10 Best Asana Alternatives in 2019

Created by former Facebook executives Dustin Moskovitz and Justin Rosenstein, Asana is an organizational, project management and tracking tool designed to serve as an all-in-one platform to organize tasks, projects, files, and a calendar within a shared workspace.

Asana is used by more than 50,000 organizations. It helps businesses to manage everything from marketing campaigns and product launches to work requests and team goals. However, Asana has certain limitations in terms of usability, pricing, and workflow so you may want to consider evaluating other alternatives to Asana for your organization.

Why use Asana alternatives

Asana is a popular project management tool that help teams complete projects more efficiently. It aims to replace daily meetings, reduce the volume of emails, and help people work at peak efficiency, but certain aspects of Asana are just plain confusing, and others are overly simplistic.

Here are some of the reasons why you want to look at Asana alternatives

Rudimentary feature set
Slow load times
No task priority
No progress tracking
Sub-tasks can be difficult to work with and it can easily lose its connection when moving items around
The overwhelming amount of features on display can make for a slow learning process

Whatever your reason is, to help you find your perfect project management tool, we have made a list of the top 10 Asana alternatives. Some of them are similar to Asana, others are wildly different. Hopefully, you’ll find the tool that fits your needs the best.

Top 10 Asana Alternatives

TeamWave

TeamWave is an integrated Project Management, CRM & HR platform. Manage your entire business with TeamWave’s all-in-one software. Integrations include G-Suite, Quickbooks, Xero, Mailchimp and Zapier.

TeamWave is a faster and more affordable platform that offers features like tasks and project creation, set up due dates and time tracking, attachments, invoicing and more. Advanced features include task and project conversations, dashboards for checking progress on all projects, an inbox for automatic updates, team management features with task assignees, integration with other solutions (e.g. Dropbox, Google Drive) and more.

Our goal is to create an intuitive and seamless experience for our users. You may feel that Asana may get more complicated with hundreds of little-used capabilities that get in the way of the handful that is really important. At TeamWave, we strive to keep a balance between features and usability.

Pricing: Starts at $39 /Month. For UNLIMITED Users.

PROS

Affordable monthly costs
Easy to use
Modern user interface
Notes and comments
CRM
Integrations

CONS

Not suitable for large businesses

Trello

Trello is a project and task management application that provides many features for collaborative use, such as notifications, calendars, comments, file attachments and so on. In Trello, users can create checklists, add labels and due dates, invite people to join tasks, and connect with other applications, including Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, and OneDrive.

Trello works in real-time and is synchronized across devices, with apps for different mobile devices. Some advanced features include power-ups, calendar, voting, and card aging.

Pricing: Paid plans start at $9.80 per user per month

PROS

Easy to use
Cheap monthly costs
No learning curve

CONS

Rudimentary feature set
Not suitable for large businesses

Wrike

Wrike is an integrated, cloud-based project management platform that helps you manage projects and teams. Wrike comes with enterprise-level security & scalability. By converting your messages and email into well-organized plans, Wrike makes your business more efficient, transparent and agile.

Wrike is a collaborative, easy-to-use and inexpensive app that has features like Gantt charts, Calendars, and Custom Dashboards that allow for structuring via folders, projects and tasks and auto-assignment based on task statuses.

Pricing: Paid plans start at $9.99 per user per month.

PROS

Reasonable monthly cost
Varied integrations
Document collaboration and workload management
Online file sharing and editing

CONS

Poorly-designed user interface
Inconsistent Customer Support
Difficult to use

Jira

JIRA is a project management tool used for Project Management, Bug Tracking, Issue
Tracking and Workflow. It is widely used as an issue-tracking tool for all types of testing. Jira also supports Scrum and Kanban boards to quickly review the progress of the project and see the status of the individual tasks.

JIRA is based on the following three concepts – Project, Issue, and Workflow. It is an incident management tool that can be integrated with many other tools – Subversion, GIT, ClearCase, Team Foundation Software, Mercury, Concurrent Version System and many more.

Pricing:$10 per month for up to 10 users – $1500 per month for 2000 users

PROS

Issue Tracking / Task Management
Agile reporting
User-friendly interface.
Advanced Analytics

CONS

Hard to set up
Difficult to use
Notification system
Costly for small businesses

Quire

Quire is an online project management and technical report-writing platform. It is extremely powerful but simple to use. Quire allows users to plan out their projects extensively and manage them at a glance, saving them plenty of time and effort in order to get things done.

Unlike other complex tools, Quire allows users to integrate ERIS data (Database Reports, Historicals, and other products) by allowing users to place orders from within a Quire Report. Pricing: Free

PROS

Simple, and easy-to-use intuitive user interface.
Unlimited tasks and subtasks
Easy to use and transparent all-in-one workspace
Smart folder + Filter feature

CONS

Upload a file up to only 5 MB in size.
Limited integrations.
No Gantt chart.
No Android native app yet though it is smooth in the mobile browser with PWA.

Zoho Projects

Zoho Projects is a cloud-based project management software that is used in a wide range of businesses and is especially suited for small to medium-level companies.

In Zoho, teams can collaborate with each other using discussion forums with various project activities. Teams can organize their work and track progress by splitting up a project into tasks and milestones. Dashboards are offered to display all the recent project activities.

