Planview PPM Pro: Best for resource management & capacity planning

Planview PPM Pro, formerly Planview Innotas, enables project management office leaders to prioritize tasks, track workloads and measure performance. The tool centralizes project portfolio management to establish a single source of truth for all work and resources. Moreover, Planview includes the capability of managing project costs against budget across portfolios by providing comprehensive views into each project’s budget, actual and forecast.

With Planview, managers can measure the team’s performance and view key performance indicators to determine if the team’s efforts align with company goals (Figure A). Planview also helps managers make informed decisions on projects and tasks based on resource availability, capacity and utilization to meet the organization’s current and future demands.

Pricing

Planview PPM Pro pricing information is unavailable on the vendor’s website. Potential buyers can request a product demo to learn more about this tool’s capabilities and receive a custom quote.

Standout features

• Project planning and scheduling, including project phases, tasks and milestones.
• Project financials management, including in-flight expense tracking to help teams stay on budget.
• Variance reporting of performance measurement against baselines to determine the differences between forecasted and actual efforts.
• Optimized resource allocation and risk management.
• Automated notifications for new and out-of-tolerance assignments.

Pros

• Improves team collaboration.
• Promotes lean and agile work.
• Time and expense management capabilities.

Cons

• Users report that this tool is pricey.
• There is a complex initial setup process.

Planview PPM Pro Integrations

Planview PPM integrates with over 60 third-party services, including:

• Jira.
• ServiceNow.
• Asana.
• Microsoft Azure DevOps.
• Git.
• BMC Remedy.
• Trello.
• Zendesk.
• Xray.

Why we choose Planview PPM Pro

We selected Planview PPM Pro for its advanced PPM features that allow you to manage all aspects of your project portfolio on one centralized platform.

Celoxis: Best all-in-one PPM and resource management software

Celoxis is all-in-one enterprise-level PPM software that offers project planning, resource management, task tracking, time tracking, budgeting, collaboration and reporting features for optimized project portfolio management. These features help businesses of all sizes plan, manage and track projects from start to finish.

Celoxis offers fully featured resource management capabilities to maximize team utilization and project performance. It enables managers to allocate tasks based on skills, roles and availability while considering employees’ time zones and work shifts. Celoxis also offers a comprehensive suite of real-time dashboards, reporting capabilities and customizable workflows to help managers measure, analyze and optimize team performance (Figure B).

Pricing

Celoxis offers two deployment plan options: Cloud and On-Premises. Pricing information for both On-Premises and Cloud plans are available upon request. The Cloud plan requires a minimum of five users.

Standout features

• Intake management capability automatically captures and ranks project requests from web forms, emails and other sources.
• Resource management features optimize distributed teams’ resources and analytics.
• Customizable portfolio dashboards allow users to monitor schedules, margins and other custom metrics.
• Project accounting provides profit and margin tracking, revenue forecasting and custom financial KPIs.

Pros

• Time tracking.
• Multilevel approvals.
• PDF option for exporting reports.

Cons

• Celoxis lacks a free plan.
• Cloud user storage space is limited to 2GB per user.

Celoxis integrations

The tool connects with over 400 third-party apps, including:

• QuickBooks.
• Slack.
• Google.
• Microsoft.
• Salesforce.
• Trello.
• Harvest.
• Slack.

Why we chose Celoxis

We selected Celoxis for its versatility. Whether we are managing complex projects with multiple dependencies and stakeholders or simple projects with a few team members, Celoxis offers PPM features that you can align to your specific PPM needs.

See how Celoxis compares to our list of the top 10 project management software.

monday work management: Best for value

With monday work management, teams can create customized workflows, automate routine tasks and easily collaborate on projects. The software can be used by teams of any size in any industry, and is available on the web and mobile devices. monday work management provides users with many beneficial features, including time tracking, customizable templates, team boards, calendar views and integrations with other tools and services.

Further, monday work management allows managers to allocate resources and prioritize tasks to meet the company’s objectives. Its PPM templates give stakeholders a high-level view of their portfolio information and overall health (Figure C).

