But it’s not for everyone.

For some teams, it can be too intrusive, while others may simply not need that level of monitoring and are looking for something more flexible, simpler, or better suited for client work.

After testing multiple time tracking tools, I have collected the best Time Doctor alternatives for different use cases. And my top picks are:

• Rize: Best for focus and productivity habits
• Clockify: Best free alternative
• Toggl Track: Best for simple team-friendly tracking

In this guide, I’ll walk you through the best Time Doctor alternatives I personally tested, along with who they’re best for and where they fall short.

Let’s dive in!

Which are the best Time Doctor alternatives in 2026?

App	Best for	Not ideal for
	Solo users wanting to build better productivity habits	Teams needing strict employee monitoring
	Teams, agencies, and small businesses needing a simple, flexible, and cost-effective tool	Users wanting deep AI-driven productivity insights
	Freelancers, remote teams, and agencies wanting a simple tool	Businesses requiring employee monitoring
	Remote teams, field workers, and businesses needing detailed tracking	Users wanting a simple or non-intrusive time tracking tool
	Users needing invoicing, budgeting, and financial tracking features	Teams needing automatic time tracking
	Freelancers, consultants, and solo professionals wanting a simple tool	Teams, internal workflows, or businesses needing advanced tracking
	Office-based, remote, and hybrid teams wanting visibility into productivity	Businesses needing invoicing or client management

How did I select the best Time Doctor alternatives?

I didn’t just look at feature lists. I tested each tool in real-world scenarios to see how it actually performs.

Here are the main criteria I used:

 Without further ado, let’s see which apps made the list!

My list of the best Time Doctor alternatives in 2026

Here are the best Time Doctor alternatives in 2026:

Best Time Doctor alternative #1 | Rize

Best Time Doctor alternative for focus and productivity habits

Rize is an AI-powered time tracking tool designed to help you understand how you spend your time and improve your focus. Unlike Time Doctor, which focuses heavily on employee monitoring and reporting, Rize takes a completely different approach. It’s built around personal productivity, habits, and sustainable work patterns.

Instead of tracking screenshots or monitoring activity in a potentially intrusive way, Rize works quietly in the background, automatically capturing your work and turning it into actionable insights.

Key features

Pricing

• Free plan available
• Paid plans start at $9.99/user/month

My experience with Rize

After long-term testing, Rize stands out as one of the most impactful time tracking tools for improving personal productivity. The automatic tracking worked reliably, and the insights were actually useful, not just data for the sake of it.

What makes the biggest difference is the shift in philosophy. Instead of feeling like you’re being monitored, Rize feels like a tool that helps you work better.

That said, it’s not perfect. The lack of a mobile or web app can be limiting, especially if you don’t work primarily on desktop.

Short on time? Here’s a quick overview of Rize

Pros and cons of Rize

Pros of Rize

Cons of Rize

Best for / Not ideal for

Rize is best for individuals, freelancers, and professionals who want to improve focus and build better productivity habits without being monitored.

It’s not ideal for teams that need strict employee monitoring, workforce analytics, or advanced payroll features like those offered by Time Doctor.

Why is it the best Time Doctor alternative for focus and productivity habits?

Rize is a strong alternative to Time Doctor if you find employee monitoring too intrusive or unnecessary.

While Time Doctor focuses on screenshots, activity tracking, and detailed workforce analytics, Rize focuses on helping you work better, not watching you work.

If you’re a solo user, freelancer, or part of a small team that values autonomy and productivity over surveillance, Rize is a much better fit.

Best Time Doctor alternative #2 | Clockify

Best free Time Doctor alternative

Clockify is one of the most popular time tracking tools, used by millions of users worldwide. It offers a simple but versatile approach to tracking time, with features like timesheets, reporting, invoicing, and project tracking, all available across desktop, web, and mobile apps.

Compared to Time Doctor, Clockify focuses much less on employee monitoring and much more on flexible, transparent time tracking for teams and individuals.

Key features

Pricing

• Free plan available
• Paid plans start at $3.99/user/month

My experience with Clockify

Based on my experience, Clockify is a simple and reliable way to track time across projects and teams. The interface is straightforward, and the learning curve is minimal.

What stood out the most is how much you get in the free plan. For many users, especially small teams, you might not even need to upgrade.

That said, it’s not the most advanced tool when it comes to deep productivity insights. Also, the mobile app can be slow and occasionally buggy, which can be frustrating if you rely on it heavily.

Short on time? Here’s a quick overview of Clockify

Pros and cons of Clockify

Pros of Clockify

Cons of Clockify

Best for / Not ideal for

Clockify is best for teams, agencies, and small businesses that need a simple, flexible, and cost-effective way to track time and manage projects.

It’s not ideal for users looking for deep AI-driven productivity insights or advanced analytics like those offered by Time Doctor.

Why is it the best free Time Doctor alternative?

Clockify is a strong alternative to Time Doctor if you want a less intrusive and more affordable solution.

While Time Doctor focuses heavily on employee monitoring and doesn’t offer a free plan, Clockify provides a transparent, user-friendly tracking experience with a generous free version.

It’s especially a better fit for teams that value simplicity, flexibility, and trust over strict monitoring.

Best Time Doctor alternative #3 | Toggl Track

Best Time Doctor alternative for simple team-friendly tracking

Toggl Track is a time tracking app designed for freelancers and teams that want a simple and flexible way to track work. It focuses on core features like time tracking, reporting, and invoicing, instead of heavy monitoring or workforce surveillance.

Compared to Time Doctor, Toggl Track takes a much lighter approach. It does not rely on screenshots or activity tracking, which makes it a better fit for teams that value trust and transparency over strict monitoring.

Key features

Pricing

• Free plan available
• Paid plans start at $8/user/month

My experience with Toggl Track

I spent a lot of time with this time-tracking software during testing. I not only tested it, but also implemented it in my business to see how it affects my workflows.

And honestly, I was quite satisfied. This time tracking app is super simple to use, while providing all the features a small or medium-sized business might need.

Toggl Track avoids the “over-monitoring” that tools like Time Doctor can create. It focuses on tracking time, not tracking people.

Furthermore, it has a user-friendly interface, and the reporting and client billing tools are outstanding. Considering its features & pricing, Toggl Track is among the best time tracking apps for me.

Short on time? Here’s a quick overview of Toggl Track

Pros and cons of Toggl Track

Pros of Toggl Track

Cons of Toggl Track

Best for / Not ideal for

Toggl Track is best for freelancers, remote teams, and agencies that want a simple and reliable way to track time and manage projects.

It’s not ideal for businesses that require employee monitoring, location tracking, or strict workforce control.

Why is it the best Time Doctor alternative for simple tracking?

Toggl Track is a strong alternative to Time Doctor if you want to avoid intrusive monitoring.

While Time Doctor focuses on screenshots, activity tracking, and detailed workforce surveillance, Toggl Track focuses on clean time tracking and reporting.

It gives you the data you need to understand your work without adding unnecessary tracking features.

If Time Doctor feels too invasive or complex, Toggl Track offers a much simpler and more balanced approach.

Best Time Doctor alternative #4 | Hubstaff

Best Time Doctor alternative for workforce management

Hubstaff is a time tracking and workforce management platform designed for remote and field teams. It combines time tracking, employee monitoring, project management, and location tracking into one system.

Compared to Time Doctor, Hubstaff offers a similar level of tracking and reporting, but with more flexibility in how those features are configured. You get detailed insights and monitoring, but also more control over how intrusive the tool is.

Key features

Pricing

• Free plan available
• Paid plans start at $6.42user/month

My experience with Hubstaff

After testing Hubstaff, the biggest takeaway is how much control it gives to admins. You can adjust almost every aspect of tracking, from screenshots to activity monitoring and permissions.

Depending on how it’s configured, it can either act like a standard time tracker or a full employee monitoring system.

However, if monitoring features are enabled at full capacity, it can be quite intrusive.

Short on time? Here’s a quick overview of Hubstaff

Pros and cons of Hubstaff

Pros of Hubstaff

Cons of Hubstaff

Best for / Not ideal for

Hubstaff is best for remote teams, field workers, and businesses that need detailed tracking, location monitoring, and workforce management features.

It’s not ideal for users looking for a simple or non-intrusive time tracking tool, or those who want a strong free plan.

Why is it the best Time Doctor alternative for workforce management?

Hubstaff is one of the closest alternatives to Time Doctor in terms of functionality, but with more flexibility.

Both tools offer detailed tracking, monitoring, and reporting. However, Hubstaff gives you more control over how those features are used, which can make it feel less rigid.

If you need similar capabilities to Time Doctor but want more customization and better support for field teams, Hubstaff is a strong alternative.

Best Time Doctor alternative #5 | Harvest

Best Time Doctor alternative for invoicing and client work

Harvest is a time tracking tool built around tracking billable hours, managing projects, and handling client invoicing. It focuses on simplicity and financial visibility rather than employee monitoring or productivity surveillance.

Key features

Pricing

• Free plan available
• Paid plans start at $11/user/month

My experience with Harvest

Overall, I had a positive experience with Harvest, and I tried all the features. It is an easy-to-use time tracking app that you can utilize on multiple platforms. While its features are not perfect, the time tracking itself is very straightforward with this app.

In addition, the invoicing feature makes this time tracking app an ideal solution for client-facing teams who need a simple solution for invoicing and project budgeting.

One of the key features I missed during my Harvest review is the automatic time tracking. Harvest only allows this for specific apps that you can connect to Harvest.

Short on time? Here’s a quick overview of Harvest

Pros and cons of Harvest

Pros of Harvest

Cons of Harvest

Best for / Not ideal for

Harvest is best for freelancers, agencies, and businesses that need to track billable hours, manage clients, and create invoices.

It’s not ideal for teams that need automatic time tracking, workforce monitoring, or field tracking features.

Why is it the best Time Doctor alternative for invoicing and client work?

If your focus is billing and client work, Harvest is a strong alternative to Time Doctor. It removes monitoring features and replaces them with invoicing, budgeting, and financial tracking tools.

Best Time Doctor alternative #6 | MinuteShark

Best Time Doctor alternative for freelancers and solo professionals

MinuteShark is a simple time tracking app built specifically for freelancers and consultants who need to track time, manage projects, and handle invoicing in one place.

Compared to Time Doctor, MinuteShark is designed for people who track their own time, not teams that need oversight or control.

Key features

Pricing

• Free plan available
• Paid plans start at $5/user/month

My experience with MinuteShark

MinuteShark is a simple time tracking app for freelancers and consultants. It has a short learning curve and is easy to set up your first projects, clients, and tasks.

I found the way it integrates the invoicing into reporting outstanding. It just feels very practical and intuitive.

