There are plenty of popular Wrike alternatives on the market - so how do you know which is the best choice? Our curated list will help narrow down your search.
In today's digitized world, the right project management software brings efficiency and convenience for managers and their teams.
Whether you're looking for advanced and customizable project management features, after-sales client support, or the ability to manage projects collectively in one intuitive platform, there are many project management tools that provide what you need.
One popular name amongst project management solutions is Wrike. Founded in 2006, Wrike is one of the leading Microsoft Project alternatives on the market. Its paid plans boasts a customizable project dashboard, file sharing, and risk management features.
But with a significant price tag, is it the right choice for everyone?
In this article, we'll look at the pros and cons of Wrike, along with our guide to the best Wrike alternatives that are free to try before you buy - so you can confidently decide which platform works best for you. Let's start!
Wrike is a popular project management software that allows teams to share resources, collaborate and keep track of project progress on a single platform.
You can quickly organize tasks with team collaboration, task management on multiple projects, and one-click Gantt charts. In addition, project status and productivity are viewable with 360-degree project visibility and over 400+ software integrations, which keep everyone informed and updated on every aspect of the project management system.
Wrike's other useful project management features include:
Mid-size businesses and enterprises may find these attributes beneficial to their scalability. At the same time, the platform's personalized reports, tasks, and workflow processes are perfect for the organizational demands of a large business.
While Wrike has its fans, other users would not recommend it as the ultimate work management solution.
It is not the most intuitive project management platform. Users mention struggling with the steep learning curve and time-consuming customization options. Its interface is complicated, which may be confusing and overwhelming for new users.
Likewise, with over 400 software integrations, users may have difficulty learning everything while setting up and customizing to tailor-fit their workflow. All that integration can also come with a price, in the form of a sluggish system which affects the real-time updating of daily schedules and workflows.
Some helpful features are also gated at a higher subscription fee, meaning that the costs can keep creeping up as your business takes on more work. The project planning and team collaboration features cost $9.80 per user per month, but if you want to customize the platform, it goes up to $24.80 per user per month.
If you've decided to look for a Wrike alternative, you may find you're overwhelmed with choices. Deciding which work management software best aligns with your organization's requirements can be a challenge.
To help you out, we've curated a list of the best Wrike alternatives for project management, according to the needs and priorities of your business.
Runn is a resource management and financial forecasting tool that lets businesses handle complex project schedules with simplicity. It offers capacity planning features that give project managers access to their team's overall capacity and individual team members' workload.
You can assign available staff to projects, avoid burnout for your team and take control of your workload management with Runn's People Planner. You can also review milestones, monitor the budget, and keep an eye on overall progress, so you're on the pulse of your project from planning through to completion.
One of the factors for effective project management is the ability to visualize your resources and prevent bottlenecks before they arise. Runn's project forecasting lets a project manager strategize for the long term, operating in real-time for both simple and complex projects.
In addition, Runn effectively manages tasks through vital PSA features like tracking utilization rates and billable time, reporting, and analytics that increase productivity and efficiency.
If resource scheduling and capacity planning are your top concerns, you'll want to give Runn a try.
Another popular Wrike alternative is Basecamp collaboration software.
Real-time exchange of information is crucial, especially for remote teams who are struggling with keeping data all in one place. But Basecamp's ethos is to enable teams to improve their workflow through better communication.
It does a great job of putting everything on the same page so that the details don't get lost. The key features of the platform are easy to learn, and overall it streamlines communication to help distributed teams deliver projects on time and to spec.
When considering switching from Wrike, Jira could be the right project management tool for agile projects that need a teamwork boost. Whether on an organization-wide level or within specific teams, Jira can provide customizable workflows for project tasks.
Project managers can plan ahead, track progress, release deliverables, improve project performance, and automate suitable workflow for an agile team. Jira offers integration and easy-to-learn automation, that saves PMs time and lets them focus on more important matters.
Hive is another alternative tool that lets team leads manage tasks with ease. Hive offers unlimited tasks and project settings, and a customizable layout which means a PM can draw project insight while managing tasks.
From tracking the status and changes made by a teammate, to a calendar view that plots actions on scheduled dates, to looking at assignments in Gantt charts, Hive monitors how members interact to carry them out. Great for specifying task priorities and recurring tasks, Hive can effectively manage organizations' overall task movement in place of Wrike.
Monday is a task management software used to create workspaces for teams to establish, organize and track projects. A popular Wrike alternative, Monday caters to most organizations especially small teams and startups with its wide range of tutorial libraries to make the most out of the platform's functions.
Monday can be a great tool for managing projects with a small team without the hefty price tag, plus users enjoy its colorful and fun interface.
As one of Wrike's alternatives, Smartsheet is a fully-customizable, no-code SaaS project management tool that enables users to adjust back-end project plans and workflows to meet the organization's goals. With this kind of flexibility, users can expect a higher collaborative productivity and efficiency rate for the whole professional services team with just one central platform to hold everything.
As an enterprise-level tool, Smartsheet has other features like RFI for sourcing, meeting agenda management, and unlimited seats, which Wrike users cannot enjoy.
For creative businesses, there is a work management tool like Adobe Workfront. Features includes automation of repetitive design tasks and marketing assignments, real-time updates for the creative team, and standard templates for streamlining content creation and project processes.
Partnering with some of the biggest organizations' preferred tools including seamless integrations with Adobe Creative Cloud, Workfront is the go-to solution for project management in many marketing and digital media agencies.
Project managers have an overwhelming responsibility of keeping the entire project in order, and making sure each team member is on the same page. Project management software should reduce the tasks that fall to the PM, rather than adding to them.
While Wrike is a popular choice, there are alternatives that provide powerful project management features in a more flexible package. Runn, for example, is an all-in-one platform that can empower users with a straightforward task management tool in an intuitive user interface.
