Best project management software for small businesses

The monday.com business plan template is colour-coded using a traffic light system, making it immediately obvious when you’re in the red and a task is overdue. Credit: Startups.co.uk.

Why choose monday.com?

Due to its visual appeal and customisable progress tools, monday.com has become a favourite among creative teams. It has lots of customisable elements – including dashboards – that provide key insights, such as the status of budgets and projects.

Our testers found monday very easy to use. Unlike Asana, which walks users through the setup process in depth, monday.com throws users in at the deep end. Once I gave my board a name, I was essentially on my own, which might be a daunting for those who dislike a complex setup process. But I quickly got to grips after a swift, self-guided tour of the platform.

Another reason I like monday.com for teamwork is its helpful, colour-coded updates. These updates help managers easily track progress, showing them who might need support, as well as who has the capacity to take on more tasks. In monday:

🔴Red = I’m stuck
🟠Orange = I’m working on it
🟢Green = I’m done

monday has a large arsenal of features (such as widgets, sub-tasks, and custom fields). monday.com’s clever design keeps everything in order and ensures you’re not overloading the team with information. Even when I added notes to a project task, it never took me off the page, whereas Zoho Projects opened a new window each time.

What is monday.com’s biggest drawback?

monday’s biggest flaw is that its resource management features are only available on the highest-paid tier, monday Pro. If you’re an agency using the platform, you will likely already use software to track your timesheets. But monday doesn’t give you specific billing and time tracking tools, which could be an issue for companies working with clients.

💡 What’s new

In May 2024, the platform announced the launch of its specialist AI templates. These are amazingly helpful for automating specific tasks. For example, the feedback digest template will automatically summarise uploaded customer feedback and analyse it for sentiment, instantly tagging it as negative or positive to expedite complaint resolution.

We found ClickUp’s action plan template was the best way to track our progress towards a SMART goal. Credit: Startups.co.uk.

Why choose ClickUp?

Clickup is an all-in-one workplace app that is designed to replace any software you might need when running a business. The platform’s generous freemium plan provides unlimited users, spaces, and tasks, as well as nine specialist templates for different team departments including finance, marketing, operations, and IT.

Clickup Free members also have access to 20 advanced features – the most of any in this list – including custom views, Gantt charts, and real time collaboration with colleagues. It’s an excellent tool for micro-businesses, because it can genuinely function as multiple software subscriptions, all for a low monthly cost.

Clickup’s ample feature library offers real bang for your buck. Its resource management features will also help budget-conscious SMEs to keep on top of finances. During testing, ClickUp gave me a complete breakdown of each team member’s availability, and allowed me to track time spent on a task. Plus, it had the option to add a budget to each project.

What is ClickUp’s biggest drawback?

Data import was particularly irksome, with one of our testers being told that a simple data upload of around 100 files could take up to three hours to complete. Delays also meant that one of our testers had to manually add milestones and due dates into tasks, whereas monday.com pulls this information through automatically.

Another area where Clickup falls down is customer service. This is because Clickup has got rid of its 24/7 live support feature. Our researchers significantly marked it down for help and support provision in our most recent testing round as a result.

💡 What’s new

This summer, ClickUp rolled out “ClickUp Knowledge Management,” an AI-driven feature that collates company information across apps and files to build an official knowledge base for the company. For example, if I wanted to organise a weekly standup, ClickUp would review my previous meeting notes to suggest topics of discussion, to act as my very own virtual assistant.

Clickup pricing

We particularly liked that, once a task had been allocated to a specific team member, the Teamwork software let us add their image to the card for instant at-a-glance accountability. Credit: Startups.co.uk.

Why choose Teamwork?

Customer service teams have specific PM requirements. They typically work with short tasks rather than large-scale projects, which means they need a system with standout time tracking abilities.

Teamwork caters exactly to this need. Its interface is kanban-based, giving users a simple column system to help them track tasks based on their billing amount, status, and deadline, and gain a clear view of project progress.

You can step in if a bottleneck is likely to occur, lowering the risk of your team losing money and wasting resources. At a time when firms are having to justify software spend, this will likely serve to strengthen cash flow.

