The 9 Best Project Management Tools for Startups (2021)

Shiv Kapoor
Nifty Blog
Published in
4 min readMar 7, 2019

In the formative days of a company, every minute, dollar, and ounce of energy is precious, which is why you need a project management tool that is cost-efficient, intuitive, and scalable. With a crush of products in the project management market to choose from, it’s easy to spend more time researching solutions than it is actually using one.

We’ve compiled a list of flexible, intuitive, and affordable project management tools to help your startup get started on day one.

1. Nifty

www.niftypm.com

Nifty consolidates team communication, project discussions, tasks, milestones, docs, and files into one place with organizational overview across all projects and teammate workloads for the ultimate experience. Interactive and affordable, Nifty is a scalable platform that will grow with your company from startup to enterprise.

Startups on Nifty enjoy:

  • One place to manage their projects, communications, and operations
  • An automated, intuitive environment that facilitates organization
  • A birds-eye overview of all your projects and teammate workloads

Price: Nifty starts at only $49/month for teams of up to 10 users. Pro plans begin at $99/mo for unlimited projects, cross-project overviews, and 500 GB storage. All plans come with a free 14-day trial period.

Try Nifty for free today! 🎉

2. TeamWork

www.teamwork.com

Teamwork is a powerful and easy to use project management platform, which allows you to manage multiple complex tasks and projects in one centralized location. It is flexible and affordable with many pricing plans available.

Teamwork users enjoy:

  • A variety of different viewing options to manage ongoing projects at a panoramic level
  • Time Tracking to effectively manage and track time spent on individual projects
  • Workload tracking of teams and team members to ensure effective and efficient task management and distribution

Pricing: Teamwork offers a range of pricing options from free to various paid levels. Their cheapest premium option is $10 per user ($12.50 billed monthly).

3. Toggl Plan

toggl.com/plan

Toggl Plan is a beautifully simple, visual project management tool. It helps you plan projects, get tasks done, and manage your team’s workloads. It’s easy-to-use, drag-drop interface means your team can get started quickly as well as enjoy using it every day.

Toggl Plan users enjoy:

  • Creating quick and easy project schedules using the Plan timeline.
  • Moving tasks from to-do to done using the customizable, Kanban-style Boards.
  • Visually managing resources and team workloads from the Team timeline.

Price: Toggl Plan’s free plan comes with unlimited projects for up to 5 users. Paid plans start at $9/user/mo.

4. ProProfs Project

https://www.proprofs.com/project/

ProProfs Project is an easy-to-use online project management tool, that allows you to plan work efficiently and deliver on time. From a centralized location, team members can easily collaborate and get work done delightfully. Visually interactive and affordable, it is the perfect tool for freelancers, small businesses, and big enterprises.

ProProfs Project users enjoy:

  • Planning project tasks and subtasks using a shared calendar.
  • Tracking project progress via an intuitive dashboard.
  • Generating insightful reports with powerful analytics.

Pricing: ProProfs Project’s Essentials plan starts at $3/user/month and Premium plan at $6/user/month (billed monthly) with unlimited storage.

5. Asana

www.asana.com

Asana organizes everything from company objectives to routine tasks in one place so teams are clear about priorities and responsibilities, and you can monitor progress in real time to keep projects on track.

Asana users enjoy:

  • A Gantt style view of projects
  • An Asana calendar for scheduling and prioritizing tasks
  • Generate detailed Progress reports

Pricing: Asana offers three tiers of pricing: Free, Premium and Enterprise. The premium plan starts at $9.99 per member/month.

6. Xtensio

www.xtensio.com

It is a good cloud-based collaboration platform to create, share and manage beautifully designed online business documents.

Xtensio users enjoy:

  • Drag-and-drop features
  • Customizable templates to stay on brand
  • Quick sharing of documents as links

Pricing: Starts free for basic individual plan and scales in pricing based on plan usage and features.

7. Wrike

www.wrike.com

Wrike is a robust and versatile project management tool that helps teams collaborate and communicate with transparency. Wrike would be best for a team of over 20 users.

Wrike users enjoy:

  • Gantt Charts
  • Custom Dashboards
  • Resource Management

Price: At a price tag just shy of $10/user/mo, Wrike is an affordable solution for budding teams.

8. Trello

www.trello.com

Don’t overthink it! Trello’s Kanban boards are a lightweight way to manage tasks amongst a team if you don’t yet require all of the other nuts-and-bolts of project and team management.

Tello users enjoy:

  • A free platform
  • Easy-to-use task boards with task customizability
  • Quick onboarding allows you to jump right into action

Price: Free to start with a $9.99/mo/user Business plan and up to $20.83/mo/user Enterprise plan

There you have it. With the changing times, the needs of startups are changing as well. Spend a good amount of time to figure out if you need a project tracking tool, robust planning software, or a holistic view of projects and processes in one place. Know what your team needs.

We hope that the above list provides you a list of top project management tools to be used in 2020. If you think, we have missed a tool that has made a difference in your life, don’t forget to drop us a comment below.

9. Airtable

www.airtable.com

Flexible, organized, and affordable, Airtable is a spread-sheet style project management system that provides a plethora of views.

Airtable users enjoy:

  • Premade templates for quick onboarding
  • Customizable views to cater to your workflow
  • Widespread integrations with other tools

Price: Airtable is free to start and scales in pricing based on factors such as storage size and data history

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Shiv Kapoor
Nifty Blog

Founder & CEO at Nifty — Delivering the future of workflow collaboration.