ProjectManager is a capable tool designed to solve common project management challenges like goal setting, scope creep, and budget changes and restrictions. The software is easy to use, offers multiple project views, and includes resource management and budgeting functionality to keep your projects on track. But how does ProjectManager fare in the face of fierce competition? Read on to learn about this project management software’s high and low points.
ProjectManager Compared to the Best Project Management Software
Our team of researchers took up the challenge of assessing the best project management software on an array of key factors. Read that post in full to get a comprehensive view of the best options on the market today, or check out our Golden Eggs below, the top three options we think work well for the widest variety of users and use cases.
Monday.com excels for many teams because of its simplicity, built-in customer relationship management, and superior task management capabilities. Try Monday.com risk-free for 14 days to get started.
ClickUp is affordable while still delivering numerous advanced features like nested subtasks, automations, and over a dozen project views. Get your feet wet by trying ClickUp’s free-forever plan.
Smartsheet is a highly customizable tool that allows you to convert traditional spreadsheets into your preferred views, including Gantt charts, Kanban boards, and calendars. Start your 30-day Smartsheet free trial today.
ProjectManager: The Good and the Bad
Choosing the project management software that best fits your team requires careful consideration of what the software offers versus what it lacks in features and functionality. The goal is to get a tool that delivers all your essential features with a few easily overlooked shortcomings. This section highlights the best things about ProjectManager and a few potential deal-breakers so that you can make an educated assessment.
What ProjectManager Is Good At
ProjectManager offers many desirable features, ranging from its user-friendliness to its capability to track a wide array of project metrics. That makes this a well-rounded PM platform for many teams, so let’s delve into what makes the ProjectManager platform able to rise to almost any occasion.
Easy-to-use interface: ProjectManager is one of the most intuitive PM software options out there, even for beginners. All essential features and functions are exactly where you’d expect them, such as view options for any project visible across the top of the page and easy navigation in the left-hand sidebar.
On top of that, templates make it easy to get up and running quickly. ProjectManager has a wide array, from construction schedules and IT project plans to product launches and work breakdown structures. Each comes with example tasks for the project type that you can edit afterward to fit your use case.
Comprehensive dashboard: ProjectManager also provides an outstanding and intuitive dashboard that captures critical, real-time information about project health, progress, cost, time, budget, and risk. Simply click the dashboard view to get a bird’s eye view of your project.
You can even tap into dashboard templates for different project needs like resource planning, issue tracking, change logs, and event planning. Or, create your custom dashboard from scratch, including customized colors.
Portfolio management: This software’s dashboard really sings when you need to keep tabs on a whole portfolio of projects. Custom dashboards let you view, manage, and allocate resources across projects from one place—just group related projects together to create a portfolio. You can compare statuses or budgets for two or more projects side-by-side and allocate resources to underperforming projects. ProjectManager also provides a roadmap to gain a high-level view of your portfolio, combining all projects into a single Gannt chart for simple visualization and management.
Built-In time tracking: Time tracking isn’t always a given with project management software, and many tools only offer time-tracking functionality with third-party add-ons. However, ProjectManager provides robust features to track employees’ hours on tasks and projects. Timesheets within ProjectManager display employees’ logged hours, updated in real-time.
You can also automate aspects of this, such as copying recurring work or auto-filling tasks as they are completed. Plus, you’re able to generate granular reports about hours worked and time spent on projects over a particular date range or for individual employees.
People management: ProjectManager lets you efficiently manage your team and resources in a few different ways. Create groups of users that can be assigned tasks and workloads. Assign skills to team members, allowing you to filter for relevant skills when you want to assign new projects or tasks.
You can also view individual members’ dashboards, see employee availability in real-time, and reassign tasks as needed based on capacity. This, combined with the time-tracking features mentioned above, means you’ll never be in the dark about who can work on what at any given time.
One-click reporting: Generating reports for stakeholders, executives, and your team is a big part of a project manager’s duties. ProjectManager lets you create instant reports for almost anything, from project status and progress reports to gap analysis, variance reports, and resource allocation. The best part is you can generate these reports with just one click, then export and share them in PDF form.
What ProjectManager Is Lacking
ProjectManager has a few flaws that might be deal-breakers for some people. Weigh these shortcomings against the value you’ll get from the above benefits to see whether ProjectManager represents a quality fit for your organization.