Moreover, you can use MinuteShark on iOS and Android apps as well, so you can track your time spent on mobile devices.

While I mostly enjoyed using MinuteShark for time tracking, I also discovered some limitations. For example, I missed a desktop version for tracking time offline.

Furthermore, it would be great if I could have more options to customize the projects, like using colors or icons. In addition, MinuteShark currently lacks team collaboration features, making it ideal for individuals.

To summarize my experience, MinuteShark has great potential to become a top time tracking app for freelancers and professionals. While I enjoyed using it, and it offers an intuitive and simple time tracking experience, it still has room for improvement in terms of features.

Short on time? Here’s a quick overview of MinuteShark

Pros and cons of MinuteShark

Pros of MinuteShark

Cons of MinuteShark

Best for / Not ideal for

MinuteShark is best for freelancers, consultants, and solo professionals who need a simple way to track time and manage client work.

It’s not ideal for teams, internal workflows, or businesses that need advanced tracking, analytics, or collaboration features.

Why is it the best Time Doctor alternative for freelancers and solo professionals?

MinuteShark works better than Time Doctor in one specific scenario: when you are the one being tracked.

Time Doctor is built around managing other people’s time, while MinuteShark is designed for individuals who need to keep their own work organized, track billable hours, and turn that into invoices.

There’s no monitoring layer, no activity tracking, and no extra complexity around team management. Everything is centered around clients, projects, and billable time.

Best Time Doctor alternative #7 | Insightful

Best Time Doctor alternative for productivity insights

Insightful is a time tracking and employee monitoring tool designed for office, remote, and hybrid teams. It focuses on tracking work activity and turning it into clear productivity insights, rather than just collecting raw data.

Key features

Pricing

• No free plan available (only a 7-day trial)
• Paid plans start at $6.40/user/month

My experience with Insightful

After testing Insightful, what stands out is how well it balances visibility and usability. It offers a wide range of monitoring and tracking features, but is not overwhelming.

The productivity trends and reporting features were especially useful. They provide a clear view of how time is spent across the team and help identify patterns.

At the same time, the lack of client management and mobile tracking limits its use cases. It is clearly built for office and remote teams rather than field work.

Short on time? Here’s a quick overview of Insightful

Pros and cons of Insightful

Pros of Insightful

Cons of Insightful

Best for / Not ideal for

Insightful is best for office-based, remote, and hybrid teams that want clear visibility into productivity.

It’s not ideal for businesses that need invoicing, client management, or tracking for field teams.

Why is it the best Time Doctor alternative for productivity insights?

While Time Doctor collects a lot of activity data and presents it through reports, Insightful organizes that data into trends, comparisons, and patterns that are easier to act on.

It is less about checking what someone did minute by minute and more about seeing how productive time is distributed across days, teams, and projects.

If your goal is to improve performance through insights rather than control through monitoring, Insightful is the better fit.

Summary: Best Time Doctor alternatives in 2026

To conclude, the best Time Doctor alternative for you really depends on how you work.

If you want to move away from monitoring, tools like Rize or Toggl Track offer a more flexible and less intrusive approach.

If you need something for client work and invoicing, Harvest or MinuteShark make more sense.

For teams that still need visibility but with more control, Hubstaff and Insightful are closer alternatives to Time Doctor.

And if budget is your main concern, Clockify remains one of the strongest free options available.

I hope I was able to find the best alternatives to Time Doctor  in 2026. As always, I will keep updating this list to ensure it reflects reality.

Why you can trust our reviews

At thebusinessdive.com, our team tests, reviews, and compares hundreds of productivity apps every year — from project management tools to note-taking apps. We dive deep into real-world use cases to help you find the right tools that actually improve your workflow, not just add noise.

Our mission? No fluff, no shortcuts—just honest, hands-on insights from productivity pros.

Discover how we stay transparent, read our review methodology, and let us know about any tools we missed.

Frequently asked questions

What are the best Time Doctor alternatives in 2026?

The best Time Doctor alternatives depend on how you want to track time and manage work. Tools like Toggl Track and Clockify focus on simple time tracking and offer a free plan, while Hubstaff and Insightful provide more advanced employee monitoring, workforce management, and detailed reports. If you need to track billable hours and ensure accurate billing, tools like Harvest or MinuteShark are a better fit for client work and project tracking.

Why do users look for alternatives to Time Doctor?

Many users look for an alternative to Time Doctor because its employee monitoring features like screenshots, keyboard and mouse activity tracking, and app and website usage can feel intrusive and negatively impact team culture. There are also complaints about pricing per user, no free plan, and a steeper learning curve, along with slow customer support. As a result, many teams prefer time tracking software that focuses more on productivity insights, workflow optimization, and non-invasive productivity monitoring.

Which Time Doctor alternative is best for remote teams?

The best Time Doctor alternatives for remote teams depend on whether you need employee monitoring or simple tracking tools. Hubstaff and Insightful are strong options for workforce management, attendance tracking, productivity monitoring, and GPS tracking, especially for remote workers and field teams. On the other hand, tools like Toggl Track are better for distributed teams and small teams that want to track time, manage projects, and focus on task management without heavy monitoring.

Are there any free Time Doctor alternatives?

Yes, there are several free time tracking tools that can replace Time Doctor. Clockify is one of the most popular time tracking tools with a free plan that includes unlimited users, projects, and time entries, making it a strong option for teams that want simple time tracking. Toggl Track also offers a free plan for small teams and supports automatic tracking, project tracking, and detailed reports, which makes it a practical choice for tracking work hours and billable hours.

What features should I look for in a Time Doctor alternative?

When choosing a Time Doctor alternative, you should look for key features like automatic time tracking, project management, task tracking, and detailed productivity reports. Other important features include employee monitoring options, GPS tracking for field teams, mobile app and desktop app support, and tools to track billable hours and manage time entries. The best time tracking solution should help you track time, understand time spent, and improve time tracking and productivity without adding unnecessary complexity.

Disclosure: I only recommend products I would use myself, and all opinions expressed here are our own. This post may contain affiliate links through which, at no additional cost to you, I may earn a small commission. Read the full privacy policy here.

Jovana Simić

Hey! I’m Jovana, a content writer who loves writing, researching, and testing new productivity apps. With a background in philosophy, I bring a thoughtful but no-bullshit approach to everything I do. Let’s connect on Linkedin!

The post Best Time Doctor Alternatives 2026 | My Honest Picks After Testing appeared first on .

As Taskade works as a task, work, and project management tool but also as a note-taking app, it might seem tricky at first. But do not be afraid; in this Taskade review, I will share this productivity app’s key features, pricing, my experience, and its pros and cons.

Let’s dive in!

Verdict

Here’s the quick verdict if you don’t want to read the full review:

Tested with our review & scoring methodology Real-world testing Unbiased evaluation

How We Test Project Management Tools (and how flexible tools like Taskade are evaluated)

To keep our reviews & final score for each project management app fair and consistent, we evaluate every tool using the same testing framework based on real-world usage, feature depth, and overall value.

Our scoring breakdown after testing 20+ project management apps:

Want a detailed breakdown of how we test each category?

Learn exactly how we test tools → Review methodology

Since tools like Notion, Coda, and Taskade are not traditional project management apps, we also evaluate how well they can be adapted into project management systems, including flexibility, structure, and scalability.

Short on time? Here’s a quick overview of Taskade

What is Taskade?

Taskade is an AI-powered productivity tool for task, work, project management, and note-taking. Over the past year, Taskade has shifted from a pure productivity app toward an AI-first workspace and app builder.

One thing is sure: it has a strong focus on team collaboration, and I will show these later. With Taskade, you can automate tasks, research, and collaborate with your team members in real time.

Taskade is a special AI tool. It allows you to create custom AI agents for specific workflows, train them by giving instructions or uploading files, and even generate full workflows or systems with AI.

My experience with Taskade

To be honest, when I first saw the user interface during my Taskade review, I was a little bit skeptical. It did not look like a tool for work. But after a few hours, it totally changed.

It was easy to navigate, and I discovered almost every feature in a few hours. I especially loved the way they integrated the automation and the AI agents.

With the current feature set, Taskade offers a unique experience to manage your projects, tasks, and notes with your team members in a centralized place.

Ultimately, I had a pleasant experience with this AI-productivity tool.

Why Taskade got a 4.3 / 5 score

Taskade lacks advanced reporting (3/5), and its project management features (3.5/5) are far more limited than those of dedicated project management apps.

However, it offers outstanding collaboration features (5/5) and an intuitive UI (5/5), and its AI agents can automate numerous day-to-day processes.

Who Taskade is a good fit for

Who Taskade is not ideal for

Taskade’s features

Here, I collected Taskade’s features!

Project management software

Taskade is a lightweight project management software. The reason why I say that it is a lightweight project management app is that it does not have advanced project management tools like time tracking features. Also, it is not a complex project management app compared to other apps.

However, it has many valuable features to make your project management workflows faster and simpler while enhancing productivity and team collaboration. With your AI agents, you can make the project planning much shorter, as it can structure the tasks, offer potential sub-tasks, set up reminders based on your timeline, etc.

Besides AI agents, automation is also useful in project management. Taskade’s automation allows you to streamline repetitive tasks by setting up a wide set of real-time triggers (task added/updated, comments, external feeds like YouTube/RSS) and chained actions.

You can design custom workflows and integrate them with Google Sheets, Slack, or WordPress.

Let me give you some examples of how the automation works. You can create a rule for sending Slack notifications if there is a new comment for your tasks in Taskade. Or, it can automatically create a task after a meeting is scheduled in Calendly.

This was my favorite feature during my Taskade review, as you can customize the rules of automation in detail. So, when adding a next step when an action is triggered, there are many options from which you can choose, like sending it to another app or sending a notification to project managers.

Let’s move on to the task management features!

Task management

Taskade is a task management software that allows you to manage multiple projects and tasks effectively. When I said that Taskade is a lightweight project management app, it is not true for task management, as it has solid features.

You can easily add and assign tasks to your team members. With one click, you can create task lists and give due dates, tags, and notes to each task.

The AI agents are also quite helpful when creating multiple tasks. They can help break projects and complex tasks into sub-tasks and are great for brainstorming what other tasks you should consider.

Note-taking

Taskade can also work as a note-taking app. Nevertheless, compared to note-taking apps like Notion, Obsidian, Anytype, or Xtiles, Taskade lacks advanced note-taking capabilities.

While Taskade works well for simple notes, it doesn’t offer some features that dedicated note-taking tools do, such as relational databases and more sophisticated knowledge-management systems.

But to be honest, Taskade was not originally designed as a traditional note-taking tool. It uses a task-based structure where most content can easily be turned into actionable items, connected to projects, or automated with workflows.

