Sick of overdue projects, endless edits, and mismanaged communication channels? If you're juggling multiple creative projects at once, you're not an agency - you're an orchestra. Without a conductor, musicians are out of tune, and your team's creativity may remain on the page, wasting you time and money.
It's not that you're working too hard. You're working too inefficiently. The right project management tool will be the added secret sauce you need to optimize systems to promote a more organized workforce. Picture this: one hub from which you can check off to-dos, receive feedback, and connect with clients and team members. Read this ultimate guide to the best PM tools for creative workflows and transform projects for your team's success!
How I Picked the Best PM Tools for Creatives in This List The best PM tools for your needs are the ones with the best rhythm for your creative team. Below are the criteria I assessed for each one to satisfy the needs of designers, marketers, and agency leaders everywhere.
Visual Aspects: Most creatives work best in a visual context. Therefore, I focused on PM tools with dashboards integrating Kanban boards and Gantt charts.Collaboration Features: Any solid creative task will require feedback and collaborative work, which means the need for file sharing options and real-time communication features.Customization: No two creative processes are alike, meaning a one-size-fits-all approach never works. The best creative PM tools have customization options.Scalability & Affordability: You might be freelance for now, but you could become an agency one day, so your tools should scale with you without a prohibitively steep price point.10 Best Project Management Tools for Creatives Compared Ready to find the best solutions to get organized so you can get back to creating? Here are the best project management tools for that!
#1 Plaky - Best Budget-Friendliest Creative Management Solution If you're looking for a budget-friendly solution that provides a lot for free, Plaky is one of the best project management tools. You can have unlimited users, unlimited projects and unlimited tasks - all for free - which is a great asset for teams just starting but on their way to expansion.
Why Choose Plaky?
Plaky offers a simple interface with features like task tracking, file sharing, and customizable Kanban boards. By glancing at the summary, you’ll know the status of your project without missing anything.
What's New in Plaky?
Plaky is continually improving team collaboration by upgrading its notification system and adding more integrations to link to your daily apps.
2 Asana — Best for Multifaceted Teams Asana is the most popular project management tool that can provide the best flexibility to your complex workflow. Perfect for groups working on different things such as ads or product rollouts.
Why Choose Asana?
Asana provides different views like list, board, and timeline for clarity so that you visualize your work in the best possible way. The project management software helps keep track of the tasks assigned to a particular project.
What's New in Asana?
Asana has AI-powered new tools that create a project plan, assign tasks, and identify roadblocks to save you time on administrative work.
3 Trello — Best for Beginners Trello’s simplicity is its greatest strength. The visual Kanban board system makes the tool intuitive. Ideal for beginners or small teams who need a simple way to organize tasks.
Why Choose Trello?
Create a board for a project and use cards to represent a task. Move cards easily between the columns "To Do", "In Progress" and "Done" by dragging and dropping. A simple yet effective way to manage workflows.
What's New in Trello?
Trello has added more "Power-Ups" (integrations) and enhanced checklists without losing the original core functionality.
4 ClickUp — Best for Complex Projects
ClickUp claims to be "one app to replace them all" and it seems to be true. The complete productivity platform is stocked with features perfect for managing complex projects with many moving parts.
Why Choose ClickUp?
Everything your team needs—from docs and whiteboards to goals and chat—is in ClickUp. You can design workflows suited to your team due to high customization.
What's New in ClickUp?
ClickUp frequently adds new features. One of the new features is ClickUp Brain which is an AI assistant that can write, summarize tasks, provide project updates, and more.
5 Wrike — Best for Creative Collaboration Wrike offers a multitude of enterprise-level features that inspire creative and marketing teams to collaborate. It provides specialized tools for proofing, approvals and asset management.
Why Choose Wrike?
Wrike has several amazing features including visual proofing tools that allow you to leave comments directly on images and documents. This makes it easier to modify, saving a lot of time for any designer.
What's New in Wrike?
Wrike has upgraded its analytics and reporting capabilities to give you better insights into your teams’ productivity and project performance.
6 Hive — Best for Busy Teams
Hive is all-in-one platform that handles project management, chat and email. It is made for busy teams that can only do it with one app.
Why Choose Hive?
Integration of native chat and email has all project conversations in one place. Hive offers various project views like Kanban, Gantt and Calendar to suit team preferences.
What's New in Hive?
Hive is the latest entry in project management software with AI drafting tool HiveMind, an action item generator and automations to keep redundancies at bay being the top notch feature.
#7 monday.com - Best For Custom Workflows monday.com is a visual Work OS which lets you customize projects to fit just about any need which makes it one of the best project management software for creative teams.
Why Choose Hive?
monday.com is the best project management software for the generalist, project in marketing or sales (and beyond) and the best part is the automations so you don't have to redundantly notify team members about task progression or completion. It's trusted by mega brands like Coca Cola, Unilever and more and successful with AI driven strategic planning and risk management.
What's New in Hive?
monday.com will introduce a world of new AI from task assignment to deadline recommendations. Their new AI assistants will help generate lead enrichment, project estimates and more.
#8 Miro - Best for Brainstorming Sessions Miro isn't the most traditional PM tool but it's an infinite online whiteboard and is a great place to brainstorm and visually map out before you'd need another PM tool to execute those efforts.
Why Choose Miro?
Miro is a great collaborative tool for teams with digital sticky notes, diagrams and mockups which are good for workshops, mind mapping and user journey mapping.
What's New in Miro?
Miro will expand its integrations with PM tools and AI based functionalities that will organize your brainstorming sessions for you and give you takeaways in summary form.
#9 FunctionFox - Best For Small Teams FunctionFox is a project management software program and timesheet management tool that is perfectly created for small teams/creative agencies as it helps you manage time, budgetary control and accuracy with client billing efforts.
Why Choose FunctionFox?
If you're looking for something that can help your profitability FunctionFox is the way to go. It provides very in depth time tracking and reporting which can show you how much projects cost and your team's capacity to inform any estimates for future work.
What's New in FunctionFox?
The reporting dashboard has been updated to provide more visual reporting options and customization makes tracking how you're doing financially easier than ever.
#10 Teamwork — Best for Client-Facing Agencies Teamwork is the ultimate solution for agencies needing to manage client work with transparency and efficiency. It offers a robust suite of tools to streamline collaboration, billing, and project tracking.
Why Choose Teamwork?
Teamwork excels with its client-centric features. It helps you manage projects profitably by setting budgets, tracking billable time, and giving clients a dedicated portal to monitor progress, building trust and alignment.
What's New in Teamwork?
Teamwork continuously improves its time-tracking accuracy and invoicing capabilities, making it easier to manage client accounts and ensure profitability.
Find Your Perfect Workflow Partner The perfect project management tool isn't a natural, all-in-one, to keep it all, delegate responsibilities and make magic happen. The perfect project management tool is an extension of the process you just put into place. If your new process involves talking, writing, editing, tracking, etc. all in one place, the perfect tool will be an extension to keep your team from having to start all over again to do its best to meet expectations.
Try a few out - many have trial periods - and see what your team adapts to best. Your process will thank you for it in the long run with time saved, creatively unified products and stress relief!
Credit for Cover Image: Photo by Daniil Komov on pexels
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