Pricing: Free plans. Paid plans start at #20/mon

PROS

Reasonable monthly cost
Advanced communication features
Varied integrations

CONS

Poorly-designed user interface
Inconsistent Customer Support
Poor support materials

Teamwork Projects

Teamwork Projects is one of the great Asana alternatives. It is another online project management platform that has features such as time logs to keep track of work hours per project task and team member, milestones, tasks view, the ability to quickly reassign all tasks from one person to another and more.

Teamwork allows integration with third-party apps – such as Dropbox and Google Docs for file sharing, Skype and Google Hangouts for communication

Pricing: $49-$249 per month for unlimited users.

PROS

Reasonable monthly cost
Easy to use
Varied integrations
Project management includes milestone tracking and cost-to-completion tracking
Powerful search

CONS

Buggy
Inconsistent Customer Support

Podio

Podio is an online collaboration and project management tool that provides a flexible way to manage projects with clients. It supports functions such as setting up and managing tasks, projects, and teams, either online or offline, across many different
platforms.

Podio is quick to configure for team collaboration on a variety of tasks – from simple to fully-featured Agile project management. It supports collaboration on shared tasks and goals in real-time and customizes the user experience. Some of its features are notifications, real-time data synchronization, visualization of productivity, comments, labels, and filters.

Pricing: $9-$24/user/month

PROS

Good customer support
Varied support materials
Customizable feature set

CONS

Moderate learning curve
Limited features

Bitrix24

Bitrix24 is one of the most popular online business management tools that improve the business experience for an individual, team or a whole company. It integrates communication tools, management tools and features that improve the business experience.

Having founded in 2012, Bitrix24 already has more than 5,000,000 active portals and supported by more than 500 data centers in different parts of the Earth and has 18 language localizations.

Pricing: Free plans. Paid plans start from $39 per month.

PROS

Gantt Charts and Reports
Team collaboration through email, instant messaging and group chat
Customizable feature set

CONS

Poor customer service
Expensive for small businesses
Learning curve

Basecamp

With more than 16 million accounts, Basecamp is the most popular project management software to date. Basecamp is an excellent tool that brings project members, managers, and clients together in one whole and centralized application. It also has features like tracking file downloads, messages, and feedback, and to view deadlines for both tasks and milestones.

Founded in 1999, Basecamp calls itself “everyone’s favorite project management app”. The founders of Basecamp seem to be on a constant quest to improve their design and provide the best product to their customers as possible.

Pricing: Free plans. Paid: $99 per month/unlimited users

PROS

Powerful search and useful filters
Intuitive user interface
Reasonable monthly cost
Risk and issue tracking

CONS

Limited feature set
No integrations

10 Best Project Management Tools for Small Business

For a small business, nothing is more important than making sure everyone on the team is on the right track.

For anyone who has ever managed a project, they are familiar with deadlines, limited resources, critical stakeholders and demanding clients. To deliver projects within the deadline and budget, teams need to pen down information, plan deadlines, and share documents and individual members of the team need to be in continuous communication with one another.

So the challenge is: how do we go about organizing people and resources – and preparing for unforeseen challenges?

The solution is to use project management software. But how do you choose the one that’s most relevant to your business?

In this article, we have compiled a list of 10 great project management tools for small businesses that should help you and your team work much more efficiently.

Best Project Management Tools for Small Business

TeamWave

Best for small to medium-sized businesses

TeamWave is designed to be more than just a project management tool. It is an all-in-one, integrated platform for CRM, Project Management & HRMS. The platform enables users to manage tasks and projects, track time, organize contacts, and generate reports for their business.

TeamWave is extremely easy to use and does not require extensive training or tutorials. Collaborate with your team, clients and even vendors. The platform also integrates with a wide range of applications such as Google Suite, Quickbooks, Dropbox, Slack, and MailChimp.

Pricing: Starts at $39 /Month. For UNLIMITED Users.

PROS

Affordable monthly costs
Easy to use
Well-designed UI
Customizable feature set
CRM
Numerous Integrations

CONS

Not suitable for large businesses

Asana

Best for managing day to day business

Asana is a web and mobile-based project management platform that specializes in handling the workflow of your team by allowing team members to create tasks, set deadlines and track the progress of each task.

In Asana each task can have subtasks, followers, attachments, discussions, and tags. This platform is great if you already have a business with a growing team. With depth analytics and tracking options, you can quickly see how your team is progressing and how your budget is being spent before the completion of a project.

Pricing: Starts at $9.99/user/month

PROS

Affordable monthly costs
Easy to use
Well-designed UI
Customizable feature set
CRM
Numerous Integrations

CONS

Not suitable for large businesses

LiquidPlanner

Best for rich tracking and resource management

LiquidPlanner is a project management software with a distinctive scheduling methodology that helps you see what is happening in real-time. It is a comprehensive project management tool for individuals, teams, and businesses that need to take control of their important workflows and leave nothing to chance.

LiquidPlanner offers tools for projects to remain on time and on budget with its time and expense tracking features. It also provides in-depth analytics and plans start at $45 per month depending on the number of users.

Pricing: Starts at $45 per user per month

PROS

Excellent customer service
Rich Tracking
Good Resource management
Good public reputation

CONS

Steep learning curve
Expensive
Poor mobile apps

Teamwork Projects Review

Best for managing both your customers and your team

Teamwork Projects is a cloud-based project management tool that helps you to plan and manage your company’s growth and bring clarity to the chaotic pipeline. With a simple and intuitive design, optional kanban view, integrated calendar, TeamWork is truly designed to be the everyman’s project management software.

One of the main features of Teamwork Projects is its central file management system where users can access all of their files, attachments, and comments from a central location.

