Best Cloud Project Management Software  (1).avif

In 2024, project management is no longer confined to a physical office or a single desktop. With the rise of cloud-based project management software, teams can now collaborate seamlessly from different locations and time zones.

These tools offer real-time updates, scalability, and easy accessibility, making them a crucial asset for both small businesses and large organizations.

This blog will guide you through the best cloud project management software options of 2024, highlighting the features that can keep your projects on track, your teams organized, and your workflow efficient.

Here’s a quick overview of each software, which will be further discussed in detail:

  • monday.com is suitable for users that require a customizable platform with an extensive list of features to accommodate complex workflows
  • Wrike software - Best known for its collaboration capabilities
  • Zoho Projects - Best known for comprehensive project management
  • ClickUp software - Best known for its mind mapping capabilities
  • Celoxis - Best known for its value for money
  • Smartsheet software - Best known for its automation of tasks
  • Asana software - Best known for its attractive visuals
  • Trello software - Best known for managing simple projects

7 Best Cloud Project Management Software

The following are the best cloud project management software:

Wrike - Best Known For Its Collaboration Capabilities

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Wrike is a project management software designed to enhance teamwork by providing a centralized platform where users can manage projects, communicate effectively, and share real-time updates. It is easy to collaborate with teams across the organization and effectively manage stakeholders.

Wrike software helps streamline the revision and approval processes for documents such as project plans, marketing materials, and reports, minimizing delays and easily routing requests for approvals to the right internal and external stakeholders.

Key Features

Wrike offers a range of features designed to enhance collaboration and streamline project management. Gantt charts promote transparency, allowing team members to visualize project timelines and stay informed about progress. The live document editor enables multiple users to edit documents simultaneously, facilitating real-time collaboration and eliminating the delays associated with traditional document sharing.

Additionally, Wrike integrates seamlessly with more than 400 applications, including popular tools like Salesforce and Slack software, making it even more impressive.

Pros 

Cons 

  • Efficient proofing feature
  • Modern, easy-to-use interface
  • The instant notifications improve team communication
  • It has a learning curve for new users
  • Managing multiple projects on the Gantt chart may get a little overwhelming for some users

Why We Picked It

Wrike facilitates team collaboration, task management, and project oversight. Its expansion includes the integration of advanced work intelligence capabilities, such as forecasting potential project delays and highlighting likely reasons for them.

Who It's For

Wrikes’s motto is ‘work management solutions for every team’. It pretty much caters to every organization that requires robust project management capabilities. It caters to both SMB's and large enterprises, making it a versatile choice for various industries.

Pricing

The software offers five pricing tiers:

  • Free - $0
  • Team - $10/user/month
  • Business - $24.80/user/month
  • Enterprise - Custom pricing plan
  • Pinnacle - Custom pricing plan

Zoho Projects - Best Known For Comprehensive Project Management

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Zoho Projects is a robust project management software that offers teams a comprehensive platform with diverse features, effectively supporting projects from inception through execution. The software helps streamline project workflows by offering features that enhance task management, time tracking, reporting, team collaboration via group chat rooms, and more.

Key Features

The work breakdown structure (WBS) helps the users break projects down into simpler work items, such as task lists, milestones, tasks, and sub tasks to organize your work efficiently. Another feature is the Custom Functions, allowing users to automate processes by writing custom code for notifications or business rules tailored to specific workflows.

The new Template Library introduced by Zoho Projects, the users can reduce planning time and get to work quickly with an extensive library of customizable templates, including marketing, sales, IT, and many more.

Pros

Cons

  • Automates redundant tasks
  • Strong integration options with other Zoho apps and third-party tools
  • Supports mobile app accessibility
  • Chat windows lag a lot between communication
  • Resource management view can be more user friendly

Why We Picked It

Another reason why Zoho Projects is considered as a comprehensive of a software is because it falls under Zoho suite of tools, which includes a Zoho CRM, Zoho Analytics, Zoho Flow, and many more. It’s a pretty solid project management software for current Zoho users because the data can be synced between the various software for the best cross-functional collaboration.

Who It's For

Zoho Projects stands out as a cost-effective project management application offering a range of beneficial functions, appealing particularly to small and expanding enterprises. Its tiered pricing structure, featuring competitively affordable rates, caters to budget-conscious organizations and those anticipating rapid growth.

Pricing

The software offers three pricing tiers:

  • Free - $0
  • Premium - $5/user/month
  • Enterprise - $10/user/month

ClickUp - Best Known For Mind Mapping

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ClickUp claims to be ‘one app to replace them all’ and hence, it offers a wide variety of features from task to resource management, from time tracking to Kanban views. The software has another very unique feature known as Mind Maps. It provides users with a powerful tool to visually organize ideas and projects. This feature allows teams to brainstorm, plan, and structure their thoughts effectively, making it an ideal choice for collaborative projects.

