9 Best Project Management Software for Small Teams [Tested in 2025]

What’s the first thing that pops into your mind when you hear the phrase ‘small team’? Juggling different tasks? Wearing multiple hats? Multitasking? 

Sounds chaotic, right? Well, with the right project management tool, it doesn’t have to be. 

Indeed, project management software helps small teams streamline workflows, organize tasks, and work faster and more efficiently. Ideally, this means there will be no chaos involved. 

In this blog post, I’ve listed 9 project management tools I judged to be the best for small teams based on weeks of research and testing their free plans and trials. 

While vastly different, each of these tools has its own advantages and reasons why they’ve made it onto this list. So, scroll down to find out which one fits you best!

Top 9 project management software for small teams — overview

How I chose and tested the project management tools in this list 

While researching PM tools, I quickly realized I was dumbfounded by the sheer number of them on the market. But I had to make a selection according to some criteria — so that you don’t feel overwhelmed as well. 

In short, these are the common factors all project management tools for small teams should have:

• Affordability — Ideally, these tools should have a free plan and affordable paid plans, or at the very least, a useful, feature-rich, and specialized paid plan that would be worth the cost.
• Customizability — Small teams often change. They may grow, freelancers may come and go, and members may perform multiple roles at the same time. So, it’s important to be able to tailor the software to the needs of the team rather than switch software every time a change occurs.
• Collaboration — Project management can’t function without inter-team and cross-team collaboration. So, access to real-time updates, comments, feedback, and notifications were all taken into consideration.
• Project management and task management features — Knowing the exact functionalities you need and picking the software based on that is the best way to choose the right tool for your team. Keep in mind that, according to the latest project management statistics, 39% of project managers cite the lack of a specific functionality as the leading cause of their dissatisfaction with certain software.

Change the grim statistics — try Plaky!

After considering these metrics and choosing the 9 best project management tools, I tested each app, simulating small team workflows. So, I believe my work will save you some time and effort in your search for the perfect PM tool for your small team.  

#1 Plaky — best free project management software for small teams

Plaky is an affordable, fully customizable, and intuitive project management tool that lets your team focus on doing their tasks instead of learning the ropes of a complicated PM tool. 

Why choose Plaky?

POV: Your small team has a tight budget, but still needs to organize and grow its processes. 

Solution: Plaky — free, easy-to-use project management software. 

Manage your workload with Plaky

Although I’ve been using Plaky for a few years now, I remember I had no difficulty navigating this tool from the very beginning. Thanks to its user-friendly interface, I wasted no time learning how it functions. 

This is especially important for small teams, as overly complicated software means you need to waste time on mastering it, while your job takes a hit. Luckily, Plaky has a simple yet robust design that helps you easily navigate your tasks. 

Plaky also helps small teams collaborate by enabling them to easily: 

• Track progress — The activity log and summary row make progress-tracking a breeze, keeping all team members informed without distracting them from their work.
• Communicate — The comments sections within the items let teammates add relevant updates and information, as well as mention their coworkers. 
• Meet deadlines — Adding due dates to items allows for better task management and planning. A simple glance at the deadline and task status can help your team act on time if there are any hiccups.  

The unlimited number of users across all plans enables businesses to scale up without having to migrate to another software every few months.

However, if you decide to go for 1 of the 2 Plaky’s paid plans, you’ll get a bunch of sweet upgrades — e.g., private boards, custom templates, bulk actions in PRO, board permissions, and an unlimited activity log in ENTERPRISE — at the most affordable price on the market.

The only things missing right now are advanced integration and automation options. But as the team behind Plaky is dedicated to constant improvement, those will be available soon as well!

What’s new in Plaky?

Recently, Plaky introduced a single login for the CAKE.com account — the easiest way for you to access 3 productivity tools:

• Plaky — for all your project and task management needs,
• Clockify — for tracking time, and 
• Pumble — for smooth business communication.  

Available for: web, iOS, Android

*billed annually

Free PM software for small teams

No matter how small, your team can still get everything done without breaking the bank — try Plaky today! 

