Starting a new business can indeed be challenging and intimidating, particularly for those venturing into entrepreneurship for the first time. The apprehension stems from the prospect of investing your hard-earned money without an immediate guarantee of returns. Despite meticulously navigating through the planning and drafting phases, the actual execution remains a formidable leap. The disjunction between theoretical projections and real-life outcomes becomes evident, as reality doesn’t always align with what’s presented on paper.
Throughout the process of establishing a business, a common obstacle arises – the lack of initial capital to invest in more advanced applications or project management software, which could provide an added edge to ensure favorable outcomes and alleviate concerns about the business’s viability.
5 Best Free Project Management and Productivity Tools in 2024:
1. Asana
Asana is a popular project management app to help businesses make their management tasks much easier. It has a rating of 4.3/5 as per G2 Crowd. It aims to help teams stay organized and have a fluid connection, which ensures efficiency. It helps to check the team’s progress and workload.
One can get automated routine work, real-time charts, boards, and timelines in this single app and run smoothly. Writing new product-specific documents, Making designs accessible to all people on board are two of the best uses of the app.
Key features of Asana:
- Project and easy task management, attachments, and files can be added too.
- Helps in Goal setting by giving access to calendars, notifications, and reminders.
While the app is free, it also has subscriptions available; the pay structure comes in a different tier. The Basic is Free then there is the Premium, and Business is billed annually at $10.99/month and $24.99/month, respectively. It is available for both Android and iOS along with the Software.
2. Basecamp
Basecamp is a project management software that can be used for personal use as well as for team communication. It has a rating of 4 out of 5 on G2 Crowd. One can track their daily ongoing tasks, check assigned upcoming tasks, and have features for sending files and assignments.
Key features of Basecamp:
- Creating tasks for various projects, using a calendar for deadline assigning.
- Checking timeline for regular updates
- Makes communication smoother as it has a Thread feature. It allows members of the team to get updated on ongoing things and immediately discuss any issues that may have arisen.
As stated earlier, the service is free for personal use, but for business use, one has to pay $99/month and can get access to unlimited users and projects. Besides web applications, it is also available for iOS and Android.
3. Trello
With a rating of 4.4/5 on G2Crowd, Trello is one of the must-have project management apps for small/ large businesses. It is used for process-based projects and tasks and to organize and update business-related pieces of information. It also gives a visual to know where the other team members are currently standing and has the feature of labeling groups.
Key features of Trello:
- Public and private timelines and boards available
- Dropbox, google drive, uploading from the device, and drag-and-drop features are available for attaching files.
- There is a Kanban process.
The price structure of Trello is free for the basic range. It gives a free trial for business class and enterprise. After the free trial, the price is 9.99/user per month for Business Class and $17.50/user per month for Enterprise-class. It is available for all OS, iOS, and Android.
Related: Trello Review and Alternatives
4. Salesforce
Salesforce is one of the famous customer relationship management (CRM) applications that are used to store customer databases. It has a rating of 4.2/ 5 on G2Crowd. The app aims to increase overall marketing productivity by letting members interact and tracking authorized customers’ information.
Key features of Salesforce:
- Accounting and contact management can be done easily
- Managing and analyzing customer’s data
- Contract management and campaign management can be done here
- Pricing and listing can be checked and kept in order.
- Sales forecasting
Like all the above, this can be used on any OS and for both iOS and Android devices.
The pricing is different for this one. The free trial is available to start with, but there are multiple other options to choose from. As Asana here also, All the plans are billed annually. The Business Essentials plan is $25 per month for a single user. The Professional Lightning plan also comes at $25 per month for one person, the Lightning Enterprise plan costs $150 per month per person, and the Unlimited CRM Power plan for one user is $300 per month.
5. IFTTT
IFTTT is amongst the top five must-have apps for business productivity. It has a rating of 4.5 out of 5 on G2 Crowd. IFTTT GOT its name from the programming conditional statement “if this, then that.” It provides a software platform that connects and syncs all the systems, files, and programs so that everything can be handled whether one is at home or outside. IFTTT is mainly used for the cloud services that it provides. It helps in logging everything from calls to emails that one may get. The app will keep everything well-synced.
Key features of IFTTT:
- One can Syndicate data via social channels.
- There are almost 121 User channels available.
- There is also an option to use ‘Trigger management.’
- One can also create polls, and there are Polling periods.
Like any other software, IFTTT has a free standard version. The app has a cheaper pro tier as compared to the others, at just $3.99/month. However, the developer tier is fairly costly; it is priced at $199/year. There is no monthly scheme for the developer tier. It is available on iOS, Android’s google play, and also available in the web version.
See Also:
- Best Clubhouse Alternatives and Competitors
- Monday.com Alternative: Easynote vs Monday Comparison
- TSheets Alternatives & Competitors
- Scrum VS Kanban: Weighting Their Pros and Cons
Conclusion
Now you know about the 5 best project management tools that you can use to improve your brand’s productivity. All of these tools’ websites have their knowledge base and resources that you can download and share with your respective team. This way your team can understand how they use these project management tools to the fullest.
