Top 13 Project Management Tools for Agencies and Creatives
There is no hard and fast set of rules regarding creative work, project management in a digital agency can be more complicated and may demand more sudden shifts in project plans.
This may be due to the customer’s changing preferences or consistently changing marketing trends.
For this reason, they require project management tools for agencies that can work efficiently and cater to the unpredictable modifications in workflows.
Unlike other industries, the digital marketing arena demands to stay constantly updated with today’s rapidly changing marketing requirements.
It requires in-depth planning, forecasting marketing trends, on-the-spot decisions and consistently monitoring customer preferences and marketing trends.
From UI/UX design to display ads to an effective content marketing strategy, creative and digital agencies cater to a comprehensive range of requirements to keep an organization’s product in the limelight.
Due to its versatile range of work processes, it requires equally versatile personnel and tools to be able to pull off its projects.
Here is a list of top project management tools for agencies that can be adopted today to make their work more streamlined and teams more aligned.
The Top 13 Project Management Tools for Agencies
1. UDN Task Manager
Primarily a project management tool designed and built for teams of all sizes and industries, UDN Task Manager comprises a wide range of features that allow for structuring projects and streamlining workflows.
UDN Task Manager is an ideal project management tool for digital agencies as through UDN Task Manager , you can easily manage your marketing projects through a variety of features including team-specific workspaces and multiple options for task and project assignment.
Some of the features and modules of UDN Task Manager include:
According to Michelle , an avid user of UDN Task Manager , it is a task/project management tool that encompasses features that may not be found in other similar task management tools.
She states it to be great for freelancers and small teams, especially agencies that need to keep track of time per project or client and want one unified interface for it. It is also a great tool for prioritizing and progress tracking.
According to Socialnomics, UDN Task Manager is the #1 choice for task management software users online. This is why we’re #1 on their list of the best task management tools .
2. Podio
Podio by Citrix is another popular project management tool with organizations. It offers a complete collaboration solution by combining the features of e-mail and chat service. It also offers a server for sharing documents and information and facilitating project delivery. Some of the features this tool incorporates, include:
Loren Baker is the co-founder of Foundation Digital. Baker is all praise for Podio when she words it as an amazing, all-in-one solution for project management. She adds that due to its app-based structure, teams can customize its application set for specific types of deliverable-based project management and reporting.
Secondly, she states that her team of 50 plus members can manage an entire project from start to end with internal agency discussion and auto-tasking. The project can evolve to be client facing for reviewing drafts and content as well as reporting.
3. Asana
Asana is another comprehensive project management tool that can be used by multiple teams from marketing to HR to creatives and designers.
It allows managing projects efficiently while allowing easy project management and encourages team collaboration to achieve results faster.
You can create tasks and projects and assign teams. Asana comes with some of the following salient features:
Katie Jansen is the VP of Marketing at AppLovin. Jansen has claimed Asana as a favorite. Some of the features she mentions for Asana include easy usage across different departments, easy to start a project, set sub-tasks, and manage deadlines and project reassignment to another team with the complete history.
4. G-Suite
Google is not just a search engine anymore. Instead, with the numerous tools and services it provides, it can prove to be an optimum project management tool for agencies.
From hosting your website to advertising to content management, the G-Suite can help agencies with the complete marketing cycle. Here are some of the services and how creative and digital agencies can make the best of them:
Kristopher Jones is the founder of LSEO.com . According to Jones, his team coordinates a lot using Google Spreadsheets for link-building campaigns and content marketing calendars.
At times they even incorporate Google analytics and campaign data directly into Spreadsheets.
They also utilize Google Docs to collaborate and through Google Calendar and Gmail, they arrange meetings and external communication.
5. SmartDraw
SmartDraw is a complete design tool for creating diagrams, templates, tools, and symbols. You can use SmartDraw to make flowcharts and organizational charts, engineering and network diagrams, application and site mock-ups, wireframes and a lot more.
Since SmartDraw facilitates the drawing process through automation, so you can add shapes and make modifications through realignment on the fly.
Some of the features of SmartDraw are:
Neil Myers is the founder and president of Connect Marketing. Myers states having used dozens of project management tools for agencies.