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#2 Trello — best for creating and executing project roadmaps

Trello is a solid choice for visualizing and executing project roadmaps in Agile settings. Thanks to its highly visual nature, it’s easy for both you and stakeholders to get a bird’s-eye view of the project and know exactly where it stands.

Why choose Trello? 

POV: You and your team need a clear visual approach to project management that will help streamline your workflow. 

Solution: Trello’s signature Kanban view can help you with that. 

I found collaborating in Trello pretty smooth, as it allows you to: 

• Break down the tasks from the project roadmap on different boards, 
• Assign labels and people, and
• Add files, links, comments, etc. 

Trello’s Power-Ups (integrations) allow you to connect the boards so that whatever your team does on their board automatically updates your roadmap. They are available in the free plan, which is great for small teams that want to test the waters before investing in an app. 

For smoother communication with your teammates, there’s an AI writing assistant available too, which helps summarize or improve your writing, fix spelling, change tone, etc. 

And as far as customization goes, Trello didn’t disappoint me. It offers plenty of options, including adding a checklist to your card, which I found especially helpful, as it helps me not forget any of the steps in my workflow. 

Aside from the checklists, Trello enables you to add other options to your cards, thanks again to Power-Ups. However, while it may be handy for an app to present a ton of information, it can become a bit overwhelming — at least it was for me. So, if you’re more inclined to minimalism, you may want to dial down on the available options. 

Another thing to consider is that Trello might not be so easily scalable. It is useful in smaller, Agile project teams. But, I can easily imagine it getting too cluttered if a larger team were to use it for a bigger project, especially in a Waterfall project management setting. 

What’s new in Trello?

Recently, Trello added new features that help you organize your to-do list, e.g., capturing tasks from a voice note to Siri, a Slack message, or an email. These tasks are then added to your Trello inbox.

Available for: web, Android, iOS, Windows, macOS

*billed annually

Free Trello alternative

If you need a PM software as user-friendly as Trello, but more suitable for larger teams and projects, try Plaky!

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#3 Smartsheet — best for users who want Excel, but better

You can think of Smartsheet as a significantly enhanced version of Excel or Google Sheets. While the software also offers Kanban, calendar, and list views, its main appeal lies in its grid (spreadsheet) view.

Why choose Smartsheet?

POV: You work in a small team that’s a fan of Excel spreadsheets and is wondering if there’s something slightly better (or less glitchy!). 

Solution: Smartsheet’s what you need. 

Smartsheet is highly customizable — if you can do it in Excel or Sheets, you can do it in Smartsheet, but better. 

In addition to supporting many of the same formulas as Excel and Sheets, it also lets you: 

• Create reports, 
• Connect and view this information in Gantt or calendar views, 
• Create project dependencies and determine the critical path, 
• Collaborate with your team in real time (directly in the sheet), 
• Set project baselines, and much more. 

I especially liked the project baseline feature, as it helps track baselines, actual dates, and the schedule variance between them. This gives you an accurate insight into your project performance, without you having to waste your time constantly checking each task on your list — a huge deal for small teams that might already have a lot on their plates.  

All this makes Smartsheet great for project managers who like the customizability and layout of spreadsheets, but need more focused PM functionalities built into their software. 

On the other hand, the amount of formatting required to create a functioning project management system (much like in Excel or Google Sheets) is something I’d highlight as Smartsheet’s biggest flaw. If you’re not already well-versed in these tools, using Smartsheet is going to be a major obstacle.

Moreover, just like in Excel, a single mistake somewhere in your sheets or formulas could create errors and potentially botch much of your data.

What’s new in Smartsheet?

In April 2025, Smartsheet introduced a new unread comments filter in New Views, which should improve collaboration for their users. 

Available for: web, Android, iOS, Windows, macOS

*billed annually

For more project management templates, visit our template center:

Plaky Template Center

#4 monday.com — best for risk management

monday.com is a versatile and customizable project management tool that can accommodate multiple small teams working together toward a common goal. 