Pricing

• Free: No cost for up to two seats.
• Basic: $9 per seat per month, billed annually, or $12 per seat billed monthly.
• Standard: $12 per seat per month, billed annually, or $14 per seat billed monthly.
• Pro: $19 per seat per month, billed annually, or $24 per seat billed monthly.
• Enterprise: Contact sales for a custom quote.

Standout features

• Resource utilization and capacity planning.
• Advanced reporting and analytics.
• Over 200 templates available.
• 99.9% uptime service-level agreement.

Pros

• Built-in time tracking.
• Self-service knowledge base.
• Budget-friendly.

Cons

• Limited reporting capabilities.
• The user interface may take time to learn for first-time users.

monday work management integrations

monday work management integrates with over 200 third-party services.

• Pipedrive.
• Slack.
• Jira.
• Trello.
• Mailchimp.
• Zendesk.
• HubSpot.
• Zoom.
• Gitlab.
• Stripe.

Why we choose monday work management

We selected monday work management for its advance features that make it an excellent choice for project portfolio management. The PPM platform gives you value for your money by providing quality tools for managing projects, tasks and resources.

For more information, check out our full monday Work OS review.

Wrike: Best for task tracking and capacity management

Wrike is primarily a project management service provider with extensible PPM capabilities that help teams manage multiple projects and visualize and prioritize resources for a better workflow. The tool has a prebuilt, ready-to-use PPM template and project portfolio analysis capabilities (Figure D). These features help teams manage multiple projects, track progress and manage resources efficiently. And Wrike’s collaboration features help teams collaborate, communicate and coordinate tasks. Wrike is available as a cloud-based, desktop and/or mobile app solution for businesses of all sizes.

Pricing

Wrike’s project portfolio management features are only available in the Business, Enterprise and Pinnacle pricing tiers:

• Free
• Team: $9.80 per user per month for two to twenty-five users.
• Business: $24.80 per user per month for five to 200 users.
• Enterprise: Contact sales for a custom quote.
• Pinnacle: Contact sales for a custom quote.

Standout features

• Advanced resource and capacity planning.
• Workflow automation to eliminate manual processes.
• Drag-and-drop capabilities.

Pros

• Enhanced collaboration, especially among distributed teams.
• Time tracking capability.
• Visual proofing capability.

Cons

• Complex initial setup process.
• Steep learning curve.

Wrike Integrations

Wrike integrates with 400+ third-party applications. Some of their top integrations, include:

• Tableau.
• Slack.
• Salesforce.
• Zoom.
• Microsoft Teams.
• Jira.
• HubSpot.
• Power BI.

Why we choose Wrike

Our analysis found that Wrike uses AI to minimize your project portfolio’s risk, and it maintains a risk log to ensure consistently high standards across your portfolio. Wrike also ranks highly for resource utilization, it evaluates capacities and distribution of work by visualizing upcoming requirements — this ultimately helps avoid employee burnout.

For more information, check out our full Wrike review.

Asana: Best for small to large businesses and contractors

Asana PPM helps project managers monitor their team’s initiatives, such as project status, progress and resource allocation, in a unified dashboard. Asana provides a comprehensive view of an organization’s project portfolio, enabling managers to prioritize projects, allocate resources and manage budgets more effectively.

With Asana, teams can track project progress, collaborate on tasks and set up reminders and deadlines. It also includes a workload view (Figure E), which helps managers identify team members’ capacity and balance their workloads.

Pricing

Asana’s PPM features are only available in its Business plan, which is priced at $24.99 per user per month when billed annually, or $30.49 per user when billed monthly.

Standout features

• Project views for timeline, list, board and calendar.
• Custom workflow automation.
• Project planning, task management, risk management and issue management.

Pros

• Short learning curve.
• Excellent collaboration features.
• User-friendly interface.
• Highly customizable.

Cons

• Asana can be expensive for teams looking for more advanced features.

Asana integrations

Asana integrates with over 100 third-party apps, including:

• Adobe Creative Cloud.
• Okta.
• Tableau.
• Google Drive.
• ServiceNow.
• Looker.
• Canva.
• OneDrive.
• InVision.
• GitHub.
• Trello.

Why we chose Asana

We selected Asana for its ability to manage multiple projects and large-scale initiatives and easily visualize progress across initiatives for executive stakeholders. Asana Portfolios can also help you monitor project timelines and dependencies, allowing you to prioritize and allocate resources effectively.

