The 9 Best Marketing Project Management Software of 2024

Customizable Marketing Templates — monday offers a range of pre-built templates, including content calendars, marketing campaigns, and social media schedules, so that you can start tracking your marketing projects with minimal set-up time.

Visual Workflows — monday.com’s visual project management style lends itself well to the flexible nature of marketing, from ideation to execution, to analysis. You can choose to view your projects on a Kanban board, timeline, or calendar and use color coding to clearly define completed and outstanding tasks.

Campaign Performance Tracking — In addition to helping you plan and schedule campaigns, you can set KPIs and track performance after your campaigns have been sent out to spot opportunities for improvement.

In addition to its free plan, monday offers four paid pricing tiers to accommodate various business sizes. Below, I’ve outlined the cost of each plan:

• Free — Ideal for individuals looking for a way to track projects, with up to 3 boards, unlimited documents, 200+ templates, 8 column types, and mobile apps.
• Basic — Great for managing small teams, with unlimited free viewers and items, 5GB cloud storage, and one dashboard.
• Standard — Introduces 250 automations and integration actions per month to help optimize your workflows across your team.
• Pro — This plan introduces 25k automation and integration actions per month, more dashboards, time tracking, and formula columns. It’s the same price as Smartsheet Business, which offers unlimited automations, and dashboards, so it’s arguably better value for money.
• Enterprise — For the largest businesses, monday.com’s Enterprise plan is a highly scalable solution with tighter security, advanced reporting and analytics, tailored onboarding, and higher limits for automations, integrations, and dashboards.

monday.com is ideal for busy, time-strapped teams who want a plug-and-play system to ensure minimal time is lost due to onboarding and set up. It also offers a variety of features and an easy-to-use interface, which is a favorite of its users.

If you’re looking for a cheap way to track time, monday.com may not the most suitable choice since time tracking is only available from its Pro plan at $19 per user, per month. I’d recommend Zoho Projects or ClickUp for low-cost time tracking.

Built-In Proofing and Approval — Wrike’s proofing tool allows you to easily review, annotate, and approve creative assets directly within the interface platform.

Campaign Planning Templates — Like monday.com, Wrike offers a range of pre-designed templates for swiftly planning and executing your campaigns.

Real-Time Collaboration — It’s important to keep all relevant stakeholders updated, and Wrike makes this easy with real-time updates and visual progress tracking.

In addition to its free plan, Wrike offers four paid pricing tiers to accommodate various business sizes. Below, I’ve outlined the cost of each plan:

• Free — Wrike’s free plan offers the basics for teams getting started with project and task management. It offers board and table views, but task limitations may hinder you.
• Team — This plan accommodates 2-25 users and grants you unlimited projects, tasks, custom fields, and request forms. You’ll get 50 automations per month, a wider range of views, and access to generative AI features.
• Business — For larger teams of up to 200, the Business plan introduces a folder structure for better organization. You’ll also get 200 automations per month, resource and workload management, reports, and time tracking.
• Enterprise — This plan allows unlimited users, 1,000 automations per month, and increased security measures for larger enterprises to maintain peace of mind over data security.
• Pinnacle — This plan offers everything in the Enterprise plan, and includes tighter security, performance dashboards, budgeting and billable hours, and 1,500 automations per month for the most sophisticated project management experience.

Due to its proficiency with proofing, Wrike is the perfect tool for creative content development. Marketing teams can use it to review and approve visual assets, ads, or copy before they are published.

All businesses should check that materials like social media posts, email newsletters, and promotional designs meet their quality standards but centralizing proofing becomes even more vital in larger businesses, where managing multiple ongoing projects can become confusing.

One area where Wrike could improve is by offering a higher capacity for external guest access. While its Team plan currently includes 20 free guests, Smartsheet offers unlimited guest access, which is useful for large projects involving multiple stakeholders.

Spreadsheet-Based Campaign Tracking — You can plan, organize, and track your marketing campaigns with Smartsheet’s familiar spreadsheet layout. This makes complex campaign management slightly less overwhelming.

