Even though it might sound funny, choosing the right task management app for task management is sometimes trickier than actually getting the tasks done on your list.
Whether it’s for personal tasks or team tasks, there are literally a hundred task management tools available that you can choose from to manage complex projects and still use as a personal task management tool for your mundane daily tasks.
By using these tools on a daily basis, you will be able to create custom fields, task dependencies, and to-do lists while reducing manual effort, increasing flexibility in your schedule, and saving a lot of time.
But how can you know which solution is the right fit for keeping track of individual tasks of remote teams if so many options are available as a project manager?
To help you avoid getting drowned in all the choices out there, here is the list of the thirteen best task management tools and detailed reviews to help you make an informed decision. To start, let’s look at some key features you must look for when choosing your new project management software.
What are the Key Features of a Good Task Management Tool?
When it comes to selecting a good task management platform, there are certain things you’ll want to look for. Consider these key features when choosing your new task management solution; they will make your and your entire team’s lives easier.
Task Monitoring: After the task assignment process, you can easily manage each task’s progress by setting an hourly budget.
Multiple Task Views: View your tasks in multiple ways: Kanban, Gantt, Form, List, and Calendar.
Project Templates: Use pre-made project templates instead of typing in tasks manually each time.
Flexibility: Use the tool for various use cases and stay on track with all your complex tasks.
Full Integrations: Possibility to integrate with various apps such as Google Calendar, Slack, Salesforce, and Zapier.
Ease of Use: Suitable for code and no-code teams without much difficulty.
Regular Product Updates: Listening to user feedback, updating the services, and fixing bugs frequently.
What Is A Task Management Tool?
Task management tools are single platforms that are frequently used by agile teams, task managers, and students to take team collaboration to the next level and meet business expectations and personal goals by increasing scalability and flexibility in the creation and customization of a project workflow.
Generally, task management tools include powerful features that will help users manage their workload in an instant so that they can experience how easy the whole process can get thanks to these agile tools; some of these key features are file sharing, project tasks, task progress, task automations, customizable workflows, time management, customizable templates, task scheduling, and custom roles.
For example, creating Gantt charts to enable task dependencies, allowing task automations, adding time tracking, and checking each task progress to generate a custom report regarding the project cycle is an example of task management by using a task manager tool.
Why Should You Use Task Management Tools?
Centralizing your work activity reduces the risk of data loss and offers better collaboration tools among your team members. It also facilitates uninterrupted communication and increases productivity as a result.
If you’re afraid of not being able to organize all of your tasks and ending up with a heavy workload, afraid not because with task management tools, you can prioritize your tasks according to business needs and set reminders to ensure that they are completed on time by separating the big individual tasks into smaller branches, making use of task assignment, and creating task dependencies to make sure even complex projects are handled smoothly throughout a simple process.
So, to organize and manage tasks and projects successfully at work by getting into a whole new world where custom workflows and time management are the king and the queen, you should give beneficial yet simple task management software a try, especially the ones I’m about to name below.
Don’t forget that all you need is a reliable internet connection to allow real-time collaborations and manage tasks and events remotely anywhere at any time.
At this point, you simply cannot afford not to invest in a task management tool!
Top 13 Task Management Tools
1- monday.com
monday.com boards feature colored rows representing anything from a task to a campaign or lead.
In each row, columns represent the basic features of task management: users, hourly budgets, time tracking, and dependencies. This award-winning, user-friendly project management software lets you customize boards and create custom templates that will suit each one of your business processes to help you organize multiple tasks at work.
You can also automate complex workflows with a list of features and several third-party and custom integrations.
To dig deeper, with monday.com as your task management software, 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 colorful Gantt 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
- and make use of the key features of monday.com (that I’ve briefly mentioned above) while adding custom items to your project
Why monday.com?
monday.com is THE best task manager on our list, and here’s why:
This task tracker software focuses on visual, intuitive layouts that help clarify the sequence of work for multiple tasks and track project progress. Its highly customizable interface is similar to a spreadsheet; still, it has additional features that make it more interactive and visually appealing.