And this approach comes in handy when it comes to meeting notes. You can instantly create tasks, summaries, and organized lists from your meeting notes using Taskade. Utilizing Taskade’s AI capabilities in these workflows can really enhance productivity.

Let’s take a look at these AI features!

AI agents

In short, Taskade’s AI agents aren’t simple chatbots. They can store short- and long-term memory, be trained on workspace data, orchestrate as multi-agent teams, and you can pick from multiple LLM providers depending on the task.

You can tailor your AI agents to your specific needs by adding sources from which it can work and giving instructions.

You can create AI agents for project management, content creation, data analysis, and so on. When creating your AI agent, you need to describe precisely the scope of activities it is responsible for. Do not worry. Taskade will pre-fill the instructions for many AI agents, and you can amend them if you want.

After, you need to choose from the commands. For example, I created an AI assistant for project management, and I could choose from these commands:

Furthermore, you need to add the tools it should use. It can get its content from any website, or you can select some specific website from which it should provide you with input.

At this point in my Taskade review, I nearly spit out my coffee. I had not seen similar features in any of the productivity tools before. The AI assistants are just too powerful.

What this means in practice is that you can create multiple agents and let them assist with different parts of your workflow. For example, one agent can help with project planning, another can generate content ideas, while another can analyze documents or summarize research.

With these capabilities, Taskade allows you to build small AI-powered systems around your projects rather than just using AI for simple prompts.

AI App Builder (Genesis)

One of the biggest recent additions to Taskade is its AI app builder called Genesis.

Instead of manually creating tasks, workflows, and dashboards, you can simply describe what you want, and Taskade generates the entire structure for you. For example, you can ask it to create a CRM system, a content marketing workflow, an SEO dashboard, a project management workspace, or even an internal knowledge base.

Within seconds, Taskade generates tasks, workflows, automations, and even AI agents that power the system.

During my testing, this was very different from traditional productivity tools. Instead of building everything step by step, you can start with an AI-generated structure and then customize it.

Of course, these AI-generated setups are not perfect and usually require some adjustments. Still, they can save a significant amount of time when creating new workflows or internal systems. If you frequently build dashboards, workflows, or project structures, this feature can noticeably speed up the whole process.

Views

You can choose from numerous view options, including list, board, table, timeline, mind map, org chart, calendar, and Gantt Chart views. My favorite one is the mind mapping feature.

Mind maps help you view the whole project from a bird’ s-eye view. You can change between the views dynamically with a click.

Chat with your docs

If you click on the “+” button, you can add files to your projects. Taskade supports almost all file formats, from PDF to JPG and MOV.

You can interact with the uploaded files if you move the mouse cursor over the uploaded attachment and click the “ask AI” tab. It allows you to ask questions about the document, summarize it, etc. So, this feature ultimately helps you digest documents faster.

Templates

Taskade offers numerous templates for task management, project management, mind maps, team management, etc. They can save you massive time, as you no longer need to start from scratch when creating a new project.

You can publish and clone apps from Taskade’s community gallery, or fork AI templates to jumpstart projects.

Collaboration tools

Taskade AI offers a shared space for teams to communicate, collaborate, and manage their projects. This app is full of collaboration features.

You can easily share your workspaces and projects with your team members. To share your whole workspace, click here and share its link or send it in an email. You can also change the permission level. So, it is possible if you want your team members only to view and not edit your content. If you want to share your project, just click on the three dots next to your project, and you will have the same options.

After you share them with your team members, you can chat with them next to every project. It is a practical solution that the chat and the project you work on are on the same page.

When you click on the chat, you can decide if you want to chat with Taskade AI & your team, only with your team, only with Taskade AI, or with one of your AI agents.

Moreover, Taskade has robust features when it comes to real-time collaboration. You can assign tasks to your team members, edit your projects together, and create a knowledge management center for your company.

Taskade’s user interface

Taskade has a user-friendly and intuitive interface with a beautiful design. Also, it has quite a short learning curve, and you can quickly learn to utilize almost all the features.

I also enjoyed the way how Taskade structures its pages and functions. Essentially, you can find almost all the features on the page you are working on. So, you can access the team chat, AI features, different views, and other projects on the same page without feeling that it is packed.

You can find Taskade among the mobile apps as well, whether you use Android or iOS.

Taskade’s integrations

During my Taskade review, I discovered that it offers a wide range of integrations. You can connect Taskade with Zapier, which allows you to integrate Taskade with more than 8000 third-party apps.

Furthermore, you can use automation with many popular apps like Gmail, Slack, Google Forms, WordPress, MailChimp, Webflow, Calendly, and more. There’s also a large gallery of 1,000+ AI-powered templates and a community gallery of cloneable apps to speed setup.

Taskade’s pricing

Taskade offers several pricing tiers depending on how extensively you want to use its AI features, automation, and collaboration tools.

Free plan

Taskade offers a generous free plan that allows you to explore the platform and test its core capabilities.

It includes one AI agent, and you can invite one teammate and organize projects into one workspace. You will get 3,000 AI credits (one-time) that allow you to make one AI-powered app.

Starter plan

The Starter plan is designed for individuals who want to use Taskade more seriously.

It will get you unlimited workspaces, premium AI models, 100+ integrations, and 10,000 AI credits that can make around 10 apps. It includes up to 3 AI agents, and you can invite up to 3 team members.

This plan is typically enough for freelancers or creators who use AI features regularly but don’t need large-scale automation.

Pro plan

The Pro plan is designed for professionals and power users who rely on Taskade daily.

It includes unlimited AI agents and workspaces, and you can invite up to 10 team members. The 50,000 AI credits that you get on this plan can make about 50 apps.

This plan is ideal for freelancers, creators, and small teams that want to automate parts of their workflow.

Business plan

The Business plan expands Taskade’s capabilities for organizations. It includes everything in the Pro plan, plus three times more AI credits and apps, unlimited team members, a custom domain, and API access.

This plan is suitable for companies that want to use Taskade as a centralized workspace for projects, documentation, and workflows.

Enterprise plan

For large organizations, Taskade offers an Enterprise plan with custom pricing.

It includes advanced security features, SSO authentication, and enterprise-level administration controls.

One more thing worth mentioning is that you can buy top-up credit packs if you run out of AI credits. This way, it is easy to scale AI usage without upgrading your entire plan.

Taskade’s pros and cons

Now, let’s check the pros and cons I explored during my Taskade review!

Taskade’s pros

Taskade’s cons

Taskade alternatives

If you are still not sure whether Taskade is the right tool for you, check these alternatives:

Compare Taskade vs alternatives

Taskade VS ClickUp

Taskade vs ClickUp

Notion VS Taskade

Notion vs Taskade

Taskade VS Coda

Taskade vs Coda

Related articles:

• Notion Vs Taskade: Side-by-Side Comparison (2026)
• Taskade Vs Coda: Side-by-Side Comparison (2026)
• Asana Vs ClickUp: This will save you $300 (2026)
• Asana Vs Notion: Avoid paying an extra $300 (2026)
• Taskade vs ClickUp | An Unfiltered Comparison (2026)

Wrap-up: Taskade review

Overall, Taskade is a fantastic tool for remote teams and people working with others. It offers a unified workspace where you can work with multiple team members in real-time.

If you are looking for lightweight project management software with outstanding AI capabilities and automation for an affordable price, I highly recommend Taskade to try.

Why you can trust our reviews

At thebusinessdive.com, our team tests, reviews, and compares hundreds of productivity apps every year — from project management tools to note-taking apps. We dive deep into real-world use cases to help you find the right tools that actually improve your workflow, not just add noise.

Our mission? No fluff, no shortcuts—just honest, hands-on insights from productivity pros.

Discover how we stay transparent, read our review methodology, and let us know about any tools we missed.

Frequently asked questions

Is Taskade a good app?

Taskade AI is a great app for managing your projects, tasks, and workflows. It is particularly an excellent choice for remote teams.

Is Taskade completely free?

Taskade has a free plan that includes basic features. The free plan is ideal for personal use or people who just want to try it.

Is Taskade better than Notion?

It depends. While Notion is a better note-taking app, Taskade has more advanced AI capabilities and project management tools. As both productivity tools constantly launch new features, I am excited to see which will have the upper hand in the future.

Is Taskade safe to use?

Taskade is a safe app to use. It deploys Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) via Google Sign-In and is further reinforced with Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) for enhanced protection. Also, they provide SAML and SCIM support for paid customers to provide even more advanced protection.

Disclosure: I only recommend products I would use myself, and all opinions expressed here are our own. This post may contain affiliate links that at no additional cost to you, I may earn a small commission. Read the full privacy policy here.

Aron Kantor

Hey there! I am Aron, the founder of Thebusinessdive. I have been testing productivity apps for almost three years now. I reach 25.000 -50.000 people monthly with the mission to help you find the perfect productivity apps. Subscribe to my YouTube channel, newsletter, and social media to hear more about the best productivity tools. Let’s dive in!

thebusinessdive.com

The post Taskade Review: I Nearly Spit Out My Coffee (2026) appeared first on .

During this time, I have also tested 20+ project management and note-taking tools, which gave me a clear perspective on where Notion truly stands—both as a note-taking app and as a flexible project management solution.

In this review, I’ll combine my personal experience with direct comparisons to other tools, so you can clearly see Notion’s strengths, weaknesses, and whether it’s the right fit for your workflow.

Let’s dive in!

Verdict

Here’s the quick verdict if you don’t want to read the full review:

Tested with our review & scoring methodology Real-world testing Unbiased evaluation

How We Test Project Management Tools (and how flexible tools like Notion are evaluated)

To keep our reviews & final score for each project management app fair and consistent, we evaluate every tool using the same testing framework based on real-world usage, feature depth, and overall value.

Our scoring breakdown after testing 20+ project management apps:

Want a detailed breakdown of how we test each category?

Learn exactly how we test tools → Review methodology

Since tools like Notion, Coda, and Taskade are not traditional project management apps, we also evaluate how well they can be adapted into project management systems, including flexibility, structure, and scalability.

Short on time? Here’s a quick overview of Notion

What is Notion?

Notion is like a Swiss army knife; you can use it for many purposes. It provides a centralized workspace where you can organize your thoughts, notes, tasks, projects, and documents in one single app. Personally, I use Notion to write scripts, track projects, and organize learning.

You can create pages for almost every purpose, such as reading lists, meeting summaries, goals, etc. Every item on a page is customizable; you can easily drag and drop items and insert pictures or videos.

It is also a great app with numerous team collaboration tools. You can invite your team members to work on pages in real-time, create and assign tasks and projects to others, and much more.

My experience after 2+ years of daily use

After using Notion daily for over two years, it has become a must-have tool for me to keep my notes and projects organized, even while constantly testing other alternatives.

