Top Free Project Management Software for 2024

Project management software is the perfect tool to optimize team productivity. A project management program is always necessary for individual or collaborative work. Project management software is a crucial tool for businesses of all sizes. It offers many features that are helpful for managing project-related tasks. We have listed free project management software, their features, and details of free plans to help you choose the suitable one for your business.

What is Project Management Software?

Managing projects is the way to optimize a company’s resources and teams. Project management software is used in project planning, scheduling, resource allocation, and change management. Project management software enables you to organize, order, distribute, assign and follow real-time control of the project tasks from a cloud application.    

The use of project management software can be grouped into three categories:

• Management and visualization of tasks: You have a global vision of your projects (time and resources) during a determined period. You can divide the projects into tasks or stages of completion (with the possibility of having a Kanban view, Gantt, etc.)
• Internal collaboration: Project management software helps in sharing information (for example, collaborative comment space), distributing and assigning tasks within and between teams, and sending reminders (notifications, deadline reminders).
• Integrations: Integrations with other platforms are essential for the software to be more useful and valuable. A rich catalogue of integrations to facilitate the connection with other tools used by the team must be considered before choosing software.

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Selection Criteria

We have picked the free project management tools based on the following criteria:

• The popularity of the software
• Essential functionalities for project management
• The number of users that the free version supports
• Ease and ergonomics of the interface

Top Free Project Management Software

• Jira
• ClickUp
• Trello
• Asana
• Slack
• monday

Jira

Jira is agile free project management software developed by Atlassian. It offers solutions for startups, small companies, and large organizations that need to manage different work teams simultaneously. This tool is specially designed for IT departments and software development teams. 

Jira's scalability makes it easy to adapt incident types, fields, and workflows as teams evolve. An excellent feature is the possibility of creating workflows adapted to the rhythm of each team in their software development project. Furthermore, the tool also offers preconfigured workflows. It features automation rules, which allow teams to streamline their processes, save time, keep Jira up to date, and focus on what’s most important.

Features of Jira

• Customizable Scrum boards for efficient iterative and incremental work.
• Kanban boards for complete visualization of the work to be done and maximum performance in a minimum cycle time.
• Roadmaps to closely follow the general panorama of the progress of the projects.
• Out-of-the-box agile reporting with real-time insight into team performance sprint after sprint.
• Creation of user stories and sprint planning ensure correct task distribution among the teams.
• Over 3,000 integrations, apps, add-ons, and plugins let teams do the job using the tools they already know and use.
• Search engine to find information related to projects and their progress.

The free version of Jira includes the following:

• Up to 10 users
• Maximum of 100 emails per day
• Scrum and Kanban boards
• Backlog 
• Agile reports
• Password management

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Trello

Trello is a web-based, list-making free project management software developed by Trello Enterprise, a subsidiary of Atlassian. It offers solutions to manage projects easily, visually, and, above all, freely. Thanks to its countless intuitive and flexible resources, such as boards, lists, and cards, Trello allows you to organise all kinds of projects.

Features of Trello

• List and card-based boards allow users to define tasks and set deadlines and calendars.
• Automated command executions per computer and user.
• Drag and drop functionality to upload multiple files from a desktop to a card.
• Actions for bulk lists like move and archive.
• Notifications are available in the toolbox and desktop if the user uses Chrome or Safari.
• Integrations between Trello cards and boards and apps like Bitbucket, Dropbox Paper, Asana, Jira, Wrike, GitHub, GitLab, Airtable, ClickUp, Azure DevOps, HubSpot, Salesforce, etc.
• Email address for each board and card.
• Mobile applications for iOS and Android.

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The free version of Trello includes the following –

• Unlimited cards and users
• Up to 10 boards
• unlimited storage (10 MB/file)
• 50 automated command executions per month
• Unlimited activity logs

In addition to its free version, which is quite comprehensive, Trello offers other plans, which include – 

• Business Class: For teams of up to 100 people.
• Enterprise: For teams of more than 100 people.
• Gold: For individuals looking to organize their work with extra features like customizable board backgrounds, larger attachments, and labels.

ClickUp 

ClickUp is a project and task management software that allows planning, organization, and collaboration from a single application. Thanks to its high degree of customization, it adapts to all types of teams and projects that seek greater agility and effectiveness in their processes.

It allows workflow customization with more than ten customizable views so that you can keep track of your projects. You choose how to display your resources in lists, boxes, Gantt diagrams, boards, calendars, etc. 

ClickUp has intuitive dashboards that allow for excellent visualization by including widgets for team members, tasks, sprints, time tracking, statuses, documents, embeds, and more.

