24 Team Management Tools for Hours, Shifts, Tasks and Chat, and What a 25-Person Team Pays

Managing a team means keeping track of a lot that never shows up in a project plan: who is working on what, how many hours it takes, who is off next week, where people are working from, and whether everyone actually read the update you sent. No single app does all of that well, which is why “team management software” covers everything from timesheets to shift schedules to company intranets.

To find the best team management software and the best team management apps for your situation, this guide sorts 24 tools into the seven jobs they do, so you can pick by need rather than by brand. We checked every tool’s pricing, free plan, mobile app ratings and limits on the vendor’s own pages and app store listings in 2026, and worked out what a team of 10 or 25 people pays per year for the tools with published prices.

What team management software covers

Project management software is organized around the work: tasks, deadlines, dependencies. Team management software is organized around the people doing it: their hours, availability, schedules, workload and the way they communicate. The two overlap, and many tools do a bit of both, but the question each one answers is different. A project tool tells you whether the launch is on track; a team tool tells you whether the people behind it are overloaded, on leave or waiting for an answer.

The tools below are grouped into seven jobs:

• Time tracking: hours per person and task, approvals, overtime and labor cost.
• Communication: chat, calls and meetings for day to day work.
• Scheduling and leave: shifts, time off and who is available when.
• Task management: who does what, by when, on boards or lists.
• Project management: timelines, resources and budgets across projects.
• Knowledge sharing: docs and notes the whole team can find.
• Internal communication: intranets and company news for larger organizations.

We left employee monitoring tools such as screenshot and activity trackers out of this list, because watching screens is a different job from managing a team. If that is what you need, see our separate guide to employee monitoring software.

Team management tools compared

Team management software for time tracking

Hours are the one team metric that connects workload, payroll and project cost. These tools record them per person and turn them into something a manager can act on.

1. actiTIME

Key features:

• Timesheets and timer
• Approvals and locking
• Overtime and leave
• Labor cost by person

actiTIME is for managers who need to know what their team works on, how long it takes, and what that time costs. People log hours against customers, projects and tasks in a weekly timesheet, in a calendar view with exact start and end times, in the iOS and Android app, or with the Chrome extension’s timer. Each week goes to a manager for approval, and approved periods can be locked so nobody edits hours after payroll or invoicing.

Where it pulls ahead of a plain timer is the team view. The Time Balance and Overtime report compares each person’s hours with their schedule, leave is logged against leave types with PTO and sick day balances, and the Estimated vs. Actual Time report shows whose tasks are running over. Cost rates per person, including overtime and leave rates, turn the same hours into a Cost of Work report, while billing rates on types of work produce invoices and a Profit/Loss view by customer or project. Managers assign tasks with estimates, deadlines and custom statuses on a list or Kanban board, and team members can change their work status from the mobile app so everyone knows who is available.

Limitation: actiTIME has no built in team chat, so it sits next to a communication tool such as Microsoft Teams or Pumble.

Pricing: free for up to 3 users; from $5 per user per month; 30 day free trial.

actiTIME enables us to balance workload better

I found in actiTIME all the requirements I was looking for. We are getting a lot of benefits – the tool enables us to better balance workload, have a constant view of what people are doing. I really recommend it, I evaluated a lot of tools, also had an in-house development before which demanded a lot of maintenance, and actiTIME solved all problems with no hassle.

Try actiTIME

2. ClickTime

Key features:

• 70+ prebuilt reports
• Approval workflows
• Cost codes and DCAA timesheets
• Resource management (Premier)

ClickTime is built for finance teams and professional services firms that need timesheets to stand up to an audit. It captures time on web, iPhone and Android timesheets, sends email reminders for incomplete ones, and applies billing and cost rates by person, project and date. Custom fields map hours to cost codes, capital or operating expense, grants and R&D, and it offers DCAA compliant timesheets for US government contractors.

Higher plans read time from connected work tools such as calendars, Jira and Microsoft 365, and suggest entries matched to clients and projects, without screenshots or keystroke logging. The Premier plan adds project budgeting with burn and actuals against estimates, plus resource management with multi month capacity planning.

Limitation: approvals and cost rates start on the Team plan, and Starter is capped at 25 users.

Pricing: Starter from $12 per user per month; Team, Premier and Enterprise on request; expenses add on extra; nonprofit pricing available.