While there are tools with more advanced note-taking or project management features, Notion’s flexibility and all-in-one approach make it an ideal choice for anyone who wants to avoid using separate tools for notes, projects, email, and more.

That said, it does come with a learning curve, especially compared to simpler tools. But if you invest the time, Notion can easily replace 4–5 tools and become the backbone of your entire workflow.

Why Notion didn’t score higher (and where it loses points)

Notion earned a strong overall score thanks to its excellent customization (5/5), integrations (5/5), user interface (4.5/5), and pricing (5/5). In my experience, you get this flexibility even with the free plan, which makes it powerful if you need a no-budget setup to manage notes and projects.

However, the lower scores in project & task management (4/5), automation (2.5/5), and reporting (3/5) reflect its biggest limitations. Don’t expect it to become a robust project management software; it lacks advanced automation and reporting tools, and you’ll need to invest time in setting up workflows before it becomes truly efficient.

These trade-offs, combined with limited offline and password support, are the main reasons it doesn’t score higher. While Notion is extremely versatile, it’s not the best choice if you need advanced project management or note-taking features.

Who Notion is a good fit for

Who Notion is not ideal for

Let’s take a closer look at the features to see why I reach this conclusion.

Notion’s key features

Here, I collected all the essential features I found during my Notion review.

Note-taking app

Notion is one of the most popular note-taking tools, and it is not an accident. Just to give you a background on how this app works: You can have multiple workspaces in which you structure your notes and basically everything. For example, you can have a workspace for personal or work-related items. The workspaces include your pages.

The Notion pages are the fundamentals of your workspaces. You can use them for notes, projects, tasks, and so on. There are no strict rules on how you structure your pages or what information you want to include in them.

For instance, in my Notion’s workspace, there are pages dedicated to self-development, money plans, YT scripts, admin info, and notes. Now, let’s go back to note-taking!

Notion is a sophisticated text editor that allows you to easily add and organize different types of content called blocks. When writing your notes, you can add headings, sub-pages, bullet points, and tables without touching your mouse.

In your notes, you can insert images, bookmarks, videos, code, kanban board, and more by simply hitting the “/” button on your keyboard. I especially love the embedded functions. Notion offers multiple embedded forms like YouTube videos, Google Docs, Google Maps, Miro, and more.

Notion is incredibly useful for note organization and knowledge management. You can tag notes with custom keywords, add teammates, set a due date, etc. You can access all your notes with your sidebar on the left.

Overall, Notion is a solid note-taking app, but it lacks some advanced features to connect your notes compared to some dedicated note-taking apps I tried, like Obsidian or Anytype.

Project management tool

Notion also works as a lightweight task and project management software, where you can plan and execute your projects with your team. Let’s start with the project management features.

With Notion, you can visualize your projects’ workflows in different formats, from calendars to boards. Depending on the format you choose, Notion allows you to use progress bars to show how your project is moving forward.

You can also create charts or visualize dependencies to see when one task is blocking another and avoid bottlenecks. Such data visualization options help a lot in project tracking.

When checking your projects, you can utilize filters to show only the tasks assigned to you or the urgent ones.

Notion’s task management features have everything that you need. You can break your projects into manageable tasks and add status, assignee, or due dates.

Nevertheless, if you need in-depth reporting features or automation, you’ll need to set them up yourself. For automation, you can connect Notion with third-party apps, and the reporting needs to be updated manually. Therefore, I can only give 2.5 stars for automation and 3 stars for reporting.

As for the pure project management features, I think 4 out of 5 stars is justified for Notion’s project and task management features. While it lacks a few advanced features and takes longer to set up projects manually than dedicated project management apps, it still provides the features most teams need.

Templates

Whether you want to use Notion for project or task management, you do not have to spend hours creating the proper form for you or your team. This is where you can use the templates.

Notion currently has more than 20,000 free templates from which you can browse. This is an insane number. Just to give you an example: if you want to create a to-do list, you can choose from almost a thousand templates.

Utilizing the templates, you do not have to go through the time-consuming process of creating pages to track your projects or tasks. With a few clicks, you can insert a template you like, and you just need to add the databases.

Collaboration features

You can share workspaces and pages with others. Here, you can customize access levels so others can comment, edit, view, or all of them.

Furthermore, you can create pages and publish them on the web. Once it’s done, anyone with the link can view the page’s content and see contributor names and emails.

Moreover, when managing projects, you can assign tasks to your team members, add comments, and enable simultaneous editing, mentions, and granular permissions.

Ultimately, I give 4.5/ 5 for collaboration for Notion. It’s because it offers significantly more team features than note-taking apps but a bit fewer than project management tools.

Notion AI writing assistant

Notion’s AI writing assistant is one of Notion’s AI features. It can greatly improve your writing by detecting errors and correcting misspelled words and incorrect grammar. But it can do much more.

In the bottom left corner of Notion, you can access the AI assistant feature that answers your questions, gives you summaries, translates your page, finds action items, and helps you improve your writing. Basically, it works like a built-in ChatGPT.

But it can do more than just work with text. The AI writing assistant’s feature can help you gather information from various file types, including PDFs and images.

Overall, these tools help you to become more efficient when taking notes. However, it’s worth noting that Notion AI is not included in the standard plans and requires a separate paid add-on.

For individuals or teams who heavily rely on AI for daily workflows, this can be justified, but for casual use, the additional cost may feel unnecessary.

Wikis & knowledge management

Team members often struggle to find the information they need. Using Notion, you can create your own knowledge library. These hubs can help your team members find and understand the information they need to do their jobs.

Imagine how powerful it could be when onboarding new employees or just wanting to have organized databases where your team members can access the information they need to do their jobs.

Calendar

You can connect your Google Calendar with your existing Notion workspace, so you will be able to see your meetings and appointments in your Notion calendar. Notion’s calendar is synced with your entire workspace, so you can make references to specific pages in the meeting invite.

Notion Calendar is available for iPhone and Android devices and integrates with Google Calendar and Apple iCloud, while Outlook support is still pending.

Ultimately, Notion’s integrated calendar helps you to centralize your calendar management, notes, and project management tasks in a centralized app.

AI meeting notes

Notion recently released its AI note-taker for Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet calls. Basically, it joins your calls without a bot and transcribes & summarizes them.

It is a useful AI feature for your calls, as it can turn your conversations into insights and action items in your Notion workspace.

Notion’s integrations

During my Notion review, I realized this is one of the note-taking apps with the most integrations. You can connect Notion with many other tools. First of all, you can connect it with Zapier, which will give you access to more than 8000 apps.

Besides the Zapier integration, you can integrate Notion with more than 100 other apps including Asana, ClickUp, Dropbox, Google Drive, or Jira.

Notion’s user interface

Notion’s user interface is simple. It has a minimalist design with white space, clear typography, and subtle colors as the focus. Even if you are a first-time Notion user, you will be able to quickly navigate the pages, as you will find all the important information on the sidebar.

As you can see, Notion has many features. This is the only thing that might feel overwhelming at first. Even though I have used Notion for more than 2 years, I have not fully explored its features or potential.

When working in Notion, you will quickly realize that it uses a block system that works like Lego. It transforms all the content into movable, customizable pieces, which gives you the flexibility to move these blocks around.

Notion’s pricing plans

Notion has a free plan and three paid plans.

The free plan includes a collaborative workspace, basic forms and sites, Notion Calendar and Mail. It also supports databases with subtasks, dependencies, and custom properties. Based on my experience, Notion’s free version is totally sufficient for individuals to organize their notes and projects.

The plus plan is $10 per seat per month. It has unlimited collaborative blocks, unlimited file uploads, charts, custom forms and sites, and basic integrations. The plus plan is ideal for small teams and individuals who work a lot with others.

The business plan costs $20 per seat per month. It offers features such as granular database permissions, private teamspaces, domain verification, conditional form logic, and premium integrations. Business users also get access to Notion AI features, including AI meeting notes. I recommend the business plan for bigger teams that want to utilize more advanced features.

Finally, Notion has an enterprise plan as well with custom pricing. By choosing the enterprise plan, you will receive a dedicated success manager, advanced integrations, and advanced security and control features, among other things.

Keep in mind that, while Notion AI is included in the price of Notion’s Business and Enterprise plans, there is only a trial usage on Free and Plus plans.

For users who rely heavily on documentation and structured workflows, the pricing still makes sense, especially if Notion replaces several other tools.

Notion’s pros and cons

Let’s see the pros and cons I found during my Notion review!

Pros of Notion

Cons of Notion

Notion alternatives

Here are some of the best Notion alternatives:

Compare Notion vs alternatives

See how Notion stacks up against other alternatives

Notion VS ClickUp

Notion vs ClickUp

Notion VS Monday

Notion vs Monday

Notion VS Asana

Notion vs Asana

Notion VS Coda

Notion vs Coda

Notion VS Taskade

Notion vs Taskade

Todoist VS Notion

Todoist vs Notion

Notion VS Motion

Notion vs Motion

Xtiles VS Notion

Xtiles vs Notion

Notion VS NotebookLM

Notion vs NotebookLM

Evernote VS Notion

Evernote vs Notion

Anytype VS Notion

Anytype vs Notion

Final thoughts: Notion review

Even before my Notion review, I knew that it was a fantastic note-taking app. But honestly, it is much more than “just” a note-taking app.

Related article:

• 7 Best Productivity Apps I Use In 2026 | 100+ Tools Tested
• 18 Best Slack Integrations You Are MISSING In 2026
• 15 Best AI Tools | 200+ Apps Tested By A Skeptical (2026)

One of the standout features of Notion is its versatility in organizing information. Notion users can create databases, projects, Kanban boards, and more, all within the same platform. It can effectively replace many other apps, which makes it a must-have app for my tool stack.

With its wide range of collaboration features and affordable pricing, I highly recommend Notion for teams as well.

Why you can trust our reviews

At thebusinessdive.com, our team tests, reviews, and compares hundreds of productivity apps every year — from project management tools to note-taking apps. We dive deep into real-world use cases to help you find the right tools that actually improve your workflow, not just add noise.

Our mission? No fluff, no shortcuts—just honest, hands-on insights from productivity pros.

Discover how we stay transparent, read our review methodology, and let us know about any tools we missed.

Frequently asked questions

Is Notion worth it in 2026?

In 2026, Notion is still a great tool that you can implement in multiple workflows. For example, note-taking, project and task management, generating summaries or to-do lists, or fixing spelling.

It has affordable pricing, especially if you consider how many apps it can replace for this money, whether you’re using it as part of a personal plan or within a team setup.

What is the disadvantage of Notion?

