Teamwork.com

Whiteboards are great but even the developers of TeamWork Projects (formerly TeamworkPM) were tired of trying to make them do the work of a real project management system. That's how I came across TeamWork Projects 8 years ago -- tossing aside the whiteboards and comparing online project management applications. TeamWork ultimately rose to the top because it either includes features I felt were must-haves or they had those features on the roadmap to deal with in the near future.

TeamWork has task-level time-tracking and incorporates a desktop timer that I use on both my Windows and Linux versions computers.

TeamWork was one of the few online project management applications that incorporated a file manager early on AND had the foresight to include it in the permissions system (important so all stakeholders have access to the files they need). I've used it for mock-ups, contract change-orders, and project photos.

There is a project notebook system that is far superior to a so-called project wiki found in other project managers. I use it to keep notes, format them to look like real documents (not just a bunch of text notes), and export out in a format that is useful to project owners and clients.

This was important enough that it would have been a dealbreaker if it wasn't included: the means to allow stakeholders (especially clients) to log in to see progress on their projects, participate in project-specific discussions, and access project-related files.

TeamWork's free tier is less generous than some of the other highly rated project management apps.

Keeping up with the times, they've lately added a Kanban view (but it costs extra). But why the boards view is an add-on instead of integrated into the main projects beats me and makes me call this a welcome feature that is also a CON.

Although TeamView has native integrations for GMail, HubSpot, and Harvest, I think it relies too much on its (well-developed and well-documented API) for integrations with the majority of the world of business applications. Of course, there are hundreds of Zapier workarounds. Still, I think TeamWork is strong enough to have better integration and less cobbled recipes.

Tracking tasks on projects are top of the line with this software. Reporting and additional features are constantly improving but much better than Microsoft Projects or Smartsheet.

Reporting features and Gantt charts/tasks both showing at the same time can use improving.

I like the fact that each project has so many ways to add information to each account. There is an overview tab where you can see the overall health of the project from one screen, and tabs where you can add Tasks, Milestones, Messages, Files, Notes, Links and even Comments for each project in the system.

It takes a very long time to get everything setup. There is so much to learn about the setup of the product and the free trial is not long enough to set up everything correctly from start to finish.