TL;DR
👉 Kanban boards have been the TALK of the town for some time, especially for project managers.
👉 These boards are quite flexible—teams can easily play around to increase visibility and efficiency.
👉 Moreover, there are several paid and free kanban board tools nowadays. If you want to learn more about your options, keep on reading ’cause this article will touch upon each robust kanban software.
I remember my university days very vividly.
Especially the specific part where I had to sign up for several task management tools to ace the classes.
Because THAT was a challenge.
Not the signing part, though. The challenge was constantly having to check the boards that were really unpleasant to the eye.
Personally, I find kanban boards a blessing. They do not hurt your eye, make it easy to track to-do lists, and keep everything in one place. Thus, long live kanban boards.
That’s the exact reason I am writing this article for you—so that you don’t have to go through what I have while finding top-notch quality kanban board tools.
In this article, I will show you a new world that only includes kanban boards and kanban boards. So, let’s start going over each tool that I find useful for various reasons that will be explained as well:
Top 8 Kanban Tools of 2023
Regardless of the purpose of your use, here are my top 8 kanban tools of 2023, which I am pretty sure will be up to your par:
Without any delay, let’s start going over each tool!
1- monday.com
Very first project management tool on the list: monday.com.
There are many reasons for it, though. First of all, monday.com is famous for its kanban boards that help you prioritize your tasks with ease. Whether you are a student or part of a remote team, you can build and start deriving value from your board with a kanban view in a second, thanks to its simple interface.
One of the things I really like about this powerful tool is that it lets you manage complex projects in the most non-complex way ever; you can make project planning, check project progress, change project boards according to your needs, and enable efficient collaboration with your entire team.
As I’ve mentioned, monday.com has multiple board views, and it is really easy to change one to another. All you need to do is go to the Add View section and choose Kanban as the style you want your digital board to have. You are now good to go!
Add new task cards, spend your time on card design, change card color, and share your visual representation of important data, daily tasks, or quarterly goals with your teammates to communicate on the matter and make sure they also stay up-to-date.
I’ve said enough about what you can achieve with kanban boards, but there is another side that needs to be mentioned: its simple design that is NOT hard to eye at all.
Alongside building great kanban boards, with monday.com, you can:
- plan, strategize, and deliver the project of your choice in a flash via the pre-built templates—which can be customized as well
- visualize your project with several colorful charts to track and manage with ease
- reshape and monitor your task dependencies, task lists, task milestones, and many more throughout the project lifecycle
- make use of all kinds of dashboards by turning insights into data that will serve as your guide for your future business plans
- oversee your team’s workload to assign resources accordingly, thanks to real-time data
- use popular integrations to take your project to the next level
- utilize the time tracking widget to make sure everything is going according to plan
- and make use of the key features of monday.com while adding custom items to your project
FORTUNATELY, monday.com offers a free plan for students to allocate their time correctly, individuals to prioritize their tasks and free time, and teams of 5 to get their workflow in order.
So, try it for free—what’s there to lose?
⭐monday.com G2 Rating: 4.7 (out of 8,626 reviews)
The project management software that will actually work for your team
Manage simple to complex projects and everything in between with monday.com
monday.com Pricing
- Free Plan: €0 (up to 2 seats)
- Basic Plan: €8/user per month when billed annually
- Standard Plan: €10/user per month when billed annually
- Pro Plan: €16/user per month when billed annually
- Enterprise Plan: For this plan, please contact sales.
*All the plans above include a 14-day free trial, making it possible to try them out before committing to an annual purchase.
2- Wrike
Wrike is a great visual project management tool that helps you create the kanban boards of your dreams.
With Wrike, you can turn plans into entire boards to define stages of each unique workflow. To simplify the whole process, you can generate your own custom templates, create custom statuses for them, avoid delays in projects, eliminate bottlenecks, view tasks and projects with a bird’s eye view, and many more.