Marketing Workflow Automations — You can set up to 250 automations for only $9 per user, per month with Smartsheet’s basic plan. With the Business plan, you can enjoy unlimited automations. This allows you to automate repetitive tasks such as content approvals, making your workflows more efficient and freeing up time for more creative work.

Dashboards and Reports — You’ll get unlimited customizable dashboards and reports that allow you and your teams to track the performance of your campaigns in a clear, data-driven layout.

Smartsheet offers three paid pricing tiers to accommodate various business sizes. Below, I’ve outlined the cost of each plan:

• Pro — Smartsheet’s entry-level plan offers unlimited free viewers, so you’ll only pay for your employees. It offers a range of views, unlimited sheets, forms, and reports, and 250 automations per month.
• Business — This plan offers unlimited free guests, so it’s ideal for projects with lots of external stakeholders. It also introduces a timeline view and workload tracking. It’s the same pricing as monday’s Pro plan, except this one offers unlimited automations, while monday offers 25k per month.
• Enterprise — The Enterprise plan offers enterprise-grade security measures, AI formulas, texts, charts, and additional insights for a more data-driven project management experience.

In essence, Smartsheet is ideal for spreadsheet lovers. If you’re accustomed to working this way and are hesitant to change your established methods, Smartsheet can provide an experience akin to ‘Microsoft Excel but better’.

It features automated workflows, unlimited reporting, and an unlimited number of free viewers, helping maintain shared visibility across your entire project.

However, it does not have a time-tracking feature, so it may not be the best option for freelancers who need to track billable hours for invoicing. If this is a feature you need, I’d recommend looking into ClickUp or Zoho Projects for an affordable time-tracking tool.

Advanced Automation — You can choose from various preset automations to streamline regular marketing tasks. These automations can help with transferring completed tasks to different boards, sending deadline reminders, or automatically updating statuses. If you want to set up custom automations but are unsure how, you can use the AI automation builder to generate them for you.

Agile Project Management — ClickUp is excellent for teams working in an Agile style as it provides dedicated sprint management, Kanban boards, and Agile reporting to support the specific Agile process.

Native Time Tracking — It is one of the only budget-friendly project management tools I reviewed that offers time tracking, which is ideal for tracking billable hours.

In addition to its free plan, ClickUp offers three paid pricing tiers to accommodate various business sizes. Below, I’ve outlined the cost of each plan:

• Free — Best for personal use only, ClickUp’s free forever plan offers 100MB storage, unlimited tasks, unlimited free plan members, and a range of views to help you better track and manage your projects.
• Unlimited — This plan is ideal for small teams, offering unlimited storage, integrations, dashboards, Gantt charts, custom fields, agile reporting, and even time tracking. Alongside Zoho, this is one of the cheapest plans to offer time tracking.
• Business — With more advanced automations, time tracking, and dashboard features, this plan is better-suited to mid-sized teams with more complicated project management demands, plus it’s AI-compatible.
• Enterprise — For the most complex projects and large teams, ClickUp’s custom pricing Enterprise model offers advanced permissions, API access, additional data security and compliance measures, and a dedicated customer support agent.

With its generous range of automations and time-tracking capabilities, ClickUp can be an ideal project management solution for time-strapped freelancers working on marketing projects for external clients.

You can stretch your working hours by automating repetitive tasks and ensure you’re paid correctly by tracking your hours. Its entry-level plan is only $7 per month, and it also offers a free plan if you’re willing to forgo the time tracking.

While ClickUp is highly flexible and customizable, this can mean that the system has the potential to become over-complicated compared to a more ‘out of the box’ solution, like monday.com with its various templates.

Integrated Time Tracking for Campaigns — Teamwork stands out for its time tracking features, which include personal and company timesheets, billable hours, workload management, and timesheet approvals. This makes it one of the best tools for managing time spent on marketing campaigns.