Pricing: Starts at $69. Unlimited users.

PROS

Reasonable monthly cost
Easy to use
Varied integrations

CONS

Buggy
Inconsistent Customer Support

Zoho Projects

Best for communication

With rich communication features and excellent time-management tools, Zoho Projects helps you in planning projects, collaborating with employees and clients, keeping track of time, managing documents, and generating charts and reports.

In Zoho Projects, teams work on a central platform where they can keep track of progress, discuss ideas, communicate easily and stay updated. It also has smart, social-oriented features like forums, design wikis, and built-in instant messaging that help to nurture open lines of communication.

Pricing: Starts at $45 per 15 users per month

PROS

Communication Features
Time-management tools
Straightforward interface
Reasonable monthly cost

CONS

Not ideal for large teams.
Inconsistent Customer Support
Poor support materials

Basecamp 3

Best for small teams

Basecamp has always been one of the best project management tools for small businesses. It offers various features such as — message boards, to-do lists, documents, use file storage, schedules, communication in group chats, direct messages, and more.

One of the main USP of Basecamp is the client portal feature which allows you to forward clients to-do’s, messages, emails, and more in one single area. It also lets you send email links to people who are not on Basecamp.

Pricing: Free plans. Paid: $99 per month/unlimited users.

PROS

Powerful search and useful filters
Intuitive user interface
Reasonable monthly cost
Risk and issue tracking

CONS

Limited feature set
No integrations

Wrike

Best for integrating with other apps

Wrike is an online project organizer software that provides customizable dashboards in which you can adjust to your different projects and be flexible with your software development. With Wrike’s timeline feature, you can just drag and drop the task to set dependency and visualize the workflow.

Wrike created a digital space for status updates on projects, resource allocation, and group communication. It is a robust and versatile tool designed to improve the working speed of a team or a group. It also integrates with a wide range of applications such as Google Drive, SurveyMonkey, Slack, and HubSpot.

Pricing: Paid plans start at $9.99 per user per month.

PROS

Easy and quick setup
Great feature set
Varied integrations

CONS

Poorly-designed user interface
Inconsistent Customer Support
Difficult to use

Trello

Best for very small businesses

If money is an issue for you, consider Trello, a free online tool that can set up a project with Kanban cards representing different tasks and different boards for different progress of the project.

Trello offers the basic collaboration tools of a project management platform. However, the lack of key advanced features such as reporting tools or billing and time tracking features are few reasons that users are seeking Trello alternative platform.

Pricing: Paid plans start at $9.99 per user per month (when paid annually)

PROS

Easy to use
Kanban boards
No learning curve

CONS

Rudimentary feature set
Not suitable for large businesses

Proworkflow

Best for  enterprise-level work management

ProWorkflow is a web-based project management software that is intuitive, versatile and extremely easy to use. It has comprehensive project management features with time tracking and hierarchical control. It enables users to manage tasks and projects, track time, organize contacts, and generate reports for their business.

One of the key characteristics of ProWorkflow is its ability to promote better communication and boost efficiency in day-to-day operations. It also offers an excellent built-in timer which is reinforced by similarly well-conceived timer and desktop widgets.

Pricing: Paid plans start at $10 per user per month (when paid annually)

PROS

Excellent customer service
Well-designed user interface
Easy to use
Open API.

CONS

It’s not suited for companies aiming for a flat org chart.
Limited integrations

Clarizen

Best for comprehensive project management with social engagement

Clarizen is the first tool that merged project management with social engagement. It is a comprehensive work management and project management platform that centralize the tasks, communication, and scheduling that happen around project work.

Aside from creating stories, planning sprints, tracking issues, and shipping up-to-date software, teams can also generate reports, and create their own workflows. Though Clarizen is easy to start using, it’s a bit expensive and less slick than other options.

Pricing: Paid plans start at $60 per user per month (when paid annually)

PROS

Automated processes and workflows
Budget tracking and expense management
Includes chat app
Open APIs.

CONS

Not particularly fast, slick, or responsive.
Very expensive
Steep learning curve
It’s not suited for small businesses.

CRM & Project Management Integration for Quickbooks

Most small businesses use QuickBooks as their first CRM. Being able to access customer contact information from the accounting software is good enough when you are a startup.

Why businesses need Quickbooks + CRM

Just like spreadsheets, QuickBooks doesn’t actually do anything to help you make sales—it only helps you manage billing and accounting.

A growing business needs CRM software to manage relationships and bring transparency to sales funnels. This boosts chances of closing more deals.

Your business can get significant value by picking a CRM that integrates with Quickbooks online.

Think of “QuickBooks-CRM integration” as a way for every member of your team to have a birds-eye view of every client: What stage of the buying process are they at? Do you need to nurture them more? What do their past buying behaviors look like? What did you discuss during your last conversation with them?

Why businesses need Quickbooks + Project Management

Quickbooks offers time-tracking / timesheet management for payroll. However, Quickbooks does not offer project or task management. If you need to collaborate with your team, clients or partners you need to invest in a project management app.

Project management software can boost your team’s productivity and bring better accountability within the organization. Integrating project management with Quickbooks is particularly valuable for businesses that collaborate and bill clients for services.

How to pick the best CRM and project management software that integrates with Quickbooks

There are dozens of vendors/tools that claim to integrate with Quickbooks. However, not all integrations are equal. Most CRM/PM offer Quickbooks integration via third-party services like Zapier. This can be expensive and time consuming to set up.

