7 Best Creative Agency Project Management Tools 2020

Published in

Nifty Blog

5 min readNov 5, 2019

As you aim to push your agency’s creative boundary forward with an innovative approach, your management process should reflect your team’s knack for success. Not only is managing your project portfolio effectively key to your business’s success, but the tools and process you put in front of your client become part of your team’s branded experience. In this way, the client’s journey of working with your team, including the method and tools used for management, will be as memorable as the project’s deliverables.

Here are some tools that will set your team apart from both internal management as well as client management perspectives.

1. Nifty

With Nifty you can manage the complete creative project cycle, including document collaboration, project deadlines, and team member workloads. Nifty keeps the entire processes centralized, and automates workflows and reporting to keep your team moving forward and bring transparency to a project’s status. Project-based Discussions facilitate client collaboration while your team can leverage Nifty’s team chat to work together.

Top features

Team communication
Collaborative docs & files
Project milestone tracking
Project & Team overviews
Kanban & List task boards
Time tracking & reporting
Client management

Pricing: Starts from $49 / team / month. Free trial available.

Mostly recommended by: product teams, creative agencies, marketing professionals, development teams

Capterra Review Score: 4.8/5

2. Teamwork

Teamwork covers all the project management essentials that creative agencies need, including creating tasks and projects, uploading files, and adding comments. Creative agency project managers that use Teamwork also have access to advanced features for complex projects. This way, you won’t have to worry about outgrowing the tool as you scale your creative agency. Teamwork also has the option to add unlimited clients to your projects, which can be a good way to keep communication channels open and help create happier clients.

Top Features

Gantt charts
Board view
Portfolio management
Time tracking
Reporting dashboards
Workload management

Pricing: Starts from $10/ User/ Month

Mostly recommended by: advertising agencies, creative agencies, digital agencies

Capterra review score: 4.5/5

3. Clarizen

Clarizen will help you to accelerate team performance and let you to automate repeatable processes. This fully-featured tool will help you to work the way you want to. One of the strongest points of this software is workflow management which will help you in reducing distractions and internal communication tracking which will unleash your creative potential.

Top features

Cross-functional workflows
Budget tracking & expense management
Resource management
Project milestone tracking
Portfolio management

Pricing: Starts from $29.95 / user / month

Mostly recommended by: enterprise-level project managers, enterprise creative teams

Capterra Review Score: 4/5

4. Milanote

Widely used by designers, creative directors and marketers Milanote provides tool kit for streamlined creative project collaboration. No matter if it’s not developed as common project management tool it will help you to visualize processes and workflows.

Top features

Creative asset management
Online whiteboard
Moodboards
Lean canvas

Pricing: Starts from $9/user/month

Mostly recommended by: designers, art directors, content writers

Capterra Review Score: 5/5

5. Monday

Visual and intuitive tool commonly used in managing creative workflows and team tasks. Monday offers a wide variety of views which helps you to visualize processes in a specific project. This tool offers 6 different views: Calendar, Chart, File, Kanban, Map and Timeline view.

Top features

Great visual design
Fast workflow management
Customizable task boards
Project templates

Pricing: Starts from $9.5 / user / month

Mostly recommended by: product designers, digital marketers, sales teams

Capterra Review Score: 4.5/5

6. Paymo

With very clean and intuitive interface Paymo helps creative teams to better understand their workflows, daily task assignments and overall task progress. Software comes with integrated time tracker which makes easier job in understanding on which task each team member spending their time. Paymo offers 2 main views: Gantt Charts and Kanban Board.

Top features

Gantt charts & Kanban boards
Project estimates & invoicing
Resource management
Portfolio management
Time tracking

Pricing: Starts from $9.56 / user / month

Mostly recommended by: web development and design agencies, creative marketing agencies, virtual assistants.

Capterra Review Score: 4.5/5

7. Admation

Software perfectly suitable for marketing teams and ad agencies. With this tool you can combine several project aspects and stay on the loop. Also, Admation will make easier briefing process for your creative team, in one centralized place client can review the brief, make necessary updates and approve final version. This tool may come in handy when you get stuck in managing wide range of processes for client digital campaigns.