Struggling to keep your head above water? Manage your deadlines, deliverables, and resources more effectively by utilizing the best project management software for your needs.
Here is the list of more than 35 tools divided into a few categories: best, free, online, Microsoft Project alternatives for Mac, as well as open-source equivalents. Microsoft Project is a powerful PM tool with dozens of useful features. Like ProjectLibre, Gantt Project is another Java based desktop free projects management app for Mac which can also import and export Microsoft Project files. As the name suggests, Gantt Project uses Gantt charts to display project details and there are more ways to customize the Gantt views than in LibreOffice. The Best Project Management Software for Mac. Googling Mac-specific project management software largely leads to lots of cloud-based options. While programs like Wrike, LiquidPlanner, and Teamwork are fantastic tools for Mac, many companies are looking for a locally installed option. With that in mind, I dove into the top five project.
Choose the Project Management Tool Wisely. Different organizations have different needs for project management. There are lots of free Asana alternatives out there, so check the list and choose the one that fits your needs. Besides, knowing how to choose the best project management app will help you in the long run.
Over the years, project management has morphed into an umbrella term, comprising of a wide array of solutions from comprehensive portfolio management tools to personal work management solutions. Some of it comes with a steep price, but others won’t cost you a dime.
If you’re willing to sacrifice a few premium features, the best free project management software might make a good fit for your needs. Below, you’ll find our top six favorites for Mac computers.
Best Project Management Software for Mac
A quick search on Google will lead to an overwhelming amount of options and information on the best project management tools today. So you don’t have to test every single one of them, we’ve made a list of our top six favorites, specifically for Mac devices.
1. Monday
Easily one of the best project management software for Mac, Monday.com is celebrated for its simple, user-friendly interface. From there, you can keep tabs on all your activities, your employees, and your deadlines.
You can also assign tasks to team members and track their progress from a single dashboard. With a highly-intuitive design, you can plan ahead and identify potential bottlenecks.
Monday.com is ideal for large teams as it has the capability to make task tracking a much simpler endeavor.
It also includes helpful integrations to link Slack, Zapier, Jira, Mailchimp, Shopify, Bitbucket, Google Calendar, and other your favorite tools. With this software, cross-functional teams can keep track of each other’s works consequently empowering them to achieve their goals and have fun while getting things done.
✅ PROS:
- Simple, user-friendly, and highly-customizable dashboards
- Integrates with your favorite tools
- Automates workflow
⛔️ CONS:
- Doesn’t have a free version
2. Wrike
Wrike might be a cloud-hosted free project management software, but it’s available on Mac platforms as well. This award-winning tool is used by thousands of businesses, from startups to big corporations. It gives teams the flexibility to juggle multiple projects and activities simultaneously, empowering them to collaborate effectively towards the same goal.
Perhaps the best perk of using Wrike on your Mac is that the desktop app gets updated regularly. Every now and then, you can enjoy new features and functionality that will help you take your business to the next level.
Since Wrike is designed for professionals, it might take beginners a little time and effort to get used to the software.
✅ PROS:
- Robust collaboration tools
- Enterprise-class security
- Automates workflow
⛔️ CONS:
- Steep learning curve
UPDATE: Wrike was acquired by Citrix on January 19, 2021
3. Zoho Projects
A powerful free project management software, Zoho Projects has mobile and desktop versions. It is ideal for small business teams. As it comes with essential collaboration tools, team members can communicate effectively and get more things done on time. Not only that, its collaboration tools can extend to clients, vendors, and consultants.
Of course, Zoho Projects also has the right project management features that allow its users to plan, monitor, and assess their outcomes without hassle.
Perhaps the best thing about Zoho Projects is integration. Other than the Zoho apps, it integrates with Google Apps, Gmail, MS Office, QuickBooks, MailChimp, and a few social media platforms.
✅ PROS:
- Supports seamless team collaboration
- Delivers in-depth insights
- Integrates with Zoho and third-party apps
⛔️ CONS:
- Free version has limited features
4. Jira
If you are looking for more serious project management software for Mac, Jira may be your best bet. It is the #1 tool used by agile teams using Scrum, Kanban, & hybrid models for workflow and project management.