Only a handful of CRM apps offer direct integration with Quickbooks. Even fewer project management apps offer direct integration with Quickbooks.

TeamWave is the only Quickbooks Online integration that works seamlessly for both project management and CRM.

Together: TeamWave and QBO combine to give you one complete view of your business, from capturing that first lead, delivering projects, right through to invoicing and payments.

Key benefits of TeamWave + Quickbooks integration:

Direct integration means an end to annoying downloading and uploading of files.
Automatically creates new customer records in TeamWave and QuickBooks Online and keeps them synced.
Export project timesheet to Quickbooks with one-click
Save time and keep your data clean

*QuickBooks + TeamWave brings measurable increase in business efficiency, convenience and productivity.*

New and Improved Project Management – August 2018

TeamWave’s ‘Project Management’ app has helped more than 2,500 teams to collaborate, stay organised and get things done. Our latest release has a ton of new time-saving features which will streamline your work and provide you with useful, realtime insights. We are excited to ship these features and are certain you are going to love them.

Bulk Edit: A better way of managing multiple tasks

Instead of editing tasks individually, you can now update details of multiple tasks at once with bulk edit. Bulk edit will help you re-assign tasks, Change due dates, log time and much more in few simple steps. Learn more

Project Status

Every project manager wants to know if a project is on-track, slightly delayed or critical. At TeamWave, our long-term vision is to help small businesses to track performance and take better decisions with the help of machine learning. We’ve taken baby steps in that direction with “Project Status”.

Project Insights

Get detailed insights about any project with just a flip!

Project Reports

Reports in Projects are organised to give you detailed information of each project and team member. ‘Reports’ comes with a List view for cut-down details and Graph view for easy graphical information. You can also easily filter them by different metrics and export. Learn more

All Tasks

All Tasks in Projects is re-engineered as we strive to make this page as one stop solution for all manager level users to manage and co-ordinate with everyone’s work. Click on All tasks in navigation bar of Projects to check this out.

Add New Project

‘Add New Project’ is completely re-designed with a new work flow. This new structured workflow will help you easily navigate through all sections within and allow you add more details to a new project. Learn more

New Dashboard for Project Management

Dashboards in Projects will give you quick overview of all the active projects in your TeamWave account. You can not just manage their projects but can also keep an eye on activity across all projects in your organisation. It also comes with Top performing Projects and Team members.

Notification Preferences

We have introduced granular notification preferences for Projects, CRM and HRM. Now you can control TeamWave notifications of your account and chose how to get notified. Learn more

As you try our new updates, we would love to hear your suggestions/feedback from you. Drop us a message or an email at support@teamwave.com

Android – Project Management App Released

Collaborate on your Projects. Anytime. Anywhere.

We are excited to announce the release of TeamWave’s Project Management app for Android!
TeamWave Projects in Android app enables you to complete or assign work, Log your hours anytime and anywhere. More power to you!

Manage Projects: Quickly look into your projects, tasks progress, start discussions and log time, right from your Android phone.

Get notified and Complete tasks on the go!

Now its easier to assign tasks to your team members and complete them from your app. You will also be notified of the tasks you are assigned to and new comments for the discussions you are following. That means less logging into your Web app and more productivity.

Log your hours anywhere.

It is also very easy to log your billable and non-billable hours for your tasks.

Of course, this is just the beginning. As usual, more updates on their way.
Get started by downloading your TeamWave app from Play Store.

Zapier Alternatives

integration-cloud-saas

Are you a small business that uses multiple SaaS apps to streamline processes? Zapier is definitely a useful tool to synchronise and integrate apps. The building block of Zapier starts with Zaps – conditional connection which is triggered when a certain event occurs.

In this post we’ll cover Top Ten Zapier alternatives:

IFTTT

If This Then That is a popular automation service for small tasks between Internet-connected services. The basic idea behind IFTTT is to automate everything from your favourite apps and websites to app-enabled accessories and smart devices. You could use IFTTT to automatically post on social media every time you publish a new post and switch on your smart lighting system as well. There are numerous combinations (recipes) on IFTTT that makes app connectivity easier. It currently supports more than 110 services (channels) including Android devices and Apple iOS apps like Reminders and Photos, along with websites like Facebook, Instagram, Flickr, Tumblr, Google and more.

Automate.io

Automate.io helps you create one-to-one integrations and multi-app workflows swiftly. For instance, you can create and send invoices automatically, track payment, send auto-reminders and initiate the post-purchase actions of an eCommerce transaction.The basic plan starts from $0 with 5 bots and 250 actions per month. Support for Gmail, Typeform, Facebook, Hubspot, Xero, Slack, Intercom, Trello, Twitter and more.

Integromat

From posting on Trello boards automatically to getting daily Google Analytics reports in Slack, Integromat offers ready-to-use integrations for numerous use cases. Everything from social media and project management to customer support, marketing, sales and much more can benefit from these automation. The starter plan costs $0 with 100 MB data transfer and 1,000 operations.

Workato

Recently Forrester Research named Workato a leader in Integration Platform-as-a-Service (iPaaS), and rightfully so. It uses a very simple and straightforward interface with drag and drop functionality, to help user connect applications easily with multi-step workflows. Currently it offers housands of pre-built integration flows between 75 most popular apps (Zendesk, Slack, Box, Marketo, Quickbase, Google Sheets, Docusign and more).