For more information, check out our full Asana review.

ClickUp: Best for customization

ClickUp consolidates productivity, project management, work management, document collaboration and communication on a unified platform. It is designed to be an all-in-one platform that can be customized to suit the needs of various teams and industries, from small businesses to large enterprises. ClickUp provides stakeholders with extensive insights into all projects’ progress and reports on milestones.

ClickUp has over 15 customizable project views and an extensive template library for various use cases (Figure F). The tool has over 50 native integrations, making it easy for teams to connect with existing apps in their toolkits.

Pricing

• Free Forever: No cost for 100 MB storage and unlimited tasks.
• Unlimited: $7 per user per month, billed annually, or $10 per user billed monthly.
• Business: $12 per user per month, billed annually, or $19 per user billed monthly.
• Enterprise: Contact sales for a custom quote.

Standout features

• Advanced task views, such as Gantt chart, table, timeline, workload, box, activity, mind map, list, calendar and map.
• Task dependencies capability.
• Natural language processing.
• Work in progress limits.
• ClickApp mobile application.
• Risk management capability to assess multiple projects’ performance against strategic organizational objectives.

Pros

• Self-service knowledge base.
• Highly customizable.
• Support for multiple assignees.

Cons

• Steep learning curve.
• Mobile app has limited project views.

ClickUp integrations

ClickUp offers over 50 native integrations. The popular ones include:

• Slack.
• Google Drive.
• GitHub.
• HubSpot.
• Loom.
• Figma.
• Vimeo.
• Zoom.
• Zendesk.
• Tableau.

Why we chose ClickUp

We chose ClickUp because it provides templates to help you manage resources, tasks and objectives, visualize progress and performance and align your teams around goals and priorities. It allows you to organize tasks into sixteen different statuses, including new, complete, at risk and in progress.

For more information, check out our full ClickUp review.

Smartsheet: Best for reporting

Project teams and managers familiar with spreadsheets will find Smartsheet easy to use due to its spreadsheet-style dashboard. Smartsheet allows users to create formulas, manage projects, track progress, automate manual processes and customize workflows.

Smartsheet’s project and portfolio reporting capability allows users to visualize and report on portfolio data with configurable widget-based views (Figure G). Smartsheet automatically adds data from new projects to the team’s portfolio reports and dashboards. Project teams can also track projects, budgets and resources to ensure they align with the organization’s goals.

Pricing

Smartsheet doesn’t advertise the rates of its Smartsheet Advance plan on its website – the plan that includes portfolio management. They encourage potential buyers to contact their sales team for quotes. The free, pro, business and enterprise versions lack the PPM feature.

• Free: No cost for one user and up to two editors.
• Pro: $7 per user per month, billed annually, or $9 per user billed monthly.
• Business: $25 per user per month, billed annually, or $32 per user billed monthly.
• Enterprise: Contact sales for a custom quote.
• Smartsheet Advance: Custom quote. This plan includes portfolio management.

Standout features

• Captures and compares variances between planned and actual schedules.
• Provides report grouping into logical categories or classifications.
• Offers grid, Gantt chart, card and calendar views.
• Automates repetitive tasks and processes.
• Benchmarks performance against expectations and goals to estimate value accurately.

Pros

• Highly customizable.
• Feature-rich.
• Excellent reporting capabilities.

Cons

• Smartsheet is expensive for small businesses.
• Users report that Smartsheet is infrequently slow when running large projects.

Smartsheet integrations

Smartsheet connects with 96 third-party services. Some of the popular integrations include:

• Slack.
• Quip.
• Tibco Spotfire.
• Google Docs.
• Microsoft Teams.
• Dropbox.
• Easy Insight.
• Jira Software.
• Okta.

Why we choose Smartsheet

We selected Smartsheet for its strong reporting capabilities in project portfolio management. The platform offers interactive dashboards that allow you to drill down into specific project details for a comprehensive view of your portfolio.

For more information, check out our full Smartsheet review.