Why choose monday.com? 

POV: Your team needs a solution for managing project risks effectively, as well as:  

• Allocating the project budget, 
• Rescheduling activities, and 
• Identifying bottlenecks.

Solution: monday.com could be a good option for you.

I found monday.com’s customization options useful, especially the fact that you can customize the menu and pin the most important tools. You can also set your working status — for instance, to ‘do not disturb’, if you want to do your deep work uninterrupted. 

As far as collaboration is concerned, I’m pretty satisfied with the options monday.com offers. To be more specific, I like that you can co-edit shared docs in real time. 

As for the project management part of the equation, I particularly liked how the combination of monday.com’s easy automation and the formulae column offered an effective way to track and manage project risks.

The formulae can be set to apply a corresponding numeric value to the risk probability and impact statuses. It’s then possible to automatically identify the risk level and probability based on the overall risk rate, which lets project managers calculate the risk impact.

Using similar methods, project managers can also create a RAID log within monday.com and see all of the high-level data on their dashboard in the form of charts for easy tracking. 

monday.com also allows you to easily identify bottlenecks by adding the Bottlenecks app to your board views. This app enables you to see the lifespan of a task, as well as how much time a team member needs for a particular task. 

The different chart views in the dashboard also allow for simple performance comparisons against the project baselines. monday.com even offers a dynamic budget plan template, which helps you keep track of your budget, expenses, and savings goals. 

That said, while the software is fairly intuitive overall, it can take a while to understand how to use it to its full potential.

Other than this, I personally found the formulae a bit difficult to get the hang of, and the Kanban view much more clunky and less intuitive than in some of the other tools on this list.

What’s new in monday.com?

You can now connect multiple projects to a portfolio for a high-level view of all your projects. However, this solution is available only on the Enterprise plan. 

Available for: web, macOS, Windows, Android, iOS

*billed annually

monday.com alternative

Looking for a free project management software with unlimited users, boards, items, and views even on the free plan? Try Plaky! 

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#5 Wrike — best for creative teams

Wrike is a project management and collaboration tool that helps teams with their everyday task organization and delegation. 

Why choose Wrike?

POV: Your small team works on creative tasks and needs to constantly exchange ideas.  

Solution: Wrike has got your back, as it offers the ability to seamlessly collaborate on creative tasks in real time.  

Wrike has a number of rather useful features, such as request forms, timesheets for logging time spent on tasks, workload management view, etc. 

What I liked most, though, is that Wrike allows users to leave comments, feedback, files, links, and suggestions directly on the uploaded file. This makes it a particularly useful project management software for creative teams, such as design or marketing.

Let’s say a designer has finished working on a cover image for a blog post and uploaded it to the task card. Other team members can then open the image within Wrike and leave feedback directly on the image. After that, the team lead can view and compare the original and updated versions of the image and make further suggestions.

It’s even possible to make smaller changes to the file itself using Wrike, but this requires users to download and install the document editor on their computers.

I personally haven’t encountered any major problems while trying out Wrike, aside from the workload management view being slightly confusing. I had to watch the demo tour to get the hang of the effort allocation and different task effort modes.  

Aside from this, I did notice that many of Wrike’s unique features (such as the ones mentioned above) are reserved for its pricey Business plan. This is especially true if you have a small team of under 5 people since you have to pay for a minimum of 5 seats, even if there are only 2 people on your team.

What’s new in Wrike?

The latest Wrike update includes Workflow Metrics, which allow you to track how long tasks and projects remain in specific statuses. The company has also re-enabled Slack inbox notifications. 

Available for: Web, Android, iOS, Windows, macOS

Free Wrike alternative

Wrike too pricey for you? Try free PM software with unlimited users, boards, items, and views — Plaky!

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#6 Zoho Projects — best for traditional project management

Zoho Projects is an advanced project management tool for experienced project managers. 

Why choose Zoho? 

POV: Your teammates are fans of traditional project management, which prioritizes structure and documentation.

