Best Zoho Projects Alternatives (11 Free & Paid Competitors)

Gather round for the ultimate list of the best Zoho Projects alternatives. 

These Zoho project competitors will be pitted one at a time against Zoho to talk about things like features, niche, and pricing. This list of the best alternatives will also mention whenever there is an amazing free version of a PM solution. 

And so begins the task and project management app showdown. 

Top 10 Zoho Projects competitors with similar products

Here are the software tools like Zoho Projects that we think are the best Zoho Projects alternatives. Although they are all fairly similar, some Zoho Projects competitors will be better suited to your circumstances than others so read more about the Zoho Projects competition below.

Surely by now you are well versed in project planning and task management, but if not, you should know a thing or two about what a project management app can do for your business needs. 

Remember, some tools will do it all, while in other cases you can link up a bunch of separate apps with integrations or using a software’s API.

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Here’s our full list of the best Zoho Projects alternatives 2022:

Well if you’re looking for the best Zoho Projects alternatives, you’ve landed on the right page. You’re about to get into this amazing list of not 10, but 11 project management and team collaboration applications.

To be sure you know the best Zoho project substitute for you, do consider brushing up on the baseline software by reading our Zoho Projects review, which goes over pricing, features, pros and cons. And now… 

Here are 11 good alternatives to Zoho Projects: 

1. Wrike (Best Zoho Projects alternative overall)

Wrike is considered by many to be better than Zoho Projects as a project management tool. Not everyone agrees though, however, Wrike is clearly among the best alternatives to Zoho Projects. 

Wrike got off the ground in 2006. This was one of the first project management software to create a tool for Gantt charts. The Wrike company has offices in Dublin, Melbourne, San Diego and San Jose. Today Wrike is part of the larger Citrix brand of business software. 

Wrike has won many awards and is used by over 20,000 companies in over 140 countries.

Wrike is best for:

• Startups

• SMBs

• Large businesses

• Overall Zoho Projects replacement

Features

For project management, Wrike offers task management including subtasks, and you can customize these tools with custom fields and workflows. You also get personal and team to-do list features like work scheduling. You can integrate your email with Wrike for real-time notifications. 

When it comes to views and dashboards, Wrike has great Gantt charts and Kanban boards and calendars, as well as some useful widgets you can add to these dashboards. Wrike’s powerful AI can recommend tasks and actions, and you also get smart searching, smart replies and quick reactions using the Wrike mobile device which is good for iOS & Android. 

You can also use Wrike’s advanced workflow automation builder as well as good collaboration features with roles, permissions and guest approvals. 

Pricing

• Wrike offers a free plan for up to 5 users

• Professional plan is $9.80 per user per month billed annually

• Business plan is $$24.80 per user per month billed annually

• For Enterprise plan, contact Wrike

Visit Wrike

2. Monday.com (Best free Zoho Projects alternative)

There are more than one Zoho Projects free alternatives on the market, including our top choice for best Zoho Projects replacement overall, which is Wrike. But when it comes to free Zoho Projects substitutes, Monday.com earns this ranking. 

The company was founded in 2012 under the name daPulse by two buddies who were passionate about team communication and collaboration. The first Monday.com customers came on board in 2014 and by 2016 there was a Monday.com mobile app which was a massive success. 

In 2017 the company rebranded from daPulse to become the project management solution famously known as Monday.com.

Monday.com is best for:

• Individuals

• Small teams

• Startups

• Small businesses

• Zoho Projects free alternative

Features

For team collaboration tools Monday.com offers whiteboard collaboration, shared document manager, shareable forms, real-time team updates, notifications and even guest access features. For things like task management, Monday.com has timers that let you do time tracking for timesheets, task dependencies, and you can set up customizable notifications to stay on top of your, and your team’s to-do items. 

You can monitor your activity logs with many views, including chart views, workload views, map views, timeline views which are like Gantt charts, and calendar views. Most views can also be viewed through Kanban board dashboards. Monday.com also has great project templates and some decent features for resource management. 