3. Everhour

Key features:

• Timers inside 40+ tools
• Budgets with alerts
• Time off and accruals
• Invoicing

Everhour suits teams that already manage work in another tool and want time tracking to appear inside it. It adds timers to more than 40 integrations, including Asana, Jira and Linear, so people track hours on the task they are already looking at rather than switching apps. Managers set budgets on projects with alerts as they fill up, and the same data feeds invoices.

Everhour has grown into light team management as well: it handles time off with accruals and a simple schedule of who is working on what, which covers the basics for a small agency. The free plan covers up to 5 seats with limited features and no integrations, so in practice it is a way to try the interface; the integrations that make Everhour useful start on Team.

Limitation: the Team plan has a 5 seat minimum, and annual plans are not refunded.

Pricing: free for up to 5 seats; Team $8.50 per seat per month billed yearly ($10 monthly), 5 seat minimum; 14 day trial.

Team management apps for communication

Chat is where most day to day coordination happens. The difference between these tools is less about features and more about price, guests and how they handle calls.

4. Microsoft Teams

Key features:

• Chat, calls and meetings
• 300 person meetings
• Recordings and transcripts
• Planner and Bookings in Microsoft 365

Microsoft Teams is the default for companies that already run on Microsoft 365, and its apps are the most rated in this article: 4.8 on the App Store from about 3.4 million ratings and 4.6 on Google Play from about 8.8 million reviews. Business plans allow meetings of up to 300 participants and up to 30 hours long, with recordings, transcripts and live captions.

The cheapest option, Teams Essentials, covers chat, calls, video meetings, file sharing and 10 GB of storage per user for up to 300 employees. Microsoft 365 Business Basic adds web and mobile Office apps, custom business email, 1 TB of storage per user and team tools such as Planner, Bookings and Forms, which is what turns Teams from a chat app into a place to assign work and schedule staff.

Limitation: audio and video calls started from a chat are capped at 20 people, and business plans are limited to 300 users.

Pricing: Teams Essentials $4, Microsoft 365 Business Basic $7, Business Standard with Copilot $23.50 per user per month, billed yearly.

5. Pumble

Key features:

• Unlimited history on the free plan
• Group video calls
• Guests on paid seats
• SSO on Enterprise

Pumble, from CAKE.com, is the cheapest full team chat here and one of the few with a generous free plan: unlimited users, unlimited message history and channels, 10 GB of storage per workspace and up to 3 integrations. That makes it a practical choice for small companies that want Slack style channels without paying per person from day one.

Paid plans add group meetings and screen sharing, more storage per seat and guest access, with 5 single channel guests included per paid seat, which is useful for working with clients or contractors. Enterprise adds single sign on and an audit log. The apps are well rated, at 4.7 on the App Store from about 1,800 ratings and 4.0 on Google Play.

Limitation: the free plan only supports one to one meetings, so group calls and screen sharing need Pro.

Pricing: free plan; Pro $2.49, Business $3.99, Enterprise $6.99 per seat per month billed annually ($2.99, $4.99 and $7.99 monthly); 7 day trial.

6. Chanty

Key features:

• Built in task boards
• Messages turned into tasks
• Group calls and screen sharing
• 3 free guest seats per member

Chanty is team chat with task management built in, which suits small teams that want one place to talk and track work. Any message can become a task, tasks sit on boards and to do lists, and the free plan includes unlimited searchable history, unlimited one to one calls and 20 GB of storage for the team.

The Business plan adds unlimited group calls and screen sharing, announcement channels, polls and forms, an employee directory, customizable roles and permissions, and security features such as single sign on and two factor authentication, with 3 free guest seats for every paid member. Chanty also offers a 50% discount for nonprofits and education.

Limitation: the free plan stops at 5 team members, and Chanty’s pricing page showed only euro prices when we checked.

Pricing: free for up to 5 members; Business €3 per user per month billed annually (€4 monthly); Enterprise on request.

7. Zoho Workplace

Key features:

• Mail, Cliq chat and meetings
• WorkDrive file storage
• Writer, Sheet and Show
• External users on Professional

Zoho Workplace is a budget alternative to Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace for small businesses that want email, chat, meetings and documents from one vendor. The Standard plan bundles Mail with 30 GB per user, WorkDrive storage, Cliq chat, Meeting, ToDo and the Writer, Sheet and Show office apps, and meetings hold up to 100 participants.