Solution: Zoho Projects is a great option for managing Waterfall projects. Integration with Zoho Sprints enables project managers to run hybrid projects as well.

One of the main reasons Zoho Projects is great for traditional, Waterfall-type projects is because of the way it handles project dependencies. 

In Zoho, you can create all 4 types of task dependencies — finish-to-start, start-to-finish, start-to-start, and finish-to-finish.

Zoho also allows you to add lag time for activities that need it or in case you want to add buffers to your schedule. All of this is fairly easy to do in the Gantt view and allows you to effectively manage your project timeline and critical path.

In Zoho Projects, you can communicate with your coworkers in the comments section too. There’s also an AI agent, Zia, that helps you with a number of things, including adjusting the content of your messages. In fact, you don’t even have to worry about conveying the right tone — Zia takes care of that for you.

The main disadvantage of Zoho, though, is that it has a steeper learning curve than any of the other tools on this list. It has some slightly confusing naming conventions and features you wouldn’t think to look for unless you specifically watched tutorials on how to use the software. 

I also noticed that the integration options are quite scarce, so you may not be able to link it to other tools you use in your daily work. 

What’s new in Zoho Projects?

You can now schedule tasks for export with specific task views, filters, and formats. Also, Zoho Projects now allows you to associate lookup fields with fields from the projects module. 

Available for: web, Android, iOS

*billed annually

#7 Clockify — best for daily work management

Clockify is work management software suitable for small teams and businesses due to its relatively low cost and useful features found on the free and lower-tier plans. 

Why choose Clockify?

POV: Your team needs to track time spent on each task so that you can work more efficiently and detect which areas are eating up your time. 

Solution: Check out Clockify, work management software with a standout time-tracking feature. 

Although not primarily a project management tool, Clockify can be used for project management. It allows you to easily organize and add team members and assign them tasks, even in the free plan. Even better, the interface itself is highly intuitive, so you can easily get the hang of the app and use it the way it suits you. 

If you need something more robust, you can switch to the affordable PRO plan ($7.99 per seat/month), as this plan enables you to:

• Forecast progress,
• Visualize project progress,
• Compare scheduled and tracked time, and
• Switch between the Project and Team view.

As I’ve been using Clockify for a few years now for time tracking, I have to say that its time-tracking feature stands out. You can track time using the timer or by logging your time manually. 

However, if you do decide to use the timer, make sure you click on Stop when you finish your task. I forgot and ended up with 17 hours tracked on doing one task without a break (17 hours, 23 minutes, and 45 seconds, to be precise). That’s when I realized logging time manually is a safer (and more accurate) option for me.  

Another plus is that the time-tracking feature can be combined with billing and invoicing to calculate the amount an employee needs to be paid based on their hourly rate and time spent working. 

That said, while Clockify truly is great for time management, if you’re looking for a more robust PM solution, it lacks some more advanced features. 

Luckily, Clockify integrates with Plaky, so you can easily enjoy the full spectrum of PM features (e.g., Gantt chart, Kanban, user roles, space and board permissions, etc.). 

What’s new in Clockify?

Recently, Clockify made it available to its users to pick and apply custom colors to new projects. It also now allows users to transfer a workspace between organizations in the CAKE.com Suite.

Available for: Web, Android, iOS, Windows, macOS

*billed annually 

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#8 Asana — best for integration and advanced automation

Asana is a well-organized, intuitive, and effective tool, with all the features you’d expect to find in a project management tool. 

Why choose Asana? 

POV: Your team needs task management software with an abundance of integrations to save time and streamline your work.

Solution: Asana offers more than 200 integrations. 

Overall, Asana is a great free option for small teams of up to 10 people (that’s how many users the free plan can accommodate), and it doesn’t require you to be a certified project manager to understand how to use it. Although, more expensive plans offer a much more robust list of features.

The main way Asana elevates its performance is through more than 200 integrations and highly advanced automations (or “rules” as they call them).

The automations, in particular, take Asana from good to great. They’re easy to create and save a ton of time. Plus, you can even use them in tandem with integrations to connect other tools with your project management tool, e.g., you can create an automation that sends an e-mail to your Gmail account anytime a task is assigned to you.

