As a manager or team leader, one of your responsibilities is assigning, tracking, and managing your team’s tasks. Without proper task management, your team will often deal with disorganization, forgotten tasks, missed deadlines, and poor utilization of resources.
So, what is the best way to manage your team’s tasks?
For a few tasks, simple tools like spreadsheets could work. When you have hundreds of tasks to manage, however, things can quickly get complicated and unmanageable. In such instances, what you need is task management software.
Task management software allows you to assign tasks to team members, set task priority, get task notifications, define dependencies between tasks, communicate with your team members, share task-related files, generate reports, and so much more.
This guide will look at 15 of the best task management software in the market and the key features that make them a good choice for your team. Before getting into that, let’s look at the features you need to look out for when choosing task management software for your team.
Here are the most important features to consider when choosing task management software for your team:
Ease of use: You should pick task management software that is intuitive and easy to use for people of all skill levels. User-friendliness boosts adoption within your team and makes your team’s work easier.
Communication features: Ensure that your task management software has features like chat and messaging, forums, and even video conferencing to allow seamless communication between your team members.
Task tracking: The best task management software makes tracking each task's status and progress easy. This is a great way to ensure that tasks aren’t forgotten or delayed.
Prioritization: Your task management software should allow you to arrange tasks based on their urgency. With this, you can visualize the priority levels for different tasks at a glance.
Integrations: Today, most businesses rely on various business and productivity tools to run their day-to-day activities. When choosing task management software, you must ensure that it can be integrated with your favorite business tools.
Collaboration: The best task planner tools come with a slew of features built to enhance team collaboration, such as file sharing, collaborative notes, the ability to assign multiple people to the same task, and so on.
Time tracking: Your task management tool should allow you to log and track the time spent on tasks. This helps you optimize your task scheduling for future tasks.
Analytics: Finally, a good task management tool should allow you to collect information about your team’s tasks and present this information as insightful reports that can guide future decision-making.
Best for Automating Task Workflows
Monday.com is one of the most popular project and task management tools in the market. Monday.com resembles a spreadsheet, but it packs a ton of powerful task management features while remaining simple and easy to use.
Central dashboard: Monitor, track, and manage all tasks from one central place.
Automation: Automate tasks and activities like assigning tasks to specific team members, sending notifications, and moving tasks along the pipeline.
Multiple views: Visualize your tasks in different views depending on what works for you, including calendar, timeline, and chart view.
Integrations: Connect Monday.com to business tools you use on a daily basis, such as Google Calendar, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Outlook, Slack, Dropbox, and Zapier.
Color-coded tasks: Use color-coded labels to define task status and priority levels.
Mobile apps: Monitor and manage tasks on the go with the Monday.com Android and iOS apps.
Pricing: $0 to $16 per seat per month.
Best for User-Friendliness
Asana is a simple task planner app that offers a clean and straightforward user interface paired with advanced task management features. Most people love Asana because of its ease of use.
Easy task management: Create tasks and subtasks and customize them based on your team’s unique needs.
Communication tools: Direct messaging, commenting on tasks, and user tagging. Automatic notifications accompany all communications to ensure team members don’t miss the communication.
Calendar syncing: Sync Asana with your favorite calendar apps, allowing any tasks assigned on Asana to show up on your calendar app.
Multiple views: Board, calendar, list, and timeline views.
Recurring tasks: Define tasks that need to be completed more than once.
Integrations: Asana is compatible with 200+ third-party tools, including Google apps, OneDrive, Salesforce, Zoom, Adobe CC, and Zapier.
Pricing: $0 to $24.99 per user per month.
Best Free Task Management Software
ClickUp is a highly versatile task management tool whose aim is to make task management and collaboration easy for teams of all sizes. The best thing about ClickUp is that it has a powerful free plan that offers more features than you’ll find on other free plans.
Templates: Use ClickUp templates to quickly set up tasks and get them rolling. You can either use the prebuilt templates or create and save your own templates.
Automated notifications: Get real-time notifications and updates on any status changes on the tasks you’re following.
Color-coding: ClickUp has a simple color-coding system that’s great for defining and tracking task priorities.
Assigned comments: Automatically convert comments into tasks and assign them to the tagged team member.
Time tracking: Allows team members to log time spent on tasks.
Pricing: $0 to $19 per member per month.
Best for Agencies and Marketing Teams
Wrike is a highly customizable task and project management tool that allows teams to collaborate on tasks and follow what each team member is working on. Wrike also has very powerful reporting and analytics tools.
Collaboration tools: Multi-project task assignment, file sharing, commenting on tasks, file sharing, and the ability to set dependencies between tasks.