With monday.com, you can create unlimited tasks and high-level project roadmaps in minutes, manage your resources, and handle other aspects of your business. The collaboration process is easily handled with threaded comments and mentions on your message board and other tools—making monday.com the best tool to track tasks.
Key Features:
- Customizable templates
- Automation
- Real-time dashboards
- Easy integration with other apps
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 Pros & Cons
Pros:
Cons:
- Attractive interface
- Encourages transparency and accountability
- Handy project visualization tools
- Advanced reporting and analytic
- Activity planning
- Multiple assignment tracking
- Expensive to manage large-sized teams
- Limited reporting features
monday.com Pricing
- Individual plan: $0 free forever (up to 2 seats)
- Basic plan: $6 per seat / per month (total $18 /month billed annually)
- Standard plan: $10 per seat / per month (total $30 / month billed annually)
- Pro plan: $22 per seat / per month (total $66 / month billed annually)
- Enterprise plan: To get the exact price for all enterprise-level features, please get in touch with sales.
2- Smartsheet
Smartsheet is an easy-to-use web-based task management tool that allows organizations of all sizes to manage their projects, and tasks, crowdsource, report, and much more.
The program resembles a spreadsheet-like task management tool that offers essential features like assigning tasks, subtasks, and activities. Smartsheet offers spreadsheet functionality with visual timelines, workflow automation, customizable workflows, and collaboratively shared files and discussions.
This cloud-based task management app can be integrated with several third-party integrations, including Google Apps, Salesforce, and Dropbox.
Here are some of the main features that Smartsheet has:
- Project planning,
- resource management,
- budget management,
- project delivery,
- analytics and reporting,
- workflow automation,
- scalability of projects, programs, and portfolios,
- templates.
Smartsheet Pros & Cons
Pros:
Cons:
- Management dashboard
- Easy collaboration with team members
- Secure platform deployment
- User-friendly interface
- Limited calendar view
- Lack of time tracking feature
- Limited features on the free version
Smartsheet Pricing
- Pro plan: $9 per user/per month
- Business plan: $32 per user/per month
- Enterprise plan: You can contact Smartsheet’s sales team to learn more about this plan.
3- Wrike
Using Wrike’s task management system, you can share data selectively with team members, as well as involve customers and contractors as required since it’s possible to grant specific people access to tasks, while disabling specific people from seeing them via custom roles and admin panel that Wrike supports.
Keep a close eye on your team’s schedule with the Workload view in real-time to see how each member is doing and how close your team is to achieve the goals you’ve created together. According to its users, Wrike’s most popular view is the calendar style that helps you on the road that goes to calendar management; however, several users also state that this view has its ups and downs.
This tool is one of the most highly rated tools for task management, thanks to its extensive feature list that includes:
- spaces,
- folders, projects, tasks, and subtasks,
- dynamic request forms,
- blueprints,
- marketing insights,
- automations,
- customizable user types,
- user activity reports,
- resource bookings,
- budgeting, and
- cross tagging.
Wrike Pros & Cons
Pros:
Cons:
- Customizable dashboard
- Purpose-built templates
- Custom request forms
- Real-time updates and project reports
- Complex calendar view management
- Confusing user interface
Wrike Pricing
- Free plan: $0, suitable for 1-5 users
- Professional plan: $9.80 per user/ month, suitable for 5-200 users
- Business plan: $24.80 per user/month, suitable for 5-200 users
- Enterprise plan: Available on request
- Pinnacle plan: Available on request
4- Hive
Hive is a process and project management tool that’s suitable for teams of any size. You can share files, assign tasks, communicate, and invite external users to collaborate.
This task tracker software combines a variety of unique tools to streamline the process of planning, executing, and completing tasks. Hive is more useful when used with a team because you’ll experience all of the productivity and collaboration features that this app involves, making you reach a new peak in becoming an agile team.
In addition, you can add comments directly to task cards to communicate with your teammates with no hassle.
