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monday.com is an award-winning work and project management platform that helps teams of all sizes plan, prioritize, manage, and execute their work more effectively. The platform offers solutions for a wide range of use-cases such as marketing, sales, oper...Read more about monday.com
recommendations
Smartsheet is a work execution platform and collaboration tool with a familiar spreadsheet-like interface that helps teams plan, track, and manage projects in real-time. Smartsheet features include a range of project management tools, such as document and ...Read more about Smartsheet
recommendations
Wrike is a cloud-based project management platform for teams of 20+ that is suitable for both large enterprises and SMBs. It supports remote work for various teams. This solution comes with Gantt charts, calendars, workload view for resource management, cu...Read more about Wrike
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Adobe Workfront is a collaborative work management and marketing work management solution that addresses the challenges of disconnected teams, siloed tools, and the relentless pace of enterprise work. Workfront includes capabilities to capture and plan, as...Read more about Adobe Workfront
recommendations
Project Insight (PI) is award-winning work & project management software that helps companies manage and visualize projects, allocate personnel, streamline accounting, and track what work is being done throughout their entire organization. PI offers a com...Read more about Project Insight
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BigTime helps professional services firms reduce operational costs, easily align talent to the right projects, and accelerate time to get paid for completed work, all while enabling quicker decision-making by getting you the information you need. By stre...Read more about BigTime
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Sciforma Vantage is a cloud-based project and portfolio management solution for enterprises that allows to strategically track and analyze project data and make relevant decisions. It can be sold as a stand-alone portfolio management, project management, o...Read more about Sciforma
recommendations
Scoro is designed for agencies, consultancies, and other professional service businesses to help them optimize operations, manage resources, and run projects. It streamlines the entire project lifecycle in a single system, including estimating, budgeting, ...Read more about Scoro
recommendations
After decades of digital project tools, Moovila’s Perfect Project finally delivers the true automation you've been waiting for. By automating tedious tasks, optimizing resource allocation, and monitoring risk 24/7, Perfect Project lets you focus on deliver...Read more about Moovila
recommendations
With 20+ years of real-world use, Workzone is a Project Management Software built for teams of 5+ users who manage large volumes of projects: Marketing, Creative, Operations, PMO, IT, and Back-office. Gain complete visibility with a portfolio-to-task lev...Read more about Workzone
recommendations
Kantata is purpose-built to help organizations of all sizes unify resource management, project management, financial management, business intelligence and team collaboration all in one solution. Elevate your performance and unlock your potential with bette...Read more about Kantata
recommendations
Visual Planning is a hybrid resource management and scheduling platform that helps businesses to manage assets and day-to-day operations. The solution can be deployed on-premise or hosted in the cloud. Visual Planning offers businesses tools and functional...Read more about Visual Planning
recommendations
Deltek Vantagepoint is a solution that helps your people manage your projects from start to finish. Vantagepoint is built specifically for professional services firms to improve productivity, boost collaboration, and increase profitability. The platform al...Read more about Deltek Vantagepoint
recommendations
Celoxis is a powerful project management software specifically designed for medium to large organizations, combining advanced features with AI-driven data insights to ensure smarter, faster decision-making. With single source of truth and centralized visib...Read more about Celoxis
recommendations
GanttPRO is a cloud-based project management solution for small to midsize companies, as well as individual users. The software offers Gantt charts, scheduling, progress tracking and more. GanttPRO enables managers to schedule projects using a visual ...Read more about GanttPRO
Notion is a digital workspace that lets small to large businesses streamline and manage notes, tasks, projects, records, calendar and more. Key features include portfolio tracker, designer templates, database management, documentation and data export. Dep...Read more about Notion
Flowlu is a cloud-based, all-in-one business management solution designed for teams of all sizes and industries. Whether you're managing projects, tracking sales, or handling finances, Flowlu brings everything together in a single, intuitive platform. Pow...Read more about Flowlu
Exciting news: WorkOtter is now Prism PPM! Prism PPM (formerly WorkOtter) is a project portfolio management (PPM) solution purpose-built for strategic portfolio management. Project Management Offices (PMOs) use Prism PPM to align their project portfolios w...Read more about WorkOtter
Project.co is a cloud-based solution that helps small to large enterprises manage multiple elements of projects including payments, tasks, time, people, files and more. It lets users request clients to process payments electronically via credit cards and g...Read more about Project.co
Everhour is a cloud-based time tracking and project management solution for teams and small to midsize businesses across various industries such as marketing and advertising, nonprofits, consultancies, and more. Track the time spent on projects using a tim...Read more about Everhour
Resource Guru is a resource management, planning, and scheduling solution that helps organizations manage teams, equipment, and other resources. The platform is designed for a range of industries, such as agencies, consultants, construction, engineering, a...Read more about Resource Guru
Aha! Suite is a comprehensive suite of tools designed to assist in every stage of the product development lifecycle. It aims to facilitate the creation of valuable software by enabling teams to strategize, plan, build, and deliver products efficiently. Cov...Read more about Aha!