Reporting tools: Collect data and gain insights into your employees’ performance.
Email integration: Seamlessly integrate Wrike with email and turn email conversations into tasks.
400+ integrations: Wrike supports over 400 native integrations with business productivity tools, including Jira, Mailchimp, Dropbox, Zapier, and SAP.
Pricing: $0 to $24.80 per user per month.
Best Task Management Software for Scaling Teams
Teamwork is a flexible task management platform with impressive features designed to make task management and team collaboration more efficient.
Intuitive task management: Create tasks and subtasks, create time estimates for tasks, assign tasks to team members, add task tags, and define different permission levels for tasks.
Digital timer: This allows team members to track their time and log billable and non-billable hours.
Automation: Automate the administrative activities associated with task management, such as sending notifications about upcoming deadlines and assigning tasks to team members.
Communication tools: Instant chat, task commenting, and file sharing.
Integrations: Teamwork integrates with dozens of tools, including Google Drive, HubSpot, QuickBooks, Xero, MS Teams, and Stripe.
Pricing: $0 to $18 per user per month.
Best End-to-End Task Management Software for Service Providers
Scoro is an all-rounded platform that combines task management, project management, customer relationship management, and team management. It is an excellent platform for simplifying and streamlining all business operations.
Automation: Automate tasks like deadline alerts, assigning tasks to specific team members, and moving tasks to the next person in line.
Shared team calendar: This shows tasks and scheduled events for the whole team.
Real-time dashboards: Get highly-detailed insights about what your employees are working on.
Built-in time tracker: Monitor how employees spend their time and improve time management.
Team collaboration: Scoro also has file sharing and document management features, which are great for team collaboration.
Pricing: $26 to $63 per user per month.
Best Kanban-Based Task Management Software
Trello is a highly visual task planner that organizes your tasks in colorful Kanban boards. Trello is great for small businesses and startups, but its very basic features make it unsuitable for large teams that require an advanced task management tool.
Butler: This is Trello’s inbuilt automation tool, which simplifies the process of automating tasks with prebuilt automation recipes and triggers.
Kanban boards: Trello’s customizable Kanban boards make it easy to create tasks and fill in task details, such as task comments, deadlines, reminders, task attachments, and so on.
Integrations: Trello supports seamless integrations with multiple tools and apps, including Salesforce, GitHub, Confluence, Dropbox, Evernote, and Google Drive.
Mobile compatibility: It has Intuitive mobile apps that allow you to keep track of tasks even when you’re not in the office.
Email-to-board: This is a unique feature that lets you automatically turn emails into tasks.
Pricing: $0 to $17.50 per user per month.
Most Affordable Task Management Tool
nTask is a task planning and project management platform that provides teams with the tools they need to collaborate and run everyday tasks. With nTask, you can create and schedule tasks, share files, monitor task progress, manage task priorities, and so much more.
Inbuilt collaboration tools: These include multiple task assignees, task commenting, file and document sharing, subtasks and task dependencies, and real-time notifications.
Task tracking tools: nTask comes with smart time and progress tracking features like task progress graphs, task progress meters, task status labels, priority labels, and timesheets.
Multiple visualization options: Calendar, grid, list, and board view.
Task import and export: nTask allows you to import tasks from other productivity tools and export your task details to other tools as CSV files.
Pricing: $3 to $8 per month.
Simple Card-Based Task Management Software
Microsoft Planner is a visual task management tool offered by Microsoft as part of their Office 365 platform. MS Planner is a great choice for teams that already use other Microsoft tools to run their daily operations.
Simple interface: MS Planner has a simple, intuitive interface that most people will find very easy to use.
Multiple task assignees: Assign multiple team members to the same task for easier collaboration.
Collaboration tools: It also has other inbuilt collaboration tools and features, such as the ability to attach files to tasks, comment on tasks, and even take meeting notes directly within the platform.
Integrations: MS Planner natively integrates with all other MS 365 apps, including Azure, SharePoint, Teams, Power Automate, and Microsoft To-Do.
Pricing: MS Planner is not available as a standalone app. You can only get it by subscribing to Microsoft 365, which has four plans ranging between $5 and $20 per user per month.
Best Calendar-Based Task Management Software
Any.do is a simple calendar-based to-do list app that you can use to organize your tasks and track task progress. You can think of it as a calendar with inbuilt task management tools. The best part about Any.do is that it automatically syncs across all your devices.
Collaboration features: These include assigning tasks to team members, tracking task progress, sharing task lists and projects, and sending messages between team members.
Reminders: Set reminders using natural language, and define whether you want the reminders to be one-off reminders, recurring, or location-based.