Budgeting and Billing — If you’re a marketing agency with external clients, Teamwork is great for tracking project expenses, budgeting, and invoicing clients directly from within the platform.

Client Collaboration — You can seamlessly communicate with your teams and clients with real-time chat, a Google Calendar integration, and feedback and approval tools.

Teamwork offers four paid pricing tiers to accommodate various business sizes. Below, I’ve outlined the cost of each plan:

• Deliver — Teamwork’s Deliver plan provides you with automations, forms, project status reports, and team management to assist with a more robust project management system.
• Grow — The Grow plan introduces workload and capacity management to better analyze the share of work across your team. It also offers advanced budgeting and reporting tools.
• Scale — For more complex projects, the Scale plan offers unlimited retainer management and custom reports. It also assists you with resource allocation and scheduling.
• Enterprise — For larger enterprise project management, Teamwork can help you with premium consulting and support, advanced security measures, and dedicated project management infrastructure.

With its attention to time management, Teamwork is best for those working to fixed deadlines with multiple ongoing projects. Its integration of billable time tracking, timesheets, workload management, and invoicing also makes it a suitable tool for marketing agencies or freelancers working with external clients.

It’s a shame there is no free forever plan, as this would be even more appealing for solo marketers. However, for what it offers, the Deliver plan is great value for money at $10.99 per month.

Collaboration Features — Zoho’s real-time chat, forums, and file sharing support collaboration across your marketing team, external stakeholders, and clients. When everyone is aligned, mistakes can be minimized, helping to deliver projects on time.

Task Dependencies — If there are elements of your project that must be completed before other tasks can begin, you can program this in Zoho with dependencies to ensure that each step is in the correct order.

Customizable Workflows — Zoho can be tailored to your specific processes with custom task statuses, notifications, and permissions. This  means the platform will be super easy to use for all your colleagues.

In addition to its free plan, Zoho Projects offers two paid pricing tiers to accommodate various business sizes. Below, I’ve outlined the cost of each plan:

• Free — Zoho’s free plan is ideal for individuals just getting started with project management. It allows you to manage two concurrent projects with subtasks and 5GB of storage space.
• Premium — For just $4 per user, per month, you can manage unlimited projects, and use project templates, time tracking, and project blueprints. Alongside ClickUp, this is one of the cheapest plans to offer time tracking.
• Enterprise — Zoho’s Enterprise plan allows you to invite read-only users to your projects and add custom fields, statuses, roles, and profiles. It maximizes security with SSO and two-factor authentication.

If you’re in need of an inexpensive and user-friendly platform to keep your team connected, Zoho might be the perfect fit for you. It is one of the most cost-effective project management tools available, making it an ideal choice for small businesses and freelancers.

Additionally, it provides the most budget-friendly time-tracking solution, ensuring that freelancers can accurately record their hours for invoicing.

However, while Zoho does offer an Enterprise plan, it lacks some scalability and customization options. As a long-term solution, it may not be well-suited for larger businesses. For larger businesses, I would recommend considering monday.com.

Visual Kanban Boards — Kanban boards are an ideal project management format for marketing teams to visualize campaign progress. Each card represents a task and can be customized with due dates, comments, and attachments.

Power-Ups — Trello’s ‘Power-Ups’ are essentially integrations with tools like Google Drive, Slack, and Dropbox, which allow you to seamlessly access and attach visual marketing assets for approval and delivery within Trello’s interface.

Unlimited Boards and Storage — The base plan offers unlimited boards, meaning you can track as many projects as you wish for just $5 per user, per month.

In addition to its free plan, Trello offers three paid pricing tiers to accommodate various business sizes. Below, I’ve outlined the cost of each plan.

• Free — For individuals or small teams, Trello’s free plan allows unlimited cards and up to 10 boards. You’ll also get unlimited storage, a mobile app, and two-factor authentication.
• Standard — You’ll get access to unlimited boards, advanced checklists, custom fields, and guest access, which is great for mid-sized businesses.
• Premium — The Premium plan offers extra views, AI features, admin and security features, and data export.
• Enterprise — For the most complex projects and tighter security, the Enterprise plan offers unlimited workspaces, user permissions, guest permissions, and free SSO.