With Hive as your cloud-based task management software, you can:
- create agile workflow processes that work for you and your team’s goals for each sprint by labeling and grouping your tasks to make project tracking as easy as possible
- manage your projects by tracking individual tasks and sub-tasks with unlimited access
- make use of flexible project views when generating a visual representation of data, such as Gantt, Kanban, table, calendar, and portfolio
- construct forms to collect information from both internal and external participants
- create personal to-do lists to keep track of the due dates of your own work while managing side projects to deliver projects on time
- break down your team’s workload and use the time tracker function for each task
- integrate your Google Calendar to get a better view of events
- customize recurring tasks and prioritize your tasks to save time while allowing automations to take care of repeated processes
- send emails by using the in-app email function and add tasks to them with ease
- choose one of the pre-made notes templates and perform real-time collaboration within them
Pros:
Cons:
- Multiple task views
- Task flexibility
- In-time communication
- Built-in templates
- No rich text editing
- Complex interface
Hive Pricing
- Hive Solo plan: $0 – free forever for individuals and small teams
- Hive Team plan: $12 for teams that run multiple projects
- Hive Enterprise: You can contact Hive’s sales team to learn more about this plan.
5- Tasklog
Tasklog is another cloud-based to-do list app on our list that tracks both your time and expenses. This software is an excellent tool for freelancers or organizations with remote workers who want to improve productivity by organizing and prioritizing their workflow.
This task tracker tool offers an advanced timing feature called Pomodoro, which is a great method to help with concentration. The Pomodoro technique, which breaks work into timed intervals, is one of its most valuable features it includes according to its users.
Monitoring employee productivity, prioritizing tasks, and assigning projects to team members are all possible with Tasklog; also its dashboard allows users to track their progress and review reports with ease.
Tasklog Pros & Cons
Pros:
Cons:
- Dynamic dashboard
- Easy-to-use timers
- Report & history access
- Adaptable time limits
- Time tracking and Pomodoro integration
- Lack of third-party integrations
- Limited offering for bigger teams
Tasklog Pricing
Tasklog offers one flat fee for everything including a free 30-day trial, which is $20/per month.
6- Todoist
Todoist is a popular to-do list app with a simple interface that lets you manage tasks across multiple projects.
Since this task manager tool allows you to add tasks and assign them to the correct team member instantly, you must make the most of it via the task view section, which enables you to see all the essential details about a task, including the task title, due date, and subtasks.
To make your task lists more organized, you can share them with others and assign tasks to each member while making use of labels, custom tags, and priority features tags, which prove to be really helpful when checking the overall progress.
You can also take a “productivity goals” quiz on their website to determine what features you will benefit from the most.
Moreover, your team can use Todoist wherever they are, as it is compatible with macOS, Android, Windows, and iOS.
Todoist Pros & Cons
Pros:
Cons:
- Real-time notifications
- Seamless third-party integration
- Detailed task record and history
- Easy task tracking with a productivity graph
- Limited to managing complex tasks/projects
- Lacks advanced features like Gantt charts, online file proofing, and file storage
Todoist Pricing:
- Free plan: $0 for starters with 5 active projects
- Pro plan: $3 for power users
- Business plan: $5 for teams
7- Asana
For those who are concerned with organizing tasks and meeting deadlines on a regular basis, Asana is a good option.
The Asana task list allows you to create large, scalable tasks and break them down into sections and sub-items, which can then be arranged into boards and lists. With this method, you’ll be able to get more control over each project and pinpoint the exact place where any delay might happen.
Using Asana as a project manager, you can prioritize your project tasks so your team knows which tasks are the most important ones and completes them first. In addition, the tool provides you with a wide range of views for you to see the overall statuses of the assigned tasks, including a list view, board view, and timeline view.
Asana has been among the best project management tools in the market for quite some time, thanks to the advanced features it provides its users with, such as milestones, custom fields, and comment-only projects.
Asana Pros & Cons
Pros:
Cons:
- User-friendly interface
- Supports third-party app integrations
- Beautiful Gantt charts
- Portfolio management
- Limited formats to export
- No in-built time tracking feature
- Limited communication features
- Too many confusing and complex features
Asana Pricing
- Basic plan: $0 (free forever)
- Premium plan: $10.99 per user/per month
- Business plan: $24.99 per user/per month
8- Airtable
Airtable is a collaboration platform that comes with several project management and task-tracking features. As its interface is quite simple, it allows you to manage your tasks conveniently without taking much of your time.