Automations can also be added to bundles (a combination of rules, fields, sections, and templates) and applied to multiple projects at the same time to standardize workflows.

What I disliked about Asana, though, is that I couldn’t find a way to add more than 1 person to a task. I later found out that’s by design, which is honestly baffling — there aren’t any clear benefits to this creative choice. 

What’s new in Asana?

In April 2025, Asana introduced the Team Knowledge tab, which lets you define and share company-specific terminology within the app. Asana has also enabled its users to add collaborators to their draft status updates. 

Available for: web, Android, iOS, Windows, macOS

*billed annually

Free Asana alternative

Asana too limiting for you? With unlimited number of users and spaces, Plaky empowers your team. 

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#9 ClickUp — best for brainstorming

Advertised as the everything app for work, ClickUp really is a versatile tool for task, goal, and time tracking. 

Why choose ClickUp? 

POV: Your small team comes up with the greatest ideas during brainstorming sessions and needs a perfect PM tool for that. 

Solution: ClickUp has a whiteboard that helps you brainstorm your way out of any conundrum. 

ClickUp is great for small teams since its free version (for up to 5 users) includes all the basics one team might need when managing their daily tasks — such as tracking their tasks, goals, and even time. 

As far as communication is concerned, there is a chat option available in the app itself, resembling Pumble — with channels and DMs. In the paid plans, there are also so-called Autopilot Agents, which you can use to get:

• Reminders,
• Team StandUp — daily updates on key topics, and
• The answers to the questions posted in chats using the information from your Workspace.

Yet, the ability to brainstorm your ideas with your team is what I found the most appealing. While testing ClickUp for this article, I especially enjoyed its Whiteboard feature, as it offers an abundance of options for brainstorming in real time. 

You can even generate AI images in the Whiteboard itself and do mockups of your creative ideas. Mind you, this is only available in paid plans, which might be a dealbreaker for you if you’re looking for a free PM app.  

If you do realize you need some more advanced features (e.g., resource management or previously mentioned AI features), or your team expands to more than 5 members, you’ll need to upgrade to the Unlimited plan. This might be a problem for teams on a tight budget since the price per user goes up to $7/month in that case. 

The good thing is that ClickUp is easily scalable thanks to its hierarchical structure. It allows you to organize your work by teams, departments, or initiatives. As your team grows, you can make use of automations, advanced reporting, and any of the plethora of integrations the platform offers. 

On the other hand, all these options might overwhelm you (as it happened in my case, I must admit). Their tutorials are top-notch, but not everyone has the time to watch all of them and learn how to play with ClickUp (especially if they’re working in a small team where they’re wearing multiple hats). 

What’s new in ClickUp?

ClickUp recently enabled its users to submit, review, and approve Timesheets. It also introduced AI insights on connected app links. 

Available platforms: web, Android, iOS, macOS, Windows, Linux

*billed annually

Lead your small team to success with Plaky 

A good project management software for small businesses should be:

• Affordable — You don’t need to break the bank for a decent project management tool.  
• Scalable —  Your team might not remain small. Plan to grow and improve, and choose a tool that will be able to grow and improve with you.
• Easy to use — Don’t choose a piece of software that you think would be too complicated to master, regardless of how amazing its features may sound. A steep learning curve will only confuse you and slow you down.

Luckily, Plaky ticks all the boxes and more!

Powerful, simple, reliable — Plaky! 

You don’t need to switch between apps anymore. Plaky is a one-tool solution for your small team that lets you:

• Organize and manage your resources with ease,
• Customize your workflows to your own needs, and 
• Track project progress at a glance.  

Even in the free plan, Plaky offers unlimited spaces, boards, items, and views. And if that’s not enough, you can easily upgrade to the PRO plan for just $3.99 per seat/month. You won’t get a more reasonable price than that without compromising quality. 

A small team doesn’t have to equal more work. Work smart — try Plaky today! 

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