Mobile app: Any.do has a mobile app that allows you to keep an eye on your tasks on the move.
Integrations: Any.do has native integration with Google Calendar, so any tasks you schedule on Any.do is automatically added to your Google Calendar.
Pricing: $0 to $5.99 per month.
Best Task Management Database
Airtable is a unique task management software that allows you to create, monitor, and track tasks within a database environment. You can think of it as a combination of a powerful spreadsheet and highly scalable database software.
Access control: This allows you to set different permission levels for accessing different tasks.
Multiple task visualization options: Kanban, Gantt, team, owner, and gallery views.
Apps marketplace: Airtable has an apps marketplace that gives you access to 50+ task management apps and tools. You can also get other open-source Airtable-compatible apps on GitHub.
Task importing: It allows you to import tasks from third-party tools and export your Airtable tasks as CSV files.
Pricing: $0 to $20 per seat per month.
Best Task Management Software for Remote Teams
Hive is an all-in-one project management tool that helps team leaders to organize and track their team’s tasks and projects in a simplified manner. It has advanced collaboration and time-tracking tools that make it a suitable choice for remote teams.
Time tracking: Hive has an advanced time tracking tool that records the time your team members spend on their tasks. It also generates timesheet reports that you can use to monitor task progress.
Multiple views: Visualize your team’s tasks in table, calendar, Gantt, label, team, and status view.
Collaboration features: These include in-app email, in-app messenger, customized task access, task prioritization, and automated approvals.
Automation: It has an automation feature that allows you to put recurring tasks and processes on autopilot.
Integrations: Hive supports native integrations with Outlook, Zendesk, HubSpot, OneDrive, Salesforce, Gmail, Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, Jira, and many other online productivity tools.
Pricing: $0 to $12 per user per month.
Best Task Management Software for Large Teams
Celoxis is a combination of a task management platform, a project planning tool, and collaboration software wrapped into one. The platform comes with an impressive set of features while remaining relatively pocket-friendly.
Easy task management: Celoxis offers task management features like task and subtask creation, task prioritization, assigning tasks to team members, and viewing task completion percentages.
Collaboration: It has excellent collaboration features like task conversations, file sharing, user tagging, the ability to follow specific tasks, meeting scheduling, and real-time notifications.
API integration: Celoxis has an easy-to-use API that allows you to connect the platform with your favorite business applications. It also integrates natively with 400+ online tools.
Time tracking: It has an in-app timer that allows you to log and track billable and non-billable time.
Mobile support: Celoxis has mobile apps for all popular mobile operating systems, including Android, iOS, Windows Mobile, and Tizen.
Pricing: $22.50 per user per month. $450 one-off payment for the on-premise version.
Best List-Based Task Management Software
Todoist is a visually appealing list-based online tool that turns managing tasks into a fun and efficient activity. Todoist provides a simple and convenient way to create, assign, and prioritize tasks and follow them through to completion.
Task management features: Create tasks and sub-tasks, place tasks within projects, set dependencies, share tasks, and assign tasks to team members.
Task labels: You can sort and organize tasks using labels, color codes, and themes. This is a great way to define task priorities.
Smart rescheduling feature: This feature looks at your current tasks and past behavior to suggest the best time to reschedule tasks.
Gamification: Todoist rewards you and your team with streaks, levels, and Karma points for completing tasks.
Collaboration: It has Instant notifications, file attachments, and task comments for better collaboration.
Pricing: $0 to $6 per user per month.
Best Task Management Software for Agile Teams
Taskworld is a task management and time tracking tool that helps teams seamlessly track their tasks and boost collaboration between team members. Taskworld is particularly suited for agile teams since it offers agile features like burnup and burndown charts.
Interactive dashboard: This gives you a quick overview of all your tasks, allowing you to make decisions without having to open each individual task.
Live stream feature: Get real-time updates about any changes to tasks, so you don’t have to worry about some tasks falling through the cracks.
Dedicated workspaces: Great for managing multiple teams.
Integrations: It integrates with Google Calendar, Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, and Microsoft Outlook.
Collaboration features: Taskworld supports direct messages, task comments, team member mentions, and file sharing.
Pricing: $0 to $22 per user per month.
Using task management software is the best way to keep track of what needs to be done, who needs to do it, and when they need to do it. With hundreds of task management tools in the market, however, choosing the best one for your team can be a bit of a challenge.
In this article, we’ve shared 15 of the best team task management software in the market today. All you need to do now is pick one that works for your team and start using it to track your team’s tasks and boost collaboration within your team.
Michael started his career as a product manager and then developed a passion for writing. He has been writing on technology, remote working, productivity, etc., hoping to share his thoughts with more people.