Using Jira, you can create multiple projects and check in on them via the roadmap to see where every task and user stands. The ticketing component makes it easy to ping a colleague regarding an open task. You can even attach large files (zipped, images, documents, and videos). Jira makes it easy to track every tiny aspect of a project in seamless detail.
✅ PROS:
- Reasonably priced
- Gantt, Kanban, and portfolio views
- Milestone tracking
- Powerful features
- Helpful messaging and collaboration tools built-in
⛔️ CONS:
- Confusing interface and hard to learn
- The cloud-based version is slow
- No timestamp on changes (hard to track)
- No in-person training available
5. Asana
In keeping with our theme of the best project management software for Mac, Asana stands out as an impressive project management tool. Although the interface may at first be confusing for some, it quickly starts to make sense. The Kanban view makes it easy to organize and move through a complex workflow with your team.
Asana’s pricing is tiered with added features as you go up a level. You can use Asana online or via the PC, Mac, and iOS apps. If you want full-fledged, fun collaboration for your teams, you can’t go wrong with Asana.
✅ PROS:
- Flexible and feature-rich for the higher tiers
- Timeline and Kanban views
- Administrative controls
- Create private teams and projects
- Priority support
- Integrates with other services and apps
- Automation
⛔️ CONS:
- No time-tracking
- A bit pricey, especially at the enterprise-level
6. Basecamp
Another contender in our lineup of the best project management software for Mac is Basecamp. This one allows you to upload files, share assets, discuss project details, and schedule and assign tasks.
This workhorse has been around since 2004, and although it has been updated, it still feels antiquated and does not include the rich, powerful features of some of the other project management options we have discussed. Essentially Basecamp is more of a collaboration tool than project management software.
✅ PROS:
- Flexible software for collaborating with teams
- Easy setup and online tutorials
- Automated scheduling notifications via email
- Group chat and messaging boards
- Calendar view
⛔️ CONS:
- Confusing interface that appears unfinished
- No Gantt charts or resource management tools
- Very pricey, especially for small teams
- Navigation is inflexible
Why do I need to Use Project Management Software for Managing my Team?
Large companies are constantly working on numerous projects. There’re big teams of people and few leaders responsible for making each project a successful endeavor. As more people become involved in project management not using a software program can be quite challenging to accomplish a project – there are many things that have to be performed in a well-organized manner.
Listed below are some reasons why you should start relying on project management tools if you want to attain your project’s deadlines.
Easy Planning
The project planning process takes a lot of time as you have to map-out all the important steps. A project management software provides you the ability to easily establish a hierarchy of tasks for effective and efficient completion. It also lets you indicate which steps are sequential and which tasks are dependent on one another. In turn, this makes it easier for the team to do their work. This is a time-saver because when the team leader knows which steps are the most important, he/she then knows which tasks to assign to whom.
Efficient Task Management
Every project out there consists of numerous tasks that you, or your team, must complete. Writing notes about what your team members are doing is sometimes impossible, especially when it comes to ongoing projects that take a lot of time to complete. This is where project management software is very useful: assign all of the important tasks to employees and monitor how they are performing. Project management becomes much easier as you have access to this data and can follow who has which tasks. Through better task management, teams work in unity. Hence, achieving incredible results and benefiting the company.
Seamless Team Workflow
Getting the whole team to work as one is often very hard to achieve, but project management software can make it much easier. Using this software solution gives a team leader a chance to always be able to see the tasks that his team is working on and which team members are involved in the task.
Furthermore, there are tasks which require more people. This is where a team leader can include several different people to collectively work on bigger tasks – while other members do smaller tasks simultaneously. Creating a seamless team workflow is something very important to attain as it contributes to a company’s sustainable future, as well as creating cohesion within a team.
