7 Best Wrike Alternatives for Project Management

You might be considering switching from Wrike or deciding which project management tool is the best choice for you. 

In this blog post, we’ll take a look at the top Wrike alternatives to help you make an informed decision and choose the right tool for your needs!

Is Wrike the Right Project Management Software for You?

Wrike is an easily customizable solution for project management. However, it’s not out-of-the-box ready for most users and requires some degree of customization to work.

If you are not ready to work on setting up and customizing Wrike, then you might prefer to look for different software that is ready out-of-the-box.

On the other hand, if you are looking for custom reports, analytics, and dashboards, then Wrike is the right choice for you.

Best Wrike Alternatives Compared

Work management is a challenge for every type of business, from small teams, and agencies, to enterprises. Wrike is foremost a project management platform coming with project templates, task management tools, and project progress reporting.

In this table, I am comparing Wrike with its top three competitors based on the most in-demand project management features and integrations you will need!

Later in the article, I will be going deeper into every tool, but this will give you a quick idea of what you need to know, as well as a pricing comparison of the project management software.

*Prices were taken on May 6th, 2023, and are based on the monthly plans.

Notion Vs. Wrike

Notion is one of the newer project management software that is getting much attention in the last couple of years. It’s a great option for smaller teams and personal projects due to its simplicity.

If you are looking for a simple process of planning and taking actionable steps to complete your projects, Notion is the right choice for you.

It features the same kanban style methodology, tasks, boards, and lists as other project management software. Notion was designed to simplify task management and offer collaboration and efficiency to project management.

While it does lack many reporting and management features, this is also its strength, stripping away unnecessary parts of the process. This is also the reason you might find more tech-oriented freelancers or entrepreneurs using Notion.

Notion Pros

• Offers a free plan
• Easy-to-use
• Clean, user-friendly interface
• Good collaboration tools
• Highly customizable

Notion Cons

• Has recently raised prices
• Difficult to customize
• Limited support
• Bad offline mode (based on user reviews)

Monday.com Vs. Wrike

Monday.com is a rising star in project management tools and one of the most full-featured software on this list. 

The focus on UI/UX and visual presentations makes Monday a favorite for users who care about working with a beautiful interface. It allows you to build a visual overview of your project to more quickly have a bird’s eye view of the project on a single page instead of moving through different pages to figure this out.

While Monday.com allows for only 2 users on its free plan, it is much cheaper than other project management alternatives. 

For general project management of a team between 15-50 people, Monday.com can be a great way to reduce operational costs by 40% without cutting down on functionality.

Monday Pros

• Easy-to-use
• Relatively cheap compared to close competitors
• Customizable reports
• Integrations with all the popular apps
• Great visual presentation

Monday Cons

• Steep learning curve
• Limitations of the mobile app
• Users’ reviews mention confusing pricing structure

Jira Vs. Wrike

Source: Jira Support

Jira by Atlassian is a project management tool originally designed to track bugs and issues and has since evolved to cover more cases and be customizable.

While Jira is still mostly used by software development, DevOps, and agile teams for its scrum and Kanban boards, it can also be used for bigger organizations and more diverse teams.

The best use cases for Jira are companies and organizations with a dev team ready to take on the optimization and set up the workflows and automation to fully utilize its capabilities. For example, you can connect with GitHub to get updates from team members, pull requests, deployments, branches, builds, and commits.

Jira works better for more technical teams or much bigger-sized organizations that require customizable project management software for multiple departments.

Jira Pros

• Very customizable
• The best for agile project management
• Multiple customizable workspaces

Jira Cons

• Limited file size uploads
• Requires work to customize to your needs
• Very steep learning curve

Compare Jira to Asana

Asana Vs. Wrike

Asana is probably the most popular software on this list and can handle the needs of individuals, small teams, and larger teams pretty well. New users will have an easy time getting the hang of it, even though the more advanced features might need some getting used to it.

Asana offers multiple views like a drag-and-drop Kanban-style board, list, calendar, and project reporting view.

Paid plans come with lots of features large enterprise users will be looking for like automated workflows, custom fields, advanced reporting, and the Gantt Chart view (timeline).

Asana is also the most expensive tool on this list, but for individual and team projects, it is my personal favorite. Compared to the tools I have used for both work and personal projects, Asana is the best for marketing teams and personal projects.  