The simple tools cannot handle complex projects and the more powerful and sophisticated tools are difficult to operate. With SmartDraw, Myers finds the necessary balance in the form of a simple application that can cater to complex projects as well.
6. InVision
An InVision is a tool that caters to design and development. On a single platform, teams can create high-fidelity web and mobile prototypes, manage projects as well as collaborate with each other in real-time.
It allows teams to prototype, review, refine and test web and mobile products without additional effort of coding. Some of the features you can find in this project management tool include:
Chapin Herman is the co-founder of Herman-Scheer. While discussing a transition to InVision from another tool, Herman explained the need for collaboration between their design team as well as sharing work with customers.
He further added that InVision facilitates his team by taking the typical wireframing process further with their prototyping capabilities.
This helps them to link and click between multiple pages as done on a live site.
7. Breeze
Breeze is one of the simplest project management tools for agencies available in the market. Breeze offers a complete set of features for agencies to timely track and monitors their project performance.
Furthermore, it helps agencies to design and execute their creative strategies perfectly by using the right mix of features it comes with. Core project management features include:
Breeze claims to be trusted by over 5000 customers in 100+ countries, with some big names to add to its portfolio, like Disney and Skyscanner. To date, more than 100,000 projects 2,000,000+ tasks have been organized using Breeze.
8. Airtable
The next project management tool for agencies making to our list is Airtable. An intuitive platform designed for a range of professionals, which supports flexible collaboration for all kinds of creative projects.
The tool focuses primarily on data organization by providing built-in reusable templates for each particular type of project.
The key project management features are:
Melissa Grey, the recruitment director at Huge states that Airtable has helped them to designate the right projects to their staff by providing an accurate snapshot of all the teams.
Furthermore, Rachel Cone-Gorham, Executive Director for Digital & Social Marketing at Penguin Random House says that from an organizational standpoint, they use Airtable for everything.
9. Brightpod
Brightpod is a web-based project management tool specifically designed and developed for digital and creative marketing teams. In Brightpod, projects are called ‘pods’ and there are visual color indicators to identify the status of each project.
The software comes with numerous project management features, some of which are:
Brightpod helped Pamela Hilliard, CEO of Writing It Right For You, increase the productivity of her team by keeping everyone on the same page, all the while making project management easy and fun.
On the other hand, Harshil Karia from FoxyMoron, a creative digital agency, thinks that Brightpod’s slick interface and marketing workflows are a game-changer.
10. Workamajig
The next tool in our list of project management tools for agencies is Workamajig. A cloud-based project management tool that provides task management solutions to all types of creative teams and agencies regardless of their size.
Following features enable smooth task management with Workamajig:
Aidan Bennett, Founder & MD at Benefitz states that Workamajig is very easy to use and provides a cost-effective solution in terms of the monthly fee per user.
11. Mavenlink
The 11 tool on our list is Mavenlink. Primarily designed for professionals and teams to collaborate on large-scale projects, Mavenlink provides a comprehensive solution for agency management and serves as a single platform for all kinds of collaboration needs.
You can utilize the following features of this tool:
Mavenlink professes that they’ve facilitated 7 billion views a month on Buzzfeed’s content. Apart from that, Judd Mercer, Creative Director at Elevated Third, says that with Mavenlink they’re able to make educated decisions about building an efficient future.
12. Workfront
The last tool in our list of project management tools for agencies is Workfront. Workfront is an advanced project management tool that helps agencies to manage, prioritize, and track their projects in an adept manner.
It offers a centralized place for teams to view and manage all kinds of projects, whether big or small. The tool comes with:
Brady Robinder, Manager- XOC Tools and Integration at Comcast labels Workfront as a provider of different methods for XOC teams to deliver promises to their front-line team members for restoring and delivering new services to their Xfinity customers.
13. Teamwork
Teamwork was actually created by 2 guys who were running a digital agency. They grew tired of the limited options out there when it came to finding an effective project management solution, so they decided to create their own.
Because of this, Teamwork is still very agency focused and has some great features for agencies including:
Teamwork is trusted by over 6,000 agencies around the world. Jay Bauer the founder of the agency Convince & Convert said that Teamwork totally changed how their business worked and that he can’t figure out how they got by without it.
This is our take on top project management tools for agencies. Which tool would you recommend as a project management tool for agencies? Let us know in the comments below.