Airtable is a different kind of task management software that combines the data manipulation abilities of spreadsheets with the scalability and flexibility of database software. So, if you’re a data lover, might as well give this tool a try!
This software on our list offers some familiar task management tools that you can use to your advantage when creating a list of tasks that are of high importance, such as Gantt charts, along with some exciting additions like image markup, video snippets, URL preview, JSON editor, and collaborative whiteboard.
Aside from all that, Airtable offers more than 150 open-source apps on GitHub.
Airtable Pros & Cons
Pro:
Cons:
- Easy drag-and-drop tools
- Highly customizable
- Calendar view
- Easy app integrations
- Automations
- No built-in reporting tools
- Higher learning curve
- Lack of communication solutions
- Limited features compared to other software
Airtable Pricing
- Free plan: $0 up to 5 creators or editors
- Plus plan: $10 per seat /month (billed annually)
- Pro plan: $20 per seat /month (billed annually)
- Enterprise plan: You can contact Airtable’s sales team to learn more about this plan.
9- Trello
Trello is one of the most popular Kanban task management tools since it has a big audience that makes use of its services. So there’s no surprise that the Kanban board is its calling card.
Trello’s Kanban interface allows users to set up cards for different projects the same way they would with post-it notes. With Trello’s minimalist design, you can immediately exploit features without much experience in using a task management application.
Using Trello’s famous cards and boards, you can organize your work and manage projects in real time while maximizing productivity by adding labels, checklists, deadlines, specialist assignments, comments, links, and files to each card.
Moreover, the functions below are just a part of features that you can try out with Trello’s task manager:
- Butler, an automation tool that is unique to Trello,
- keyboard shortcuts to save time when organizing cards,
- unique card covers to visualize what you have in hand,
- advanced checklists to cover and track all the tasks easily, and
- dark mode that you can make use of at night.
Trello Pros & Cons
Pros:
Cons:
- User-friendly interface
- Easy team collaboration
- Real-time sync
- Board view
- Trello cards
- No-code automation
- Overcrowded UI
- Low storage
- Fewer in-built features
- Not suitable for larger teams
- No Gantt charts
Trello Pricing
- Free plan: With unlimited cards and up to 10 boards per workspace
- Standard plan: $5/per user per month (billed annually)
- Premium plan: $10/per user per month (billed annually)
- Enterprise plan: $17.50/per user per month (billed annually), starting cost for 25 users
10- Basecamp
Basecamp is another online task management software that allows teams of any size to manage unlimited projects and complex tasks easily and effectively.
This software has a wide range of functionality, including assigning a list of tasks, creating to-do lists, scheduling meetings, tracking progress, and more. It also offers a real-time team chat feature and a way for the client to view the project’s progress.
As with many of the other services on this list, Basecamp can also be integrated with third-party integrations like Google Drive, Zapier, and Google Calendar for reporting, analysis, and time tracking.
No matter how many people, tasks, files, or documents you have, Basecamp can effortlessly help you manage them all.
Basecamp Pros & Cons
Pros:
Cons:
- User-friendly interface
- Simple task management
- Auto check-in questions
- Integrations & cross-device
- Built-in communication tools
- Limited customization options
- No time-tracking feature
- No advanced analytical tools
Basecamp Pricing
- Basecamp Personal: $0, free plan for personal use
- Basecamp Business: $99 per month (flat rate with unlimited projects)
11- Jira
Jira is a task management tool that is preferred by many due to the two boards it has: Kanban and scrum.
These two boards help teams break tasks into smaller units so that they can manage what they have on their plates; thus, enabling members focus on tasks that cannot be automated instead. Moreover, you get to observe every single task with more visibility and obtain a more insightful point of view to make further decisions regarding projects.
One unique feature that Jira promotes is its bug tracking; this function enables you to get an overview of the bugs that are apparent in your products and services. By using this function’s template, you can capture, manage and resolve the issues that get in the way by assigning them to the right person.
