Top 10 Best Project Management Software for Successful Agencies

For any team to work well, effective collaboration and communication are essential. They’re even more important now when companies are increasingly opening up to remote workers. If all the people on your team created their own to-dos for working on the company projects, imagine what a mess everyone would get in!

Hard to even imagine, right? Well, relax, here’s where project management software hops in. As you read this, 86% of organizations are acknowledging the importance of using some online collaboration tool. Online project management software help you and your team stay on the same page and enable you to work your way to finishing projects on time.

Top 10 Best Project Management Software for Agencies

So turbocharge your toolkit with these amazing tools, beat deadlines, and get great results for yourself and your clients.

1. Trello

How Does It Work?

Trello is a powerful project management tool that helps you visually track your project’s progress. Trello uses boards to represent projects, lists to represent stages, and cards to represent tasks.

The default Trello board fires up with three lists: to do, doing, done. You begin by listing items in your to-do list. And then drag and drop the tasks in the doing list as you start working on them. And finally, as you complete them, you move them to the done list. Trello lets you add a due date and time to all the tasks. You can rename the default lists and add more depending on your project. For example, if you’re a web design agency – you can name your lists as: “Under Review,” “Approved,” “Rejected,” “Needs Revision,” and so on.

Trello works perfectly with teams. It lets you invite your team members to any project. Your team members can edit, post comments, add checklists, and more to the cards (tasks). As a board updates in real time, the whole team sees the changes that happen across the board. In addition, Trello has apps for Android, iPhone, iPad, and Kindle Fire, so you can stay productive on the go.

How Is It Used?

Needmore, a consulting and design studio based in Portland, uses Trello to streamline their web design projects. Needmore has created a template board that lists the stages and tasks in a typical web design project. They duplicate this board for each new project thus making sure that nothing falls through the cracks.

Price

Trello is free for unlimited projects and team members. However, the premium plans that come with advanced administration control features cost about $8.33/member/month.

2. Asana

How Does It Work?

Asana is one of the most popular result-oriented project management software platforms with a robust collaboration system. Once you sign up for Asana, you can quickly get your team on board by sending them email invites. You can assign tasks, add deadlines, discuss details, and share feedback.

Asana comes packed with a chat system that lets you communicate with your team about your project tasks. You can see if your tasks are lagging and streamline your work so that you don’t miss your deadlines. Asana also sports a smart inbox where you get notifications about any project updates.

How Is It Used?

Sticker Mule, the world’s fastest shipping printer, uses Asana to track all their projects to completion. They use it for handling product design, marketing, production, development, and customer support. Hinting at Asana’s versatility, Anthony from Sticker Mule says, “[We] redefined Asana’s conventions to categorize our work.”

Price

Asana is free for smaller teams (up to 15 team members). For bigger teams, the plans start at $10/member/month.

3. Evernote

How Does It Work?

You’ll probably know Evernote as a premier note-taking app. While yes, Evernote is indeed a wonderful note-taking app, it can also be turned into a collaboration tool.

By creating a notebook for a project and sharing it with your team members, you can transform Evernote into a full-blown project management. Evernote’s chat option can come really handy when using Evernote for managing projects.

As Evernote syncs with your computer and phone, you can be sure that you’ll have full access to your project even on your smartphone.

How Is It Used?

MailChimp, an email marketing software, uses Evernote Business to collect research and organize it. Their full team can access the data from their shared notebook – rather than let it sit unused in someone’s email or desktop.

Price

Evernote has a limited free edition. Its premium plans come with advanced features and start at $5.99.

4. Azendoo

How Does It Work?

Azendoo is an awesome project management app that makes collaboration with teams faster and more productive. Using Azendoo dashboards your team can view each project’s workflow at a glance.

All the team members have handy access to their tasks (and also to the information about the tasks like whether they’re completed, overdue, pending, or due that week).

To track a project’s progress, Azendoo uses two graphs.

• The progress graph that shows the number of tasks pending as well as the finished ones. This is your project’s broad level snapshot showing you all that needs to be done.
• The activity graph that shows the tasks added and finished every day. This is your daily activity on a project showing you how you’re doing on a day-to-day basis.

Azendoo has a built-in chat system that you can use to send private messages to your team members. Sharing files is convenient – thanks to Azendoo’s out-of-the-box integrations with Evernote, Google Drive, Dropbox, and other cloud services.

How Is It Used?

Apsynth Publishing, a mobile and web app development agency from Paris, onboards their clients onto Azendoo itself. CTO Jean-François describes Azendoo as even their client’s preferred means of collaborating with them. Jean says, “[Azendoo] become our information hub for all exchanges about ongoing projects.”

Price

Azendoo comes with a 30-day free trial, following which you can buy their plan starting from $7.50/user/month.

5. Quip

How Does It Work?

