What’s the best marketing project management software?
It’s a simple question; however, our research found the answer is a bit more nuanced than you might expect. Finding the right project management software for your marketing team often requires buyers to dial in on their teams’ more specific needs and then evaluate how each software option addresses those needs. This process can take extensive time and research, but if you’re looking for a head start, we’ve done a lot of the work for you in this software guide.
I’ve evaluated more than 30 different options to create this buyer’s guide. Here are 10 top marketing project management software solutions you should consider:
- monday work management: Best Overall
- ClickUp: Best for Smaller Marketing Teams
- Asana: Best for Marketing and Communication Integrations
- Teamwork: Best for Client-Facing Project Teams
- Hive: Best for Simple Automated Workflows
- Zoho Projects: Best for Affordability
- Wrike: Best for Project Portfolio Management
- Trello: Best for Ease of Use
- Basecamp: Best for Internal Collaboration and Communication
- Workzone: Best for Time and Resource Management
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I conducted this review through a mixture of testing and using project management platforms, reading customer reviews of different PM software, combing through case studies from marketing industry customers, and exploring the marketing-specific features highlighted on each vendor’s website. I also reviewed product screenshots to assess the user-friendliness of different tool interfaces, read through lists of available third-party integrations, and considered how the pricing of each software package compared to its included features and user seats.
I researched over 30 project management platforms to formulate this buyers’ guide. monday.com was selected as the best overall marketing project management solution for its balance of customization, marketing-specific features, relevant integrations, advanced reporting and analytics, user-friendly interface, project portfolio management capabilities, and reasonable pricing structure.
Based on these criteria, I identified the options listed in this guide as the best project management software options for most teams. These tools are highly rated by users and experts alike because they provide essential project management features, are customizable, and frequently offer free trials that allow users to experiment with the platform’s capabilities before making a financial commitment.
Top Marketing Project Management Software
monday work management: Best Overall
monday work management’s project management platform includes all of the best elements of a project management solution, especially when it comes to customization capabilities and overall user experience. Perhaps most significantly, users can incorporate custom fields and data into their workspaces while also relying on monday’s prebuilt project templates and reporting and dashboard widgets.
monday.com’s templates are a true standout for marketing professionals. From the time you sign up for the platform, you’re immediately asked what industry sector you’re in and receive template and setup recommendations based on that industry. Some of monday.com’s best templates for marketing teams include the following:
- Marketing SWOT Analysis template
- Social Media Calendar template
- Editorial Calendar template
- Marketing Calendar template
- A/B Tests template
- Quarterly Objectives template
- Competitors Analysis template
- Campaign Tracking template
Standout Features
Read our monday work management software review.
monday work management Pros and Cons
Pros
Cons
Relevant Integrations
- Slack
- Google Drive
- Trello
- Dropbox
- Microsoft Teams
- Outlook
- Salesforce
- Zoom
- Gmail
- Zapier
Why We Chose monday work management
monday work management is a great project management tool that includes highly accessible features and visual and creative elements for marketing teams. The platform is filled with collaboration-friendly capabilities, easy-to-use project templates and setup resources, and best of all, granular customizability. I use monday work management for my own project management needs because I love how easily I can set up my own columns and fields for different project and task types. I also love how intuitive both reporting and automation setup are. It takes me very little time to filter my report results to exactly what I want to review, which I think would be especially helpful for marketing teams that are juggling multiple projects and/or clients at once but still need to measure and work toward strategic outcomes across the board.
ClickUp: Best for Smaller Marketing Teams
ClickUp has long been used by advertising and marketing agencies to manage their project tasks and client relationships. For the number and variety of features the software offers at a reasonable price, ClickUp is a great deal for smaller organizations that need big marketing functionality.
The platform offers a variety of project views and extensive reporting and dashboarding capabilities. Most notably, ClickUp provides workload management features in all pricing tiers; whereas many other competitors, such as monday.com, only include this level of user management in higher pricing tiers.
Standout Features
Read our ClickUp software review.
ClickUp Pros and Cons
Pros
Cons
Relevant Integrations
- Calendly
- Discord
- HubSpot
- Slack
- Zendesk
- Box
- Microsoft Teams
- Zoom
- Vimeo
- Google Drive
Why We Chose ClickUp
ClickUp is a user-friendly project management tool with affordable plans that offer enterprise-level features. It is well-suited to a marketing team’s needs, especially when it comes to marketing templates and communication and collaboration features like built-in chat, collaborative whiteboards, and a comprehensive document management setup. Its custom forms and requests also make it useful for teams with multiple important players making contributions to a final product. While I personally find certain aspects of ClickUp to be overwhelming, I think this would be less the case if I were using ClickUp with a team. In fact, I think its automations and integrations are particularly well-rounded and easy to set up; I just have little use for them as an individual user.
