10 Best Project Management Tools for Writers in 2023
Boost your productivity, optimize communication, and stay organized
Having the right working tools and control over your workload is essential to being successful as a writer. Fortunately, there’s a wide range of project management tools for freelance writers and writing agencies that allow you to work efficiently with your teams. By using the right tools and apps, you can work in a much more organized and coordinated way, while avoiding the excessive use of email or too many conflicting apps.
Project management programs are designed to facilitate efficiency for your writing business, whether it’s just you and your client or there are many people working on different tasks at the same time. The right app will provide a single place for assigning specific tasks, following up on work, and more. Here, you’ll learn the many benefits of managing your team with advanced software, plus we’ll give you our top 10 recommendations to boost your productivity.
The Benefits of Project Management Tools
Nowadays, freelancers can take advantage of the many benefits offered by project management tools. This software can help optimize communication and organize your ideas, projects, and plans on a single platform.
Take a look at the most significant benefits of using a project management tool:
Streamline Communication Between Teammates
You can keep track of the status of any project by centralizing all messages in one place. This is a huge advantage for writers with multiple clients as it avoids dispersion. In fact, using multiple communication channels (like WhatsApp, Zoom, Telegram, emails, and more) is not ideal because it can lead to miscommunication.
Now, with a good project management tool, anyone involved in the project can get an overview of the project status. They can participate in content planning, content management, editing, scheduling, and publishing systematically. With the right software, a team of five writers can work on 10 different projects at the same time — without getting off track searching for relevant updates.
Better Task Organization and Planning
An effective project management platform is capable of displaying each writer’s workload. It avoids common problems in teams like overlapping tasks or missing deadlines. You can more easily and clearly track each project and its progress.
Potential Drawbacks to Consider
Many of the top project management tools for writers are easy to use and don’t require background knowledge. However, when you use new software, you may have to spend some time adapting to and learning its capabilities. There are a couple things you should consider before integrating a new project management tool:
Adaptation to the New Program
To get the most out of a project management tool, you must learn how to use it properly. Even if project management platforms are simple and intuitive, they also can come with complex technical details. The team needs to learn the features and shortcuts. Each software has its own interface, and it can take a few days of adaptation until you learn to use all the tools effectively.
Costs
Some of these project management tools are free. But free versions are limited and they normally target individuals and small teams. So, when your writing agency grows, you should consider purchasing software that can keep up.
When you’re just getting started, however, spending on premium services is not a must. The free plans are usually a great choice for basic features.
[This post may have affiliate links, which means I may receive commissions if you purchase through links I provide.]
The Top Project Management Tools to Check Out
Now that you know a few benefits of using a project management platform, you can make an informed decision on the tool your team will use. Here are our top 10 project management tools for writers and other freelancers in 2023:
1. Monday
Monday is a popular software for collaborative work management. It enables you to plan projects, assign tasks, and communicate effectively with team members. As a writer, you can stay updated on the documents you’re working on with detailed reports and visual dashboards.
This tool is optimized for agile project management. It helps you track time, organize processes, set deadlines and goals, chat, and schedule content. Also, you can integrate it with an impressive number of tools: Zapier, LinkedIn, HubSpot, Facebook, Shopify, WordPress, and many more. Best of all, your personal information and communications are encrypted and secure. So, there’s no risk of losing your privacy.
This software has a free plan, but you can try its Premium version free for 14 days. After the free trial period expires, you’ll pay $8 to $16 per month billed annually.
2. ClickUp
ClickUp is perfect for those who find themselves overwhelmed by work. With this simple and intuitive platform, you can manage all imaginable projects and get organized. In fact, ClickUp’s primary goal is to eliminate the frustrations and inefficiencies caused by managing multiple projects at the same time.
Related Article: Monday vs ClickUp Comparison
It has all the important functionalities you can expect in a top project management platform for writers. ClickUp has time tracking, a visual dashboard, and agile methodologies that make it simple to manage your projects. Explore its features for reminders, to-do lists, chat, goal tracking, and others to increase your team’s productivity.
ClickUp’s features are fully customizable, allowing teams to create projects according to their needs — even with the free version. However, the free app won’t give you all the integrations or unlimited storage. Get all the ClickUp functionalities for $5 per month, a really competitive price on our list.
3. Asana
Created by Facebook co-founder, Dustin Moskovitz, this popular program adopts a similar aesthetic and simplicity to Facebook. Asana offers an intuitive task management system that works well for teams looking to interact in real-time. Users can visualize their goals on their dashboard, track timelines, assign priorities, set OKRs (objectives and key results), and add updates to projects directly from the application. Asana’s calendar keeps you aware of the deadlines for each assigned task, and you can receive notifications when there are updates or other alerts.
Many of these functionalities are available in its free plan. However, if you need more advanced features, you can get a premium plan. The premium plan from Asana costs $10.99 per month. With a paid plan, you get more benefits like customizable fields, premium support forms, and reporting tool for analyzing your historical data. And all these added benefits can make the difference if you’re managing a large team!
Asana’s free version is good enough for small teams and its prices for paid plans are reasonable. That’s why Asana is a great tool for managing your writing business.