As the name suggests, Teamwork’s toolset is complemented by a strong focus on teamworking features (standouts include task comments and a project message board). Its integration offering is also strong, with eight communication apps available to add-on, as well as marketing, finance, and data reporting integrations.

Our testing team highlighted the automation builder as first-rate. For example, we were easily able to set up an alert if a customer ticket was taking too long to respond to. Automations are especially handy for resource-stretched SMEs.

What is Teamwork’s biggest drawback?

Teamwork’s strong package for customer service agents is mirrored in its own helpdesk. Users gain access to a suite of support options, including live chat, phone, and email support. However, our testers found its onboarding capabilities were lacking, due to minimal signposting during setup. Teamwork throws a lot of information at you. It’s likely that businesses will need to organise workshops to teach their team how to use the platform.

💡 What’s new

Teamwork makes regular updates to the platform. One I was particularly impressed by is the addition of multiple new board views to its ‘Planning Overview‘ feature. Through the change, you’re able to display each person’s allocated, completed, and estimated tasks on a bar chart, giving managers an instant understanding of their team’s or department’s workload capacity.

Teamwork pricing

Our testers were pleased to find that Wrike offers a Gantt chart view for free. Whereas with rivals like monday.com, this premium offering is only available on a paid-for tier. Credit: Startups.co.uk.

Why choose Wrike?

Wrike is similar to Zoho Projects in that you’ll need to purchase a higher tier for anything more than the staple PM features, such as customisable views. I can’t say it has the best value for money in this list (that title instead goes to ClickUp). However, Wrike’s dashboards more than make up for this drawback.

Wrike’s impressive Office Timeline integration, which users can download free of charge, also automatically turns chaotic team messages into Gantt charts and timelines – giving you an excellent visual on your project progress and goals.

Unlike monday.com, Wrike permits guest access across every payment tier, even on the free Wrike plan. As a result, those working with outside stakeholders who need to share their projects externally can do so easily – improving cross-business communication and keeping clients happy.

Its free plan also doesn’t scrimp on security features, with both two-factor authentication and Google Authentication available. This is essential when working with clients, who want to know that their data is being properly stored and kept safe from cyber attacks.

What is Wrike’s biggest drawback?

It’s a small pain point, but it could create big problems. Wrike does not auto-save edits to its projects. On more than one occasion this caused our testers to lose data they had just inputted because they forgot to click ‘Save’.

While this shouldn’t put SMEs off Wrike completely, it’s a notable issue that could lead to challenges, particularly in larger teams where multiple people are editing a dashboard at once.

💡 What’s new

In our latest round of testing, we found Wrike has one of the best AI assistants on the market. Teams can record voice notes to ask Wrike to carry out an action, such as creating or assigning tasks. And all of these AI features are available on Wrike’s free plan, whereas Smartsheet and Clickup make you pay for that privilege.

In June 2024, Wrike added a major update to this USP by rolling out generative AI functionality across all paid accounts. Users can ask Wrike to summarise long discussions or create content in one click, from marketing text to a meeting agenda.

Wrike pricing

Asana’s huge library of templates includes this timeline blueprint to plan a conference. Credit: Startups.co.uk.

Why choose Asana?

Asana is a major player in the PM market, allowing for a simple and easily navigable overview of a project or campaign. It offers a strong set of features that includes excellent co-working tools. Like Teamwork, it offers a chat feature for team messaging, making it easy to collaborate with colleagues remotely.

Certainly, Asana’s USP is its huge list of sophisticated integrations. Asana out-performs its rivals by being one of the only brands to permit third-party CRM and communication extensions. The former is naturally especially handy for customer service teams, who might have large data sets that they regularly need to import.

We also found Asana incredibly easy to use. The platform has a huge range of project templates which you can instantly begin populating rather than building one yourself (although custom fields are available on the premium plan). Plus, if I ran into trouble, the Asana help centre is built into the platform and provides plenty of walkthrough guides to find a solution.

What is Asana’s biggest drawback?

One drawback I’d flag for SMEs with a strict hierarchy is that Asana’s cheaper tiers are limited when it comes to management features. Advanced elements, like personal time tracking, aren’t available, whereas rival Clickup offers this as a free extension.

