Quiz: What is the best Monday alternative for your business?
Monday Alternative: The Best 6
Project management can become incredibly tedious without the right kind of tools. In recent times, technology and the internet have made it much easier by providing various project management software that can be used to improve project planning.
As a freelancer, project management isn't the only thing you have to do for your business; you also have to ensure proper communication between your clients, team, and stakeholder. Also, you need tools with money management features to help sort out the financial aspects of your projects.
Hence, a firm would prefer to use a Monday alternative software to carry out their projects. This project management software makes monitoring team members easy and ensures they carry out all their tasks effectively.
Besides, the best project management software allows you to handle document management, scheduling, task management, resource management, and other essential activities. Putting all these together, you can create that beautiful structure they had in mind.
Without further ado, let us dive into some of the best monday.com alternatives for freelancers and explore their features. We'll start with the one we know best--our own.
Note: Bonsai is the best alternative to monday.com. Bonsais comes with a project management tool to help you be organized and provide project oversight. From task management, to time tracking, Bonsai has it all. Try a 7-day free trial today.
1. Bonsai
Freelancing is becoming increasingly common, meaning freelancers exist in almost any field. While self-employed business owners possess various tools that aid their work, none hasn't been tailored to fit the exact needs of freelancers in the area. Well, that was until now.
When talking about excellent affordable project management tool for freelances, Bonsai easily comes to mind; It is a top task management tool with several remarkable features that make it stand out among its peers.
Architects tend to find tasks like account management tedious, especially when dealing with multiple projects at once. An application that can take care of your invoices, billing, and other essential account management tasks will relieve lots of pressure. That is where Bonsai comes in. With Bonsai, you get access to most project management features that helps you take care of all these and more.
The beautiful thing about this software is that other professional services firms can apply it in their business and achieve outstanding results equally.
Do you want to find out more about Bonsai? The following features make it an agile project management software for your business.
Create Portfolio and Forms
A portfolio helps you to organize and showcase your construction projects to potential clients. Using Bonsai, you can create a mini portfolio to display your work and accomplishments for clients. You can also link this portfolio to other platforms like LinkedIn, Dribble, and GitHub for more exposure.
In addition, you get to create a contact form that enables potential clients to reach you directly once they view your portfolio. Doing this enhances your chance of landing more gigs as a freelance architect.
Project Management Tool
With the Bonsai software, task management is simple. You could organize project tasks with day-to-day priorities and set up recurring tasks. Not to mention, your project workflow could be shared with other collaborators. Our built in project structure allows for a suitable collaboration space.
Proposal Templates
After securing a client, the next thing is to send them that killer proposal that contains all the project's requirements, pricing structure, and other essential detail. This process can be tedious, especially if you are new to it.
Thankfully, Bonsai provides you with ready-to-use templates you can use for them. There are six different templates available for this purpose.
Time Tracker
Effective time tracking aids you in monitoring the number of hours spent on each project and individual tasks. Bonsai not only helps you secure a client and create the appropriate proposal but also allows you to get the job done.
With the built-in time tracker, you can set a timer for each task you are working on. That way, you can meet deadlines, manage tasks and get jobs done faster. Time tracking projects has never been easier.
Invoice
What's stopping you from replacing messy excel spreadsheets and getting paid as when due? Bonsai's invoicing software provides the most accessible means of getting your payments on time.
It also automates the entire process by creating your invoices based on the proposal approved by the client. With this, you can worry less about creating an invoice for each of your client's work. However, you can also customize an invoice right there on the application.
The platform provides you with three different ways to get paid - via your bank account, PayPal account, or Stripe.
Coupled with this, you can enable reminders to notify clients of overdue invoices. All you need to do is customize the outgoing message.
Bonsai Tax
One of the Bonsai project planning features people love most is the "Bonsai Tax". It helps you manage your taxes and save an average of $5,600 per year on your expenses. This feature also assists you in tracking payments from bank and credit cards, identifying write-offs, and estimating quarterly taxes.
What's more, you can access this application on your PC or mobile phone. With the money management features included in this software, it's easy to manage all the technicalities that come with the financial aspect of a project. Freelancers certainly would benefit a lot by using it.
Pricing: Bonsai offers three packages:
- Basic Plan at $24/month
- Professional plan at $39/month and
- Business at $79/month
2. Wrike
Wrike is a digital project manager that helps with team collaboration and proper work management. Wrike can take care of most of your architectural projects seamlessly and allows you access to interactive Gantt charts that help track your project's progress.
Team management is much easier on this platform; Each team member gets information from a single source to eliminate the information silo. On this platform, you can easily automate routine tasks, freeing time for other essential duties and improving efficiency.
With this software, you can easily integrate other third-party applications like Salesforce, Microsoft, or Adobe to aid proper workflow. Wrike's platform has an enterprise-grade end-to-end security framework that ensures each customer's data is safely secured and encrypted.
Wrike can be accessed on the web and installed on computers like Macs and PC. Also, you can access this platform to manage projects via their mobile application, available on iOS and Android. With this, you can constantly monitor project progress on the go.
Pricing
- It offers a free trial for new users.
- The Professional package to organize tasks is available at $9.8 per month.
- The business plan package is $24.8 per month.
- It has an Enterprise plan package for up to five users or more; you may need to contact the company for the custom pricing of this particular package.
3. Teamwork
Just as its name implies, Teamwork helps for easier coordination of better teamwork, ensuring work is delivered on time and within budget. It gives team members access to project management tools that make task management much more straightforward.
