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Wrike Review

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Wrike is a comprehensive project management solution tailored to marketing teams, agencies, and professional service providers. With all of that versatility comes a high price tag to unlock everything you need. The biggest issue comes down to one question: is it worth the added cost compared to other solutions on the market? Let’s find out!

Compare Wrike to the Best Project Management Software

While Wrike is definitely a popular and trustworthy project management solution, it didn’t make it into our top picks for this category:

  1. Monday.com – Best for project management software for most
  2. ClickUp – Best remote work platform
  3. Smartsheet – Best for flexibility
  4. Teamwork – Best for client and service-based businesses
  5. Asana – Best balance of power and simplicity
  6. Trello – Best Kanban project management

If you’re an agency, marketing team, or professional service provider, Wrike is a strong choice for any size business. It delivers hyper-tailored features you won’t find anywhere else. It’s also worth it for large businesses that want to use Wrike across multiple departments to make the most of the software (and its hefty price tag).

Small to medium-sized businesses may have better luck with one of our top recommended project management software. These will likely be easier to deploy and more affordable.

This isn’t to say Wrike is enterprise-only. Far from it. Wrike just may not be the right path for smaller teams that won’t benefit from the advanced project tracking and analytics. Let’s take a closer look.

Wrike: The Good and The Bad

Although it didn’t make it into our top picks, Wrike is excellent if you’re an agency, marketing team, or professional service provider. Keep reading to learn more about what we love (and don’t love) about this marketing-centric project management tool.

The Good

User-Friendly Dashboard: Wrike’s dashboard is unique compared to other project management solutions. It contains three panes with a consolidated view of your entire workflow, so you can see an overview and the final details without ever navigating somewhere else. The first pane provides access to all projects, teams, and financials, making it easy to manage resources. The next pane offers functions to create a task, assign tasks, and set due dates for each task. Finally, all of your current tasks and subtasks are in the far right pane. Unlike other project management tools, everything you need is literally at your fingertips (without having to even so much as click your mouse to see it all).

Enterprise-Grade Functionality: With Wrike, you’ll have full access to enterprise-level project management tools. Within the platform, you can share files, publish assets, track time across projects and at the individual team member level, and more—all bolstered by enterprise-level security. While it may feel overwhelming to learn it all at once, the wealth of features give you and your team plenty of room to grow. Plus, the advanced features help prepare your business for future growth while letting everyone get familiar with them before you need to start using them. You may even realize bottlenecks and ways to improve your processes by accident. With dozens of free templates you can use to get started, you’ll have lots of new features to explore and plenty of room to bolster productivity in new ways.

Real-Time Analytics: Regardless of the types of analytics you want to see, Wrike automatically updates charts, some reports, infographics, and analytic dashboards every 15 minutes so you never have to worry about looking at (or presenting) outdated information. This gives project managers a real-time overview of project statuses, team performance, task statuses, workload, approvals, and tasks waiting on you. This is a key benefit, especially if you’re juggling multiple projects at once. Not every project management tool comes with analytics at all, so we love that Wrike comes with real-time analytics that are always up to date.

Department-Specific Solutions: One of the best ways to save money and align departments is to use the same project management tool across them all. While some tools are best suited for specific use cases and departments, Wrike is one of the most versatile. From operations, product development, and research to content creation, HR, and sales, it’s adaptable enough to meet the needs of your entire business. There are specialized templates and solutions for everyone, including marketers, creative teams, professional service organizations, business operations, IT teams, product managers, and more. Whether you need a company-wide project management tool or a department-specific solution, Wrike has you covered.  

Custom Request Forms: Whether you already use forms or plan to use them in the future, Wrike’s custom form builder makes creating them easier than ever. While Wrike suggests using them for requests, you can use them for just about anything you can imagine. Rather than having your team update a spreadsheet, you can have them submit a form instead, making the process easier for everyone involved. You can even decide what page users see after submitting based on their input. And when a new form is created, it can automatically assign a task, populate subtasks, set a due date based on the submission date, and more. Every piece of the form is customizable and you can set custom rules to trigger custom automations, which is a major time saver.

