The Best Free Task Management Software in 2023

Trello was launched in 2011 by Joel Spolsky. The name is derived from the word “trellis” – a structure made of wood, metal, or bamboo, connecting to form interesting patterns and used to display climbing plants. A fitting choice, as Trello is equipped with numerous features that enable users to arrange their tasks and grow their business.

Pros

Trello is some of the best free software out there. Most of the features that make it exceptional are available with the $0 plan. Today, we’re going to examine them one by one.

Even if you’ve never used a task manager before, you won’t have any trouble figuring out Trello and its Kanban boards, cards, and lists. Its simple drag-and-drop system and highly informative educational material make that possible.

Trello doesn’t leave any room for confusion. A few clicks will show you exactly who’s doing what and how close they are to finishing their assignments. Managing multiple projects at the same time becomes a breeze with this free task manager at your side.

We also love how customizable the Trello cards are – you can add labels, checklists, images, and files to them. Trello Free provides an unlimited number of cards, but don’t worry about potentially misplacing them, as they can be filtered by list, label, member, and due date.

The cards can be assigned to specific team members, too. Once you’ve done so, your team can discuss the assigned task using the comments section.

Our last reason for crowning Trello as the best free project–management software is the fact that it’s ISO/IEC 27001 and PCI-DSS certified – your information is exceptionally well-guarded.

Cons

The only negative remarks we have about Trello concern the inevitable limitations of its free version.

There’s a ten-boards-per-team restriction which, in all honesty, isn’t all that bothersome, unless you tend to designate too many assignments to a single team. You might also have to brace yourself for a long wait when contacting Trello’s knowledgeable customer care team. Priority support is reserved for paying customers.

This team–management software might offer more than a hundred integrations, but free users can only use one per board. Despite Trello’s noteworthy security standards, they also won’t have access to most advanced administrator features, such as domain-restricted invites or member deactivation.

Verdict

Trello’s costless features are hard to beat. They are high in quality and many in number. Like all freeware, you won’t have access to its full capabilities, but the one integration per board is the only real downside of this amazing free work software.

More than 200,000 teams have chosen ClickUp as their go-to task software. A newcomer in the world of project planning, ClickUp was founded in 2017 and later that same year launched its namesake app with the ambitious goal of becoming the best all-in-one task-management solution on the market.

Pros

ClickUp offers a unique project-management hierarchy that starts with workspaces representing a company. Spaces are next – think of them as your organization’s departments. They are followed by folders, lists, and tasks, respectively. Folders are the only optional layer, but we recommend you use them nevertheless, as they proved very helpful during our tests.

ClickUp is a lot more than just a to-do–list app. Its multi-task toolbar lets you configure several tasks at once, with keyboard shortcuts to set up individual ones. The option to save your filtering preferences greatly helps with execution speed.

Timeline views and Gantt charts are often viewed as one and the same, so task managers often provide only one of them. However, ClickUp makes a clear distinction: Gantt charts are great for examining your projects in detail, whereas the timeline view is more suited for quick project overviews.

Since ClickUp is a free project–management app, we were pleasantly surprised to see that it also provides time tracking, automatic activity reports, and 24/7 customer support.

It uses the same level of encryption as financial institutions, plus two-factor authentication as an additional level of security.

Cons

Although we love all of ClickUp’s features, we have to admit that the sheer number of them can be intimidating for new users. Similarly, despite the ample praise it receives for its advanced customization capabilities, it can take too much time to set up this task tracker.

Integrations aren’t ClickUp’s strong suit either – there just aren’t that many to choose from. This issue is somewhat mediated with Zapier, but although it lets you connect web apps to ClickUp, Zapier is still a third-party service.

Our final remark concerns the various restrictions placed on the free version. The most noteworthy ones are the 5-spaces limit, the 100-uses cap on Gantt charts, and the one-day activity view – as opposed to the weekly or unlimited history reviews contained in ClickUp’s Unlimited, Business, and Enterprise online task–management plans.

Verdict

Depending on your skill and experience, you may need to explore ClickUp for a few minutes or hours to get the hang of it, but once you do, you’ll realize just how effective this software can be.

Amir Salihefendić started working on Todoist while he was still at university. His initial goal was to help himself deal with a full class load, numerous personal projects, and two part-time jobs. Luckily, in 2007, Salihefendić shared his superb task–tracking tool with the rest of the world.

Pros

You can install Todoist on pretty much any device, from your desktop to even your smartwatch, and you won’t need any special training to use it on any platform.

The app is streamlined to the bone: Everything is neatly and logically arranged. Clicking on the Today or Upcoming tab is the fastest way to view your tasks. They’re sorted according to your due dates, and you can add colors to tasks, or divide them into sub-tasks.

The Todoist free plan provides several premade filters and lets you set up priorities and recurring items. For simple task management, these functionalities should be more than enough.

If you could use some extra motivation, you can set daily goals and earn Karma points for completing assignments on time. Viewing your weekly progress will help you adequately distribute your workload.

You might also like to know that Todoist’s notification options are very extensive. For example, the app can inform you about uncompleted tasks, a collaborator joining a project, or send you a daily summary.

Cons

Sadly, the full potential of Todoist’s management tools is greatly diminished by the first-tier plan’s many restrictions. Relatively basic functionalities are disabled for non-premium users.

You can add just five people per project, and commenting and file uploading will be out of your reach. Todoist’s fantastic pre-created templates soften the blow of being unable to create and import/export your own.

However, even though Todoist’s integration list is modest, there doesn’t seem to be a specific app connection limit to worry about.

Todoist utilizes the latest security protocols, like all the best project–management tools that we’ve examined. Regrettably, its automatic back-up feature isn’t available to free plan subscribers.

Verdict

There are some noticeable differences between the Todoist Free and Premium plans but even so, the positives outweigh the negatives. Users that like a clean design and don’t collaborate with too many people should definitely try it.