As a project manager, you can easily carry out billing, invoicing, time tracking, and other mind-numbing tasks efficiently with this project management software.
Additionally, Teamwork is a handy project management software that aids real-time collaboration between clients, project managers, and team members.
Teamwork is one of the monday.com alternatives that allows you to create subtasks or task dependencies. You'll be able to break down larger projects into more bite-sized levels or tasks.
Pricing:
- The delivery package is $10 per user/month for five users.
- Grow package is $18 user/month for five users.
4. Freedcamp's Project Management Tool
Here is software well suited for freelancers and enterprises alike. Getting software that offers simpler project management tools all in one place is tedious. Freedcamp's project management features are abaible to all users at no cost.
With this application, you can do your work while collaborating with your team on the same platform. Freedcamp also has a document management feature that makes sharing files between team members easier.
You might need a more capable project management tool with this software as some advanced features. However, you can still get a lot done with this tool.
5. Kanban Project Management
Kanban is a project management system that will add some spice to any freelancer's work life. It is a cloud-based software whose many features make managing a project more manageable.
Kanban aids team spirit by offering a collaborative environment for team members to communicate seamlessly regarding each project. The software provides file sharing capabilities to aid sharing of documents, images, designs, etc. It also includes time-tracking, Gantt, an integrated Kanban board, and more.
Combining all these features, you are sure to improve your team's project management to achieve significant milestones faster.
Moreover, Kanban enables users to integrate with third-party applications such as Dropbox, Google Calendar, Google Drive, MailChimp, Microsoft, etc. Having access to these external applications in one place increases productivity rate and brings faster results.
You can access the Kanban software on Android or iOS mobile devices. This way, monitoring your architectural projects is a whole lot easier.
Pricing
- The basic features package is a free plan
- The standard team package is $5 seat/month.
- The Enterprise package price is $9 seat/month available on request.
6. Deltek Ajera
Deltek is one of the top monday.com alternatives. This software that aims to connect and automate the project lifecycle. The company was founded in 1983, specifically for accounting purposes.
However, it has since transitioned into the architecture industry with the release of the Deltek Ajera project management and accounting software for architects in 2004. It is recognized as an excellent project management tool.
It offers many features that make project management feel like a walk in the park. Users get a comprehensive overview of existing and future clients (prospects). This allows them to efficiently plan and manage the project lifecycle to optimize for a great client experience. Deltek features a proposal automation tool that aids in crafting winning, professional proposals. With this, the company can automate the proposal creation process saving time and ensuring good quality proposals.
Furthermore, it also has cost tracking and project reporting features that give managers the right kind of feedback they need. Other benefits of this software for architects include Project Snapshot and Earned Value Analysis (EVA), which are appropriate for passing relevant information to the project head. All these traditional project management features make the Deltek Ajera one of the digital tools freelancers just love for Project Management.
Usually, it takes a bit of time to master how to use this software's features. Hence, first-time users need to go through a learning curve. Discover more Deltek Ajera alternatives.
What to look out for in project management software
When checking out project management software tools suitable, there are some criteria you need to note. That way, you can make the best choice for yourself and your organization. Let us take a look at these architect software comparison criteria below:
User Friendly Interface (UI):
A software application with a poor or unattractive User Interface is a turn-off, no matter how efficient it is at aiding project planning or creating Gantt charts. Apart from creating a sense of appeal, a great UI makes navigating the platform much more effortless, increasing productivity. Therefore, firms tend to opt for software with excellent User Interfaces.
Usability
Does it do what it claims it can do? How steep is the learning curve for this particular software? When picking out a task management tool, it is essential to answer the above questions.
Using complex software will throw your team off balance. It would be best if you chose project management software that is easy to use. Also, tutorials are available to teach you and your team how to use such applications.
Software Features
This is probably the most important criteria to look out for when choosing a project management software. There are some lightweight project management tools and ones with more advanced features for long or complex projects. Look for the project management tool with the specific features that help you better perform their job.
Nonetheless, it isn't easy to find project management software with all these features in one place. Such features include:
Budgeting and Accounting
Avoiding mistakes is essential when it comes to financial management or budget management for a project. Hence, you need to employ software that can offer adequate financial planning help for any type of architectural project you handle.
Document Management
Often time during a project, there is a need for team members to share documents and other files amongst themselves. Sometimes, you need to import existing files using Dropbox or Google docs. Thus, opting for project management software that can easily send and receive files is crucial.
Collaboration
Managing projects involves ensuring the team is coordinated and in sync. Complex projects usually have multiple teams all working together. Does this software allow cooperation among team members and project managers? Are messages sent and received in real-time?
Task Management
It is essential to keep track of time when working on a project. A project management software that has time tracking capabilities is most preferred. However, without this, some firms tend to employ other time management software for this task.
Resource Management
How good is it at resource planning? Can you easily track the amount of workload each team member has? Whatever your response is, understand that effective resource planning is important; more reason you must select a project management software that meets this need.
Integrations
How good is the software working with the external application? Can you quickly send out emails or backup files on this platform? What other valuable ad-ons does this software provide?
Pricing
Sometimes, expensive does not mean quality. That's why you must check if the software's price matches the value it is offering. Always ensure that you are getting real value before paying.
Final Thoughts
That's it! we just looked through some of the other project management tools to invest in. Implementing one or more of the aforementioned excellent pm software will aid your architectural projects and ultimately set your business up for success.
While other project management software promises to streamline your business activities, you can't go wrong with the Bonsai task management app, especially if you are a solo freelancer who wants to ride the waves of freelancing. Do you want to start your journey? Start a free trial today!