PieSync

This Belgium-based startup PieSync offers a platform that connects a plethora of cloud applications and provides two-way real-time contact syncing in those apps. The basic plan starts from $5 per month with 1 connection and support for 1000 contacts. Currently it integrates 50+ apps including Shopify, Google Contacts, Office 365, Campaign Monitor, Intercom, MailChimp and more.

DSYNC

It synchronises and transforms data between multiple cloud apps and legacy applications. Its IPAAS offering specializes in system integration. Data can be mapped and transformed in near real time between multiple applications enabling businesses to take advantage of real time decision making. The starter plan comes with $25.00 per month with 900 transactions and 2.5 GB data. Connections include applications like SAP ERP, Megento, WooCommerce, MailChimp, Open Office, Quickbooks, BigCommerce and much more.

OneSaas

OnceSaas connects business apps like Quickbooks, Xero, FreshBooks, BigCommerce, Shopify, eBay, Eventbrite etc. Spread of integration covers accounting, ecommerce, billing & invoicing, CRM, fulfillment, inventory management and email marketing. The basic plan starts with $29 per month for 300 transactions offering 1 accounting app, 2 ecommerce/billing & invoicing apps and 1 fulfillment app.

Microsoft Flow

Microsoft Flow focused on integrations with Microsoft’s own business tools, like Office 365, Dynamics CRM, PowerApps, and Yammer, as well as those that are used in organizations, like MailChip, GitHub, Salesforce, Slack, and others. It can used in common scenarios like getting a text message whenever your team lead emails you, saving the results of a Twitter search to an Excel file, copying files from OneDrive to SharePoint and more. While the Android app is still work in progress, the iOS app has already been rolled out.

Built.io

It offers Infrastructure Platform as a Service (iPaaS) to integrate apps and automate multi-step workflows. Within this solution there are two offerings – flow express for business users and flow enterprise for technical teams. The subscription starts with $29 per month and integrates services like Salesforce and Marketo.

Skyvia

Skyvia offers wizard-based data integration and synchronisation services spanning across apps like Amazon RDS, Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, MySQL, Salesforce, FreshBooks, QuickBooks, Shopify, Magento and more. The starter plan comes free of cost with support for 5k records, 100k CSV import/export and once per day scheduling.

An alternative for automation tools like Zapier:
If you don’t like using third-party automation/integration tools, you should consider using a fully-integrated business software suite like TeamWave

TeamWave – CRM, Project Management and HR software with Native Integration

TeamWave is a unified platform for sales, project management and HR with seamless native integration. Here are some of the benefits:

Sales and Projects: Important files can be copied from deals to projects (example: requirement document) with a few clicks. Comes in handy when you commence project delivery after winning a deal.

Projects and HR: Project admin can keep track of the performance of the employees along with appreciation received from clients and log them as private notes in the HR app. During appraisal these notes can be reviewed for better decision making.

Sales and HR: In the HR app, if you add someone as the reporting manager of a sales rep, then the reporting manager will be automatically added as a deal follower whenever the sales rep adds a new deal. This fosters collaboration and helps in progress tracking.

Managing Web Design Projects – Process, Software and More

Managing multiple client projects can be difficult for even the most experienced project manager. When a design project starts, the manager doesn’t only concentrate on the aesthetic, there are various other factors that affect the success of the projects—project planning, resource allocation, scheduling, balancing budgets, etc. While many aspects of project management may seem complex, understanding of the fundamentals can make large difference to project’s profitability. Because of this, it’s vital you head into your client work armed with the knowledge and tools to keep things on track.

To help identify project management tips that can keep your team on track, check out this guide and establish a solid foundation for managing your next client project.

Documenting

It is critical to document business objectives and requirements in a detailed scoping document. In-experienced project managers might omit this step, which can lead to costly project budgeting and schedule overruns. Do adequate documentation and planning up front to mitigate execution risks.

It’s crucial to involve everyone from designers, copywriters and creative directors to internal or external clients, so you don’t leave out parts of the process that you simply don’t know about. Include every single step and avoid the temptation to document the process you wish you had.

However, note that “highly comprehensive” does not always mean better. Keeping every task, irrespective of whether they are large or small, in a project plan results in micromanagement issues. Instead, build a plan to manage the tasks at a higher level and provide the resources detailed task checklists that they can self-manage and give you the rolled-up status for your schedule.

A project management tool such as TeamWave can be used to store the document via file manager to ensure that the all the team members are on the same page and it is easily accessible for quick reference.

Starting off correctly

With a sufficiently detailed document, it should be easy to transition into kicking off the project with your team. According to the finalized project plan, carry out the following activities.

Breakdown of tasks. Include all the steps to get from starting point to finishing point. For example, your website design project can have several high level task groups like information architecture, wireframe, graphics, conversion to HTML/CSS, etc.

Each of these steps should have an established process. For example, IA can involve different steps like business intent, user intent, content organisation, relationship and navigation. In these cases easy to use PM tools like TeamWave would allow you to create the task groups and individual tasks.
Team roles. Now that you have broken down the tasks into smaller tasks, determine who on your team will do what. Include internal QA tasks that precede sending deliverables to the client for approval. Also be sure to include client tasks, such as reviewing and approving initial mock ups.
Due Dates. Your project plan should include deadlines for you and the client, broken down for each deliverable.
Dependencies. Make sure your team knows what pieces depend on other pieces to be finished before they can be implemented, so all of the different parts can come together smoothly.