Asana: Best for Marketing and Communication Integrations
Asana is an advanced project management platform that offers one of the largest native and integrated portfolios of marketing solutions. Its many project views, administrative controls, and reporting and analytics features make it a top choice for larger marketing teams. Most notably, Asana offers a large number of marketing-specific integrations with third-party software, such as Adobe Creative Cloud, Wistia, Canva, YouTube, Mailchimp, HubSpot, and HipSocial.
Although this platform is sometimes considered less user-friendly and more overwhelming than its competitors, it has many strengths when it comes to individual user and task management, regardless of your team size. For example, the personalized My Tasks dashboard is an easy-to-use tool that is available for each user to more closely monitor their performance across tasks assigned to them.
Standout Features
Read our Asana software review.
Asana Pros and Cons
Pros
Cons
Relevant Integrations
- Salesforce
- Jira Cloud
- Power BI
- Adobe Creative Cloud
- Mailchimp
- HubSpot
- Microsoft Teams
- Slack
- Microsoft 365
- Gmail
Why We Chose Asana
Asana is by far the best project management solution for task management and setting up task hierarchies, supporting not only tasks but subtasks, recurring tasks, dependencies, and more. If you have complex marketing campaigns or other marketing initiatives that need to be broken down into smaller parts, Asana allows up to five layers of subtask hierarchy on a single task. Personally, I think this could get incredibly complicated, but it’s there and highly effective for the teams that need this kind of granularity. I am also generally impressed with Asana for several other reasons: Its free plan is impressive, offering several unlimited features to up to 10 users, and its paid tiers offer impressive enterprise functionalities that are still easy to learn how to use; I also really like its approach to integrations. For example, communication integrations—including Slack—are available in all plans, including the free plan.
Teamwork: Best for Client-Facing Project Teams
Teamwork is one of the best project management solutions available for balancing the needs of the project manager, employees, and clients simultaneously. With Teamwork, you can grant access to as many client users as you want, giving them the levels of visibility and permissions that make the most sense. With client-level access to your platform, customers and other stakeholders can see how your marketing team is tracking toward project goals and deliverables at any time.
Teamwork is also often lauded for its advanced workforce and performance management features. It has one of the clearest and most consistent workload management feature sets on the market, also offering accountability management, time tracking, task management, invoicing, and communication tools to make the user experience better for everyone.
Standout Features
Read our Teamwork software review.
Teamwork Pros and Cons
Pros
Cons
Relevant Integrations
- HubSpot
- Mailchimp
- Stripe
- Slack
- Microsoft Teams
- Microsoft Outlook
- Basecamp
- Asana
- Trello
- Wrike
Why We Chose Teamwork
While Teamwork does a great job with project management basics and essentials, it sets itself apart from most other PM solutions with its vast collection of client management features. Time management, finance and budget management, project proofs, resource and workload management, and client user management all factor into this platform and make it highly useful for marketing teams or agencies doing collaborative, client-facing work. Many of these advanced features are available across both free and paid plans, including several time management features, client management features, and invoicing. Users also frequently compliment the tool’s team collaboration features, easy-to-use mobile app, and simple data visualization and reporting features.
Hive: Best for Simple Automated Workflows
Hive has made a splash in the project management space by offering a platform and product roadmap that is primarily driven by user input. It’s an easy-to-use, comprehensive project management solution that allows users to automate project tasks and campaigns, track time and workloads, and manage assets with unlimited storage. Hive Automate and Hive’s library of workflow recipes are some of the most straightforward automation tools available for PM software today.
One of the newest and most exciting features offered by Hive is HiveMind, an AI assistant that supports market research, content creation, and project task planning. For marketing teams, HiveMind is especially helpful for outlining or drafting blog content and other types of strategic marketing content.
Standout Features
Read our Hive software review.
Hive Pros and Cons
Pros
Cons
Relevant Integrations
- Google Drive
- Dropbox
- Salesforce
- Jira
- Slack
- Zoom
- Microsoft Teams
- Microsoft Outlook
- Box
- HubSpot
Why We Chose Hive
Hive is a user-friendly project management solution that is bolstered with top-tier customer support and user resources. Its many features are simple but scalable, with each product tier offering additional capabilities that can scale with a growing marketing team’s needs. I was impressed by how many AI assistive features are available in the platform; I really appreciated that even free plan users can access some of these features to support their goals. Additionally, I liked the platform’s generous approach to automation workflows. Even its free plan includes up to 100 automation workflows, while most paid plans support unlimited automation workflows and thousands of execution runs. The approvals workflows are especially enterprise-friendly and support a wide range of marketing material approvals and workflows.