Costly access to key features: ProjectManager is a capable project management tool, but you’ll likely have to pay for a higher-priced plan to unlock what other PM software offers on entry-level (or even free-forever) plans. For one, all portfolio-level views are only accessible on the more expensive Business plan, which may be prohibitive for a small agency that juggles a variety of projects at once.
Other key features locked away on the Business plan only are automations, customizable workflows, time tracking, and resource management. While the latter two aren’t as prevalent in other PM platforms, you can likely shop around for other software that delivers automations and workflows for less than $24 per user per month.
Metered guest access: You can allow external users guest access to your ProjectManager platform on the aforementioned Business plan. The brand recently added this feature, which is a welcome addition. But, again, this is locked away on a higher-cost plan, and you still only get five guest licenses included. You’ll have to pay extra to add more than that to your account or opt for the custom-priced Enterprise plan to unlock unlimited guest roles.
Lackluster support: ProjectManager is more expensive than many competitors on the whole, yet it still lacks phone support. Worse still, the cheapest plan has a 72-hour support response time, which only drops to 48 hours on the Business plan. You’ll need the Enterprise plan to get a 24-hour turnaround time on support responses.
On top of that, the options are severely limited on ProjectManager’s entry-level plan. You only get access to their website’s knowledge base, but no way to utilize their live webinars (only on Business or higher) or a dedicated account representative (only available on the Enterprise plan).
ProjectManager Options and Pricing
ProjectManager is a pretty feature-packed PM platform with straightforward enough pricing. However, it’s important to note that, unlike a lot of other popular project management software options, there’s no limited free plan at all, and its entry-level pricing is a bit steeper than other leading platforms.
ProjectManager Project Management
If you’ve shopped around for project management software, ProjectManager’s pricing plans and structure will be familiar. You can choose from one of three plans.
The entry-level Team plan starts at $13 per user per month when you pay annually. For month-to-month billing, that goes up to $16 per user.
In this package, you’ll unlock the essentials and basics of the ProjectManager software. Utilize multiple views, like Gantt charts, Kanban boards, task lists, sheet views, and calendars. You’re allowed up to 10 users on this plan and 5 GB of file storage. You also get basic reporting functionality.
That’s pretty limited for the price point, and with no free-forever option, it might be just a bit too much cost for a limited feature set for small teams.
Fortunately, you can tap into a generous 30-day free trial for this plan or the more popular next step up, the Business plan.
Business costs $24 per user per month when paying for a full year upfront or $28 per user on month-to-month billing. This package delivers the bulk of ProjectManager’s features, including portfolio management, full and customizable reporting, time tracking, timesheets, approvals, automations, and more.
This is basically the full run of the platform, with just a few restrictions. You’re allowed up to 100 projects on the Business plan, 25 GB of storage, five rules per workflow automation, and five guest licenses.
If any of those limitations are unappealing, you can opt for the custom-priced Enterprise plan of ProjectManager. That delivers unlimited projects, storage, and guest licenses, plus it raises the complexity of automations you can create to 20 rules per workflow. You also unlocked advanced security controls, custom user roles, access to the API, and priority support (with a dedicated account representative included, as well).
The general view is ProjectManager doesn’t quite offer the best value for money. The software isn’t ridiculously priced, but you can get many of these features for cheaper elsewhere.
ProjectManager in Summary
ProjectManager is decently advanced project management software when it comes to integrating time, resources, and people management. However, a lot of key features are limited, especially on the cheapest plan they offer. Still, it’s a capable PM platform that’s easy for users to get the hang of, even if they’re new to this kind of software. And its wide array of project views allows it to adapt to the needs of various teams.
If you’re not sold on ProjectManager for your team, take a look at the Golden Eggs we enumerated earlier in this post. Options like Monday.com and ClickUp are great for teams that want feature-rich software that won’t leave too much of a dent in their budget, while Smartsheet offers a lot of the same flexibility and project visibility as ProjectManager on a cheaper entry-level plan (starting at $7 per user per month).
Want to know more about all of your best PM platform options? Then head to our full post reviewing the best project management software to scout for the ideal fit for your team and needs.