Communicating updates and conducting demos

Always start with internal communication, i.e., conduct short internal meetings for updates and finalize next steps to keep the complex project moving.

Next step is communication with your client as it is critical throughout each project cycle. Inform the client and stakeholders about the expectations from them in order to keep the project moving along to meet the deadline. Then, during the course of the project, send reminders to the client of upcoming milestones. Whenever there is any delay or bottleneck, communicate the details to the client immediately.

It’s also a good idea to give clients/stakeholders product demos as you progress. Demos allow decision makers to see for themselves if the project seems on track, ahead of schedule or behind schedule.

These type of meetings can be swiftly scheduled and the members can be notified via TeamWave’s event scheduling feature — from one-off meetings to daily stand up meetings.

Collaboration and feedback

Your project management application should have the functionality to invite the clients into the project easily so that certain deliverables can be shared with clients for feedback. There must be provision to keep specific tasks private in the project that would be only visible to the internal team.

Your team members should also be able to comment on the tasks to provide inputs and brainstorm by creating messages with respect to the project.

Billing

If you’re billing the client by milestones then be sure to add the milestones on the project calendar so that your invoices get regularly cleared. On the other hand, if you are charging clients on the basis of the number of hours, then make sure that the team members are regularly logging the billable hours.

TeamWave’s time log feature lets you track time and reporting functionality allows you to quickly download the time spent on various tasks (which can be imported to invoicing app). Also, the milestone scheduler reminds you when the timeline approaches the pre-specified date.

Contingency plan

When managing deadlines and projects, consider potential resource and technology challenges that might emerge. Ensure that there is time allocated for undiscovered work and develop a contingency plan for it. Lots of projects assume an ideal path, but do not plan for unanticipated and undiscovered work, which is bound to happen.

Similarly, it’s important to keep an eye out for potential conflicts that could interfere with your project, such as other projects requiring your resources. Learn how team members can handle at once, because giving someone more than they can handle will jeopardise deadlines.

Going beyond the norm

While generic project management apps allow you take care of the above-mentioned factors in some way, the need of the hour is to approach project management in a holistic manner. Essentially, project management should be considered as an integral part of other business functions like CRM and HRMS. For example, while starting a project you would ideally want to transfer some of the crucial files (including requirement documents) that were associated with the deal while your sales team was pursuing the client. Apart from that if there are opportunities for up-selling or cross-selling, then it is best to keep the deal in CRM app linked with the project. This will keep your sales team and delivery team on the same page minimizing any possibility of missed opportunities for revenue generation. Moving to the people management aspect, there is a close connection with HRMS — you would want to track the feedback given by the client for a team member along with adherence to the timeline while completing different tasks. This can be highly useful during the performance appraisal period.

This is where TeamWave comes into the play; you not only get all the benefits of a project management app via an intuitive UI and power-packed features, but also get to use CRM and HRMS app via native integration (owing to the unified nature of the platform). In terms of pricing, the whole platform including the three apps costs $3 per user per month in case of annual subscription which is a fraction of other stand alone project management apps.

Takeaway

Sometimes managing a web design project can be too overwhelming. But, you can keep everything streamlined by following a process and selecting the correct project management app. Start with clear expectations, do the preparation, keep communicating, and stay focused, and your projects will get completed one milestone at a time.

Basecamp vs Asana

Project management software is a must for any process-driven company and two of the most popular tools in this space are Asana and Basecamp: they help your team get organized with task groups, progress tracking, and facilitate collaboration. While both Asana & Basecamp offer an exceptional user-experience, they have not been built with an holistic approach to help small businesses.

TeamWave is a complete platform to manage & streamline everything (including projects) in your company: Project Management, CRM & HR. Moreover, TeamWave is at par with other popular tools in terms of usability and features.

Here is a detailed comparison of Asana, Basecamp & TeamWave:

1. Features

All the apps provide similar features – task management, reporting, document management and messaging. However, there is big difference in implementation and especially user interface of Asana when compared with TeamWave and Basecamp.

Client/Vandor Collaboration

Working with third party users is one of the crucial aspects of project management. In case of Basecamp and Asana, you can add client users by inviting client to your projects (requires multiple steps) which means you are required to mange the users as well. For example, in case your client’s employee leaves their organization, you’d have to delete the user.

TeamWave has a specialised workflow for vendor/client collaboration. Just invite just one person from your client’s team and they will be able to independently add/manage their entire team, from an independant TeamWave account with all the features. There is no need for you to manage their employees!

Time Tracking

TeamWave offers time logging as an out-of-the-box feature. You can log time spent on each task and compare that with the estimated time. Download the time log report with a few clicks (individual projects/all the projects) and upload it to any invoicing app.

But, in case of Asana and Basecamp you need to depend on third-party integrations with apps such as Everhour and Hubstaff to achieve the same functionality.

Reporting

Both Basecamp and Asana are limited in terms of reporting. Asana gives you one type of project progress chart and Basecamp also follows the suite requiring multiple steps for visualizing and generating reports. For example, if you want to see the work load of a team member you’ll have to click on ‘Reports’, search the team member and click on ‘Run a new report’.

Note that both of them don’t have holistic view of all the team members, projects and time logs.

TeamWave’s project reporting gives you quick insights by allowing you to access pre-built reports and create custom reports as well. Here are some of the most important questions you can answer instantly:

– Which project is in a critical state with respect to overdue and total tasks?

– Which project is contributing the most to the total number of overdue tasks across all the projects?

– Which project has been continuously contributing more to the billable time log?