The sample stages that Wrike offers are “to-do, doing, done, canceled, and backlogged” so that you can efficiently keep track of the actions your assignees take.
For instance, kanban boards of Wrike can be of great help to visualize product development processes, track product reviews, record detailed changelogs, plan features, and create columns for planning projects.
Wrike offers a free plan for newly-found teams—make the most out of it.
⭐Wrike G2 Rating: 4.2 (out of 3,424 reviews)
Wrike Pricing
- Free Plan: $0
- Team Plan: $9.80/month per user
- Business Plan: $24.80/month per user
- Enterprise Plan: For this plan, please contact sales.
- Pinnacle Plan: For this plan, please contact sales.
*All the plans above include a 14-day free trial, making it possible to try them out before committing to an annual purchase.
3- Smartsheet
Smartsheet is an agile tool for work management with customizable features that pushes you into taking an agile approach when finding the right workflow method for you.
Smartsheet adapts to your needs, whether you are a small-sized business or a worldwide company. The reason for this is the basic features it offers. For example, views, workflows, reports, and dashboards are all customizable and ready for insightful reporting for you to note down key information regarding the matter so that teams can continuously improve.
One additional functionality I have to mention is its WIP Limit (Work In Progress), which aims to reduce the projects that are generated and enhance the number of projects that are completed within each phase that you determine.
⭐Smartsheet G2 Rating: 4.4 (out of 12,596 reviews)
Smartsheet Pricing
- Free Plan: Free for small teams.
- Pro Plan: $7/user per month when billed annually (minimum 1 user, up to 25 users)
- Business Plan: $25/user per month when billed annually (minimum 3 users)
- Enterprise Plan: For this plan, please contact sales.
*All the plans above include a 30-day free trial, making it possible to try them out before committing to an annual purchase.
4- ClickUp
ClickUp is an agile project management software with a simple interface that helps you build a flexible physical board to run an entire project smoothly.
It separates the board into sections: To Do, Work In Progress, and Done. Along with this feature, you can place mainboards, columns, cards, work-in-progress limits, and kanban swimlanes with almost no training—which have many use cases, including project, program, and portfolio management.
Another perk of ClickUp is the collaboration features, including collaboration tools, such as Google Calendar, Loom, Intercom, Figma, and Microsoft Teams. It is also important to mention that it now allows Slack integration as a team chat app for you to communicate with your team members without difficulty.
⭐ClickUp G2 Rating: 4.7 (out of 8,061 reviews)
ClickUp Pricing
- Free Plan: $0
- Unlimited Plan: $5/month per user when billed annually
- Business Plan: $12/month per user when billed annually
- Business Plus Plan: $19/month per user when billed annually
- Enterprise Plan: For this plan, please contact sales.
5- Teamwork
Teamwork is another task management software that appears on this list due to its customizable task boards in Kanban view.
Maybe the name of this tool might make you think otherwise, but it has a free plan for personal use so that individuals can get to experience how easy creating a board online is.
Cause it really is.
Just in case you don’t believe me, let me put it out for you: With Teamwork’s kanban boards, you can manage your work as if it were child’s play. Check your progress with just a glance toward the board, leave comments on each task, enable workflow automations, and take your project planning to the next level via customizable boards.
Larger teams like software development teams can effortlessly collaborate with other teams to check their progress on projects regarding website development, for example. It could be the marketing team to create new campaigns or the customer support to get feedback on the website design. Possibilities are ENDLESS.
⭐Teamwork G2 Rating: 4.4 (out of 1,037 reviews)
Teamwork Pricing
- Free Plan: $0 (up to 5 users)
- Starter Plan: $5.99/month per user when billed annually
- Deliver Plan: $9.99/month per user when billed annually
- Grow Plan: $19.99/month per user when billed annually
- Scale Plan: For this plan, please contact sales.
*All the plans above include a 30-day free trial, making it possible to try them out before committing to an annual purchase.
6- Notion
Why is Notion the sixth option on our list?