Quip completely transforms how teams work with its concept of a living document. Basically, Quip has chat built in its documents. It lets you send quick messages your team members and discuss the document’s content with them.

Quip has applications for Mac, Windows, iPhone, iPad, Android devices, and even the Apple watch. You can choose to be notified about any project updates (checklists, task lists, living docs) on any device.

How Is It Used?

What makes Quip different? It adds context to a document.

As Jacob Gadikian (a Quip enthusiast) explains on Quora: “CONTEXT! Quip provides the conversation alongside the document, allowing a newcomer to understand how the document evolved.”

Check out the sidebar in the following screenshot to see how this example document has evolved:

Price

Quip’s basic plan comes for free. Other plans start at $10 for 1-10 member team/month.

6. Wrike

How Does It Work?

Wrike is an amazing tool that allows you to work faster. It lets you create real time reports to measure a project’s progress. Its report builder is easy to use and quickly generates a report based on the team’s performance. These reports can come in handy when planning the project work for timely delivery.

Wrike comes with a collaborative editor for editing and viewing changes in real time. It’s integrated with a full suite of business apps like Google Drive, Dropbox, Zapier and many more.

How Is It Used?

When Hootsuite, the leading social media management solution, struggled to keep up with their quality standards, they switched to Wrike. Wrike helped them track how their resources were getting used.

Kate Chalmers, Director of Marketing Operations, tells that she uses Wrike to report quarterly to executives on how many projects they’ve done and how long it takes them to go to market.

Price

Wrike’s basic plan is free for small teams with up to 5 users. For advanced project planning and collaboration features, plans start at $49/month.

7. Monday

How Does It Work?

Monday claims any team in any industry of any size can benefits from project management with Monday’s unique interface, which includes ready-made templates and drag-and-drop building blocks. It includes the usual features you would expect, including workflow management, automation abilities, and integrations with over 50 other tools you are probably using right now. It also boasts a clean mobile app.

How Is It Used?

“With monday.com, we’re 30% more efficient at delivering hundreds of campaigns seen by millions of customers,” said Tye Rapley-Hawkins, Head of Delivery at 02 Priority, Telefonica.

Price

Monday offers a free trial for unlimited users and boards, and plans starting at $8/user/month.

8. Producteev

How Does It Work?

Producteev is another promising task manager tool that helps you stay organized at all times.

Producteev comes with a neat, easy-to-use interface where you can create to-do lists, assign tasks and collaborate on projects. It lets you organize your projects with labels and priorities.

It also lets you set due dates to tasks and set reminders. With Producteev’s advanced filters, you can sort projects using values like people, project, status among others.

How Is It Used?

After Jira took over Producteev, Producteev became especially popular with companies that used any of Jira’s collaboration solutions (thanks to the seamless integration). Additionally, users of Producteev explain how the product’s tagging capabilities help them delegate tasks and keep track of priorities.

Price

Producteev’s free plan allows unlimited free users, projects, and tasks. Its premium plan costs $99/month and comes with priority support and customization features.

9. Flow

How Does It Work?

Flow is a minimalist task management software that makes teamwork easy, effortless, and organized. It looks and works like a full-blown task management system where you can delegate tasks, and prioritize to-dos. In addition to featuring a traditional task management interface, Flow comes with a Kanban style board (like Trello). So if you’re a visual planner, you’ll like Flow’s Kanban view.

You can use Flow to create tasks and discuss them with your team members. Flow also lets you share files and notes. With its apps for Apple and Android, you can stay productive all the time.

How Is It Used?

Bright Fox Agency, an online marketing agency, uses Flow to streamline their projects. Flow makes it easy for them to work by being “[The] big sheet of paper on the wall in the office that we would manage workflow on,” says Lindsay, founder, Bright Fox Agency. Flow also lets them track their deadlines and makes working with contractors easy.

Price

Flow comes with a free 15-day trial, after which you can sign up for their plans starting from $59/month.

10. Zoho Projects

How Does It Work?

Zoho Projects is a comprehensive project management tool with more than a million users. It uses Gantt charts to show a project’s progress. Zoho Projects lets you break down your complex projects into simple tasks and helps track their progress. It also enables sharing spreadsheets, documents and more. There’s also a provision for private and group chats to facilitate discussions.

Using Zoho’s timesheets, each team member can log in their hours of work. If your projects are billed by the hour, you’ll find this feature incredibly helpful. You can also integrate Zoho Projects with Zoho Invoice for creating quick invoices from these timesheets.

How Is It Used?

GRP Consulting, an internet marketing agency for small and medium business, uses Zoho Projects to collaborate. Zoho Projects allows their contractors to easily invoice them using Zoho’s timesheet feature.

Price

Zoho’s basic plan is free. Higher plans start at $25/month.