Features of ClickUp

• Availability of mental maps that allow planning tasks and projects.
• To-do lists to which you can add items and sub-items with drag-and-drop functionality.
• Prioritization of tasks so that teams know the degree of flexibility in the work.
• Templates for tracking project phases and task templates that speed up work.
• Document creation and text editing.
• Measurement of objectives, linking assigned tasks and resources.
• Resource management with a view based on hours, tasks, or points.
• Voice commands to create reminders and tasks, as well as to review notifications.
• A global timer that works from desktop, mobile, and even Chrome.
•  A communication platform for commenting on any task or document, chatting in real-time, sharing attachments, and getting notifications about the progress of each project.

The free version of ClickUp includes the following:

• Unlimited tasks
• Five workspaces
• Custom views: 100 uses
• 100MB of storage
• 24/7 customer support

Asana    

Asana is another project and task management software. It is an intuitive and easy-to-use tool for controlling your project’s workflow.

It enables users to work with a hierarchical vision of projects, dividing them into tasks. Portfolios are a recent addition to the hierarchy, allowing users to group multiple related projects.

In addition, it has a very usable interface and a frankly clean design. Easy access to all the variables of the same task with a single click in any view or display makes a project manager’s job much more manageable when reorganizing objectives, reassigning tasks, and setting deadlines.

Features of Asana

• Automation – Users can automate manual tasks thanks to rules-based automation that simplifies workflows, reduce errors, and save time. Users can set up to 50 Rules per project.
• Dynamic Reporting – Real-time reporting and visualization through dashboards, charts, and graphs.
• Work Request Management—Asana has a Forms feature that allows users to create a standard work intake process. Users can create multiple forms in a project.
• Integrations - More than 100 integrations are available with platforms such as Microsoft and Google products, such as Teams, Office 365, Power BI, Gmail, Android, and Looker.
• Customization – Users can track vital information to keep work visible to all. It allows the addition of data essential for tasks and projects.

Free Plan 

• Free plan for teams of up to 15 members
• Unlimited tasks, projects, messages
• File storage of up to 100MB each
• Activity log
• Work views like list, board, and calendar views, mobile apps, and integrations
• Enterprise-level features for startups and small businesses

Slack    

Slack is a powerful project management tool. It allows you to send messages and files and has a lot of plugins. With an intuitive user interface for group and individual messaging, Slack also allows companies to have some control over who can use it through the invitation system.

It has two outstanding aspects: design and understanding users’ needs.

Features of Slack

Discuss and manage tasks: You can centralize tasks, discuss resolutions and create new tasks within Slack.

Keep projects on track: Send task updates and deadline reminders via Slack to keep everyone informed about project progress.

Easily share and collaborate on project files – You can explore and share files from file management services such as Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, and OneDrive without leaving Slack.

Integration with other tools: Slack has project management integrations with platforms like Asana, Jira, Google Drive, Dropbox, GitHub, MailChimp, Intercom, ZenDesk, Blossom, Trello, etc.

Free Plan 

• Unlimited private and public channels
• 90 days of searchable messages
• Connect with up to 10 apps
• One-to-one voice and video calls
• Public files are kept in just one place
• Personalized notifications

monday

monday is a project management platform that offers a “new way to manage your work.” You can plan, organize, and track your work with custom workflows and beautiful visual collaborative workspaces.

Since monday is a flexible project management software, you can use it to manage your sales process, inventory, bug tracking, tasks, events, lead tracking, engineering projects, design projects, agile development projects, GDPR management, and many of your other core business processes.

One thing that stands out about this project management tool is the splash it makes with all the colours. monday also comes with several views, such as a calendar, chart, files, Kanban, map, and timeline.

Features of monday

• Automated workflow processes for task assignment.
• Project schedules for convenient planning and scheduling.
• Online Kanban boards for better task visualization.
• Custom automation and helpful templates.
• A trusted knowledge base.
• A long list of integrations.
• Variety of view types (table, Kanban, Gantt charts, etc.).
• It works well for smaller groups that have other task management tools at their disposal. 
• The customization capabilities make it suitable for any enterprise, remote and freelance job.

Free Plan 

• Unlimited boards for managing projects
• Unlimited docs
• 20+ column types, including Time-tracking, People for assigned tasks, Tags, Voting, Due Date, etc.
• Template centre with 200+ templates and board bundles
• 24+ dashboards widgets
• Full-scale data insights for data-informed decision making

Conclusion

In summary, to find the project management solution that suits you best, several parameters must be taken into account the following:

• Do you want free project management software, or are you willing to invest in a paid one? 
• How many users should have access to this planning software? This will allow you to see if you need software that offers unlimited users.
• What options do you need in your daily life (e.g., a Gantt chart, setting alerts about deadlines, being able to enter a substantial list of tasks, managing different projects in the same tool)?
• Do you prefer classic or more advanced management to manage large projects?
• Are you seeking free project management software with intuitive handling for agile and efficient management?

No single free project management software is recommended since it depends on your needs and use. Above all, you will have to think about ergonomics and ease of use because one thing is certain: if the software seems challenging to use, neither for you nor your employees, it will be useless even if it is the best-rated one available.