Another issue that kept appearing during our testing was Asana’s interface. Compared to the clean, white space of monday.com, Asana’s display can look a bit busier, which makes it slightly harder to absorb the information being presented.

💡 What’s new

One recent rollout that I think small businesses should know about is the smart status feature. Particularly if you’re working remotely, it can be hard for the entire team to stay up to date on a project status if someone has been off sick or away on leave. This tool will automatically summarise what’s happened in a project during a specific time frame, so everyone can get up to speed on any notable changes.

Smartsheet is designed to appear similar to Google Sheets and Microsoft Excel. It had a very short learning curve for our testers, who liked how easy it was to turn table information into a Gantt chart. Credit: Startups.co.uk.

Why choose Smartsheet?

Smartsheet differs from competitors because of its familiar spreadsheet format, which is essentially a collaborative, online version of Microsoft Excel.

Like monday.com, Smartsheet has a lot of customisation tools for spreadsheets, including conditional formatting and changeable column types. However, Smartsheet’s are more advanced and specifically designed to manage large datasets with thousands of cells.

Smartsheet’s interface is not the prettiest design, but its table view does drastically simplify complex project schedules. This USP is complemented by Smartsheet’s more intelligent reporting tools, such as Gantt charts. In comparison, on other platforms such as monday.com, these are only available on the more expensive paid plans.

It’s also very simple to switch between views on Smartsheet. Our testers were able to upload their data and then instantly flip between a Kanban board and Gantt chart to enable project monitoring from a variety of angles.

What is Smartsheet’s biggest drawback?

Naturally, Smartsheet is easy to master for those with experience using spreadsheets. Teams without much experience in this field will struggle to adapt to Smartsheet’s singular focus, though, which is why some of our testers reported that the platform is difficult to use.

Smartsheet’s advanced features are also strictly limited to number crunching. Its AI tools can generate formulas, but that’s about it. Smartsheet also does not offer any time tracking tools, which is a big problem for teams that are working to lots of tight deadlines. We recommend it for long-term deliverables, such as payroll management for accountants.

💡 What’s new

When it comes to major product updates, Smartsheet isn’t as prolific as brands like Asana and monday.com. However, it does make small, nifty changes to the platform that are designed to aid the user experience. For example, at the end of June it made a few tweaks to its bar chart presentation, which made viewing data easier for users. Small, but no doubt useful.

Smartsheet pricing

Zoho Projects displays information in a similar format to Wrike. This means it lacks the aesthetic of monday.com, but is easier for viewing large sets of data. Credit: Startups.co.uk.

Why choose Zoho Projects?

Zoho Projects is a generous app available at a low price; an ideal combination for entrepreneurs who are just starting out. It boasts multiple collaboration features such as a team-wide calendar, instant messenger, project message board, and task comments.

Zoho Projects also has some small but mighty features that make the setup process run much more smoothly. For example, Zia, the platform’s in-built chatbot. For basic queries, users can ask Zia questions about tasks, issues, and automations, and the platform will come back with helpful prompts — although our testers did find that Zoho’s clunky interface meant they were sometimes overloaded with information from Zia.

Another advantage is that Zoho Projects is a cheap, long-term investment for business users. Even if you hire a lot of new starters, you won’t be punished for scaling up because Zoho’s costs increase at a gradual pace, which is great for early-stage firms or those running a side hustle, who don’t want to be migrating data to a new platform in a year’s time.

What is Zoho Project’s biggest drawback?

Understandably, Zoho’s super cheap pricing means some areas suffer as a result. I’m not impressed that Zoho doesn’t offer onboarding support, live chat, or phone support with any paid-for tier, which could be an issue if you need complex technical support.

Our testers also found the user interface difficult to acclimatise to. Feedback from the team was that Zoho was clunky and outdated, potentially leading to a slower adoption rate for teams that are new to the software. Any time our testers edited a column in Zoho, it opened a new pop-up; a small issue that nonetheless proved frustrating.

💡 What’s new

The newest version of the platform, Zoho Projects 8.0, was released in January 2024. It has a more intuitive and streamlined user interface and allows users to make bulk updates on Gantt charts. It can also automate tasks like performance reviews, quality assurance testing, or inventory audits, speeding up tasks for specialist departments.

Zoho Projects pricing