The biggest disadvantage for me is that this note-taking app has no offline mode. It would be awesome if I could reach my notes without an internet connection.

Also, you can not protect your pages with passwords. As my notes include sensitive data, I would feel safer if I could protect them with a password.

What is better than Notion?

Notion is an outstanding app for note-taking. However, if you want to try out other apps, I recommend trying Xtiles, Anytype, Evernote, Taskade, or Coda. They are all great note-taking apps and can improve your productivity.

Related article:

• Best 7 Notion Alternatives In 2026 | 100+ Personally Tested Tools
• 7 Best Note-Taking Apps For 2026 | +2 Years Personal Testing

Is Notion really free?

Notion has a generous free plan. It covers a collaborative workspace, basic forms and sites, Notion Calendar and Mail.

It also supports databases with subtasks, dependencies, and custom properties. Based on my experience, Notion’s free version is totally sufficient for individuals to organize their notes and projects.

Aron Kantor

Hey there! I am Aron, the founder of Thebusinessdive. I have been testing productivity apps for almost three years now. I reach 25.000 -50.000 people monthly with the mission to help you find the perfect productivity apps. Subscribe to my YouTube channel, newsletter, and social media to hear more about the best productivity tools. Let’s dive in!

thebusinessdive.com

The post My Honest Notion Review After Using It For +2 Years (2026) appeared first on .

Stay here, because in this brutally honest Jira review, I will share insights from 3 years of experience in testing project management software and help you decide whether this app is for you or if you should look elsewhere.

Let’s dive in!

Verdict

Here’s the quick verdict if you don’t want to read the full review:

Tested with our review & scoring methodology Real-world testing Unbiased evaluation

How We Test Project Management Tools

To keep our reviews & final score for each project management app fair and consistent, we evaluate every tool using the same testing framework based on real-world usage, feature depth, and overall value.

Our scoring breakdown after testing 20+ project management apps:

Want a detailed breakdown of how we test each category?

Learn exactly how we test tools → Review methodology

Short on time? Here’s a quick overview of Jira

What is Jira?

Jira is a project management and issue tracking tool developed by Atlassian. It was primarily designed for agile project management and is particularly effective for software and IT teams.

Jira offers agile boards (Scrum/Kanban), reporting, and customized workflows to visualize work progress and track projects.

It’s integrated with Confluence, which is a cloud-based team workspace and knowledge management tool ideal for creation, collaboration, and organization.

While this Jira review will mainly focus on the project management features, I will also cover and share my thoughts about Confluence.

My experience with Jira

Jira is a powerful and robust project and issue tracking software developed for larger businesses. Its features are mostly useful for technical teams requiring traceable workflows and in-depth reporting. For example, software development businesses, IT DevOps, or tech-heavy teams.

In terms of customization options, Jira is outstanding. You can customize workflows, issue types, custom fields, and a wide range of automations to help reduce repetitive tasks.

Nonetheless, this extensive feature set, options, and space-focused approach can be daunting and overwhelming for beginners.

Most of the teams I talk with require a simple project management app for tracking tasks and projects and collaborating. For those, Jira is an “overkill” app. The time it takes to master it simply does not make sense to them.

Based on my experience during my Jira review, it is an ideal project management app for teams above 100 users and/or those working in a tech-heavy industry.

Why Jira got a 4.3 / 5 score

Jira scored highly because of its exceptional depth in features and customization. It performed near the top across most categories compared to other project management apps we have tested.

However, it didn’t achieve a higher score for a few key reasons.

First, reporting—while solid—is not as intuitive or accessible as in some competing tools, especially for non-technical users. Extracting insights often requires more setup and familiarity with the system.

Second, and more importantly, Jira’s user experience significantly impacts usability. The platform has a steep learning curve, and its structure (like the “spaces” approach) can feel confusing at first.

Even though the interface looks clean, the sheer number of features and configuration options makes it overwhelming, especially for new users or non-technical teams.

Who Jira is a good fit for

Who Jira is not ideal for

Jira’s key features

Here, I collected the tools I tried during my Jira review.

Homepage

Jira’s dashboard provides a quick look at the recent spaces showing open queries, tasks, and ideas, depending on the type of space.

If you scroll down, you will access the outstanding tasks for today, assigned and viewed tasks, starred spaces, and boards. Unfortunately, I missed the option to customize this page with widgets, for example, showing the timeline view of one of my most urgent projects or a calendar.

Project management

If you are looking for projects in Jira, you’re not going to find them, at least in this way. Instead of projects, Jira uses spaces to better represent the workflows as flexible, ongoing work containers rather than just time-bound projects.

When creating spaces, you can choose from numerous templates for software development, marketing, finance, product management, and more. It takes 30-40 seconds, and Jira will add it to your workspace.

You can visualize project lists, boards, calendars, and timeline views. However, your space (i.e., project) can include way more views and functions, such as goals, backlog, security, etc. You can add these to the navigation panel with a click.

Inside your spaces, you can add further views to give you a picture of your project from a different angle. You have numerous options here, and if you used a template, Jira will pre-fill your space with relevant view options, and you only need to change the parameters.

Task and issue tracking

In your spaces, you can create tasks with a few clicks. But the tasks can be different work types, like a feature, an epic, or a simple task. You can customize and add work types to your workflows.

In contrast to the homepage, Jira provides many customization options here. You have full control over what the fields should include. That said, you can add labels, URLs, tracked time, and many other options.

With this feature, you can easily track issues with customizable fields, types, and workflows that match your team’s processes. It allows you to map issues through stages (e.g., To Do, In Progress, Done) and prioritize to efficiently manage issues.

When creating tasks, you only need to type the name, add an assignee, and a due date, and you are good to go. If you click on your task, you can create sub-tasks and link to other work items.

Nevertheless, there are numerous other smaller tools you can use for your tasks. You can move them, add flags, votes, clone them, add to a parent, and export.

Overall, Jira has one of the most robust task and bug tracking features I have tried so far. It not only offers many functions, but you can further customize them to design them for your workflows.

Service management

Using Jira Service Management, you can receive, track, manage, and resolve requests from your team’s customers. It allows them to share requests via email, help centers, and an embeddable widget. With this tool, you can categorize requests, issues, and changes and prioritize them in one place.

Jira Service Management enables Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) surveys to collect feedback trends upon ticket resolution.

Just a heads-up: It’s a separate Atlassian product that requires an additional fee to use it. However, Jira Service Management offers a free tier for up to three agents, allowing users to try the product at no cost.

Team collaboration features

With Jira, you can share spaces and assign tasks to your team members. When you click on the task, you can add comments, mention others, share files, and set up automatic notifications. In addition to assigning tasks to your team members, you can assign them to teams as well.

In your task, you will access the activity history and work log if your team members used time tracking. Furthermore, you can also see team members editing in real-time, with instant updates on issues to avoid duplicate work.

When it comes to the team collaboration features, we also need to cover Confluence. Scroll down, because in the next step of this Jira review, I will guide you through Confluence and what it can offer.

Confluence

Confluence works as a collaborative knowledge base and documentation hub. It lets you create, share, and organize team knowledge, documents, and meeting notes. So, essentially, it works like a Wiki for your business.

You can create folders to organize content and share them with your team members, but you can keep them private as well. Confluence allows you to add pages, whiteboards, databases, live docs, and more.

It uses a block-based text editor similar to Notion, and you can place headings, pictures, pie charts, links, and many other items in your document.

Confluence is a different product of Atlassian, so even if you use the paid version of Jira, you need to buy Confluence to use it. Nevertheless, up to 10 users can use its basic functionalities for free.

AI features

Jira has numerous built-in AI features across the platform. When clicking on a task, just hit the “Improve Task” and you can improve the description, summarize comments, and more. Furthermore, you can use natural language for searching, and Jira uses AI to find the tasks you need.

Jira also offers a feature called Rovo. It is an AI-powered assistant designed to accelerate workflows, accessing all the Atlassian tools and third-party integrations. You can use it for finding tasks, creating content, or asking for definitions of acronyms and company jargon.

Moreover, with Rovo, you can create AI agents to organize work, automate, write content, prepare OKRs, and more. Based on my experience during Jira review, I found such AI agents useful and helped to avoid switching to ChatGPT when a bit of AI assistance is needed.

Automations

Jira lets you use automations to avoid repetitive manual tasks. For this, the Jira software uses rules. Rules are automations you define in an “If This, Then That” format. Each rule has these elements:

• When: add a trigger
• If: add a condition
• For each: add a branch
• Then: add an action

You can create quite complex automations that include up to 65 components.

Ultimately, you can create powerful automations with Jira. Again, its capacity for components, plus its massive customization options, make it a robust project management app for automations.

Jira’s integrations

To further improve your experience with Jira software, you can add further apps from the marketplace. Jira has a large app marketplace that allows for extensive integrations with third-party tools. For example, you can download apps for time tracking, creating timesheets, script running, and more.

It supports 1,000 integrations, which you can access through the Atlassian Marketplace. You can filter by pricing, category, use cases, and trust signals to find the ideal apps more easily.

Jira’s user interface

During my Jira review, I discovered that it has a good-looking user interface. You can easily switch between the Atlassian apps and access your spaces fast.

Nevertheless, despite its user interface, Jira is a complex app with a very long learning curve. It’s packed with features, integrations, and customization options, which will take time to learn.

Furthermore, in contrast to other project management apps, Jira utilizes spaces, which makes it even more difficult for beginners to use this app.

Jira’s pricing

Jira has a free plan and three paid plans. If you need Jira Service Management or Confluence, you need to purchase them separately.

Jira offers a 7-day free trial for its paid plans, which can be extended to 30 days upon request.

Let’s break down the pricing plans of Jira!

Free plan

Jira’s free version includes unlimited goals, projects, tasks, and forms. Also, you will access backlog, list, board, timeline, calendar, and summary views.

Furthermore, you can use the reports and dashboards, and get 100 automations per month and 2 GB storage. You can utilize the Free plan up to 10 users, which is quite good.

To summarize, Jira has a solid free version ideal for smaller teams. However, it can be an “overkill” for small teams in the sense that this project management app is very complex and full of features. Even though it is an ideal free option, if you are looking for a simple solution, Jira is not ideal for you.

Standard plan

Jira offers a Standard plan for $9.05 per user per month with monthly billing. Besides the features in the Free version, it covers Rovo, user roles and permissions, external collaboration features, multi-region data residency, 1,700 automations per month, and 250 GB storage.

The Standard plan for Jira provides access to customer support via a ticket system during business hours.

It’s recommended for mid-sized businesses. Overall, it has decent pricing, although it would be great if it had a higher automation limit.

