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A team’s success largely depends on its ability to effectively plan and streamline workflow. This is even more true of virtual teams, whose members could be spread all over the world and in different time zones. When used correctly, project management software alleviates much of the stress associated with task management and can offload team members to spend less time on laborious administrative tasks and focus rather on what they do best.
Let’s take a look at what some of the best free project management tools available on Windows have to offer.
1. Milanote
Milanote presents itself as an easy-to-use tool for organizing your ideas and projects into visual boards. In reality, it is much more than that. Milanote does away with the typical hierarchical approach to task management and instead opts to organize everything into visual boards. Of course, you can always drill down to any task in the board and add a host of options like recipients, due dates, links to other documents, and more.
This makes Milanote extremely flexible. With just one click, you can arrange your board in just about any layout you can imagine. From Agile task boards for software development, to product management roadmaps and retrospectives, to game and level design boards, there’s something for everyone.
Milanote’s free plan includes; up to 100 notes, images or links. Up to 10 file uploads and unlimited shared boards.
To download: Milanote (Free)
2. Trello
Trello is pretty much a household name at this point and certainly deserves a spot on any list of project management tools. Trello lets teams collaborate anywhere in the world and have a board up and running in seconds. Trello follows the familiar Kanban format to organize your tasks and workflow. It also has powerful built-in no-code automation tools, which allow automation of tedious tasks. If you want to automate other repetitive tasks in your life, check out the best apps to help you automate repetitive tasks.
When working in Trello, you break things down into Lists and Cards. Lists are a collection of specific cards or tasks, which can be organized into different stages of progress. Lists can be used to create a workflow in which cards are moved through each step.
The cards themselves represent specific tasks or ideas and are the smallest but most detailed units of work on a board. Cards can be personalized with due dates, attachments, conversations, and more. Maps can also be seamlessly managed, tracked, and shared with teammates.
Trello’s free plan includes; unlimited cards, up to 10 boards per workspace, and unlimited storage with a 10MB cap per file.
To download: Trello (Free)
3. Click Top
ClickUp is more than an average project management tool. Right out of the box, it offers notes, planning, goals, reminders, and even an inbox. The platform is also highly customizable.
With just a few clicks, you can view your tasks as a list, Scrum board, timeline, or even a Gantt chart. You can even switch between all views once configured. Dashboards offer high-level overviews of everything in your workspace and contain customizable widgets for task, backlog, and sprint information.
ClickUp also has a built-in workflow management system that helps you easily allocate team resources and assess performance on the fly. ClickUp also integrates very easily with a variety of other software like Microsoft 365, Slack, and Discord to name a few.
ClickUp’s Free Forever plan includes unlimited tasks, unlimited free members, collaborative documents, and 100MB of storage.
To download: Click Up (Free)
4. Crafty
Nifty is a project management and real-time chat and video application rolled into one. It aims to unite roadmaps, tasks, documents, and discussions into one seamless user experience. It’s fast and flexible, and ticks enough good boxes in the project management and collaboration departments to live up to its premise. Teams can organize, prioritize, and track daily work in a Kanban, List, Calendar, or Swimlane view.
We especially like the ability to establish a knowledge hub, where you can create documents and wikis to share ideas, finalize specs, and gather feedback from your team. It also probably has the best built-in automated reporting features of any free project management tool we tried. With virtually no setup, you can glean insights into all of your team projects and activities.
The free version of Nifty includes; unlimited team members and guests, two projects, custom roles and permissions, choice of light or dark theme, and 100MB of storage.
To download: Clever (Free)
5. Hive
Although Hive was originally built with small teams in mind, it is now backed by big names.
Hive prides itself on enabling teams to “move faster” together, and it shows. Everything in the app is designed with productivity and speed in mind. Complex timelines can be mapped with just a few clicks in the Gantt view. Switching to Kanban view allows you to drag and drop tasks, mark them as In progress, completedWhere Unstarted.
The calendar view allows you to quickly visualize all the actions of your project organized by deadline. Finally, the portfolio view is a high-level overview of all project actions and tasks. The portfolio view can also be customized in-place with stocks, custom fields, and even new projects.
Hive also offers a centralized dashboard, with hundreds of integrations with the most popular tools and apps to choose from. It really is a complete package, especially if you prefer simplicity over endless customization and complexity.
The Hive Solo Free Forever plan includes; unlimited storage, unlimited projects and tasks, unlimited collaborative notes, cloud storage integrations and native chat.
To download: Hive (Free)
Simplified project management
We’ve never been so spoiled for choice when it comes to project management software. All of the mentions on this list have merit, and we’re confident that if you spend enough time with one, one is bound to meet your needs.
The days of working in silos are over, and as the world evolves with new ways of working, so too has the software that powers our daily collaboration efforts. Now that you and your team are ready to succeed with the best project management tools for Windows, what are you going to accomplish next?
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