Zoho Projects: Best for Affordability
Zoho Projects is one of the best-value project management options available, offering a full-featured deck for resource and time management, project customization, team collaboration, and automation. It is one of the most affordable project management solutions, with even its highest-tier Enterprise package coming in at only $9 to $10, which is the approximate price of most competitors’ lower-tier, limited packages.
Although Zoho Projects users have reported limitations with reporting and mobile app functionality, the platform makes up for it with many of its other features. Significantly, Zoho Projects has many third-party integrations, as well as integrations with the following Zoho ecosystem tools that could be helpful for marketing agencies:
- Zoho CRM
- Zoho People
- Zoho Desk
- Zoho Invoice
- Zoho Analytics
- WorkDrive
- Zoho Assist
- Zoho Books
- Zoho Mail
- Zoho Meeting
- Zoho Cliq
- Zoho Sprints
- Zoho Expense
- Zoho Forms
Standout Features
Read our Zoho Projects software review.
Zoho Projects Pros and Cons
Pros
Cons
Relevant Integrations
- Gmail
- Microsoft 365
- Slack
- Zendesk
- Google Drive
- Microsoft Projects
- Dropbox
- Box
- Microsoft Teams
- Other Zoho products
Why We Chose Zoho Projects
There’s no denying that some of Zoho Projects’ features are much more limited than that of its competitors. However, I truly cannot get over how good of a deal Zoho presents to its users. Its free plan allows up to three users to access limited features, but the real value lies in its reasonably priced paid plans. The Premium plan starts at $4 per user per month and gives access to unlimited projects, advanced task and issue reports, project-specific workload reports, all basic task and project management features, time tracking and budgeting, AI, limited issue tracking, all third-party integrations, and most Zoho-specific integrations. The Enterprise plan starts at $9 per user per month and includes all of the features offered in Premium plus access for up to 10 guest users, editable cross-project Gantt charts, critical path, baselines, custom fields and roles, more issue tracking features, and all Zoho integrations. Yes, that is the brand’s Enterprise and highest product tier, but even when you reach that level, it is priced equivalently to the lowest-tier paid plans of most of its counterparts. So if your team is large, needs basic and easy-to-use features, and/or already uses Zoho software for other aspects of your marketing workflows, it’s hard to beat the price Zoho Projects offers.
Wrike: Best for Project Portfolio Management
Wrike’s project management platform includes several task management features, automations, dashboards, and integrations that make it a top solution for marketers. It is a tool that focuses heavily on individual user experience, especially with some of the UX and analytics advances that accompanied Wrike’s Lightspeed release in 2023.
But where Wrike stands out is in its approach to project portfolio management (PPM). Wrike offers users many resource management and allocation features, change-focused roadmaps, time tracking, and OKR templates that make it possible for marketing agencies and other marketing teams to juggle multiple projects, clients, and competing priorities.
Standout Features
Read our Wrike for Marketers Buyer’s Guide.
Wrike Pros and Cons
Pros
Cons
Relevant Integrations
- Salesforce
- Gmail
- Outlook
- Microsoft Project
- Google Drive
- MediaValet
- Dropbox
- Microsoft Teams
- Zoom
- Slack
Why We Chose Wrike
Wrike is ideally suited for complex, larger marketing teams and agencies that need to manage multiple client projects and portfolios simultaneously. Its PPM features are incredibly advanced, with detailed OKRs that can be viewed in multiple formats, budgeting forms and resources, governance workflows and templates, detailed workload visualizations, and data analytics that are visual and easy to configure for different metrics. I was also surprised and impressed by the platform’s many creative team resources, including the integration with Adobe Creative Cloud, in-platform proofing, and Wrike Publish for creative team asset management. This would be a great solution for teams that cover everything from marketing campaign management to graphic and video design management.
Trello: Best for Ease of Use
Trello is one of the easiest to use and most affordable project management solutions available, even providing extensive user access and numerous useful features in its free tier. The software operates with an intuitive and highly visual interface that focuses on drag-and-drop functionality in a project card layout.
Although the software itself is somewhat limited when it comes to storage and customization, Trello is a great solution for teams that want to smoothly transition into using project management software. Trello offers many relevant marketing integrations and power-ups as well, making it a strategic option for teams that want to better manage social media, customer journeys, and other marketing workflows.
Standout Features
Read our Trello software review.