LiquidPlanner: Best for managing project and portfolio shared resources

LiquidPlanner offers project and portfolio management capability that helps teams prioritize work, manage resources and track progress in real-time. Our research found that its PPM capability is available to all user tiers, allowing teams of all sizes to easily create and manage project schedules, allocate resources correctly and ensure that everyone works on the right tasks at the right time. It also serves as a unified hub for teams to access and share documents and resources.

Pricing

• Essential: $15 per user per month, billed annually.
• Professional: $28 per user per month, billed annually.
• Ultimate: $42 per user per month, billed annually.

Standout features

• Portfolio-wide search.
• Portfolio workload views.
• Alerts and insights.
• Schedule insights and dependencies.
• Detailed data reporting.

Pros

• Feature-rich.
• Automatic resource leveling.
• Its data customization capability lets you add custom properties to projects, tasks and resources to get the reports you need.

Cons

• Essential plan has limited time management tasks.
• Limited integrations.

LiquidPlanner integrations

• Slack.
• Box.
• Google Drive.
• Dropbox.
• OpenAI.
• Zapier.

Why we choose LiquidPlanner

We selected the tool because of its high level of customization in project and portfolio management. For instance, its custom data functionality lets you categorize your data by client, program, and risk level with various data field types. Its integration with OpenAI also lets you filter and download schedule data for analysis.

For more information, check out our full LiquidPlanner review.

Easy Project: Best for comprehensive visibility over all projects in progress

Easy Project is a robust project and portfolio management software that enables users to plan, monitor and track their projects centrally. It comprehensively overviews project performance, resources, time and budget.

With features such as Global Gantt for accurate project planning, Portfolio Statement for creating detailed reports and Portfolio Tree for an overview of all projects, Easy Project simplifies project and portfolio management processes, allowing users to streamline workflows, optimize resource allocation and achieve project goals.

Pricing

Easy Project has both an on-premises edition and a cloud edition. The on-premises solution costs $5.90 per user per month.

Cloud pricing

• Essential: $5.90 per user per month.
• Business: $11.90 per user per month.
• Platform: $23.90 per user per month.
• Enterprise: Custom quote.

Standout features

• Resource management.
• Agile tools — scrum boards, kanban boards and dashboards for product owners and scrum masters.
• Portfolio statement — support portfolio statements for budgets, spent time and resources.
• Export options (CSV, XLSX, PDF, print).
• Time tracking capability.

Pros

• Time tracking capability.
• Custom reports functionality.

Cons

• Advanced features require integration with third-party apps.
• Essential plan lacks project budgets and finance functionalities.

Easy Project integrations

• Outlook plugin.
• Make.com.
• Jira.
• Microsoft Project.

Why we choose Easy Project

Straightforward project monitoring and management — the Portfolio Tree feature in Easy Project gives users a quick overview of all their projects, with color-coded indicators for important project features such as overdue tasks, time spent and current status. This feature helps users stay organized and easily track project progress.

ActiveCollab: Best for small to medium-sized teams

With ActiveCollab, users can track progress, allocate resources and monitor budgets to ensure successful project delivery. The platform allows for easy collaboration among team members, with features like task assignment, file sharing and real-time updates. Additionally, ActiveCollab provides a bird’s eye view of all ongoing projects, allowing users to prioritize tasks and manage deadlines. Users can also generate detailed project profitability reports to gain insights into the financial health of their projects.

Pricing

• Free plan for up to three members.
• Plus: $9.5 per month, billed annually or $11 month-to-month —for 3 members.
• Pro: $8 per member/month billed annually or $9 per member month-to-month.
• Pro+Get Paid: $11.75 per member/month billed annually or $14 per member month-to-month.

Standout features

• Work management.
• Team collaboration.
• Time management.
• Resource management.
• Client management.

Pros

• In-app budget, time and expense tracking.
• Robust project resource tracking.
• ​​Simple and easy-to-implement interface.

Cons

• Limited storage space.
• Sometimes slow.

ActiveCollab integrations

• Quickbooks.
• Slack.
• Google Drive.
• Dropbox.

Why we choose ActiveCollab

We chose ActiveCollab for being easy to use, even for non-technical team members. It has a simple and intuitive interface, making it easy for team members to navigate and collaborate on projects without much training or technical knowledge.

For more information, check out our full ActiveCollab review.