Agiled is an all in one business management platform. It comes with built-in CRM, HRM, Financial Management, Project Management and Time Tracking. Users can manage all of their business in one place and provide a client portal access to their customers. A...Read more about Agiled
Quire is a project management software designed for small to medium-sized teams. It provides a suite of features to help teams plan, collaborate, and achieve their goals. The software includes a Kanban board that allows users to visually arrange, priorit...Read more about Quire
Freedcamp is a project management solution for large organizations in markets including advertising, architecture, engineering, interior design, IT services, manufacturing, retail, telecommunications, and many more. The system is offered primarily as a web...Read more about Freedcamp
Popular Comparisons
Your Guide to Top Project Planning Software, July 2024
Software Advice uses reviews from real software users to highlight the top-rated Project Planning products in North America.
Learn how products are chosenExplore FrontRunners
“Usability” includes user ratings for Functionality and Ease of Use.
“Customer Satisfaction” includes user ratings for Customer Support, Likelihood to Recommend and Value for Money.
Reviews analysis period: The reviews analysis period spans two years and ends the 15th of the month prior to publication.
Buyers Guide
This detailed guide will help you find and buy the right project planning software for you and your business.
Last Updated on January 27, 2025Whether or not a project is successful largely depends on how well the project is planned. In fact, in a recent analysis of project management (PM) software buyers who contacted Software Advice in the past year, 66% requested systems with project scheduling and resource management capabilities.*
We've created this guide to help buyers better understand project planning solutions and how they factor into the larger PM software market.
Here’s what we’ll cover:
What is project planning software?
Project planning software is a specialized tool that helps project managers and stakeholders map out and visualize a project plan, helping to optimize resource allocation across a complex project and/or multiple projects. The project planning management tool helps plan the sequence of activities and tasks required to complete a project and identify the best project team based on availability and skills set.
This high-level "roadmapping" process helps managers:
Identify key resources
Pinpoint project tasks’ dependencies and constraints
Determine essential project milestones
Set baselines for the project’s scope, budget, and timeline (the three benchmarks used to determine project success)
Businesses can purchase stand-alone project planning/project scheduling software or invest in an integrated PM suite. A comprehensive project management software solution typically contains project planning capabilities in addition to other core PM functionality, such as:
Among the best project planning tools are Gantt charts, which are used to visualize a project's schedule and determine the critical path. These digital charts are vastly less labor-intensive to update than Gantt charts created using manual methods.
Now let's get into more detail on planning tool features.
Common features of project planning software
The following are some common capabilities of project planning tools:
Gantt charts | Used to determine the critical path of tasks, identify task dependencies, and potential risk areas. They can also help track performance and progress on tasks once projects are underway. Represented as cascading bar charts across a timeline or calendar (see screenshot below table for an example). |
Resource scheduling | Provides project managers increased visibility into team availability and skill set. Managers can schedule resources to tasks and projects or create a “placeholder resource” for roles they know they’ll need but haven’t been able to schedule yet. |
Project timeline planning | Visualize the full project timeline based on task durations and dependencies. Project managers can create a project schedule, manage employee scheduling, and track project status (see screenshot below table for an example). |
Risk identification | Allows project managers to track and manage potential risk areas, such as dependent tasks (e.g., if task B can only start once task A is complete, these tasks would be flagged). |
Automatic alerts | Provides PMs and their team the ability to schedule in-app or email alerts. These can be used to notify the team about upcoming task due dates or to alert an employee assigned to a dependent task that the preceding work item is nearing completion. |
Collaboration tools | Helps facilitate team collaboration among users via in-app comments, in-task chat streams, or discussion forums. For example, users can comment and add status updates directly to tasks or flagged risk items or loop in a team member on a question posted to a project discussion board (see screenshot below table for an example). |
Gantt chart in Zoho Projects (Source)
Project timeline planning in Microsoft Project (Source)
Project collaboration in Basecamp (Source)
Benefits of project planning software
There are many benefits of using project planning software as opposed to manual methods. These benefits include:
Increased visibility: View, track, and manage individual and team workloads, their skill sets, and current and future availability. This benefit is best realized when using a comprehensive PM suite with both project planning and resource management capabilities.
Improved communication and collaboration: Project planning tools act as a shared hub where managers, team members, and stakeholders can store all project-related communication. This provides a permanent record for important decisions and project changes.
Early risk detection: Using visual planning tools, such as Gantt charts and timelines, project managers and stakeholders can plan risk management strategies ahead of time and mitigate any potential obstacles.
Maintain historical archives: The information in project plans and status reports can influence future business decisions. Managers and stakeholders using planning software can look back on previous projects to see why decisions were made and to compare timeline and budgetary measures.
*Analysis was performed on software buyer calls asking about project management software from March 10, 2020 through March 9, 2021.
Note: The applications selected in this article are examples to show a feature in context and are not intended as endorsements or recommendations. They have been obtained from sources believed to be reliable at the time of publication.