– Which user has maximum work load? Who has the most number of overdue tasks?

– Whether the time logged by team members has been consistently increasing or decreasing?

You can also create custom reports related to time log by selecting billable/non-billable entry, organisations, users and projects.

Third-party integration

Both Asana and Basecamp offer sizeable number of integrations ranging from reporting and time tracking to file sharing and communication. However, the primary reason behind these integrations is the lack of comprehensive functionalities that an all-in-one app for small business should provide out-of-the-box.

With TeamWave, although you have the native and tight integration of other essential apps like HR and CRM with Project Management, there are other popular third-party integrations such as Slack, Google Drive, Zapier, MailChimp. Here are some of the benefits of the application suite:

Sales and Projects: Important files can be copied from deals to projects (example: requirement document) with a few clicks. Comes in handy when you commence project delivery after winning a deal.
Project and HR: Project admin can keep track of the performance of the employees along with appreciation received from clients and log them as private notes in the HR app. During appraisal these notes can be reviewed for better decision making.

Also, the well-documented API allows you to build seamless integration with your business process.

Usability

While Basecamp has been generally known for its simplicity, Asana users traditionally experience steep learning curve. In fact, sometimes with the growth of the company users find Basecamp over simplified for a project management app. With TeamWave, the balance between usability and comprehensiveness of workflow/feature has been carefully crafted. It essentially provides the ease of use of Basecamp while delivering the power-packed features of Asana — the best of both worlds.

teamwave-projects — TeamWave’s Project Management App

2. Pricing

Basecamp comes with one package ($99 per month) and a free trial for 30 days. Asana’s ’Premium’ package starts at $9.99 per user per month and offers unlimited dashboards, advanced search, custom fields, private team and project. They also have ‘Enterprise’ package which provides advanced admin controls, customized UI to match your branding and same day customer support.

TeamWave has straightforward pricing – $3 per user per month (paid annually). Moreover all the plans get all the features and apps – absolutely no restriction. Coming to the crux of the topic, let’s see how pricing differs for a company of 20 people across the three apps.

3. Customer Support

Both Asana and Basecamp provide support via email and ticketing system. In case of Asana, same day response is only available with enterprise tier. But, at TeamWave, we’re just a chat window away—everyone gets priority support. Send us a message whenever you’re in need of some clarification or facing difficulty. You can also log support ticket, browse our knowledge base and watch video tutorials.

Over to you

To sum up, TeamWave offers a unified platform of three essential apps (Projects, CRM and HR) required to run a small business with right balance of ease of use and robustness of features at much less price. Evaluate the options to the fullest potential before finalizing the app that will drive productivity and bottom line of your business.

Zoho Alternative

Zoho is a collaboration and business productivity app provider with tools like project management, CRM, Accounting, etc. While it offers all the bells and whistles based on a complex pricing structure, it misses it’s mark when it comes to on small business and usability. TeamWave provides an out-of-the-box and simple solution to help small businesses manage and streamline everything in their company (Project Management, CRM & HR) while maintaining a strong focus on usability.

Why TeamWave is the leading Zoho Alternative.

1. Ease of Use

Small businesses need simple software that can provide most of the functionality out-of-the-box. The software should have a minimal learning curve, setup time and save resources (time and money). Here are some examples:

CRM Customization

CRM customization is important for businesses – it helps a company align the CRM system with own processes and extend the functionality. With Zoho you’ll get a lot of customization options, but they are also cumbersome and time consuming. For example, adding or modifying the the default sales pipeline can be quite tedious in Zoho. Here are the steps to add an additional sales stage.

Click on ‘Settings’, then ‘Setup’ and ‘Modules’ present under ‘Customization’ heading
Click on ‘Create New Layout’ once you move to ‘Modules’ section
Customizations in Zoho
Select deals and click on stage-probability map
Next, you need to enter the name, probability and two forecast types
Click on save

This can overwhelming for any new user, especially in every step you need to select one option out of several other options. And let’s not get into handling of multiple sales pipeline which is a whole new ball game.

With TeamWave you can edit the sales stages with two clicks: click on settings and click on the stage which you wish to edit. Add additional pipelines from the same page.

Third Party Collaboration in Projects

Collaboration with third party users is one of the crucial aspects of project management. In case of Zoho, you can add client users by inviting client to your projects (requires multiple steps) which means you are required to mange the users as well. For example, in case a client user leaves their organization, you’d have to delete the user.

TeamWave has a specialised workflow to collaborate with clients or vendors. Just invite just one person from your client’s team (requires few steps) and they will be able to independently add/manage their entire team, as they will be given their own TeamWave account with all the features. There is no need for you to manage their employees!

2. Pricing

Zoho can be expensive for small businesses. The CRM app starts from $12/user/month and goes up to $100/user/month. You will end up paying more if you go for certain additional features in Project Management app (example: Timesheet). The plans restrict the type of feature you can use!

TeamWave has a straightforward pricing – $2/user/month for annual subscription. All the plans get all the features and apps – absolutely no restriction.

Here is the cost comparison for a company with 15 employees:

3. Truly Native Integration of Apps

TeamWave is a unified platform for collaboration, sales and HR management. This means you’d get an application suite that integrates three apps. Some of the benefits:

Sales and Projects: Important files can be copied from deals to projects (example: requirement document) with a few clicks. Comes in handy when you commence project delivery after winning a deal.

Although Zoho lets you link CRM deals with projects, there is no option of transferring important files from deal to projects.

