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Whether youre a freelancer or an enterprise-level company, its important to consider how you and your teams work best. We suggest looking at how each task management tool handles collaboration, communication, views and pricing structure.

Collaboration starts with your coworkers, but it also includes outsourced help and clients. If you need to share view-only boards with clients, ensure it offers that feature at the price point you can afford. Alternatively, some task management software let you invite clients or collaborators as guests and you can set permissions for different users.

Some task management tools are nothing but boards for listing and organizing tasks for a project. Others let users leave comments, send direct messages, start group chats or integrate with popular communication tools, such as Slack. Choose one that best fits your organizations communication requirements.

Kanban-style views are visual and very easy to use, but not everyone works best with that style of project management. If you need Gantt charts or a timeline view, be sure to consider what views each task management software offers as you whittle down your list of choices.

Finally, pricing structure is a huge part of choosing the right task management tool. If you have a small team, a per-user-per-month pricing plan might work fine for your budget. Larger teams may want to consider an enterprise plan with a custom price or a flat-fee price with unlimited users allowed.

The best task management software includes basic features to help you build and manage tasks and projects on the whole. Make sure these features are present even in the low-priced plans:

Task management software is made better with collaboration tools. Without ways to collaborate, youd still rely on email, phone calls and meetings to make sure everyone is on the same page. So, as you assign tasks, reassign projects and get feedback, its helpful to have all of that happen in one place. Look for these tools to help you collaborate within your task management software:

The best task management software today is cloud-based, so you should be able to access your tasks and projects from any browser. Still, its important to ensure that your chosen task management software supports the devices your team and company use. Most software create mobile apps for iOS and Android, but not all. If not, make sure the browser version is optimized for mobile, at least.

Its equally important to check the integrations available with task management software. Just because theres a missing feature in the software you want, there may be a way to integrate another app for a complete solution for your business. You may only need to add a time tracking app to your stack or you might want to connect your CRM or accounting software, such as Salesforce or QuickBooks.

Project and task management is notorious for ranging from simple to extremely complex. For larger businesses with multiple teams, there can be a lot of moving pieces with dependencies and various subtasks associated with each task. Thats why its vital to choose the right task management software for your teams or companys skill.

The easiest task management software has intuitive interfaces with drag-and-drop functionality, so you can create and move tasks around on a board or list. These are great entry-level task management software options. As your team or business grows, you may want to migrate to a more advanced task management software that includes Gantt charts and real-time reporting thats more helpful for managers and stakeholders.

Knowing when to use free vs. paid task management software comes down to the size of your business, projects and budget. Freelancers and ultra-small businesses can likely get away with the limitations of a free task management software solution. Limits are usually applied to the number of users, collaborators, tasks or projects, file size or advanced features.

As your needs grow, you may find you need to upgrade to a low- or mid-tier plan with more advanced features or fewer limitations. If youre a manager who needs to view various reports to study a myriad of data, you might need to start off with a paid plan as these reports arent usually available on free plans.

Another big difference between free vs. paid task management software is how the plans handle or allow workflow automation. Some free plans may allow some automation, but youre likely limited to a set number of actions per month and you may be surprised at how quickly those run out. Workflow builders are key to reducing the time you spend doing the most mundane parts of task management, so it could be worth it to you to start off with a paid plan anyway.

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10 Best Task Management Software (2023) Forbes Advisor - Forbes