10 Best Project Management Software in 2023

Using software to optimize your productivity as a project manager is expected, but choosing a software option for your business can be challenging. There are so many options on the market, which can seem overwhelming. Each solution promises the best features to optimize productivity, but each business and its requirements are unique.

Well, there’s good news! We have done the work for you, making it easier to choose the best-in-class project management software for your needs. We tested and analyzed over 50 software options across different criteria, and now you can use the results of our detailed research to make an informed decision.

According to PwC, 77% of all high-performing teams use project management software to boost their efficiency and productivity. As a project manager looking to improve your portfolio of results, picking an option from our list will help you join the train of high-performing agile teams. When researching a project management software for your team or organization, our carefully researched criteria will help you make the right decision. Now, let’s dive in!

What is Project Management Software?

It has been estimated that 54% of businesses fail to track and monitor their KPIs when working on projects. It has led to several failed projects and a continued wastage of resources. Companies seeking to reduce this waste have turned to a dedicated software solution: project management software.

Project management software is a digital platform or solution that allows businesses and managers to plan projects, schedule and assign tasks, allocate resources, collaborate with team members, and track progress. Project management tools allow team leads to optimize the process of managing multiple teams or individuals, ensuring that every team member is productive. It also facilitates oversight, as the team lead can always grasp how much the team has progressed.

Some of the features you’ll find with project management software include the following:

Project planning

With agile-oriented project management software, you can map out a new project on an interactive interface. You can add and remove tasks, make notes, and add details such as dates, deadlines, tables, and links.

Task management

You can easily create and assign tasks to team members with task management. You can also harness added functionalities such as deadlines, priorities, progress reports, and reminders.

Team collaboration

Project management software makes it easy for team members to collaborate. You can upload all documents to a central repository where team members can access them anytime.

Calendars and contact sharing

Excellent project management software makes it simple to schedule meetings, deadlines, and contacts that sync automatically across the team. It ensures that every team member is always updated on what needs to be done.

Time tracking

Secure that your team members are efficient with their time usage and performance with time tracking. With time tracking functionalities, you can also improve your accountability to clients, making invoicing easier. Some project management solutions will come with manual time trackers, while others include an automatic option.

Project overview and reporting

With project management tools, getting a bird’s-eye view of your project is much easier. You can track the progress of specific assignments and tasks with status reports, and Kanban boards allow you to get a general snapshot of how close the project is to completion. With this information, you can ensure that your team stays agile.

What Makes the Best Project Management Software?

To determine the best project management software, our team performs in-depth research and analysis to find the most important criteria for comparing offerings. In deciding on these criteria, we look only at features that offer the best value to users in handling projects effectively. With these criteria in mind, we conduct our investigations on various product offerings, interview experts, and analyze thousands of user reviews and data.

For project management software, we create a list of the product offerings on the market. We then map each product's features and specifications and carefully arrange them into categories. We then carefully score each product in each category based on its performance and specifications. Then, we assign a score to each product based on aggregating its score in each category.

So, what makes a project management software solution an excellent offering? From our assessment, we’ve determined the following categories are crucial:

Features

Project managers have to do a bit of everything. With a complete suite of features, it becomes easier for them to direct and scale operations. It is why this criterion makes up 20% of the total score.

From keeping track of progress to task assignments, managers must always stay in charge. The best software solutions help you to keep on top of projects with automation. If you want to read more about how we evaluate product features, you can visit this page.

Access

With the growing popularity of smartphones and the rise of remote work, it has become more important for project managers to be able to work from anywhere and on any device. The access criterion includes variables that describe to which extent each platform can be used. It’s why access forms 15% of the overall score in our assessment.

If you want to find out more about the metrics we evaluated to determine this score and how we incorporated them, we’ve created this page for you.

Pricing

For a business aiming to keep the cost of its operations relatively low, the pricing of product offerings is an essential factor. It’s even more critical for small and medium-sized businesses and startups, so we’ve included pricing in our assessment, with a weighted percentage of 15%.

For more information about how we consider this criterion, visit our dedicated page for the project management software with the best pricing.

Admin Controls & Reporting

A manager is also an administrator, so the fact that we include it in our assessment criteria is probably a no-brainer. Administrator controls allow the manager to overview and manage the project with the team members quickly.

This component is captured in our assessment at 10% of the overall score. We assess each piece in-depth, from custom fields and workload management to data exporting. Find out more about how we do this here.

Project Views

A picture is worth a thousand words, or so they say. It is no less accurate regarding project management, where a manager has to grasp lots of information at every stage of the process. Therefore, the quality of different project views makes up 10% of the overall score in our assessments.

Want to know more about how we derive our scores for each solution? Visit this page.

Integrations

The world of work is evolving rapidly with software, and providers have begun integrating software for decades. It ensures that workers can always use the best software for each purpose. Additionally, good software integrations enable seamless communications, boost worker productivity, and make it easier to generate reports and monitor growth.

Integrations form 10% of our overall score. Among other things, our analysis assesses the availability of integrations to streamline processes in various industries. Visit this page to learn more about incorporating this criterion into our assessment.

Ease of use

Nobody wants to spend countless hours learning the ropes of using new software; it defeats its purpose. Is a project management software solution user-friendly and has an intuitive interface? These factors count in making the assignment and performance smooth and seamless.

Therefore, ease of use counts toward 10% of our overall scoring. With a high-quality experience, it is easier for your team members to stay motivated while using your chosen project management software. Find out more about our process for determining this score here.

Customer Support

No matter how good a software offering is, it’s still possible to run into a few technical issues now and then. And the only thing more frustrating than running into a technical issue is having no one to help solve it. This critical consideration is why customer support makes up 5% of the overall score in our assessment.

Our assessment checks how easily users can access and receive needed support. Here’s a detailed explanation of how we evaluate the customer support of project management software solutions.

Security

Data privacy and security are essential concerns in today’s highly-connected world. Businesses and third parties must ensure their activities and confidential information are protected. In addition, data needs to be appropriately secured to ensure no leaks or losses.

Security makes up 5% of the overall score in our assessment. To know more about how we incorporated the different elements of this criterion, visit this page.

By scoring various software offerings based on the criteria described above, we develop a weighted score that strongly reflects each solution's effectiveness. We then compare the scores in multiple categories to determine how each software ranks. The aggregate of these rankings helps us to determine the ten best software for project management in the market.

The 10 Best Project Management Software

Now that you’ve seen the leading project management tools on the market, how do you make your choice? We’ll discuss this in the next section.

How to Choose the Best Project Management Software for Your Needs

We’ve covered the best project management software offerings and the chief criteria for determining a software solution for your business. However, choosing a project management software for your business needs is up to you. How do you do this?

First, you’d need to determine which features are most important to your business. You can take your time with this stage, as it’s critical to the rest of the process. It’s also a good idea to consult with your team members and other stakeholders to determine what they believe is vital.

When you’ve determined the most critial features for your business, you can start comparing providers to see which ones offer the best-in-class solutions to meet those requirements. If you want to make the comparison process more manageable, you can use our Comparison Tool to look at your options side by side and see which comes out the strongest.

A corporate software solution is always a substantial investment that can impact the business for years. After comparing options, you should test the solutions that you think are effective. This way, you’ll be able to pick the best solution for your business. Also, don’t be afraid to spend more on a solution containing everything you need – it will be worth the few extra dollars.

We hope our research has helped you find the best project management software. Make sure also to check out our Finder Tool if you need further assistance in finding a project management software that suits you.