5 Best Project Management Tools For Personal Use

Gone are the days of using a pen and paper or basic note-taking apps to manage your projects. Now, we have ample project management tools to create a smooth workflow. Whether you are a professional, small business owner, entrepreneur, freelancer, or product manager, check out the top project management solutions for personal use on your laptop.

We won’t list the full-fledged project management tools like Basecamp, Jira, Asana, Airtable, and others in that category. Those are mainly aimed at large workplaces and businesses with multiple teams. Instead, we will focus on tools that are ideal for personal use and small teams. Without further ado, let’s get started.

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5 Trello

Trello shouldn’t come as a surprise at all. It’s one of the oldest project management tools out there. Trello uses a familiar Kanban board setup, where you can create boards with columns and cards to manage your tasks and project progress efficiently.

Apart from the default Board view, Trello also supports Table, Calendar, Timeline, Dashboard, and Map view. Whether you work in HR, sales, marketing, design, or the education sector, you won’t have a hard time finding a relevant template to help you get started.

Trello’s third-party app and service integration options are where it truly shines and separates itself from other tools. You can connect popular tools like Google Drive, Slack, Salesforce, Teams, and more to automate your workflow. The company offers a feature called Power-ups, which is well named; you can move a card to the Completed column and trigger an automated-message in a Slack channel. The possibilities are endless here.

Trello offers a generous free plan with unlimited cards, up to 10 boards, Power-ups, and more. The Standard plan starts at $5 per month. Head to Trello’s official page to learn more.

Trello

4 Notion

With its innovative block-based editor, Notion has completely shaken up the productivity market. Apart from managing projects, Notion can be your all-in-one solution to track habits, write notes, manage tasks, create a social media calendar, and more.

As for managing projects, you can simply type /board to insert a standard board view. You can open any card to enter details like date, files, checkbox, URL, description, and more. Apart from the board view, Notion also supports a table, timeline, calendar, list, and gallery view to glance over your project progress.

Notion has a rich templates gallery to kick off your project in no time. You won’t have a hard time finding a relevant project management template. Other features include support for third-party apps, real-time collaboration, the ability to publish your Notion pages, synced blocks, and more. Check our separate post to learn about the top Notion features.

Notion’s free plan should be good enough for personal use. You can upgrade to Notion Plus plan to unlock unlimited blocks, file uploads, and more.

Notion

3 Todoist

Before you dismiss Todoist as a task management app, hear us out. While it shines at managing your tasks, Todoist offers handy project management tools, too.

Todoist supports list, calendar, and board view to help you easily plan and track your projects. You can open every card to add more details like descriptions, sub-tasks, and more. You can also explore the default templates library to start with a ready-to-use setup.

Other Todoist features remain rock solid. It offers smart tasks, live stats, labels, priorities, and native apps and add-ons on all the major platforms and email providers. The free plan is limited to five personal projects only. To unlock more projects and other features, upgrade to Todoist Pro for $5 per month.

Todoist

2 Coda

Like Notion, Coda can replace several apps in your workflow. You can create different workspaces for specific purposes and create docs to get started. There are several project management tools that can help you draft a document in no time.

Coda shows neat live project stats at the top. You can also track project timeline, tasks status, and more on a single page. It’s a much better approach than other tools where you can see only a single project view at a time.

Like Trello’s Power-ups, Coda also offers Packs to connect it with other productivity tools like Gmail, Slack, Google Calendar, and more. The free plan lets you create unlimited docs, Kanban boards, and access to other features. The subscription starts at $12 per month to unlock AI features, Pro packs, 30-day version history, and more.

Coda

1 Microsoft Loop

Microsoft Loop is the newest entrant in the productivity space. While it was basic at launch, Microsoft has been surprisingly quick at adding new features to Loop. It uses a block-based editor with slash (/) commands to edit your text, insert templates, and explore other features.

Loop is quite different from other Microsoft 365 apps. It may take some time to get used to. You can simply type /board and insert a Kanban board to your Loop page. It also supports a table view. You can enter column properties like text, number, date, person, vote, label, and more to create the perfect project board to get started.

Loop has a healthy number of templates for you to use as a base. It also has tight integration with other Microsoft 365 apps. Check our separate guide to learn the top tricks for Microsoft Loop.

Boost your productivity

Let’s sum up the list quickly. Trello is purely project management software with tried-and-tested Kanban boards. Notion, Coda, and Loop are all-in-one solutions that go way beyond project management. Todoist is primarily a to-do app with Kanban boards to track your projects in real-time. Pick any tool for your upcoming project, and you won’t be disappointed.

If you want to explore more tools to elevate your productivity, read our dedicated guide to learn more.