ClickUp software enables users to create free-form mind maps that can be customized to suit various project needs. This feature enhances the brainstorming process, allowing teams to visualize their ideas and relationships between concepts in real-time.

Key Features

Another key feature of the software the Whiteboard. This feature provides an interactive space where teams can brainstorm and visualize ideas collaboratively. Users can create freeform canvases, adding sticky notes, drawings, and other visual elements to facilitate discussions and planning sessions in real-time.

In addition, ClickUp’s Kanban View streamlines task management by allowing users to organize tasks into customizable columns that represent different stages of a workflow. Teams can easily drag and drop tasks between columns—such as "To Do," "In Progress," and "Done"—to track progress visually.

Pros 

Cons 

  • Strong collaboration features for team brainstorming
  • Intuitive and user-friendly interface
  • Useful Mind Maps for project managers
  • You have to take the time to learn the features and how they can serve you best
  • Sometimes, dashboards won't pull in new information

Why We Picked It

ClickUp software stands out for its mind mapping capabilities, which allow teams to brainstorm and organize ideas visually within a comprehensive project management framework. It tames complexity by breaking down ideas and turning ideas into actions.

Who It's For

It's best suited for teams of all sizes across various industries, including marketing, education, and product development. Its versatility makes it an excellent choice for organizations looking to enhance their brainstorming and planning processes.

Pricing

The software offers four pricing tiers:

  • Free - $0:
  • Unlimited - $10
  • Business - $19
  • Enterprise - Custom pricing

Celoxis - Best Known For Its Value For Money

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Celoxis is an all-in-one project management software that offers exceptional value for money, making it a preferred choice for businesses of all sizes. With an extensive set of features like project planning, portfolio management to monitor KPIs, team utilization to measure the efficiency of resource allocation, and workload distribution within your team to optimize productivity. It strikes a perfect balance between capabilities, ease of use, and cost efficiency.

Key Features

With the project accounting features like profit and margin tracking, users can monitor profit margins and overall profitability for each project, enabling informed financial decision-making. Additionally, revenue forecasting capabilities help organizations plan for future financial performance based on project timelines and deliverables.

 The portfolio management feature provides an aggregated view of projects through fully customizable dashboards. Users can easily tailor these dashboards to track essential portfolio KPIs, ensuring clear and efficient project oversight. With the resource conflict feature, Celoxis automatically detects and alerts managers when resource conflicts arise, ensuring proactive resolution and uninterrupted project progress.

Pros

Cons

  • Short setup time and easy-to-use
  • Flexible deployment options (cloud or on-premise)
  • Offers great communication and documentation features
  • The user-interface can be improved
  • No free version

Why We Picked It

Celoxis stands out for its value for money, offering a robust set of features at competitive pricing. Its powerful analytics tools make it an ideal choice for organizations seeking to optimize their project management without breaking the bank.

The software provides both cloud-based and on-premise deployment options, ensuring flexibility for different organizational needs.

Who It's For

Celoxis is suitable for a wide range of industries, including construction, engineering, IT services, and professional services. Its versatility makes it an excellent choice for organizations that require comprehensive project portfolio management solutions.

Pricing

The software offers the following pricing plans:

  • Essential - $25/month
  • Professional - $35/month
  • Business - $45/month
  • Enterprise - custom pricing

Smartsheet – Best Known For Its Automation Of Tasks

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Smartsheet is a powerful project management software that excels in automating tasks, making it an ideal choice for teams looking to enhance efficiency and reduce manual workload. With its flexible automation capabilities, users can replace repetitive tasks with ready-to-use templates via the template gallery in Smartsheet, allowing them to focus on more strategic activities rather than mundane tasks.

Key Features

Smartsheet software offers no-code automation workflows where Users can easily create automated workflows to handle repetitive tasks without needing coding skills. This feature helps teams save time and reduce errors associated with manual processes.

It also includes project management features, allowing users to track and visualize their work in their preferred format, with easy switching between Gantt, timeline, grid, and calendar views. The software also offers team collaboration via customized dashboards that combine live data from sources like YouTube, Google Docs, and Tableau, ensuring you can share real-time information with stakeholders.

Pros

Cons

  • User-friendly interface that resembles a spreadsheet layout
  • Strong automation capabilities that reduce manual workload and improve efficiency
  • Excellent collaboration features, allowing real-time communication among team members
  • Configuring Smartsheet to leverage its full potential can be challenging
  • Setting up integrations can be complex

Why We Picked It

Smartsheet for its exceptional automation capabilities and AI features. The software leverages the power of AI to automate repetitive tasks, analyze data, summarize long texts, generate formulas, uncover valuable insights, and further streamline workflows, providing users with a competitive edge in managing their projects efficiently.

Who It's For

Smartsheet is suitable for a wide range of industries and teams, including marketing, IT, project management, and operations. Its versatile features make it an excellent choice for organizations of all sizes that seek to improve collaboration, reporting, and overall project efficiency.