Asana Pros

Asana comes with all the functionality and features needed to track your daily tasks or complex projects:

• Has a free plan for up to 15 users,
• Easy to use,
• Great at task management, milestones, and time tracking.
• Includes Gantt charts, calendar view, and a kanban board
• Comes with project management templates,
• Good team collaboration features.

Asana Cons

Of course, there are some downsides to Asana as well:

• Has a small learning curve,
• Difficult customization,
• No resource & file management*,
• Not ideal for handling multiple teams.

*You can upload files but Asana does not track versioning and a complete resource library.

Compare Wrike to Asana

Basecamp Vs. Wrike

Basecamp is a well-established project management tool that has been around for over two decades. It allows teams to work together with real-time and asynchronous communication better than any other in this comparison.

Basecamp has a clean and intuitive interface that makes it easy for users to manage their projects. It offers a range of features, including to-do lists, message boards, schedules, and file sharing, that are designed to streamline communications and collaboration.

Basecamp pricing is a bit complex and comes out as more expensive for a few users, but much cheaper than its competitors for larger teams due to the unlimited users for $299 per month price.

Basecamp Pros

• Simple & easy to use
• Transparency for tasks
• Real-time communication
• Free account for teachers and students

Basecamp Cons

• No free plan
• Complex pricing

Trello  Vs. Wrike

Trello is the original Kanban-style project management software, but you can also choose to use task lists and card views.

It does not have many advanced features and functionalities. Trello is the embodiment of ease of use and excels at it at a very affordable price.

Trello is probably the simplest software for project planning in this list and is better suited for individuals, smaller and remote teams. 

Trello Pros

• Free plan
• Drag-and-drop boards
• Simple & easy to use

Trello Cons

• Not a full-featured software, if you are looking for advanced project management features you probably won’t find it here
• Not suitable for multiple projects

Airtable  Vs. Wrike

Airtable tackles project management customization in its own unique way, with an extensive marketplace of Airtable Apps.

While it’s not as easy to use as Asana or has a beautiful user interface as Monday, it comes with added functionalities to track projects or build unique workflows.

It goes beyond a simple project management solution and to-do lists and becomes customizable by adding specific key features for unique projects. It can be customized to keep track of a roadmap, build dependencies, or link-building.

It even accepts simple scripts to be written and automates simple tasks, customizes reporting, and more!

Airtable is better compared with Wrike over Asana as they both work well for small business customizations in different ways.

Airtable Pros

• Free plan
• Easy to use
• Customizable spreadsheet (grid view)
• Incredibly customizable, and programmable

Airtable Cons

• No live chat or phone support
• Unusual pricing structure (per records & storage)
• Not very intuitive (the UI could be improved)

Choosing the Best Wrike Alternative

Deciding to buy task management software is not an easy choice. They are not very comparable and come with many small and big differences, but the right choice can streamline your project and workflows!

Different team sizes, projects, and disciplines may require a different style of software. It’s great to have many options, but you need to see what will work for YOU!

Whether you prefer simple, easy-to-use, and cheap software for a solo project or looking for full-featured project management software with an enterprise plan depends on your needs.

Typically, bigger teams might be looking for features like permissions or approval management, tracking metrics, and customized reporting.

My personal favorite is Asana, but I have used Wrike, Jira, and Trello for different projects with different stakeholders over time. All have their pros & cons, and I have friends swearing over how easy Basecamp and Notion are or how much they love Jira for dev work.

FAQ

Who is a competitor of Wrike?

Wrike’s competitors are:

• Asana
• Monday
• Notion
• Jira
• Basecamp
• Trello
• Proofhub
• ClickUp
• Airtable

Why is Wrike considered a top choice for project management software?

Most Wrike users love it for its customizability, and turning it into their dream project management software. Especially important is the ability to customize reports, which is ideal for project managers looking to monitor their team’s work and project progress.

What are some of the features of Wrike?

Wrike comes with some great features like:

• Docs proofing & approval,
• Gantt charts,
• Resource management,
• Calendars,
• Dashboards,
• Notifications,
• Due dates, and 
• Mobile apps

What is the best Wrike alternative?

In my opinion, Asana is the best Wrike alternative as it is a full-featured project management software with an easy-to-use interface.