4. Teamwork
This software makes it easy for everyone to see what they are working on and what the next steps are. Teamwork helps you optimize collaboration and save time when working on multiple projects. It allows you to control all your projects, tasks, and files through public tasks, timelines, and chats. Also, Teamwork ensures end-to-end encryption of a single database and double authentication. So, only authorized persons make can changes.
Teamwork allows your team to visualize projects through calendars, Gantt charts, and reports. And these can be configured in different ways to match your preferences. Similarly, you can manage files with Google Drive or Dropbox.
Teamwork is free forever, and it works quite well for small teams. If you want a much more personalized experience, however, or if you manage a large team, you can upgrade to the Pro or Premium plans for $10 to $18 per month, billed annually.
5. nTask
nTask is a cloud-based all-in-one software solution that allows writers to stay organized while on the go. With integrations to popular apps such as Google, Dropbox, HubSpot, and Outlook, you will no longer need multiple apps to manage the various aspects of your writing projects.
Whether you are a solo writer or working as a member of a large team, nTask has all of the features you would expect from a project management tool. Prioritizing tasks, improving team communication, reporting, and time tracking are all features available on the platform.
The to-do lists and Kanban Board are great because they help you easily organize and prioritize tasks in a flexible way so that nothing falls through the cracks.
Pricing plans start as low as $3.00 per month, making nTask a very consumer-friendly option. There’s also a 7-day free trial with no credit card required so you can try out all of the features before committing.
6. Trello
Trello is another tool that’s perfect for managing teams and staying organized. It helps you improve the work routines of your team by generating priorities and due dates, adding attachments and notices, as well as automating workflows.
You can integrate Trello with other useful apps for writers like Clockify, Hootsuite, HubSpot, Mailchimp, and Dropbox. Trello uses a Kanban-style dashboard, a visual project management system that allows users to modify and move cards with project tasks.
Like some of the others on the list, this tool is free to use. The free version allows attachment uploads up to 10 MB, and it doesn’t allow customization. When you want to expand its file capacity to 250 MB, export data, get more customization, and premium support, purchase a plan for $9.99 per month.
7. Wrike
Wrike is an online project management and collaboration tool that gives freelancers the chance to adjust their project plans, prioritize tasks, stay on top of scheduling, and collaborate online.
One of the most useful features is its marketing strategies. Wrike helps you launch marketing campaigns, optimize your ROI with analytics tools, measure the performance of your campaigns, create spreadsheets, and automate your reporting. It’s a complete tool for a writing agency!
Start the free 14-day trial to decide which plan you’ll choose. The free account supports up to five users and includes 2 GB of storage. As for paid plans, the professional plan allows up to 15 users and costs $9.80 per month, while the Business plan will give you the chance to incorporate up to 200 users at $24.80 per month.
8. Podio
Podio is focused on helping you organize your team’s workload. You can customize the platform according to your business’s needs. Like many other project management tools, it allows you to communicate with your team, configure task management, store files, visualize data, and automate workflows. Podio connects with many other services, like Evernote to attach your notes. Podio comes as a free mobile app available on iOS and Android.
The free plan from Podio is limited to task management and adding workspaces. Podio also offers paid plans that range from $7.20 to $19.20 depending on the number of advanced features you need.
9. Basecamp
Basecamp is one of the leading project management tools for creative freelancers. It features a simple, intuitive, and easy-to-use interface for collaborating with teammates. You’ll have the ability to create multiple projects, make to-do lists, manage files, share documents, set deadlines, generate reports, and schedule tasks.
Since the software is fully responsive, users can manage their projects and review different issues directly from their smartphones. You can download the free mobile app from Google Play and the App Store.
Basecamp has a dashboard to display all your projects and features like messaging, task assignment, and time management. To access all its features, try the 30-day free trial. Then, check out the Business plan at $99/month or its Premium Plan which gives you unlimited access to all features and 500 GB of storage.
10. Proofhub
ProofHub is a SaaS-based project management that includes a minimalist yet effective interface. It has powerful graphics and features like group chat, quick project discussions, workflows, dashboards, and project reports. If you’re a visual person, this application may be a great option for you!
With ProofHub, your team can collaborate and communicate across projects easily and flexibly. The mobile app is available on Android and iOS, making it easy for even remote teams to stay connected. And, if you use other tools, you can easily integrate them into your Proofhub account. For instance, if you need to do invoicing, you can integrate QuickBooks or FreshBooks to increase the effectiveness of ProofHub.
ProofHub’s interface has an emphasis on simplicity, and it’s definitely made for everyone, from freelance writers to large-scale corporations. The paid version of ProofHub is available starting at $45/month, offering unlimited users and up to 15 GB of storage.
As a Company Grows, so Does Its Complexity… Unless You Have a Project Management Tool!
In 2023, project management tools are more important than ever. When you start using marketing tools for writers, you can seamlessly manage your team and business goals. To select the best project management tools for your writing agency, consider the types of tasks you assign each week, as well as your work ethic.
Each of the tools above has strengths and weaknesses, so it’s crucial to consider the needs of your team. Think of your budget, project management style, and team size. Then, you can choose the best tools to start working more efficiently!
Originally published at https://www.jenniferberube.com on January 31, 2022.