Professional raises meetings to 250 participants and lets each member invite up to 5 external users, which helps when clients or freelancers need access to shared files. For teams that only need email, Mail Lite and Mail Premium are cheaper still, and Mail Free covers up to 5 users.

Limitation: the Mail only plans are billed yearly only, and the suite’s apps are less polished than Microsoft’s.

Pricing: Mail Free for up to 5 users; Mail Lite $1 and Mail Premium $4 per user per month, yearly only; Workplace Standard $3, Professional $6 per user per month billed annually ($4 and $7 monthly); 15 day trial.

Team management software for scheduling and leave

Every plan assumes people are available. These tools make sure that assumption is true, whether you schedule shifts or just need to know who is on vacation.

8. actiPLANS

Key features:

• Leave requests and approvals
• Automated PTO accrual
• Shift assignment
• Work location scheduling

actiPLANS answers the question most team tools skip: who is actually going to be at work, and where. Employees request time off from the web or mobile app and managers approve it in a click, with unlimited custom leave types and their own policies. PTO accrues automatically by your rules, balances are always current, and a balance history records every change, so nobody has to rebuild the numbers in a spreadsheet.

Everything appears on a shared visual timeline with color codes, which makes leave clashes obvious before they happen. Beyond absence, actiPLANS assigns shifts, tracks work locations such as office, home, client site or project site, schedules company events, and shows team activities on the same timeline. Reports cover time off by employee, leave type and date range for payroll, schedules sync to Google, Outlook or Apple Calendar through iCal, and the actiTIME integration combines leave with time tracking.

Limitation: actiPLANS schedules people, shifts and locations rather than project tasks, so it pairs with a task or time tracking tool.

Pricing: free for up to 3 users; from $1.20 per user per month; 30 day free trial, no credit card.

9. When I Work

Key features:

• Auto scheduling
• OpenShifts and shift swaps
• Team messaging
• Scheduling across locations

When I Work is built for shift based teams and hourly staff. Managers build schedules with auto scheduling, publish open shifts that anyone qualified can pick up, and let employees swap shifts with approval, while in app messaging replaces the group text that usually holds a shift team together. It handles several locations from one account, and Pro adds scheduling rules and role permissions.

Its mobile app is one of the best rated in this article, at 4.8 on the App Store from about 58,000 ratings and 4.7 on Google Play from about 77,000 reviews, which matters because hourly staff rarely sit at a computer. Premium adds single sign on and API access.

Limitation: time clock and attendance tracking cost extra on every plan, raising the per user price, and the pricing page does not show separate monthly and annual rates.

Pricing: Essentials $2.50, Pro $5, Premium $8 per user per month; with time tracking and attendance $4, $7 and $10; 14 day trial.

10. Unrubble (formerly TrackTime24)

Key features:

• Shift scheduling with drafts
• Time off and work from home requests
• GPS and facial recognition clock in
• Pay per module

Unrubble is the new name of TrackTime24, and the old domain now redirects to it. It is modular: you choose Time Tracking, Scheduling and PTO Tracker separately and pay only for what you use, with no minimum number of users. Schedules are drafted and then published, employees request shift swaps, time off or work from home days through approval flows you configure, and time tracking supports GPS clock in with geofencing and facial recognition, plus time rounding and overtime balancing.

That flexibility makes it cheap for small teams: Unrubble’s own calculator puts 25 users with every module, billed annually, at $62.50 a month, or $750 a year. It is free for nonprofits, and the company says it has almost 300,000 users. Its iOS app is rated 4.5 from 10 ratings, so there is little public feedback yet on the new brand.

Limitation: custom reports, white labeling and custom integrations are Enterprise only, and AI scheduling is marked as coming soon.

Pricing: from $1 per user per month billed annually ($1.25 monthly), priced per module; 14 day trial.

Team management software for task management

These tools keep track of who is doing what. The choice depends on how structured your work is: simple boards, nested lists, or formal requests with deadlines.

11. MeisterTask

Key features:

• Kanban project boards
• Team overview of workload
• Recurring tasks and automations
• Imports from Asana and Trello

MeisterTask is a Kanban task manager from Meister, the company behind MindMeister, and it suits teams that want boards that look good and stay simple. The free plan already includes unlimited tasks and team members, up to 3 projects and 5 notes, and imports from Asana and Trello, so switching is painless.

Pro removes the project limit and adds recurring tasks, automations and integrations. Business is the plan with real team management: a team overview of each member’s workload, a timeline view, subtasks, roles and permissions, custom fields and custom reports. Enterprise adds a workload planner and portfolios. Prices are shown in euros, and MeisterTask notes that they depend on your region.