Automated Workflows: Aside from request forms, Wrike does an excellent job at demystifying and simplifying workflow automation without sacrificing support for complex workflows. It integrates with more than 400 third-party tools, so you can easily build automations that span multiple business tools with Wrike’s workflow builder. From automated approval processes and smart workload balancing to automated analytics, resource management, and task assignments, you can automate as much (or as little) as you’d like up to 100 automations per account. The workflow builder uses simple “if, then” statements to build automations with up to 10 automated actions in one—that 100-automations limit isn’t as limiting as it sounds. However, the workflow builder is only available on the top three tiers.

Team Collaboration Tools: Most project management tools make it easy to collaborate with your team, and Wrike is no different. Anyone on the team can access a global or project-based live stream of recent activity so everyone knows what’s happening in real-time. You can also easily invite clients, contractors, vendors, or other third parties at no additional cost to track the status of their projects and work with you towards project completion. Plus, your team can communicate on specific tasks and at a project level to centralize conversations and keep everything related to tasks and projects in one place. These features paired with an extensive set of real-time reports and analytics make collaborating within your org and with others easier than ever.

The Bad

Not For Beginners: Wrike can be a bit challenging for beginners to navigate and figure out. While we like the dashboard and the enterprise-level features, people who are new to project management software will likely find Wrike overwhelming. The initial setup and onboarding process can be challenging, as well. Wrike offers training to help you get started, but most businesses don’t want to be trained for software that’s supposed to simplify their processes. It seems counterintuitive. 

Limited Mobile Functionality: All of the best project management tools come with some version of a mobile app. While Wrike has apps for iOS and Android, they’re not the most user-friendly apps on the market. Managing tasks from the app can be a pain, and sometimes you’re entirely unable to move or edit a task. Wrike is really only good if you’re using the software from a desktop or laptop computer. 

Expensive: In terms of cost, Wrike is definitely towards the higher end of the spectrum for similar tools in the project management category. While the software can be configured to accommodate a wide variety of needs, lots of advanced Wrike features are offered as add-ons. So by the time you’re done adding these features to your plan, the price could be double or triple what you initially thought. We’ll discuss Wrike’s pricing in greater detail below. 

Wrike Pricing and Options

Wrike Pricing

No project management software review would be complete without a detailed overview of the plans and pricing. Wrike has several different package tiers and product offerings, each at varying price points. 

There’s even a free version of Wrike that supports up to five users. Here’s a general overview of the plans and pricing:

The free plan comes with task management basics, but it’s not a viable option for business use. For example, you can use the free package for basic board views and spreadsheet views, but not for Gantt charts. While it does support file sharing, basic task management, and some integrations, there aren’t many potential use cases for Wrike’s free offering. Skip over that altogether. If you want a free project management solution, there are better alternatives on the market. 

Wrike’s Professional plan supports up to 15 team members in intervals of five. It can be a little annoying if you fall in between these numbers, as you’ll end up paying for extra seats. For example, if you have a team of 11, you’ll need to sign up and pay for 15 users. This pricing structure may add to your overall costs.

The Professional package is essentially Wrike’s entry-level project management solution. It comes with task management, subtask management, Gantt charts, shareable dashboards, and advanced integrations. But if you want to get the most out of Wrike, upgrade to the Business plan.

Starting at $24.80 per user per month, the rate is a bit high compared to alternatives with similar features on the market today. In addition to all of the Professional features, Wrike Business includes:

  • Custom workflows
  • Real-time reports
  • Calendars
  • Request forms
  • Project and task approvals
  • Time tracking
  • User and group permissions
  • Automation engine
  • Graphical analytics
  • Report templates

The package also supports Salesforce integration and allows you to brand your workspace with company logos. 