Trello Pros and Cons
Pros
Cons
Relevant Integrations
- Slack
- Jira Cloud
- Gmail
- Hootsuite
- Salesforce
- Mailchimp
- Autopilot
- Google Drive
- Confluence Cloud
- Toggl
Why We Chose Trello
Trello is the first project management tool I ever used while working in healthcare marketing. It’s easy to use, with the card layout making it simple for me to see where my own priorities stood as well as what my teammates were focusing on. As my taskwork progressed, I could easily move my tasks from status to status because the drag-and-drop functionality was not only easy to use but made logical sense (even before I knew anything about project management software and how it works). In addition to being one of the most user-friendly tools, Trello also includes relevant third-party integrations and plugins, task and resource management capabilities, and custom fields and checklists that help teams shape their boards according to their specific projects and work philosophies.
Basecamp: Best for Internal Collaboration and Communication
Basecamp emphasizes effective internal communication and collaboration that isn’t one-size-fits-all. For real-time chat, user groups can use the Campfire feature. If your marketing team wants to collaborate on documents and files, Basecamp makes it possible to attach discussions directly to those assets. Automatic polls and check-ins, straightforward dashboards, and the Messages feature all work differently but serve the purpose of creating constant communication and performance checkpoints. Basecamp also enables you to add clients and track their feedback in the system, which further extends and unifies marketing communications.
Although Basecamp doesn’t have as many integration opportunities as a lot of its competitors, its existing integrations are great for internal team management and time tracking. These useful integrations include Earned Value App, BrightGauge Software, Toggl, and Everhour. More recently, Basecamp has also added its Doors feature, which further extends its linkability with more commonly used marketing tools like Adobe Creative Cloud, Google Drive, and Dropbox, for example. In general, for teams that need more transparency and granular performance measurement, Basecamp is a great option.
Standout Features
Read our full Basecamp software review.
Basecamp Pros and Cons
Pros
Cons
Relevant Integrations
- Project Buddy
- Zoho Flow
- Everhour
- Toggl
- Klipfolio
- Slickplan
- Zapier
- Ziflow
- Akita
- Proposify
Why We Chose Basecamp
I was immediately drawn in by Basecamp’s approach to communication because they really allow marketing teams to choose what fits their needs best. You can easily handle one-on-one, small-team, and teamwide communications directly in the platform, maintain both formal and informal conversations, and have managed conversations with clients so they feel included but don’t get bogged down or caught up in conversations that aren’t meant for them. And while many platforms include some capabilities for file-specific communication and collaboration, Basecamp consistently receives high praises for its file management capabilities and how seamlessly they work with both internal team members and clients. Basecamp also clearly listens to what their customers want, as you can see with the thoughtful new additions they’ve made to the platform over time. When I first wrote a version of this product guide last year, the platform had incredibly limited third-party integration opportunities. While there’s still some room for improvement here, the new Doors feature has greatly extended the platform’s integrability and appears to be both user-friendly and robust.
Workzone: Best for Time and Resource Management
Workzone is a specialized project management platform that was designed with the needs of marketing, creative, and operations-focused teams in mind. This specialization really sets it apart, especially since Workzone is one of the smaller vendors on this list. They have a highly focused, expert customer support team on hand that understands marketing-specific issues and how to solve them in the Workzone platform. Among its notable support resources and features is a commitment to providing unlimited training and coaching sessions to interested users who want to get the most out of the platform and their marketing project strategies.
Workzone includes everything a marketing team needs to effectively manage its time and resources, especially in an agency setting where multiple timelines, budgets, and priorities need to be balanced at once. Time tracking and resource management—including expense management—are available in all plans, and advanced capacity planning and enhanced time-tracking controls are included in the platform’s Professional and Enterprise tiers. Project managers and leaders can easily see both individual and team-wide time metrics, considering how these numbers stack up against budgeted time while also reviewing any comments that can shed light on specific task details and/or reasons for time variance.
Standout Features
Read our full Workzone software review.
Workzone Pros and Cons
Pros
Cons
Relevant Integrations
- Salesforce
- Hubspot
- Microsoft Office 365
- Google Drive
- OneDrive
- Dropbox
- Slack
- Quickbooks Online
- Toggl
- Zoho Books
Why We Chose Workzone
Workzone focuses primarily on marketing users and audiences, so many of its built-in features and strategies will make sense for marketing teams. This specialization is probably why it is more expensive than most of the products on this list, but it may be well worth it for all of the marketing knowledge and support this vendor provides as well as the platform’s immediate readiness for marketing initiatives; you likely won’t need to spend much time on customizing the workspace to fit your team’s needs. Additionally, it’s hard to top a vendor that provides both unlimited training sessions and success-based coaching as well as advanced features in all plans. In my research, the following features stood out as different or better than your average PM platform: unlimited project and task management, 99.99% uptime, multiple project views in all plans, image markup, automated to-do lists, resource management and time tracking, unlimited workspaces, and comprehensive approval workflows.
