Wise Startup Blog

Starting to build your small business or Internet startup and don’t know where to start? Besides hiring a developer as your CTO, you should be looking at project management solutions to keep your business organized. I used to loathe project management suites, but lately I’ve given them a second chance as our business has grown and become more complicated and as we’ve had to rely on them for virtual communication and productivity.

Early on your business, you’re most likely still at your day job or you might be removed from your co-founders and you’re going to have to rely more and more on remote communication and virtual project management. Even for partners in the same office, often times a lot of work takes place at home, on the go and you want to have a central location to organize all of your brainstorming sessions, to-do lists, and goals and milestones.

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3 Best Free Project Managent Solutions for Startups

Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, virtual project management doesn’t take place in a 3d environment as this 90s depiction represents. Project management does, however, allow you to interact with co-founders and employees in a web-based environment where all data is shared and exchanged freely allowing you to make decisions to help your company start earning revenue.

I’ve used the majority of these project management solutions, and while I will admit there’s not “best” solution, these are some pretty great options, and the best way to find out if you’re the right fit is to take the free trials, and see if the solutions will work for you.

Basecamp

Basecamp comes from the 37signals guys notorious for providing innovative ways to communicate in virtual worlds in the most simplified way possible. Their BasecampHQ project manager is the essential of minimalism and falls just in line with the GTD (Getting Things Done) principle and gives you just the right tools to accomplish your goals in your company. They offer accounts for larger companies going up to $100/month, but they do offer a free version that I definitely suggest you check out. You can only have 1 project, but for testing purposes, this is perfect (and actually kind of addicting, too!).

In addition to the essentials, they include an email tracking system that allows you to log all email chains and conversations between clients, employees, and customers. You can also use email as a means to add and discuss content within the system. Simply reply to emails from the Basecamp system and the comment is added to Basecamp, all from your email. Personally I’ve found this to be the biggest advantage to Basecamp, seeing that I hate going on web-interfaces, I’m glad I can get my work done from my iPhone or Blackberry without having to log on.

5pmweb

This is one of the best designed, easiest to navigate project management suite I’ve seen in awhile. It blazes past the competition when it comes to flow-charting and gantt charts and has a wonderful simple, fun, interface that allows you to easily organize projects, tasks, memos, and employees.

While they are actually one of the newer project management suites on the block, 5pmweb definitely holds its own when it comes to deliver features. Just like Basecamp, they have integrated email compatibility so you don’t have to constantly log into the web interface as well as great timelines for project management, RSS integration, and a beautiful dual-pane interface that is reminiscent of dual monitors. I personally really enjoy the simplicity and ease of use of 5pmweb, and even though I’m currently using Basecamp, I am leaning hard on switching to 5pmweb due to their great feature package. They offer a free 14-day trial and then their plans begin at only $14/month (or $2.80 per user).

Goplan.info

This is actually a project management suite that I was referred to by some friends on Delicious. And upon never hearing about them I had some initial second-thoughts, but after trying out the service I was very impressed. As you can tell from the screenshots, they have a lot of similarities with Basecamp in the UI, but that’s where the similarities stop. Goplan is has the capabilities to take on the needs of an advanced project management suite with their developer API as well as ticket tracking for bugs and such.

One of the best features was the ability to talk to team members through their inline chat program. While I also thought Facebook chat would be nothing special, I find myself using Facebook chat all the time, and it’s the same with Goplan. For some reason, the ease of use and instant-nature of chat is great a project management feature. Another cool feature (coming soon) is the addition of instant messaging alerts when items change in the dashboard. Like all project management suites, Goplan emails you when there is an update to the system, and with this instant-messaging notification, the connectivity and ease of use will increase dramatically. Goplan offers free accounts for up to 2 projects and plans starting as low as $10/monht.