One thing to keep in mind is that the services that Jira offers might be more appealing to technical people most of the time.
Jira Pros & Cons
Pros:
Cons:
- Workflow statuses
- Bug tracking
- Scrum and Kanban templates
- DevOps
- Native integrations with other Atlassian products
- Complex interface
- Lacks collaboration features
- Lacks built-in timeline
- Hard to set up
Jira Pricing
- Standard Plan: $7.75 per user/per month (up to 10 users)
- Premium Plan: $15.25 per user/per month
- Enterprise Plan: You can contact Jira’s sales team to learn more about this plan.
12- Microsoft 365
Involving several effective tools in one place, Microsoft 365 offers you one of the best experiences you can get when it comes to task management, especially for large teams.
Giving you the freedom to move between devices, Microsoft 365 also enables you to work with your team and connect anywhere you like. Moreover, having a convenient system like this definitely has it perks. For example, your team members could easily swap applications to check what you have for the rest of the day on Microsoft Planner and check off your daily tasks on Microsoft To Do.
This system includes the crucial applications below:
- Teams
- Outlook
- To Do
- OneDrive
- SharePoint
- Exchange
- Planner
- Word
- Excel
- PowerPoint
Plus, keep in mind that Microsoft 365 offers a month-long free trial!
Microsoft 365 Pros & Cons
Pros:
Cons:
- Mobile and web app
- Easy to use and collaborate
- Access from anywhere
- Several integrated tools
- Several complex functions
- Fewer customization options
- Lack of views
- Hard to find the features you need due to several apps in one place
Microsoft 365 Pricing
- Microsoft 365 Business Basic: $6/user per month
- Microsoft 365 Apps for Business: $8.25/ user per month
- Microsoft 365 Business Standard: $12.50/user per month
- Microsoft 365 Business Premium: $22/user per month
13- Google Tasks
Google Tasks is one of the fan-favorites among the products that Google launched.
Compatible with all devices out there, Google Tasks offers you a new experience that you can make use of by just downloading on both desktop and mobile devices. Just like the apps of Microsoft, Google also includes several more tools—such as Gmail, Calendar, and Drive, you can connect Google Tasks to boost your performance even more.
Moreover, managing tasks is super easy with Google Tasks because you don’t have to switch a single tab to organize your personal and daily tasks; you can reach them with ease, especially if you use the Chrome extension.
Google Tasks Pros & Cons
Pros:
Cons:
- Mobile app
- User-friendly interface
- Access from anywhere
- Powerful integrations
- Lack of some essential features
- Lack of views
- Fewer customization options
Google Tasks Pricing
Google Tasks is a free application that you can use alone; however, you might need to purchase Google Workspace to get a better view of your team’s tasks.
Conclusion
Everybody knows that the key to efficiency is proper planning which starts with defining your business process and then identifying tools that can help you automate your tasks along the way.
It’s evident from the list of 13 task management tools above that a large number of them are currently available in the market that can help business owners and teams achieve their goals.
The best way to identify the most efficient tool for your needs is to specify how you want to organize your tasks and then look at what tools are available for that workflow.
To make sure that you accomplish everything on your plate and accurately report your progress to others, you’ll want to use any of these tools.
In the end, it all boils down to this: stop relying on others, stop relying on others and start hitting goals and creating effective design work with the right digital task management tool.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is task management CRM?
A task management CRM allows the users to plan, organize and prioritize tasks to resolve them efficiently within a defined timeline in order to record and follow the conversation you have with your contacts. This kind of software is designed to address the requirements of project managers and rule out the possibility of missing deadlines or exceeding budgets when it comes to customers.
What is the best tool for task management?
monday.com is one of the best task management tools that powers teams to run projects and workflows confidently. It’s a simple but intuitive tool with a broad range of task management features, from board views and dashboards to time-tracking and automation for task management optimization.
What are some examples of work management tools?
Here is a list of the best work management tools:
- monday.com
- Hive
- Asana
- Todoist
- Tasklog
- Smartsheet
- Basecamp
- Wrike
- Airtable
- Trello
- Jira
- Microsoft 365
- Google Tasks