Because it has all the essential features a kanban tool should for free if you are a student. As an individual, you get to make use of creating unlimited boards based on your needs and wishes.
BUT IF what you are looking for is team collaboration, Notion has a premium plan with unlimited users for you and your teams to put to use. With Notion as your agile project management tool, you will be able to carry out larger projects by breaking them into smaller tasks without any doubt.
Also, it has many advanced features that wait for you to check them out when building your digital boards in kanban style. For example, building databases from scratch. You can use database templates, customize them, create a wide array of workflows with them, and link them according to your work requirements.
⭐Notion G2 Rating: 4.7 (out of 4,691 reviews)
Notion Pricing
- Personal Plan: $0
- Plus Plan: $8/month, billed annually
- Business Plan: $15/user per month, billed annually
- Enterprise Plan: For this plan, please contact sales.
7- Asana
Asana is a task management tool that many people use during work hours. The reason is that Asana is popular for its user-friendly user interface that helps you set your goals the moment you turn your computer on.
Aside from its user interface, Asana is a great option for visualizing work as it goes through different stages, thanks to its kanban board. You will get to use many exciting features when designing your team board: label columns, use the drag-and-drop functionality, change due dates, assignees, subtasks, and more—just to reflect your workflow in the most unified and unique way.
OR you might just make use of it for monitoring work requests, assigning individual tasks, creating customizable workflows, arranging product roadmaps, and tracking progress. The choice is all yours since Asana offers a free plan for individuals and teams of 15 to use (without automations😔) on a regular basis.
⭐Asana G2 Rating: 4.3 (out of 9,404 reviews)
Asana Pricing
- Basic Plan: $0
- Premium Plan: $10.99/per user per month when billed annually
- Business Plan: $24.99/per user per month when billed annually
- Enterprise Plan: For this plan, please contact sales.
*All the plans above include a 30-day free trial, making it possible to try them out before committing to an annual purchase.
8- Trello
Trello is another go-to kanban tool that you can use with ease.
Trusted by Visa, Google, Zoom, and many more, Trello proves that its kanban board design enables a digital workplace that is more transparent as you get to check who is working on what with no wasted time.
Increasing efficiency and productivity at the same time, this project management software helps you focus on which task needs to be done instead of what tasks could be done. Shifting your focus, it is no secret you will start working on what’s on your plate, or should I say kanban?
Additionally, attaching files to cards from Google Drive, creating bullet point lists to highlight important changes, adding due dates, making use of built-in automation, and several app integrations are only a few of the advanced features that Trello provides you with on the road to success.
Side note, Trello offers a free plan with limited features for both individuals AND teams.
⭐Trello G2 Rating: 4.4 (out of 13,292 reviews)
Trello Pricing
- Free Plan: $0
- Standard Plan: $5/month per user when billed annually
- Premium Plan: $10/month per user when billed annually
- Enterprise Plan: For this plan, please contact sales.
*All the plans above include a 14-day free trial, making it possible to try them out before committing to an annual purchase.
In Conclusion
Many software tools could help you get your life in order, whether you are a student or an employee.
BUT not all of them can offer you the beautiful view that kanban boards provide.
That is why I prepared this list containing the best kanban tools of 2023.
If the shoe fits, wear it—AND I am sure that one of them will!
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best Kanban tool for agile teams?
monday.com is the best kanban tool for agile teams, thanks to the service it provides its users for a reasonable price. With monday.com, you can easily customize your kanban boards to have a better look at your projects and check your teams’ progress.
What is the best personal Kanban tool?
monday.com is the best kanban tool for personal use due to the basic features its free plan includes, such as mobile apps, over 200 free templates, unlimited documents, and 3 boards—which would be more than enough resources for you to plan your projects or create workflows for your own tasks.
Does Google have a Kanban board?
While Google Workspace doesn’t have a kanban board, you can easily install third-party applications to make use of kanban boards when managing your tasks and projects.