Trello is known for its board-style project management, and it’s especially great for small teams. Even on the free plan, you get access to 200+ integrations.

In contrast, platforms like monday.com require you to pay $12 per user, per month for basic integrations. Trello’s unlimited boards and storage also offer excellent value for those on a budget.

However, Trello isn’t ideal for large teams like Zoho Projects. You won’t find features such as time tracking, extensive reports, or AI functions, as you would with Monday or Wrike.

Databases — Notion is ideal for building wikis, a written database containing important company information such as employee policies and company guidelines thanks to its customizable nature.

Shared Templates — You can access and add to the Notion marketplace with 10,000+ ready-made templates available. Over 1,000 of these are marketing templates, including content calendars, product launch plans, product launch trackers, social media trackers, and campaign calendars.

Customizable Blocks — A block can be text, images, tables, board views, calendar views, links, or codes. This essentially means you can design your marketing campaign from scratch and build any template you like.

In addition to its free plan, Notion offers three paid pricing tiers to accommodate various business sizes. Below, I’ve outlined the cost of each plan:

• Free — Notion’s free version offers a collaborative workspace that integrates with Slack and GitHub. You’ll also get basic analytics and be able to invite up to 10 guests.
• Plus — With the Plus plan, you can access unlimited blocks and file uploads, invite up to 100 guests, sync data with third-party apps, program custom automations, and use charts and dashboards.
• Business — When security matters, Notion’s Business plan allows you to add SAML SSO and create private spaces. You can also benefit from advanced analytics and invite up to 250 guests.
• Enterprise — For even more advanced security, the Enterprise plan may be a better fit. It also provides you with an audit log, unlimited page history, and a dedicated customer success manager.

Important to note: Notion AI is not included in these pricing plans and costs an additional $8-10 per month.

Notion is an excellent choice if you prefer to manage your marketing campaigns independently and create custom templates. It also provides a high level of flexibility and creativity, allowing you to fully customize your software to fit your team’s workflow.

However, it is not as user-friendly as monday.com or ClickUp, and it requires some time to set up to unlock its full potential. Therefore, I wouldn’t recommend it to those looking for a quick solution.

Hill Charts — Basecamp’s “Hill Charts” provide a unique visual method for tracking project progress over time. The process consists of two phases: “figuring it out” and “making it happen”. Each task progresses along the hill until it’s finished, helping gain a clearer understanding of the project’s status.

Client Access — Basecamp grants your clients access to your project space, but lets you remain in control of what they see. It also keeps a paper trail of the feedback process, minimizing the chance of disputes regarding what was said later down the line.

File and Document Sharing — With 500GB-10TB storage, you can efficiently manage marketing visual assets, proposals, and other important documents in one place.

What’s new? As of 2024, Basecamp introduced native time tracking and timesheets, making it easier to track your billable hours.

Basecamp offers two paid pricing tiers to accommodate various business sizes. Below, I’ve outlined the cost of each plan:

• Basecamp — Basecamp’s standard version is ideal for small teams, freelancers, and startups. It offers all the features available with 500GB storage and works on a pay-as-you-go monthly basis. So there’s no long-term commitment, and you can invite guests for free.
• Basecamp Pro Unlimited — For growing businesses and larger companies, the Pro Unlimited version of Basecamp offers all the same features except with additional file storage (5TB), priority support, 1:1 onboarding, time tracking, greater control over access permissions, and annual billing for simplified accounting.

Basecamp is ideal for teams working with the Agile methodology. Its visualized charts help teams reflect on and improve completed sprints.

I like its straightforward pricing, but the flat fee of $299 per month might be expensive compared to other enterprise solutions, depending on your team size. However, as it’s unlimited, the larger your team, the more cost-effective it becomes, and vice versa.