Limitation: the workload planner is Enterprise only, and the free plan’s 3 project limit is tight for a whole team.

Pricing: free plan; Pro €13.50, Business €24 per user per month billed yearly (€17.50 and €31 monthly); Enterprise on request.

12. Nifty

Key features:

• Tasks, subtasks and checklists
• Time tracking
• Chat and discussions
• Docs

Nifty combines tasks, docs, chat and time tracking for small teams that would otherwise juggle three apps. You manage tasks, subtasks and checklists, track time against them, talk in project discussions or direct chat, and keep docs next to the work, with a calendar across everything. Desktop apps for Mac and Windows and a Chrome extension sit alongside the iOS and Android apps, which Nifty recently rebuilt.

Pricing is unusually flexible. Flat plans charge a fixed monthly fee for a set number of members, and per member plans charge by head, so a team can pick whichever is cheaper for its size. The free plan includes unlimited members, which lets you invite clients to follow progress without paying for them.

Limitation: the free plan allows only 2 active projects and 100 MB of storage.

Pricing: free plan; flat Pro $79 per month for 10 members and Business $124 for 30 members, billed annually; per member from $10 per month billed annually ($16 monthly); 14 day trial.

13. Trello

Key features:

• Boards, lists and cards
• Inbox capture from email and Slack
• Planner view
• Offline editing on mobile

Trello is the simplest way to show a small team who is doing what: boards with lists and cards that move along as work progresses. Cards hold due dates, checklists, owners and attachments, the Inbox collects to dos from email, Slack and Teams, and the Planner puts your cards next to your calendar. Its mobile apps are the only Trello apps that work offline, letting you create and edit cards without a connection.

The free plan covers up to 10 collaborators per Workspace and 10 boards, which is enough for a small team’s whole workflow. Automations are included too, with 250 command runs a month on the free plan, though files are capped at 10 MB each. To see who is overloaded, most teams pair Trello with a time tracker, because a card shows that work is in progress, not how many hours it has taken.

Limitation: boards show tasks, not people, so there is no built in view of each person’s workload or hours.

Pricing: free plan; Standard $5, Premium $10 per user per month billed annually; Enterprise $17.50 per user per month.

14. Runrun.it

Key features:

• No code request forms
• SLAs with delay alerts
• Approvals inside tasks
• Capacity dashboards

Runrun.it is for teams that work on incoming requests and need deadlines enforced. Requests arrive through no code forms, each one gets an SLA with alerts when it is late or inactive, approvals happen inside the task, and live dashboards show each person’s capacity. The company says more than 100,000 teams use it, and it has added AI agents to the platform.

The free plan supports up to 5 users with unlimited guests and 20 boards, but its metrics only cover the last 31 days. The Business plan starts at 5 users, and every paid plan is billed annually and prepaid. Free plan attachments are limited to 50 MB, so teams that share large files will hit that limit before the user cap.

Limitation: there is no monthly billing, and the mobile app is a reduced Lite version of the web product.

Pricing: free for up to 5 users; Business $10, Enterprise $26 per user per month, annual only; 14 day trial for up to 100 users.

Team management software for project management

When a team runs several projects at once, the manager needs to see timelines, workloads and budgets across all of them. These tools add that layer.

15. Avaza

Key features:

• Timesheets with approvals
• Resource scheduling
• Team chat
• Quotes and invoicing

Avaza bundles project management, timesheets, resource scheduling, chat and invoicing for small service businesses that bill clients. Time is tracked with a timer or weekly timesheets that go through approval before billing, and the resource schedule shows an availability bar for each person, so you can see who is under or over utilized before assigning more work. Avaza says more than 70,000 businesses in over 150 countries use it.

Pricing is a flat fee per account rather than per user, with each plan including a set number of timesheet users: 2 on Startup, 5 on Basic and 10 on Business, plus unlimited projects on Business. Extra timesheet, admin or scheduling users cost $7 each per month, and annual billing costs the same as 10 months.

Limitation: every plan includes only 1 resource scheduling user, and emailing invoices needs a paid plan.

Pricing: free plan; Startup $9.96, Basic $19.96, Business $39.96 per month billed annually ($11.95, $23.95 and $47.95 monthly); 14 day trial.

