Project planning software allows you to automate much of the work management process, streamlining the management process and making projects more productive. While large businesses run on powerful, expensive enterprise software, there are many free options that are perfect for small teams and product managers who are just starting out.
If you run a small business or an independent team, you’re sure to benefit from incorporating modern software solutions. If you’re shifting to remote work, then it’s almost a necessity to run at your top productivity levels.
1. MeisterTask
MeisterTask’s free version is a great starting point for project planning software.
You have the basic set of task management and organization tools, as well as a handful of neat additional features. While many free versions only allow you to run one project, you have more leeway here and can organize three simultaneously. You can scale these three projects to include unlimited members, which means you won’t hit a glass ceiling where upgrading instantly becomes mandatory to continue working. There are some severe limitations, such as a lack of integrations for different apps to support the features in MeisterTask.
2. Basecamp
If you aspire to grow your projects and eventually upgrade to a full version of your chosen project management software, Basecamp might be right for you.
The free version is highly functional for small teams, with easy-to-use management tools and a limit of twenty users that should be suitable for many projects. Once you exceed twenty users, you’ll appreciate the flat-rate pricing that will only charge you $100 a month, no matter how many more members join your projects. You’ll also gain unlimited clients and projects, priority support, and everything else you need to take your company to the next level.
3. TeamGantt
If you’re familiar with Gantt charts and how useful they are when it comes to project management, you might have wished that you could simply digitize your Gantt charts.
That’s exactly what TeamGantt does, and more. It offers comprehensive, detailed digital Gantt charts that allow you to visualize individual and group schedules, track progress, and keep a clear view of your goals. You control the schedules with a simple, drag-and-drop mechanism that saves time and effort so you can get back to the work you enjoy. While TeamGantt doesn’t cut out features for the free version, it does throttle the member limit down to three. While this is an excellent choice for extremely small projects, you’ll have to pay to scale up at all.
4. RedBooth
The free version of RedBooth is one of the most functional options you can choose, with a mixture of management and collaboration tools.
You can use Gantt charts and task overview as well as calendars to organize and assign work on an hourly and daily basis. Another nice feature is that you have an impressive amount of free storage space, with 2 GB available before you upgrade. However, this free version is also only suitable for extremely small teams since RedBooth limits free users to two.
5. Todoist
When it comes to running large projects for free, Todoist is unbeatable.
Even with the free version, you can run up to eighty projects at once and assign five users to each project. You could theoretically manage four hundred people without paying a cent, although it’s unlikely anyone is managing exactly eighty projects with exactly five members. On the other hand, the scheduling and organizational tools are fairly basic, but they’re also extremely intuitive.
Bonus Tool: actiTIME
actiTIME is an advanced piece of time tracking software with some useful project planning functionality. With its assistance, you may not only keep a detailed record of hours but also create projects with multiple tasks and allocate them to different team members. Besides, you can specify deadlines and estimates for separate pieces of work, add descriptions and billable rates to them. This way, actiTIME supports easy workload distribution and overview.
A forever-free version of actiTIME is available only to single users and small teams of two-three members. However, anyone can sign up for a 30-day trial at no charge and check out the benefits this time tracker provides at different stages in project management.