Pricing

The software offers the following four pricing plans:

  • Pro - $12/user/month
  • Business - $24/user/month
  • Enterprise - Custom pricing
  • Advance work management - Custom pricing

Asana - Best Known For Its Attractive Visuals

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Asana is a leading project management tool that stands out for its visually appealing interface and intuitive design. Known for its attractive visuals, Asana helps teams organize and track their work through various visual formats, including Kanban board, list, timeline, calendar, or Gantt chart.

This focus on aesthetics not only enhances user experience but also makes it easier for teams to collaborate via the portfolio feature, where you can invite teammates to give them all the details they need about a specific project in one place.

Key Features

Asana software offers a wide variety of templates ranging from creative production to product development. There are stand-alone templates for various departments as well, like marketing, design and many more. You can utilize these templates to standardize and enhance business processes across your organization.

Reporting dashboards in Asana provide visually appealing reporting visuals that help teams communicate progress and performance metrics clearly to stakeholders. Using real-time data uncovers the state of your team’s work. The best part is you can easily create dashboards with a few clicks and visualize data in different ways.

Pros

Cons

  • Attractive and easy-to-use interface
  • Real-time data reports allow for course corrections before it’s too late 
  • A wide variety of ready-made templates at your disposal
  • Search ability feature lacks when a project comprises many tasks
  • Finding files can be a bit confusing for new users

Why We Picked It

We chose Asana for its attractive visuals, which significantly enhance the user experience in project management. The platform leverages visually engaging tools to automate repetitive tasks, uncover valuable insights, and streamline workflows. This focus on aesthetics not only makes task management enjoyable but also helps teams stay organized and aligned on their objectives.

Furthermore, Asana has a wide variety of third-party integrations like Figma, Canva, Notion software, and many more to further give you a helping hand in your workflows.

Who It's For

Asana is suitable for teams of all sizes across various industries, including marketing, product development, IT, and operations. It is an excellent choice for organizations looking to improve collaboration and project visibility while maintaining an engaging work environment. Whether managing small projects or large-scale initiatives, Asana provides the best visual experience.

Pricing

The software offers five pricing plans:

  • Personal - $0
  • Starter - $8.50/user/month
  • Advanced - $19.21/user/month
  • Enterprise - Custom pricing plan
  • Enterprise + - Custom pricing plan

Trello - Best Known For Managing Simple Projects

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Trello is a widely used project management software renowned for its simplicity and effectiveness, making it an ideal choice for managing simple projects. Utilizing a visual approach, Trello employs boards, spreadsheet-styled lists, and cards to help users organize tasks and collaborate seamlessly. This straightforward design allows teams to quickly set up their projects without the complexity often found in more advanced project management software.

Key Features

A Trello board serves as the foundation for transforming ideas into actionable tasks, much like a Kanban board. It provides an intuitive way to plan projects and break down each step necessary to achieve goals. Users can effortlessly track the status of every task, allowing them to celebrate accomplishments as they progress.

Trello's Dashboard feature offers a comprehensive overview of projects and processes, enabling users to manage workloads effectively and prevent potential bottlenecks before they arise.

Pros

Cons

  • Easy to use for new users
  • Creation of boards is easy and helps users to be more organized in all projects and task
  • Helps collaborate with the team
  • Integrations necessary for complex needs
  • Switching between boards can be a bit cumbersome

Why We Picked It

We chose Trello for its simplicity in managing projects, making it particularly effective for simple tasks and workflows. Its visual organization through boards and cards allows teams to quickly understand project status and collaborate effectively.

Who It's For

Trello software is ideal for individuals and small teams across various industries looking to manage simple projects efficiently. Its intuitive design makes it suitable for anyone, from freelancers managing personal tasks to small businesses coordinating team efforts, who seeks a software that handles projects that not very complex in terms of minimal risk, limited dependencies, and clear objectives.

Pricing

The software offers four pricing plans:

  • Free - $0
  • Standard - $6/user/month
  • Premium - $12.50/user/month
  • Enterprise - Custom pricing

Choosing The Best Cloud Software For Your Team

When selecting the best cloud project management software for your team, it's important to consider your organization's unique needs. Teams working on large, complex projects may benefit from feature-rich platforms like Wrike or Celoxis, which offer comprehensive tools for collaboration and resource management.

Smaller teams or those focused on simpler workflows might prefer solutions like Trello or Asana for their ease of use and visually appealing interfaces.

Key factors to keep in mind include the software’s scalability, ease of use, integration capabilities with other tools your team uses, and, of course, the pricing structure. Some platforms offer more affordable options, while others may be more suitable for larger enterprises with unique needs.

Ultimately, the best cloud project management software for your team will be one that enhances productivity, fosters collaboration, and helps you stay organized while aligning with your project goals and budget.

Please visit our project management resources center for further assistance.