Pricing

• Monday.com has a free version for up to 2 users

• Basic plan is $9 per user per month billed annually

• Standard plan is $12 per user per month billed annually

• Pro plan is $19 per user per month billed annually

• For Enterprise plan, contact Monday.com

Visit Monday.com

3. Smartsheet (Most similar to Zoho Projects)

Smartsheet bills itself as a “modern” work and project management platform, which means it ditches old-school and out-dated methods that only slow teams down. 

The company was created in 2005. The Smartsheet headquarters are in Bellevue, Washington, and they also have offices in Boston, London, Edinburgh, and Sydney. Today, Smartsheet has subscribers in over 190 countries, which by our calculation means Smartsheet is used in over 97% of the globe. 

As a project management solution, Smartsheet is quite similar to Zoho Projects, albeit for a few tiny differences.

Smartsheet is best for:

• Startups 

• Small businesses

• Large businesses

• Enterprises

• Similar to Zoho Projects competitor

Features

Smartsheet positions itself for a few specific industries and verticals, including being a media and entertainment project solution, a professional services solution for smaller business owners, a telecommunications tool, as well as being great for construction, finance and nonprofits. 

Smartsheet has nice dashboards which can have many custom widgets for more functionality. You got grid views, Gantt charts and calendar views, as well as a template library. 

Workflows and automations are also on offer, which can do things like send alerts and notifications, send reminders, automatically assign roles to team members, and do things like approval-requests. 

Another reason this is similar to Zoho Projects is that both PM systems are very user friendly. 

Pricing

• Pro plan is $7 per user per month billed annually

• Business plan is $25 per user per month billed annually

• For the Enterprise plan, contact Smartsheet

Visit Smartsheet

4. Trello (Cheaper alternative to Zoho Projects if you’re on a budget)

Many people are familiar with Trello as being a total champion of the Kanban board system of task management. But some of you may ask, is this truly cheaper than Zoho Projects? Both have free plans, and both charge $5 per user per month for their basic plans and then $10 per user per month for the next premium plan. 

The reason Trello gets this spot for being better than Zoho Projects if you’re on a budget is that you get slightly more with Trello for a similar price. While Trello used to be its own company, the platform is today owned by Atlassian, who also makes Jira the issue tracking tool, as well as Confluence for document collaboration and Bitbucket for Git code management.

Trello is best for:

• Task management

• Kanban boards

• Individuals

• Small teams

• Startups

• Budget Zoho Project replacement

Features

Trello begins with some of the most intuitive Kanban board functionality known to mankind, with easy drag and drop cards and boards. 

Even the free version gets you unlimited cards. And the cheapest version gets you unlimited boards as well as unlimited file storage and 1,000 workspace command runs per month. 

Compare this to the cheap Zoho Projects plan which only offers 100 GBs of storage space, which is why Trello is a superior alternative if you have tight-budget business needs. Trello has great project templates, workspace tables and workspace calendar views too. 

Pricing

• The Trello free plan is good for unlimited cards and 10 boards

• Startup plan is $5 per user per month billed annually

• Premium plan is $10 per user per month billed annually 

• Enterprise plan is $17.50 per user per month billed annually

Visit Trello

5. Basecamp (Great Zoho Projects alternative for remote working)

Basecamp has been in the game of task and project management for decades. The people who brought us Basecamp also brought us the coding language called Ruby on Rails and put out several NYT bestseller books about how to do business better in the modern age.

 Basecamp used to be called 37signals and got renamed in 2014, with the name Basecamp coming from one of their products for remote work team management. Among many of the Basecamp benefits, this one stands out as being a good substitute for Zoho Projects for remote teams.

Basecamp is best for:

• Startups

• Remote work

• Distributed workforces

• Small businesses

• International companies

Features

The way that Basecamp advertises its list of PM tools is by saying this one platform combines much of the functionality of other popular apps like Slack, Dropbox and Google Docs and Google Calendar. Basecamp lets users set up workspaces for individuals and teams. 

These workspaces can be customized to show you dashboard information like incoming messaging and group chats, to-do lists and tasks, a work schedule, a document and file database There’s also something called automatic check-ins which is good for project planning work, seeing status updates, and for making general inquiries and questions to the team. 