Shared Documents, Calendars and Contacts
Consider that project management tools are useful as they support the storage and organization of a variety of documents. This is extremely important as a majority of projects have a high number of documents. By creating a centralized document storage plan, every team member can easily, and more quickly, edit and contribute. This feature is very important in cases where the work is outsourced to a person or a team. It is much easier to perform all the necessary tasks without sending thousands of emails with attached documents where, sooner or later, things become convoluted.
As well, having access to calendars of other team members is convenient because sooner or later, a meeting between team members has to be organized. So, having access to people’s calendar makes coordinating much easier. Make sure to share a document containing every team members’ contact information. This ensures remote team members can communicate with one another.
Precise Project Tracking
Tracking the time spent on every task is of great value. It allows you to collect data about team members, to know their work pace. This will make planning future projects much easier. The team leader can then make much more precise time estimations. For example, a team leader can give different types of tasks to team members throughout a project to determine their strengths. This creates better performance and faster results.
These are some of the most important reasons why you want to rely on project management tools in your company. Utilizing the latest technologies currently available maximizes the performance of project teams.
Every business needs to be armed with scalable tools that will help them overcome their growing pains. However, it doesn’t have to cost you a fortune to acquire the tools you need.
Equipped with the best project management software, you can keep all your files organized and centralized in a single platform. More importantly, you motivate your team to work together toward the same goal.
The whole workflow becomes improved, as people are capable of collaborating on a variety of tasks. This leads to a significant improvement in productivity, which leads to higher profits in the business world. High quality in a short time-frame, that’s what businesses want to achieve. Rely on project management software to get this done.
Related Articles:
Not only is it a popular collaboration tool, but it is also available as a downloadable mac app. Naturally, it is a favored Project Management software for Mac. Not only is it available on Android which touches a larger base of customers, but it can be easily accessed over multiple browsers. Although the most popular project management software, Microsoft Project, is currently Windows-dependent, there are other project management tools available that'll work with your Mac. In this article you'll learn what to look for in Mac project management software.
The key to perfect task management is astute planning and timely execution. Many a time, we fail to get the desired result due to either lack of structured formation or wrongly implementation of the planning. If you wish to handle your to-dos immaculately and derive the required result painlessly, you need to have the best task management apps for Mac.
#1. Microsoft OneNote
As far as functionality is concerned, I put “Microsoft OneNote” right on top with the best in the business. Creating and managing tasks, to-dos, and notes is a breeze with this feature-rich app.
You can also add pictures, your PowerPoint doc or PDF, links, and web articles to your notes. Ideally, organize your notes to meet your workflow.
Tag your tasks to access them with ease and track all the things that matter a lot to you. It lets you sync your files with OneDrive, OneDrive for Business, and SharePoint.
Price: Free
Download
#2. nTask
nTask has done all the research on how to build a killer task management app. And for this reason, a single app brings all the cool features of different tools in one app. The developers have paid enough attention to its aesthetics to create an appealing task management software.
A flexible app on your Mac, you can quickly make checklists, collaborate with teams, arrange meetings, share files, and presents up-to-date Gantt Charts.
As a team leader, you can easily assign tasks and track those tasks from your desk. Integration with Slack is a notable feature of nTask. Another noteworthy feature is cloud integration.
Price: $3.99 per user, per month
Download
#3. Things 3
“Things 3” has always appealed me as a top-notch task manager. With this app, you can create a project for each of your goals and add the required steps to accomplish them.
You will be able to group your projects by areas of responsibility like “Family”, “Work”, or “Health”. Keep track of all of your goals so that you stay at the pace. View your calendar events alongside your to-dos and plan your time appropriately.
The app lets you create repeating to-dos for things you do more often. As it works with all the major features like Touch Bar, Today Widget, Calendars, Siri & Reminders, Share Extension, Handoff, and AppleScript, you will always be in complete control of your tasks.
And yes, the support for several languages like English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, and Traditional Chinese further enhances the reputation of Things 3.
Price: $49.99
Download
#4. Clear
Clear is dead simple and makes task management a painless experience! You can make separate lists to keep everything fully organized. Use various themes and tools to customize your lists.