16. TeamGantt

Key features:

• Gantt charts with critical path
• Workload management
• Actual vs. estimated timelines
• Flat pricing

TeamGantt is for managers who plan in timelines and need everyone, including clients, to read them without training. Its Gantt charts show dependencies and the critical path, the workload view shows how much each person is assigned across projects, and actual against estimated timelines show where a schedule is slipping. It also has Kanban boards, time tracking and exports to CSV, PDF and Microsoft Project.

Pricing is flat rather than per user. Base covers one manager and 10 collaborators on up to 5 projects, and Business adds unlimited users with 5 to 20 projects, at $24 per extra project. TeamGantt now also sells a Builder Edition aimed at construction teams.

Limitation: the iOS companion app uses list views in place of timelines, so schedules are really a desktop job, and the trial needs a credit card.

Pricing: free for 1 user and 1 project; Base $589 per year ($59 monthly); Business from $1,140 per year ($120 monthly); 14 day trial.

17. Aha!

Key features:

• Capacity planning
• Logged time and approvals
• Velocity charts
• Roadmaps (separate product)

Aha! is best known for product roadmaps, but its Aha! Teamwork product is the one that fits team management. It covers capacity planning, logged time, approvals and team productivity analysis, and the Advanced plan adds velocity charts for teams that work in sprints. Aha! says it integrates with more than 35 tools.

For product organizations, the value is in connecting the two: Aha! Roadmaps holds strategy and priorities, and Teamwork shows whether the team has the capacity to deliver them. That link requires the Advanced plan, and Roadmaps itself is priced well above Teamwork, starting at $59 per user per month billed annually. For a team lead, the practical benefit of Teamwork on its own is seeing logged time against capacity, which shows whether a sprint or release is realistic before it starts.

Limitation: there is no free plan, and connecting Teamwork to Roadmaps needs the more expensive Advanced tier.

Pricing: Teamwork Essentials $9, Advanced $18 per user per month billed annually ($11 and $23 monthly); 30 day trial, no card needed.

18. Workzone

Key features:

• Gantt, Kanban and portfolio views
• Workload and capacity
• Time and expense tracking
• 1,000+ templates

Workzone is aimed at departments that run many projects and need a manager’s view across them. It offers Gantt, Kanban and portfolio views, workload and capacity planning, time and expense tracking, intake forms for new requests and proofing for creative work, with more than 1,000 templates to start from. Intake forms matter for team leads, because requests arrive in a standard format instead of through email and hallway conversations.

The Starter plan covers 1 to 25 users with 100 active projects and 250 GB of storage, and Team starts at 5 users with 500 GB. All plans are billed annually. Workzone’s pricing page also shows a comparison table with different figures from the headline prices, so confirm your quote before buying. We found no Workzone app on the App Store.

Limitation: there is no monthly billing and no native mobile app, and Starter is capped at 25 users.

Pricing: Starter $8, Team $20 per user per month billed annually; Enterprise on request; 2 week trial.

Team management software for knowledge sharing

A team that cannot find its own decisions repeats them. These tools keep docs, notes and processes in one searchable place.

19. Notion

Key features:

• Docs and wikis
• Databases with tasks
• Forms and dashboards
• Notion Calendar

Notion is where many teams keep their wiki, onboarding docs and meeting notes, and because its databases support tasks, subtasks and dependencies, the same workspace can hold the work itself. A team handbook can link to the project tracker it describes, which keeps context and work in one place. New hires can find how the team works without asking the same questions every week.

The free plan suits individuals; once two or more members share a workspace it limits blocks, caps uploads at 5 MB and keeps 7 days of page history. Notion AI is only a limited trial on Free and Plus. The Business plan adds the Notion Agent and forms with conditional logic, which turn the workspace into an intake point for team requests, and the free plan allows up to 10 guests for clients or contractors.

Limitation: Notion gives you building blocks, so someone has to design and maintain the team’s workspace.

Pricing: free plan; Plus $10, Business $20 per member per month billed annually ($12 and $24 monthly).

20. Slite

Key features:

• Doc verification workflow
• AI search over the knowledge base
• Doc ownership
• Answers in Slack

Slite is a knowledge base built around one problem: docs that go out of date. Every doc has an owner and a verification workflow that prompts them to confirm it is still accurate, and AI search answers questions from the knowledge base, inside Slite or directly in Slack. Slite says more than 3,000 companies use it.