Premium plan

Jira’s Premium plan is $18.30 per user per month if choosing the monthly billing. It includes everything in the Standard plan, plus cross-team planning, customizable approval and onboarding, 1,000 automations per user per month, and unlimited storage. The Premium plan for Jira offers 24/7 ticket support for critical issues only.

It was developed for mid-sized and large businesses. After testing numerous project management apps, Jira’s Premium plan’s price tag is okay. However, it has some hidden costs, especially if you start integrating it with third-party apps or want to use Confluence as well.

Enterprise plan

Jira’s Enterprise plan pricing is available when you enter 801 or more users. They offer customized pricing here. Jira’s Enterprise plan includes 24/7 support for all issues.

Pros and cons I discovered during my Jira review

Let’s summarize the pros and cons I found during my Jira review!

Pros of Jira

Cons of Jira

Jira alternatives

Here are some alternatives to Jira if you think it is not right for you.

Wrap-up: Jira review

Jira is an excellent project management app if you are running software development or similar projects, and use Agile or Scrum methodology. While it provides a ton of value for software and larger teams, it’s not a good fit for most other use cases.

It is complex, has a steep learning curve, and is overkill for simple project management and collaboration.

Related posts:

• 8 Best Project Management Software in 2025 | My Honest List
• 6 Best Asana Alternatives in 2025 | 20+ Personally Tested Apps
• 5 Best Jira Alternatives | 20+ Personally Tested Apps (2025)
• 6 Best Trello Alternatives After Testing +20 Tools (2025)
• 5 Best Basecamp Alternatives in 2025 | 100+ Hours Testing

Hope I was able to help you find the best project management app for you. As always, I will update this Jira review over time so you guys have up-to-date information about this project management software.

Why you can trust our reviews

At thebusinessdive.com, our team tests, reviews, and compares hundreds of productivity apps every year — from project management tools to note-taking apps. We dive deep into real-world use cases to help you find the right tools that actually improve your workflow, not just add noise.

Our mission? No fluff, no shortcuts—just honest, hands-on insights from productivity pros.

Discover how we stay transparent, read our review methodology, and let us know about any tools we missed.

Frequently asked questions

Who is Jira’s biggest competitor?

Besides the popular project management apps like Asana, Monday, or ClickUp, which are better for more use cases, I found Nulab Backlog as one of the biggest competitors of Jira.

In addition to Nulab Backlog, Linear, and GitLab are also great choices for software teams.

Is Jira free or paid?

Jira’s free version includes unlimited goals, projects, tasks, and forms. Also, you will access backlog, list, board, timeline, calendar, and summary views.

If you have a team bigger than 10 users and want to access advanced features, you need to purchase one of the paid plans.

Is Jira still popular?

Jira was among the first project management apps developed for software development and agile teams. Currently, it has over 300,000 customers, and in 2026, it is still the most popular project management app for software development.

Why is Jira so difficult?

Jira provides an extensive feature set with high customization. Therefore, finding all the key features and mastering Jira’s functions takes a lot of time.

Aron Kantor

Hey there! I am Aron, the founder of Thebusinessdive. I have been testing productivity apps for almost three years now. I reach 25.000 -50.000 people monthly with the mission to help you find the perfect productivity apps. Subscribe to my YouTube channel, newsletter, and social media to hear more about the best productivity tools. Let’s dive in!

thebusinessdive.com

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So, I have been using Asana in the past weeks and thanks to my +2 years of personal experience and testing in the project management software space, I have a chance to put this tool into perspective.

In this Asana review, I will share the key features I tried, pricing, red flags, pros and cons, and ultimately, my and other users’ experience with this project management software.

Here is my goal: I want to give you an honest and unfiltered view of Asana so you can easily decide whether this project management software is for you or if you have other alternatives.

Let’s dive in!

Verdict

Here’s the quick verdict if you don’t want to read the full review:

Tested with our review & scoring methodology Real-world testing Unbiased evaluation

How We Test Project Management Tools

To keep our reviews & final score for each project management app fair and consistent, we evaluate every tool using the same testing framework based on real-world usage, feature depth, and overall value.

Our scoring breakdown after testing 20+ project management apps:

Want a detailed breakdown of how we test each category?

Learn exactly how we test tools → Review methodology

Short on time? Here’s a quick overview of Asana

What is Asana?

Asana is project management software that helps teams organize, track, and manage projects and workflows. It offers numerous view options for projects and tasks, and overall, it is an easy-to-use app compared to other project management software.

You can use Asana on the web and on your desktop. Furthermore, Asana has mobile apps for iOS and Android devices.

When signing in, you have the option to add extra security by using two-factor authentication. This essentially means that Asana will ask for another code besides your email address and password when you log in next time.

My experience with Asana

I loved the simplicity of working with Asana. It has a user-friendly interface and a short learning curve. While it does not have as many project management tools as other apps, it offers all the features you need, even for managing large teams.

It was great to be able to use multiple project views and easily customize them. The goals feature is also very useful, especially for teams.

However, Asana’s pricing model is unfair. There is no single-user subscription, and you will be charged for at least two seats. Based on user reports, Asana denies the refund. I took some screenshots and will share them under the pricing section of this Asana review to ensure you don’t fall for it.

Furthermore, I have read many negative reports about Asana’s customer support. Many Asana users who had issues were ghosted multiple times before finally replying and resolving the issue.

Overall, I think Asana is a solid project management tool from a product perspective. However, its pricing structure and customer experience left a really negative impression.

Why Asana didn’t score higher (and where it loses points)

Asana lost points mainly in pricing (2/5) and real-world experience (3/5).

Its pricing structure is misleading, with no true single-user option and a minimum seat requirement that can significantly increase costs.

It also scored lower in real-world experience due to consistent negative user feedback about customer support and concerns about how the company handles billing and refunds. These factors hurt trust, even though Asana performed well as a project management software.

Who Asana is a good fit for

Who Asana is not ideal for

Asana’s key features

I collected all the essential features I tried during my Asana review here.

Home Dashboard

Your home dashboard gives you a quick overview of your tasks and projects. Under the “Good morning, Aron” part, you can filter your monthly or weekly tasks.

Also, you have the option to see only the upcoming, overdue, or completed tasks for a more focused view. I enjoyed that Asana offers customization options for your dashboard.

You can drag and drop the cards, and move them around, change background color, and add widgets like notepad, Asana AI, or comments mentioning me. While you might not have infinite options to customize your home page, you can put here are the workflows you need.

On the top, you will access a search bar, which is quite useful for quickly accessing specific tasks or projects in your workspace. You can use this search bar on every page of Asana.

At the next step of this Asana review, let’s dive into its project management tools!

Project management tools

Using this project management tool, you can create projects in a few minutes. You only need to add the essential information, such as due dates or team members, to get started. Furthermore, you can accelerate the process by using the Asana intelligence (AI) tool.

When creating projects, Asana offers some templates that you can use. There are templates for marketing, IT, sales, and product teams. When using a template, you have no further to dos, just to change the example tasks and their parameters.

The heart of your project management are the project views. You can choose from numerous view options like Gantt charts, kanban boards, workflow, list, calendar views, etc.

The project overview provides you with the some essential information about the specfic projects. On the right side, you can ask Asana’s AI tool to summarize what happened on this project lately.

While other project management softwares also have AI tools, I found this helpful since you can generate a report with one click.

You can change between the project views with a click, although some view options took time to load. If you click on the “+” icon, you will access some additional view options, for example, a workload view, which is quite valuable for resource planning.

It is also worth mentioning that Asana offers a portfolio feature that provides a holistic view of all your projects in one place. You can create more portfolios and decide which projects you want to involve in each portfolio.

Now, let me show you some task management tools I tried during my Asana review.

Task management tools

No matter which project views you use, you can easily add new tasks. When you click on the task, you can edit, change due dates, assignees, and leave comments.

It is great that you can add recurring tasks in Asana. You can change the frequency of the task, and it will pop up based on your instructions.

Although this is a small thing, it saves you from constantly adding repetitive tasks.

Overall, Asana’s task management tool is quite easy to use, and you can easily track progress on your home page.

Collaboration tools

As mentioned earlier, you can add task comments, but you can also leave comments under the project view. This option is useful when you have a more general comment regarding your project rather than a task specific.

In the top right corner, you can share projects with your team members. You can also change the access level and user permissions so you can choose whether everyone inside your organization should see the project or only those who received an invite.

Among the view options, you will find the “files.” By clicking on it, you can drag and drop files to share them with your team members inside the project. If you want to attach a file only to a task, that is not a problem, you can do it inside the task.

Another exciting feature I discovered during my Asana review is the collaborators. When you assign tasks to your team members, you can also add collaborators. Collaborators can work actively on a task and track how the task is going.

Rules

Asana’s automation builder tool is called Rules. You can access this tool under the customize options inside your projects.

There are rules for automation, but you can also create custom rules. Similarly to other project management tools, it follows the “when” and “then” logic. It also great that you can use Asana AI here to help you setup your own rules.

All in all, the rules are easy to set up, and Asana AI can help a lot with this process. Now, if we are here, let’s check Asana’s AI tool more closely!

Asana AI

To access this feature, click on the AI icon at the top right corner. Essentially, this tool helps you obtain the project data or information you need and answers your questions.

Based on my experience, it works pretty fast, and it is also useful to include references from your projects.

When it comes to the outputs, I got relevant and quite good answers from Asana’s AI assistant. So, overall, I was satisfied with this feature.

Goals

You can add three types of goals in Asana. First, there are company goals that focus on your business’s mission, priorities, and objectives.

Second, there are team goals. These goals are created by different teams to support company goals and other teams’ goals. Lastly, there are my goals. These objectives focus on your performance and aims.

This tool helps you track your key objectives and gives you a fantastic overview of how your goals are connected to each other. You can connect your goals, leave comments under them, and add owners.

Honestly, this feature was one of my favorites during my Asana review.

Asana’s integrations

Asana offers many third-party integrations like Google Calendar, Microsoft Teams, and more. Furthermore, you can connect Asana with Zapier, so you can access an additional +7,000 third-party apps.

Asana’s user interface

Asana has a user-friendly interface. You can easily navigate among its features, and you can quickly find all the tools you need.

When it comes the learning curve, it is relatively short compared to many other project management tools. There are two reasons behind this.

First, Asana’s user-friendly interface helps you find all the features smoothly. Second, Asana has fewer features than some other tools, such as ClickUp.

Asana’s mobile app

Asana’s mobile apps for iOS and Android allow you to track projects and tasks from your phone. The iOS app is decent; however, I ran into some bugs, and the user interface was far from perfect.

Asana’s pricing

Let’s see what I found during my Asana review when it comes to pricing.