You also get clear project activity timelines which can be further filtered for better searching. Instead of standard Gantt charts, Basecamp has its own “Hill Charts” that work with your to-do list and are more accurate than the guesswork displayed with the Gantt chart system.

Pricing

• There is a free plan for Basecamp for up to 20 users

• Basecamp standard plan is a flat $99 per month

Visit Basecamp

6. Teamwork (Top Zoho Projects substitute if you need billing and invoicing)

Teamwork may emphasize its team collaboration and team communication tools more than anything else but this is still a solid project management system overall. As a potential Zoho Project alternative, Teamwork is a good option for delivering finished products and getting paid. As an overall company, Teamwork is very big on advertising their corporate cultural values which include openness, teamwork and always putting the customer first.

Teamwork is best for:

• Startups 

• SMEs

• Larger companies

• Billing and invoicing 

• Team collaboration

Features

You can use Teamwork to plan tasks, products, projects and for overall larger portfolio management functionality. Resource management handles labor power and availability. You got your set of automations and workflows too. There are Kanban board and Gantt chart views, time tracking, and team & sub-team management. You can create short and long-term plans with tasks and subtasks as well as milestones and project owners. There is solid file management with file versioning, messaging and permissions tools. Teamwork makes it easy to do time logging and track billable hours and feed this data to invoicing, as well as do risk forecasting. There are also some native Teamwork integrations with other apps like Teamwork CRM, Teamwork Spaces, Teamwork Chat and Teamwork Desk for handling tickets.

Pricing

• Teamwork has a Free Forever plan 

• Deliver plan is $10 per user per month billed annually

• Grow plan is $18 per user per month billed annually

• For the Scale plan, contact Teamwork

Visit Teamwork

7. Celoxis (Good Zoho Projects replacement if you want workflow automations)

Celoxis is one of the very few SaaS on this list to be birthed into the world before the big dot-com crash of 2000. It is also proud to be one of the original SaaS companies to come out of India, which today everyone knows is a powerhouse country for digital products. 

Celoxis as we know it today was released in 2012, and now they are proud of having over 2,800 worldwide customers. Celoxis is a great alternative to Zoho Projects for PM workflows. 

Celoxis is best for:

• Startups 

• Small businesses

• Large businesses

• Enterprise

• Workflow automations

Features

Celoxis is a great option for large businesses and enterprises because they offer an on-premise solution. Building workflow automations is a snap with Celoxis, which lets you use simple logic to set up trigger-based actions. 

Along with workflows, you can also create custom fields and KPIs. You got your range of standard project planning tools, including a request tracker, resource management, project accounting, and portfolio management. 

There are Kanban board and Gantt chart views, and advanced risk management, time tracking, issue tracking and scheduling. Celoxis also offers one of the best client portals for project management platforms, in fact they helped pioneer the online client portal. 

Pricing

• Celoxis Cloud solution is $22.50 per user per month

• Celoxis On-premise solution is a one-time fee of $450 per user

Visit Celoxis

8. ClickUp (Great Zoho Projects competitor if you like document management)

ClickUp is another one of those business apps that wrap their product in a bunch of valuable-based copywriting, talking a big game about customer satisfaction, eternal growth, hustle culture, kindness and, in their words, living by the adage that “normal f*cking sucks,” as if they are harbingers of something incredibly unique and special and not just a productivity tool. 

Well, how much these values translate into their product is to be determined, but we can say that ClickUp is a good Zoho alternative for document management.

ClickUp is best for:

• Startups 

• SMBs

• Document management

Features

ClickUp is a nice and standard project and task management solution. Its world class document management set of features includes an overview of all your shared docs, a collaborative document builder along with templates, and a shared whiteboard tool which works alongside the docs features. 

ClickUp is also useful for managing tasks, setting milestones and goals, and tracking progress. You also can use decent internal chat tools with ClickUp. Timelines, mind maps, and prioritization tools are more things you get with ClickUp.