Bottom Line

Primarily small businesses just need business apps to track the progress of deals in a sales pipeline, manage tasks in a project, schedule activities and collaborate with the stakeholders. TeamWave offers all these basic tools for a fraction of the price one would pay to zoho! As TeamWave is focused on providing solutions for mission critical business functions targeted only for small businesses, it has been built with a minimal feature set that anyone can use, leaving out everything else. No clutter, no complexity and no extra features to confuse or overwhelm you. We do a few things, but we do them very well. If you need advanced features like sales automation, complex third party integration (via API), TeamWave offers that as well!

The intuitive user experience, holistic focus coupled with straightforward pricing ensures that the fundamentals of any business, i.e., business acquisition, business delivery and people management run like a well-oiled machine.

Integrated CRM and Project Management Software – Benefits of a Unified System

Every “services” business that is required to manage client projects, must have a holistic view of customer lifecycle. Important aspects include: tracking leads, managing sales activities, creating new projects and managing existing deliverables associated with clients.

Traditionally, organisations have taken a siloed approach to business management. Applications are developed to handle only one function of the business. These applications are not “designed” to connect the dots between closely associated business functions because they start with a fundamentally flawed premise. So, many interlinked departments such as Project Management, HR and CRM need manual data entry to close the gap.

Benefits of Project Management and CRM apps

Project management is quite straightforward — the app is supposed to streamline the process of delivering tasks from start to finish, leading to completion of project. Project management software helps companies keep track of resources, manage personnel, arrange meetings, and keep up with deadlines (among other things). CRM apps help companies build and maintain relationships with potential and existing customers. A mature CRM app combines customer relations, marketing, and sales functions. The ultimate goal is to increase the revenue from the clients via various modes of account expansion.

Features of Project Management and CRM apps

Very few vendors provide an integrated CRM and project management software. Primarily because these two types of apps have different goals.

Let’s look at some unique features CRM software offers:

Managing sales pipeline
Tracking Q&A
Tracking interactions
Follow-up tracking support
Tracking customer referrals
Tools to offer quotes or proposals
Managing client engagement

Here are the things project management software offer:

Tracking goals and meeting deadlines
Tools for more effective collaboration and communication between team members
Support
Managing project portfolio
Managing finances and budget
Tools to plan the project
Gantt charts
Generating reports

There is no overlap between CRM and PM software. The key difference between CRM and project management software is the timeline. CRM is a perpetually ongoing process to any business. Project management, on the other hand, happens with specific timeline (with some exceptions). At first, it might make sense to keep the two separate. But, there is actually a lot of value in combining both apps:

Why Opt for an Integrated CRM and Project Management System

In a typical business setting project managers, marketers and customer support teams have to continuously exchange information between departments. If this exchange of information would rely on the individual apps built for specfic function, this can become inefficient and error-prone.

Integrating CRM and project management systems thus eliminates silos and gives visibility to these departments that exchange information. Let’s consider a scenario, a marketing agency company is building websites for its clients. The data for this project, such as budget, progress, deadlines, are kept in a project management database. The other needed data about customer orders, sales, contact info and such are kept in a different CRM system. And different people will have access to these systems. The sales reps will have access to the CRM system, while only the project managers and relevant team members might have access to the project management system. So, if the sales team wants to plan for cross-selling a solution (example: SEO service) to the clients who are at the end of development project, they will have to be constantly in touch with the Project team to track the progress of various projects and create sales activities accordingly. But, wouldn’t it be great if all the departments would have access to key information at a central location! Smoothly moving from a won deal to delivery of the project in the same app without re-entering any data and avoiding data loss.

Key advantages of integrating CRM and Project Management apps

Increase collaboration between separate teams
Unify task completion based on client initiatives
Better manage the workforce by having access to deadlines and reminders
Gather customer related data for better customer service
Connect customer feedback to project managers
Cost effectiveness by eliminating additional fees associated with managing separate systems
Manage customer lifestyle in a single system
Higher ROI

Ultimately, a business can focus on business growth by retaining data in one place.

Why use Asana alternatives

Top 10 Asana Alternatives

Trello

Wrike

Jira

Quire

Zoho Projects

Teamwork Projects

Podio

Bitrix24

Basecamp

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Best Project Management Tools for Small Business

Asana

LiquidPlanner

Teamwork Projects Review

Zoho Projects

Basecamp 3

Wrike

Trello

Proworkflow

Clarizen

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Bulk Edit: A better way of managing multiple tasks

Project Status

Project Insights

Project Reports

All Tasks

Add New Project

New Dashboard for Project Management

Notification Preferences

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Collaborate on your Projects. Anytime. Anywhere.

Manage Projects: Quickly look into your projects, tasks progress, start discussions and log time, right from your Android phone.

Get notified and Complete tasks on the go!

Log your hours anywhere.

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In this post we’ll cover Top Ten Zapier alternatives:

TeamWave – CRM, Project Management and HR software with Native Integration

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Documenting

Starting off correctly

Communicating updates and conducting demos

Collaboration and feedback

Billing

Contingency plan

Going beyond the norm

Takeaway

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1. Features

2. Pricing

3. Customer Support

Over to you

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Why TeamWave is the leading Zoho Alternative.

1. Ease of Use

2. Pricing

3. Truly Native Integration of Apps

Bottom Line

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Benefits of Project Management and CRM apps

Features of Project Management and CRM apps

Why Opt for an Integrated CRM and Project Management System

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