Personal Plan (i.e. Free Plan)

Asana’s Free Plan includes some of the most essential features like projects, tasks, activity log, storage, and comments. With the free Plan, you can access the list, board and calendar views, a few integrations for your workflow builder, and basic reporting tools.

Compared to other project management tools’ free plans, I would say Asana has a decent one, and it is ideal for personal use.

Starter Plan

Asana’s Starter plan is $10.99 per month if you choose the annual billing. It covers all the features in the Free Plan, plus a list, board, calendar, timeline, and Gantt views. Furthermore, you will access Asana’s AI tool, advanced integrations, and scaled security.

It is ideal for small teams and individuals, BUT here is the problem with Asana’s paid plans. There is no single-user subscription, and you will charged for at least two seats without clear notice from Asana.

When I read the user reports, I did not believe them first, so I also checked them for myself. And I also ran into the same issue when I tried to upgrade my Plan.

Moreover, the default setting for your Plan is for 5 seats. So, if you do not check the details, you can easily buy the Starter plan for 5 seats.

So, if you want to use Asana alone, the Starter Plan is actually $21.98 if you opt for the annual billing.

Advanced Plan

You can get Asana’s Advanced Plan for $24.99 in case of annual billing. Besides the features included in the Starter plan, you can use five project views, portfolios, goals, advanced reporting, and resource management tools. These features make Asana ideal for teams.

Asana’s pricing mechanic works same here, so you can purchase two seats at minimum for $49.98, which makes this project management tool one of the most expensive on the market.

Enterprise Plan

Lastly, Asana offers Enterprise and Enterprise + plans for larger teams and businesses. Here, they apply custom pricing.

Related post: Asana Pricing For 2026 | This Will Save You +$300

Pros and cons I discovered during my Asana review

Let’s summarize the pros and cons I found during my Asana review!

Pros of Asana

I loved Asana’s user interface and the fact that they put an emphasis on simplicity and have only the relevant tools to manage projects.

Asana’s goal tool offers a great way to connect and visualize business, teams, and personal goals in one place.

Furthermore, Asana has fantastic project view options where you can see the task dependencies, deadlines, responsible team members, and more.

Moreover, Asana supports a wide range of integrations, so you can easily connect it with other popular apps.

Lastly, Asana allows you to add recurring tasks, which I really appreciate.

Cons of Asana

Sometimes, I experienced that Asana is slow when changing between views and even freezes out.

However, there is a more significant problem: their pricing model. Asana’s pricing is misleading, and you can only realize it when you check out.

Lastly, the user reports regarding Asana’s customer support are a huge con for me.

Asana alternatives

Here are some alternatives to Asana if you think it is not right for you.

Compare Asana vs alternatives

Monday.com VS Asana

Monday vs Asana

Notion VS Asana

Notion vs Asana

Teamwork VS Asana

Teamwork vs Asana

Asana VS ClickUp

Asana vs ClickUp

Motion VS Asana

Motion vs Asana

Related article:

• 6 Best Asana Alternatives in 2026 | 20+ Personally Tested Apps

Wrap-up: Asana review

Honestly, I think Asana has the potential to become one of the best project management software if we consider its features. It would be an ideal app for project managers and even individuals to manage their personal tasks.

Nevertheless, its cons made me a no-go when it comes to project management tools. Because of these factors, I can not recommend Asana, even though I personally had a good experience with it.

Hope I was able to help you to find the best project management app for you. As always, I will update this Asana review over time, so you guys have up-to-date information about this project management software.

Why you can trust our reviews

At thebusinessdive.com, our team tests, reviews, and compares hundreds of productivity apps every year — from project management tools to note-taking apps. We dive deep into real-world use cases to help you find the right tools that actually improve your workflow, not just add noise.

Our mission? No fluff, no shortcuts—just honest, hands-on insights from productivity pros.

Discover how we stay transparent, read our review methodology, and let us know about any tools we missed.

Frequently asked questions

What are the disadvantages of Asana?

Asana has fantastic project management tools, and user-friendly interface. However, they have a misleading pricing, and non-responsive customer support team.

How good is Asana’s customer support?

During my Asana review, I also considered user reports, and many of those involved their customer support team. In a nutshell, there were only negative reports on their customer support.

What is better than Asana?

It depends on your preferences and goals. I think Coda, SmartSuite, ClickUp, Notion, and even Taskade could be a great alternative.

Is Asana really free?

Asana has a free plan. It includes some of the most essential features like projects, tasks, activity log, storage, and comments. With the free Plan, you can access the most basic features you need to manage tasks and projects.

Aron Kantor

Hey there! I am Aron, the founder of Thebusinessdive. I have been testing productivity apps for almost three years now. I reach 25.000 -50.000 people monthly with the mission to help you find the perfect productivity apps. Subscribe to my YouTube channel, newsletter, and social media to hear more about the best productivity tools. Let’s dive in!

thebusinessdive.com

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So, the overall idea sounds exciting.

But how does it actually deliver in real life?

In this Zoho Projects review, I will share my honest experience on how it fits into our business workflows, what features it offers, its pricing model, and its pros and cons.

Let’s dive in!

Verdict

Here’s the quick verdict if you don’t want to read the full review:

Tested with our review & scoring methodology Real-world testing Unbiased evaluation

How We Test Project Management Tools

To keep our reviews & final score for each project management app fair and consistent, we evaluate every tool using the same testing framework based on real-world usage, feature depth, and overall value.

Our scoring breakdown after testing 20+ project management apps:

Want a detailed breakdown of how we test each category?

Learn exactly how we test tools → Review methodology

Short on time? Here’s a quick overview of Zoho Projects

What is Zoho Projects?

To understand Zoho Projects, it helps to first look at the company behind it.

Zoho is a global software company that builds cloud-based business tools across sales, finance, customer support, marketing, analytics, and operations. Rather than offering isolated products, Zoho focuses on building a connected ecosystem where tools are designed to work together.

The company is best known for Zoho CRM, which acts as the foundation of the Zoho ecosystem. CRM plays a central role, with other tools naturally extending into areas like project delivery, billing, and customer support.

Zoho Projects is Zoho’s project management tool within this ecosystem. It is designed to help teams plan work, organize projects and milestones, track time, and create task dependencies, while staying closely connected to other business functions.

My experience with Zoho Projects

While Zoho Projects has a learning curve, especially when setting up advanced features, it is worth it in the end, as it significantly improves the overall user experience and efficiency.

One thing that helped a lot in my workflow was the Chrome extension, which kept Zoho Projects easily accessible at all times. I also found the Gmail add-on genuinely useful. Being able to turn emails into tasks with a single click made it much easier to capture work without breaking focus.

Moreover, I discovered that when reviewing Zoho projects, it is designed to be scalable and customizable to meet the unique needs of different organizations.

My biggest frustration is that Zoho Projects still does not have a native desktop app, and that it doesn’t offer extensive customization options.

Overall, Zoho Projects feels reliable and capable, especially for complex or recurring projects. While the interface is traditional and there is limited visual flexibility, it is a top project management software for structured workflows.

Why Zoho Projects got a 4.3 / 5 score

Zoho Projects outperformed numerous project management apps we have tested in terms of integrations (Zoho ecosystem), reporting depth (workload reports, time log reports, etc. ), and project and task management features.

Where Zoho Projects lost points is in the level of customization options offered (3/5). Compared to other project management software such as ClickUp or Monday, Zoho Projects offers fewer personalization options.

Who Zoho Projects is a good fit for

Who Zoho Projects is not ideal for

Key features

Now, let’s take a closer look at Zoho Projects’ key features!

Dashboard

In Zoho Projects, the dashboard lives inside the Home tab and is split into two views: Personal and Portfolio.

The Personal view focuses on individual work. It shows your tasks, phases, issues, time logs, items due today, and overdue work across all projects.

The Portfolio view provides a higher-level overview of projects. Here, you can see reports such as Project Status, Project Ownership, Project Groups, customer-related reports, and a yearly timeline summary. This view is more about understanding overall project health than managing individual tasks.

Overall, the Home dashboard feels practical and easy to work with. It does a good job of supporting both daily execution and project-level oversight.

Reports and project insights

The reports section gives you a much clearer picture of what is happening across projects, teams, and time.

You can switch between different types of reports, such as Workload Reports, Planned vs Actual, Time Log Reports, and Custom Reports, depending on what you want to analyze.

I found this structure intuitive because it mirrors how project managers usually think about work: who is overloaded, how plans compare to reality, and where time is actually going.

The workload reports are especially useful. Using Zoho Projects’ features lets you view capacity by task owner and time period, and you can switch to a heatmap view to quickly spot overloads or gaps.

Ultimately, this makes it easier to adjust assignments.

Project planning and task structure

At its core, Zoho Projects uses a clear project hierarchy built around projects, milestones, task lists, tasks, and dependencies.

Creating a new project is simple. When you add one, you can either start from scratch or choose from a wide range of ready-made project templates, depending on how much structure you want upfront.

What I really liked here is the way Zoho Projects supports this structure with a large library of premade templates.

Instead of limiting project templates to software or marketing workflows, Zoho offers templates across many different areas, including construction, manufacturing, HR, events, SEO, product launches, and even more practical use cases like wedding planning, travel planning, and vehicle inspections.

I found this surprisingly useful. These templates feel less abstract than what many PM tools offer and more grounded in real-world processes.

Each template comes with predefined tasks and phases, which makes it easy to get started quickly, while still allowing full customization. Of course, you can also create your own templates from scratch.

Compared to other project management apps like ClickUp, Asana, or Monday, Zoho Projects puts more emphasis on industry-specific and process-driven templates rather than flexible visual setups. That makes templates feel more practical, especially for teams that value structure over experimentation.

Once a project is set up this way, it also becomes much easier to automate workflows and manage timelines later on.

Automation and custom workflows

Zoho Projects provides practical customization where it counts, enough to make the tool fit your workflow. You can add custom fields, adjust task statuses, create your own views, reuse templates, and set up simple no-code automations.

On the automation side, Zoho Projects offers a dedicated set of tools for building workflows around that structure. You can create workflow rules triggered by user actions or by date and time, automate status updates, assignments, notifications, and approvals, and manage everything from a single place.

There are also additional automation options like task blueprints, email alerts, and approval flows.

If you are used to some Zoho Projects competitors, such as ClickUp or Monday, where you can redesign almost everything and build very specific setups, Zoho Projects will feel more structured and a bit less flexible.

That said, this can actually be a good thing. Zoho Projects keeps a clear and consistent structure, so you spend less time configuring and more time actually managing work.

It is easy to get started, easy to explain to new team members, and easier to keep organized over time. The trade-off is that it is not the best choice if you want highly customized layouts or very specific workflows.