Pricing

• ClickUp has a free version for unlimited number of users

• Unlimited plan is $5 per user per month billed annually, or you could make an offer

• Business plan is $12 per user per month billed annually

• Business Plus plan is $19 per user per month billed annually

• For the Enterprise plan, contact ClickUp

Visit ClickUp

9. Microsoft Project (Top Zoho Projects alternative for large business and enterprise)

Microsoft, the popular maker of Office, Outlook, Teams and OneDrive, has a project management platform as part of the larger Microsoft 365 solution. Being Microsoft, MS Project is a number one alternative to Zoho for enterprises and large organizations. 

Other 365 apps that Project streamlines well with include Power BI for analytics and insights, and SharePoint for intranet tools.

Microsoft Project is best for:

• Medium-sized businesses

• Large organizations

• Enterprise-level companies

Features

Projects starts with its home page which gives you a main view of all your ongoing projects and tasks. You got your board view, your Gantt chart and your grid view. With MS Teams working alongside Project, there is added communication and collaboration among team members. You can easily set up project roadmaps with milestones. There are strong analytics and reporting. MS Project has reliable tools for doing timesheets, billing, payrolls and invoicing too. 

Pricing

• Project Plan 1 costs $10 per user per month

• Project Plan 2 costs $30 per user per month

• Project Plan 3 costs $55 per user per month

• Project Standard on-premise costs $679.99

• Project Professional on-premise costs $1,129.99

Visit Microsoft Project

10. Asana (Good Zoho Projects substitute for startups and small business)

The seeds for Asana were first planted among a couple of coworkers at the Facebook Corporation (today’s Meta). They wanted to take the hard work out of the work of meetings and chats and email threads and overall team communication. 

Hence Asana blossomed into the teamwork tool it is today, with more than 100,000 paying subscribers to this platform. It’s also a top alternative to Zoho Projects for startups.

Asana is best for:

• Startups

• Small businesses

• Medium-sized businesses

• Remote teams

Features

Asana has a very good free version with unlimited projects, tasks, comments, activity logs, messages and due dates. There is also a good Asana mobile app for iOS and Android. You can set up workflow automation for things like time tracking and notifications, start dates and times, task dependencies, proofing and approvals. 

The views include lists, boards, calendars, timelines, and even a portfolio view and a goals view. Now there are more tools for remote work, which team members working from home can use to stay more connected to the team and project goals.

Pricing

• Asana has a free version

• Premium plan is $10.99 per user per month billed annually

• Business plan is $24.99 per user per month billed annually

Visit Asana

11. LiquidPlanner (Great alternative to Zoho Projects substitute for risk management)

Last on our list, and left off the initial top 10 table, here is LiquidPlanner. LiquidPlanner specializes in things like risk management and for offering more intelligent planning and forecasting recommendations.

LiquidPlanner started out in 2008 as just a predictive scheduling tool, and today it is a total planning intelligence machine.

LiquidPlanner is best for:

• Startups

• SMBs

• Large companies

• Risk management

• Predictive scheduling

Features

With LiquidPlanner, everything is about being smart, from smart planning, to smart estimation and smart prioritization. After that, LiquidPlanner is a highly functioning tracking device, tracking data and metrics on project times, costs, and milestones. With all that activity monitoring and data tracking, LiquidPlanner offers some intuitive insights. 

LiquidPlanner is also a great tool for its views, including a portfolio view for all your projects, an individual project view, as well as a personal workload view.

Pricing

• Essentials plan is $15 per user per month billed annually

• Professional plan is $25 per user per month billed annually

• Ultimate plan is $35 per user per month billed annually

Visit LiquidPlanner

Which of the alternatives to Zoho Projects is a good choice for you?

Everything we do in life that is more complicated than the most instinctual gesture is in some way a project, from graduating university, to planning a social media marketing campaign, to building a home and starting a family.

Wrike, Monday.com and Asana might be the best Zoho Projects alternatives for you if you are a smaller operation and working on a budget. Otherwise, more full-bore tools like Microsoft Project or LiquidPlanner might best suit your business needs. Every single vendor here is right for somebody. 

There are many more Zoho alternatives, and not just for Zoho Projects but for other Zoho apps. 

Our Zoho CRM review should take you through a lot of these functions.

That wraps it up for this Zoho Projects comparison review article.