For a manager, the useful part is accountability. Instead of a wiki nobody trusts, each process doc has a named owner and a status showing whether it has been checked. The Basic plan includes 30 AI questions per seat each month, and Pro adds the Slite Agent with 50 monthly credits per seat.

Limitation: there is no free plan, so you have to buy a plan after the 14 day trial, and Basic caps file uploads at 200 MB.

Pricing: Basic $10, Pro $20 per user per month billed yearly; Enterprise on request; 14 day trial, no card needed.

21. Evernote

Key features:

• Shared Spaces
• Tasks assigned to others
• Calendar sync
• AI meeting transcription

Evernote, now owned by Bending Spoons, is a note taking app that has grown team features: shared Spaces for a team’s notes, tasks you can assign to others, calendar sync and AI transcription of meetings. Team plans add administration, single sign on and activity logs.

Many people on your team may already use it personally, which makes adoption easy. It suits small teams that mainly capture and share notes. The free plan is now limited to 50 notes, 1 notebook, 1 synced device and 1 GB, so it works only as a trial. Teams get 5 shared Spaces on the free plan, which is enough to test whether a shared notebook per project or client fits how you work, and AI meeting transcription turns a recorded call into notes the whole team can search.

Limitation: the free plan syncs to only 1 device, and paid prices load by region, so check the price for your country before you plan a team rollout.

Pricing: free plan; Starter, Advanced, Flexible and Unlimited plans priced by region; 7 day trial.

Team management software for internal communication

Once a company is too large for one chat channel, news, recognition and policies need a home. These are enterprise intranet and employee experience platforms.

22. Simpplr

Key features:

• Intranet and enterprise search
• Multichannel communication
• Surveys and analytics
• Recognition and rewards

Simpplr is an employee intranet for mid size and large companies that want one place for news, policies, search and recognition. It sends communications across channels, runs surveys, rewards employees and measures what people actually read. Simpplr says it has more than 2 million active users and over 1,000 customers, and that it is a Leader in Gartner’s 2026 Magic Quadrant for intranets.

For a manager, the useful part is measurement. Instead of sending an all company email and hoping, you can see which updates were read and run a quick survey afterwards, while recognition and rewards give leaders a visible way to thank people across teams. Its mobile app is rated 4.9 on the App Store from about 540 ratings, which matters for companies with frontline staff who never open a laptop. Google Play is lower, at 3.9 from about 130 reviews.

Limitation: pricing is not published and is volume based, so it only makes sense for organizations large enough to need an intranet.

Pricing: quote only.

23. Interact

Key features:

• Targeted news
• Personalized homepages
• Social feeds and recognition
• Frontline access

Interact is intranet software that targets news and pages to the right people, so a warehouse team and a finance team see different homepages. It adds social feeds and recognition, surveys and access for frontline workers who do not have company email. Interact says more than 1,500 organizations use it.

It suits organizations whose main problem is reach: making sure important updates arrive and get read across offices, shifts and countries, rather than chat or task tracking. Personalized homepages mean each department or location sees the news and pages that apply to it, and surveys give managers a way to check whether a message actually landed.

Choosing between the three intranet tools here comes down to emphasis. Interact is strongest on targeting content to the right audience, Simpplr on search, analytics and recognition across a large company, and Workvivo on a social, mobile first feed for distributed and frontline teams. All three are quote only, so ask each for a price at your headcount before deciding.

Limitation: pricing is a tailored quote, and a branded mobile app is a paid add on.

Pricing: quote only.

24. Workvivo by Zoom

Key features:

• News, campaigns and livestreams
• Spaces by team or location
• Shoutouts and badges
• 60+ HR integrations

Workvivo, now part of Zoom, is an employee experience app that feels more like a social network than a classic intranet. Workvivo HQ includes news articles, campaigns, push notifications, livestreams with auto translation, Spaces for each team or location, shoutouts and badges, knowledge pages and a people directory with an org chart. It integrates with more than 60 HR tools, so the directory and org chart can come from the HR system rather than being kept up to date by hand.

It is built mobile first, and the ratings reflect it: 4.7 on the App Store from about 1,100 ratings and 4.4 on Google Play from about 4,800 reviews. That makes it a strong choice for companies with distributed or frontline teams where culture and recognition matter as much as announcements.

Limitation: there is no public pricing and no free trial, only a demo.

Pricing: custom proposal only.

