 users in your free Asana plan. If you have a larger team, you can opt for the Premium plan which lets you add unlimited team members.

App Integrations

Asana’s free plan is one of the only $0 per month plans that offers app integrations. The Basic plan lets you integrate your free project management software with over 100 apps, such as Microsoft Teams, Adobe Creative Cloud, Google, Outlook, and many more.

>> Get started with Asana

Nifty: Best for Larger Teams

Star rating: 4.59/5

Nifty is a free project management software that provides team collaboration, reporting, time tracking, and task management to help centralize and streamline your company’s workflow. However, it’s the best free project management software for larger teams because the free plan lets you collaborate with unlimited members.

Pros:

• App integrations
• Clear project overview
• Task tracking

Cons:

• Visually unappealing user interface
• Can’t edit time logs
• Lacks expense management

Pricing:

Nifty carries five different plans you can purchase either with an annual or monthly subscription:

• Free: $0 free forever
• Starter: Starts at $39 per month
• Pro: Starts at $79 per month
• Business: Starts at $124 per month
• Enterprise: Contact Nifty for price inquiry

However, Nifty lets you upgrade, downgrade, or cancel your subscription at any time. Furthermore, you get a 14-day free trial with any paid plan without needing to provide your payment information. Furthermore, annual plans receive up to 20% off compared to monthly subscription plans.

Free Plan Features

Nifty’s free plan provides all of the project management software’s core features. This includes tasks, milestones, discussions, docs, files, portfolios, recurring tasks, and a collaborative team chat. In addition, the free plan offers task dependencies and milestone dependencies. These are features you’d find in paid project management software, so it’s immensely valuable Nifty provides it for free.

However, you don’t get access to Nifty’s paid advanced features, which include time tracking and reporting, custom fields, budget tracking, and workflow automations. Furthermore, the free plan only provides 100MB of storage space. Therefore, you will need to use other cloud storage solutions to store your company’s assets and files.

Maximum Number of Users

Nifty is the best free project management software for larger teams because the free forever plan lets you add unlimited users. Therefore, Nifty is the perfect solution for larger startups looking to expand and grow the business with a comprehensive free project management software.

App Integrations

Nifty offers over 2,000 integrations with apps such as Harvest, Zoom, Slack, Microsoft Suite, Google Drive, and Github. Therefore, you can streamline your team’s workflow easily and access everything you need from one central location.

>> Try out Nifty today

Methodology for the Best Free Project Management Software

In order to differentiate each free project management software, we closely examined several criteria. Overall, we chose and prioritized free PM software that offered immense value in their free plans. The software with the best features, user interface, and communication tools ranked highest on today’s list. Let’s take a closer look at each of these key ranking factors.

• Project Planning: The main job of all project management software is to schedule and plan different projects. Each option on today’s list features extensive team individual and team dashboards. This makes it easy for project managers to assign tasks and set due dates. For instance, monday.com offers more than eight view options.
• User Interface (UI): Project management software won’t be very effective if it’s difficult and complicated to use. For this reason, we prioritized free project management software with excellent user interfaces. A well-designed user interface requires low effort from the user to carry out their desired tasks. As such, the best free project management software offers intuitive dashboards and simple setup processes.
• App Integrations: Third-party app integrations are more important than ever before because of all the online tools businesses use. The best free PM software should offer app integrations with all your third-party tools. For example, monday.com has over 1,000 app integrations, including Outlook, Slack, and Dropbox.
• Monitoring: Monitoring is an often overlooked aspect of project management. This is because successful projects require constant monitoring. Therefore, the best free project management software for free will let you create a system for viewing your projects. You should be able to view all your data from a single location and keep track of unique project phases.
• Tracking: The best free project management software offers real-time reporting and tracking capabilities. They should offer quick exports of every important metric to see what you need to change or improve.

Free Project Management Software — Frequently Asked Questions

Before we conclude this guide on the best free project management software, there are a handful of specific questions to answer. This will help clear any confusion you may still have surrounding free project management software.

What is project management?

Project management is the planning, organization, and management of a specific business project. It lets you utilize your business’s resources to the maximum extent while moving towards a specific task or goal. In addition, project management defines the goals and objectives of a project and assigns specific tasks to each employee. This way, everyone is moving together toward a common goal.

Why is project management important?

Project management is crucial to any business’s success because it optimizes a team’s workflow. Successful companies typically have excellent project management that allows them to remain effective and productive. In essence, project management ensures all your team members are working on the correct task at the right time.

How can I manage multiple projects for free?

You can manage unlimited projects with Asana’s free “Basic” plan. Asana offers unlimited tasks, unlimited projects, and unlimited messages. You can also collaborate with up to 15 teammates and view all your projects on the iOS or Android mobile app.

Is there a free version of Microsoft Project?

Although many project management software offer free plans, Microsoft Project does not. All of Microsoft Project’s plans are paid and start at $7 per month. If you want free project management software, check out the five picks from today’s guide.

Bottom Line on Free Project Management Software

The growth of remote work and collaboration has made proper project management even more important for businesses. The best free project management software can help you, and your team members stay organized and up-to-date on the current project status. While the best overall free project management is monday.com, the other four options are also worth taking a closer look at.

This story was originally published October 26, 2022 10:15 AM.