Larger organizations with advanced security needs will benefit from the Enterprise solution. This offers custom IT admin permissions, SSO, two-factor authentication, password policies, network access and compliance policies, BI integrations, advanced access controls, and more. 

Overall, Wrike Business will be the best option for most organizations seeking a project management solution. It’s a bit pricey but still feature-rich.

You can try Wrike for free with a 14-day trial.

Wrike for Marketers

Wrike has custom packages for marketing and creative teams. These are designed to manage the entire marketing project lifecycle from a single collaborative workspace. 

You can use Wrike to gather and analyze marketing performance data from 50 different platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, and Google. Customize your advertising channels, leverage marketing-specific project templates, and tie it all together with your projects and tasks.

Wrike for Marketers comes with the following:

  • All Wrike Business plan features
  • Wrike Proof add-on
  • Wrike Publish add-on
  • Extension for Adobe Creative Cloud
  • Marketing-specific templates and workspace

Wrike recently released an upgraded and more advanced version of this offering, called Wrike for Marketers Performance. This is more of a big-picture marketing solution that goes beyond basic project management. 

In addition to all of the features listed above, the plan supports integrations with Salesforce and Marketo. You’ll also benefit from data integrations across digital campaigns from social media, search, SEM, and more. 

If you’re interested in Wrike for Marketers or Wrike for Marketers Performance, you’ll need to contact the Wrike sales team for a custom quote. No pricing information for either of these plans is available online. 

In terms of project management solutions built specifically for marketing teams, both of these options are great. Not a lot of other tools on the market have these marketing-specific plans.

Wrike for Professional Services

Wrike for Professional Services is built for agencies. It helps teams manage projects for clients while ensuring deliverables are met on-time. With Wrike for Professional Services, you can turn billable hours into revenue for your services agency. 

The use-case specific solution supports powerful resource management, automated workflows, time tracking, utilization analytics, real-time insights, and more. 

Wrike offers ready-made professional services templates for things like client projects, meeting notes, project scheduling, proofing and approvals, communication roles, and more. Wrike for Professional Services comes with all business plan features and the Wrike Resource module.

Like the marketing plans, there’s also an advanced version of this for Wrike for Professional Services Performance agencies. 

This solution integrates with Salesforce, QuickBooks, NetSuite, and 400+ third-party apps. It includes advanced reporting, data visualization, and the ability to leverage automation to minimize manual tasks. If you want to connect Wrike with your CRM to get the most out of the platform, Wrike for Professional Services Performance will be the best option for you.

Contact the Wrike sales team for a custom quote on either of these two packages. 

Wrike Add-on Features

As previously mentioned, Wrike has add-on modules that can extend the functionality of your base plan. Some of these are included with specific Wrike packages (like Wrike for Marketers or Wrike for Professional Services).

Here’s a quick overview of these modules and what they do:

  • Wrike Resource — Real-time visibility for resource planning and resource allocation
  • Wrike Proof — Centralized location for feedback, approvals, and asset reviews
  • Wrike Publish — Wrike’s digital asset management (DAM) solution
  • Wrike Integrate — Custom integrations with 400+ third-party apps
  • Wrike Analyze — Run advanced reports and analytics
  • Wrike Lock — Control the access of your data with your own encryption keys
  • Two-Way Sync— Create a two-way sync with Jira and Github

Some of these modules go beyond basic project management. That’s why they’re considered add-ons. Not every business will need these, and they’ll add to the cost of your package. Contact Wrike to get a quote on these add-ons for your custom solution. 

Comparing The Best Project Management Software

Overall, Wrike is a great option for project management. While it’s a bit pricey and not ideal for beginners, the software is perfect for marketers, agencies, and organizations that want an advanced tool with enterprise-level functionality.

If you are looking for something with less of a learning curve, you should check out our top picks of the best project management tools. You’ll find popular Wrike alternatives like Monday.com, ClickUp, and super beginner-friendly tools like Trello.


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