Best free team management apps

A free team management app is only useful if its limits fit your team. These are the free plans the vendors publish:

For a small team that wants to pay nothing, a workable free stack is Pumble for chat, Trello or MeisterTask for tasks, and actiTIME for hours if you have three people or fewer. ClickTime, Microsoft Teams business plans, When I Work, Unrubble, Aha!, Workzone, Slite and the intranet tools have no free plan. For more options, see our list of free project management software.

What a team of 10 or 25 pays

Starting prices make most of these tools look similar. The yearly cost for a whole team shows how far apart they are. This table uses each tool’s entry paid plan, billed annually where offered, from the vendor’s published price:

Three things stand out. Chat is cheap: a 25 person team can run on Pumble for under $750 a year. Flat pricing wins as teams grow: Nifty’s flat Business plan costs $1,488 for 25 people, about half of what the per user knowledge and task tools charge. And per user tools in the $8 to $10 range all land around $2,400 to $3,000 a year at 25 users, so the decision between them should come down to fit, not price. As an example, a 25 person stack of Pumble Pro for chat ($747), Trello Standard for tasks ($1,500) and Everhour Team for time ($2,550) comes to $4,797 a year.

Which team management software to pick

• You need to know where hours go and what they cost: actiTIME, with approvals, overtime and labor cost by person and project.
• Your team works in shifts: When I Work for scheduling with the best rated mobile app, or Unrubble if you want to pay per module.
• Leave and availability keep surprising you: actiPLANS, which shows absences, shifts and work locations on one timeline.
• You are already on Microsoft 365: Microsoft Teams with Planner and Bookings, before you buy anything else.
• You want cheap chat for a small team: Pumble, free with unlimited users and history.
• Your team handles incoming requests with deadlines: Runrun.it, for SLAs and approvals inside tasks.
• You bill clients for project work: Avaza for an all in one small agency setup, or actiTIME alongside your task tool.
• Your docs are always out of date: Slite, for verified docs with named owners.
• You have hundreds of employees across sites: Workvivo or Simpplr for internal communication.

Where team management software goes wrong

• Buying a tool for the manager, not the team. If people find a tool slow or awkward, they stop updating it and the manager’s dashboard goes stale. If people work away from a desk, test the mobile app with them before you commit.
• Managing tasks without hours. A board shows that work is in progress, not that someone has spent 30 hours on a task estimated at 8. Connect task tracking to time tracking.
• Ignoring availability. Assigning work to someone who is on leave next week is the most common scheduling mistake, and it is invisible in most task tools.
• Too many places to look. A chat app, a task app, a doc tool and a scheduling app each add a login. Decide which tool is the source of truth for each type of information.
• Mistaking monitoring for management. Screenshot and activity trackers show a busy computer, not finished work. Hours logged against tasks, with estimates and deadlines, tell you far more about how the team is doing.
• Choosing on free plan limits you will outgrow. Many free plans stop at 3 to 5 users or a few projects. Price the plan for next year’s headcount before you commit.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best software for team management?

It depends on the job you need done. For tracking hours, approvals and labor cost, actiTIME is our pick. For shift scheduling, When I Work has the best rated app. For chat, Microsoft Teams suits companies on Microsoft 365, and Pumble suits small budgets. Most teams combine one tool from two or three of these categories.

What is the best free team management app?

Pumble has the most generous free plan for communication, with unlimited users and message history. For tasks, Trello covers up to 10 collaborators and MeisterTask allows unlimited members on 3 projects. For tracking time and costs, actiTIME is free for up to 3 users.

What is the difference between team management and project management software?

Project management software is organized around the work: tasks, timelines and deadlines. Team management software is organized around the people: their hours, availability, schedules and communication. Many tools cover some of both, so check which side a tool is strongest on before choosing.

How much does team management software cost?

Entry plans in this guide range from about $2.50 to $10 per user per month, and several tools are free for small teams. For a 25 person team, a single tool costs roughly $750 to $3,000 a year on its entry plan, and enterprise intranets such as Simpplr, Interact and Workvivo are priced on request.

Conclusion

The right team management software depends on what keeps going wrong. If people don’t know what to work on, start with a task tool. If you don’t know where the hours go or what the work costs, start with time tracking. If plans keep breaking because someone is on leave, start with scheduling. Pick one tool for each problem you actually have, check its mobile app and its price at next year’s headcount, and connect the hours to the work.

To see your team’s hours, approvals, overtime and labor cost in one place, start a free trial of actiTIME.