Project’s global capacity planning and visibility, as well as its streamlined workflows that focus on delivering process-driven project management.
What to Look For in Marketing Project Management Software
Marketing project management software typically includes many of the same features as traditional project management software, including built-in task management, user management, and reporting capabilities. Particularly for marketing PM needs, you’ll want to look for the following features and capabilities in your chosen tool:
- Built-in collaboration tools: Task and document comment threads, chat, communication integrations, whiteboard spaces, native document libraries, and approval workflows are all examples of how the right project management software can help your team maintain consistent communication without leaving the app.
- Marketing integrations: While many project management tools boast a range of enterprise integrations, not all of them have the integrations that marketing teams need most. When looking through a prospective tool’s integration library, pay close attention to integrations for time tracking, invoicing and accounting, communication, and CRM platforms, depending on your needs.
- Reporting and dashboarding: Marketing campaigns and similar initiatives are only as successful as they are measured. The best tools include extensive reporting and analytics features, customizable enough so marketing teams can measure and report on their most important KPIs at all times.
- Customizability: Standard features and functions may suit your team’s needs at the beginning, but if you’re ever tasked with completing a new or unique project type, you’ll likely benefit from customizable fields, columns, automations, and reports. Customization makes it possible to measure and visualize your projects in a way that makes the most sense to your team and project stakeholders.
- Affordable scalability: Marketing projects and client loads can grow quickly and unexpectedly, requiring your team to scale up your internal resources and tooling immediately. It’s a good idea to find a software solution that matches both your budget and your needs as your workload grows and becomes more complex. Pay close attention to the price of higher-tier plans, even if you’re not there yet, and consider what advanced features are available at that price point.
- Time, workload, and performance management: Many marketing teams work in agency settings where time spent on specific client work determines billing numbers for the month. For this reason and more, it’s helpful to have a project management tool that easily allows project managers to measure time, workload, and performance across individuals, teams, and the specific projects or tasks they’re working on.
- Project portfolio management: Especially for marketing teams working with external clients and projects, PPM capabilities can help them measure and optimize resource usage, strategies, and performance goals across the full spectrum of client work their teams are covering.
Marketing Project Management FAQs
Bottom Line: Choosing the Best Marketing Project Management Software
While most marketing teams share similar strategies and goals, marketing projects and the teams that pursue them vary widely. As such, it’s important to find the project management solution that best aligns with your team’s unique skill sets, requirements, and expectations. To quickly sum up when it would be best to use each of the software solutions in our guide, take a look at the following statements:
If a generous and high-powered free plan option is important to you, choose ClickUp, Asana, Trello, Hive, or Wrike. Each of these solutions’ free plans offers access for at least 10 collaborators, and several even allow unlimited users in their free plans. While there are certainly some limitations to what these free project management software solutions could offer in their free tier, many teams will be satisfied with the built-in integrations, task and board counts, reporting capabilities, and other features that are available at this basic tier. If not, or if your needs scale over time, several of these tools offer affordable paid tiers that can grow with your needs.
If purpose-built marketing platforms, templates, and resources are important to you, choose Workzone, monday work management, ClickUp, or Asana. Workzone was designed primarily for marketing and creative teams, which makes it a great solution for marketing agencies that need a tool that integrates well with their existing tools and processes. monday work management, ClickUp, and Asana each offer well-documented and highly praised resources for marketing teams, including purpose-built project templates for various marketing initiatives and project types.
If built-in teamwork and collaboration features are most important to you, choose Teamwork, Basecamp, Zoho Projects, ClickUp, or monday work management. For marketing efforts that are led by a team, it’s important to find a tool that includes built-in document management, chat, commenting, whiteboard space, and other collaborative features to communicate and stay on the same page while moving through project tasks. Each of these tools offers unique and user-friendly ways to stay in touch with your teammates, and a couple even include admin-managed features for client communications and feedback.
Ultimately, you cannot find a best-fit marketing project management software solution for your organization if you haven’t taken the time to assess your top-priority requirements. At both a leadership and team level, evaluate your current tools and processes, consider where performance gaps or challenges are arising, and research which tools will best round out your team’s strengths and alleviate its weaknesses. If you’re feeling stuck, reach out to your top prospective vendors directly; many are willing and able to offer custom demos or trials so you can make a more informed purchasing decision.
Read our comprehensive Top 10 Project Management Software Buyer’s Guide.
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