To ensure you don’t fail to carry out any necessary thing in time, set reminders. Even better, you can take the full advantage of iCloud integration to sync your data across macOS and iOS devices.
Price: $9.99
Download Clear
#5. OmniFocus 3
“OmniFocus 3” provides you the desired flexibility to deal with all of your impending tasks. Hence, you can do more with less stress!
The app lets you keep all of your to-dos in one list, or you can use as multiple folders, projects, groups, and actions put everything in the right order.
You can select a fluid view that shows and hides fields or go for Custom Columns for scannable, tabular lists. Use the forecast perspective to check out your due items for each day alongside events from your calendar.
What’s more, OmniFocus 3 is compatible with multiple international languages including English, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, etc.
Price: $39.99
Download
#6. Todoist
What I have found really appreciable in Todoist is the neat user-interface, which is primed for hassle-free task management. With this app, you can perfectly manage your tasks, sub-tasks, projects, and sub-projects.
Based on your need, you will be able to prioritize your tasks for the day or week ahead. You can keep an eye the deadlines with due dates and recurring dates.
Another notable feature of this app is the compatibility with multiple platforms including iOS, macOS, Android and more. Furthermore, Todoist is integrated with several major services like Google Drive, Cloud Magic, Sunrise Calendar, Toggl, IFTTT, and Zapier.
Price: Free
Download
#7. Evernote
“Evernote” helps you stay organized by keeping all of your to-dos, notes or tasks in the perfect order. You can take notes, create to-do lists, and also save things you find online to catch up with them at your own pace.
You will be able to take notes in a wide range of formats like text, sketches, photos, audio, video, PDFs, web clippings, etc. Create personal checklists to never forget any necessary things.
Take the advantage of various tools to create agendas, write memos and prepare sensational presentations. You can also annotate documents with comments and thoughts during team meetings. Sync all of your data across your devices to keep them secure and easily accessible.
Price: Free
Download
#8. Simplenote
The thing that has made me want “Simplenote” is the range of easy-to-use features. If you don’t want to go for an expensive task manager but still wish to use a highly-user friendly app to assist you in getting your work done with the needed efficiency, you should keep it in consideration.
The app lets you effortlessly create notes, tasks, and to-dos. You can put all of your tasks in the perfect order and be able to track them. Furthermore, Simplenote lets you synchronize with the cloud to access them from any of your devices.
Price: Free
Download
#9. Any.do
“Any.do” provides a more streamlined user experience. Creating and managing task is quite upfront. The app comes with a clean UI that allows you to comfortably view and track your notes and tasks.
You can print, export and share your lists with friends. Sync your files with cloud services to keep them safe.
The Best Project Management App For Mac Live Performance
Though Any.do to-do is available for free, you can upgrade to the premium version to have unlimited access to all the important features like themes, files, and collaboration for $2.99 a month or $26.99 a year through.
Price: Free
Download
#10. GoodTask 3
GoodTask 3 is a fully featured task or project manager for Mac. The app syncs with the default Reminders and Calendars to let you manage them with ease.
Best Free Project Management App For Mac Free
The Best Project Management App For Mac Os
You can quickly edit your tasks thanks to the bulk editing and deleting features. You will be able to duplicate, change due dates, and add tags to easily access any tasks.
The dark theme lets you comfortably use the app at night. And with Today widget support, you can keep track of your tasks more conveniently.
Price: $19.99
Download
That’s all for now!
Your favorite task manager?
With the availability of so many impressive options, choosing one is not an easy task. However, you can go with a particular one keeping in mind your requirement. Have any of these task managers won you over? Let us know about them in the comments.
You might want to refer these posts as well:
Best Mac Project Management Software
The founder of iGeeksBlog, Dhvanesh, is an Apple aficionado, who cannot stand even a slight innuendo about Apple products. He dons the cap of editor-in-chief to make sure that articles match the quality standard before they are published.
Free Project Management Training
- https://www.igeeksblog.com/author/dhvanesh/
- https://www.igeeksblog.com/author/dhvanesh/