Built-in time tracking and timesheets

Time tracking is not an afterthought in Zoho Projects. The platform supports timers, manual time entries, weekly timesheets, and timesheet approvals, which is a big deal if you bill clients or need clean internal reporting.

One small thing worth mentioning is that the timer is not immediately front and center. It is there and works reliably, but you may need a moment to notice it when you first start using the tool. Once you do, it works without any issues.

Zoho Projects also makes a clear distinction between billable and non-billable time, and timesheets can go through an approval flow before being finalized. This is something many teams end up solving with third-party tools in other project management platforms.

I discovered that during my Zoho Projects review, teams using other project management apps often rely on external time tracking integrations to achieve the same level of control and reporting as I had with Zoho Projects.

Gantt charts and project timelines

Zoho Projects has a solid Gantt experience that goes beyond a basic timeline view. You can work with task dependencies directly inside the Gantt chart and define how tasks relate to each other, which makes planning more realistic from the start.

What I found useful is that the Gantt view actually feels central to project planning. You can see how tasks shift when timelines change, track progress against the original plan, and quickly spot delays or bottlenecks.

Tools like Asana also support dependencies on their Timeline view, but Zoho Projects feels more oriented toward classic project planning, where tracking planned versus actual progress is part of everyday project management rather than an advanced feature.

Resource and workload management

After reading some user reports, I found that in the course of my Zoho Projects review, this is one of the most underrated features. The platform includes dedicated workload and resource utilization views that help you see who is overloaded and who still has capacity, using clear visual indicators like bars and heatmap-style reports.

What I liked here is that workload planning feels like a built-in part of the tool, not something you have to assemble yourself through dashboards or extra reports. You can quickly understand how work is distributed across the team and adjust assignments accordingly.

This feature matters most for project managers, agencies, and service teams where capacity planning is a daily concern and where knowing who can take on more work is just as important as knowing what tasks are due next.

Collaboration and team communication

Zoho Projects includes built-in collaboration features such as task comments, mentions, file attachments, activity feeds, and a dedicated Chat section for team conversations. This covers most everyday communication needs without relying on external tools.

What stood out to me during my Zoho Projects review is that collaboration is still primarily anchored to work items. While built-in chat exists as a separate space, most discussions naturally happen around tasks, phases, or issues, which makes conversations easier to follow later and keeps context intact.

Compared to chat-first platforms like ClickUp or Notion, collaboration in Zoho Projects feels more structured and work-focused. It works best for teams that prefer communication to support project execution, rather than replace task-based workflows with constant real-time chat.

Roles and user permissions

Zoho Projects supports role-based access control with clearly defined roles such as Administrator, Manager, Employee, and Contractor. These roles are tied to profiles that determine what each user can see, edit, or manage across projects.

This feature becomes especially important if you work with external collaborators, freelancers, or clients. You can give people access only to the parts of a project they actually need, without exposing internal discussions, budgets, or sensitive information.

Many lighter project management tools offer basic permission settings, but Zoho Projects takes a more business-oriented approach. It is designed for teams that need clear boundaries and accountability, not just internal collaboration.

For agencies and service teams, this level of control can make day-to-day project management much easier to maintain.

Zoho Projects user interface

The user interface in Zoho Projects feels clean and structured, with a clear focus on functionality. Navigation is consistent, and once you understand where things live, it is easy to move around.

That said, the UI is not the most modern or visually flexible on the market. Compared to tools like ClickUp or Monday, it feels more traditional and a bit conservative. I see this as a trade-off that works in Zoho’s favor if you value clarity and predictability over heavy customization or pretty design.

Zoho Projects integrations

Integrations are one of the strongest parts of Zoho Projects, especially if you are already using other Zoho tools. The platform is designed to work as part of a larger ecosystem, which makes it easier to connect project work with sales, support, finance, and internal operations.

What stood out to me is that these integrations feel built in rather than bolted on. You are not just syncing data, but actually extending workflows across tools.

For example, the integration with Zoho Books and Zoho Invoice allows users to manage project budgets and invoicing directly within Zoho Projects. Also, the integrations with Zoho’s CRM allow for automatic task creation based on customer interactions, improving project tracking.

Furthermore, Zoho Projects can connect with third-party tools like Google Drive, Microsoft Office, and Slack to streamline project management.

There are also integrations with Google and Microsoft apps for calendars, email, and documents, but the real value shows if you plan to work inside the Zoho ecosystem rather than mixing many unrelated tools.

Zoho Projects pricing plans

Zoho Projects offers one of the more flexible pricing structures in the project management space, with a usable free plan and several paid tiers that scale gradually as teams grow. In addition to the free plan, Zoho Projects also offers a 15-day free trial on paid plans.

The Free plan supports up to five users and three projects. While it supports only basic issue tracking and reporting features, and only includes 5GB of cloud storage, it is a decent option for small teams or for testing the tool long-term.

Paid plans start with Premium, at €4 per user per month when billed annually, and unlock unlimited projects, custom views and statuses, time tracking, task blueprints, and workflow automation. For many teams, this tier already covers most core project management needs.

The Enterprise and Ultimate plans are aimed at larger or more process-driven teams. These tiers add advanced permissions, higher automation limits, resource management features, portfolio-level dashboards, and enterprise-grade security options like SSO and sandbox environments.

There is also a Projects Plus option for organizations that want Zoho Projects bundled with other Zoho apps. It is a combination of four applications – Zoho Projects, Zoho Sprints, Zoho Workdrive, and Zoho Analytics.

Overall, I found Zoho Projects’ pricing fair, and the Premium and Enterprise plans seem especially an affordable solution compared to other software.

My experience with Zoho Projects

After spending time with Zoho Projects, my overall impression is that this is a genuinely serious project management tool. It is clearly built for teams that care about structure, process, and long-term project visibility.

While Zoho Projects has a learning curve, especially when setting up advanced features, it is worth it in the end, as it significantly improves the overall user experience and efficiency.

My biggest frustration is that Zoho Projects still does not have a native desktop app.

That said, there are a few solid workarounds that make daily use much more comfortable. On Microsoft Edge, you can open Zoho Projects, click the three dots in the top right corner, go to More tools, then Apps, and choose Install this site as an app.

It still runs in the background as a web app, but it gives you a proper desktop-app feel. You can do something similar in Chrome by clicking the three dots, going to Cast, save, and share, and choosing Install page as app.

Another thing that helped a lot in my workflow was the Chrome extension, which kept Zoho Projects easily accessible at all times. I also found the Gmail add-on genuinely useful. Being able to turn emails into tasks with a single click made it much easier to capture work without breaking focus.

Moreover, I discovered that when reviewing Zoho projects, it is designed to be scalable and customizable to meet the unique needs of different organizations. So, if your business grows, Zoho Projects can grow with you.

Overall, Zoho Projects feels reliable and capable, especially for complex or recurring projects. While I would still love to see a native desktop app in the future, the available workarounds make it easy to live with the web version in the meantime.

Pros and cons I found during my Zoho Projects review

Here, I show you the pros and cons I discovered throughout my Zoho Projects review.

Pros of Zoho Projects

Cons of Zoho Projects

Zoho Projects alternatives

Here are some alternatives to Zoho Projects if you think it is not right for you.

Wrap up: Zoho Projects review

Zoho Projects is a strong choice if you are looking for a serious, structured project management tool. It shines in areas like planning, automation, reporting, and resource management, and it feels especially well-suited for teams that run repeatable, process-driven projects.

The tight integration with the broader Zoho ecosystem is a major advantage if you already use Zoho tools or plan to build a connected business stack. As for the pricing aspect, Zoho Projects is affordable for small businesses, making it accessible even for cash-strapped organizations.

Related posts:

• 8 Best Project Management Software in 2025 | My Honest List
• ClickUp vs Monday: My Findings After +6 Months (2025)
• 6 Best Jira Alternatives | 25+ Personally Tested Apps (2025)
• 6 Best Trello Alternatives After Testing +20 Tools (2025)
• 5 Best Monday Alternatives in 2025 | 20+ Personally Tested Apps
• 6 Best Asana Alternatives in 2025 | 20+ Personally Tested Apps

As always, I will update this Zoho Projects review over time so you guys have the latest information on this project management software.

Why you can trust our reviews

At thebusinessdive.com, our team tests, reviews, and compares hundreds of productivity apps every year — from project management tools to note-taking apps. We dive deep into real-world use cases to help you find the right tools that actually improve your workflow, not just add noise.

Our mission? No fluff, no shortcuts—just honest, hands-on insights from productivity pros.

Discover how we stay transparent, read our review methodology, and let us know about any tools we missed.

Frequently asked questions

What are Zoho Projects?

Zoho Projects is a cloud-based project management app designed for managing projects, tasks, timelines, and teams in one place.

Zoho Projects lets project managers create a new project, assign multiple team members, manage task dependencies, track time, and monitor progress using tools like Gantt charts and reports.

It works especially well when handling multiple projects as part of the broader Zoho ecosystem.

Is Zoho Projects free?

Yes, Zoho Projects offers a free plan that supports up to five users and three projects, making it a solid free version for small teams or first-time users.

The free plan includes core features like task management, basic time tracking, and limited storage space. Paid plans unlock advanced features such as workflow rules, detailed reports, single sign-on, premium support, and higher limits, with options available on an annual or monthly basis.

Is Zoho a CRM or ERP?

Zoho is best described as a full business software ecosystem rather than just a CRM or ERP. While Zoho CRM is one of its most popular products, Zoho also offers ERP-style tools through apps like Zoho Books, Zoho Analytics, and other Zoho apps that cover finance, operations, and analytics.

That said, Zoho Projects fits into this ecosystem by connecting project work with broader business workflows.

Is Zoho Projects any good?

Zoho Projects is a strong choice for teams that need structured project management with built-in time tracking, Gantt chart views, and solid reporting.

It is especially useful for project managers and service teams that track time, manage project tasks, and rely on task status, dependencies, and timely delivery. While it may feel limited compared to highly visual tools, it offers reliable core features at competitive pricing.

Jovana Simić

Hey! I’m Jovana, a content writer who loves writing, researching, and testing new productivity apps. With a background in philosophy, I bring a thoughtful but no-bullshit approach to everything I do. Let’s connect on Linkedin!

The post Zoho Projects Review: My Honest Experience (2026) appeared first on .

After testing 20+ project management software recently, this is the first time I’ve seen this pricing model.

But I wanted to take a closer look at this project management software to see how it stacks up against the most popular competitors like Asana or ClickUp.

In this ProofHub review, I will cover the key features I tried, pricing, pros and cons, and, ultimately, my experience with this app.

Let’s dive in!

Verdict

Here’s the quick verdict if you don’t want to read the full review:

Tested with our review & scoring methodology Real-world testing Unbiased evaluation