#dapulse

Blog taken from the nTask Blog — 5 of the Best Free Monday Alternatives (formerly DaPulse)

Monday.com, formerly known as DaPulse, has been around the project management block for quite some time. Bagging some major clients including Fiverr, Discovery, McDonald’s and more, Monday has surely made its mark as a great productivity and project management tool, with over 10 years of history.

Monday is a project management tool with a multitude of features for team management and project delivery. So, why do we need alternatives?

Like each entity present on the surface of the earth, this tool, too, is not perfect. It’s not exactly a one-size-fits-all solution. For instance, here are some of the basic features it lacks:

No Gantt Charts

Yes, you read that right. Monday does not believe in Gantt charts. In fact, they have an entire blog on why they pride in offering a tool that does not include Gantt charts. It’s sad but if you’re looking for a Gantt chart software in a project management tool, Monday will be a no-go for you.

Pricing vs. Features

With so many tools that offer a vast feature set for reasonable prices, Monday seems to lag behind in competitive pricing. The preliminary package costs $25 per month for features other tools offer in less than one-third of the price.

Recurring Tasks

Monday does not have an inbuilt module for scheduling recurring tasks. Teams often need to work with certain types of tasks on a daily level. It can be monotonous setting a schedule every day and many tools allow one-time scheduling for such tasks.

Time Tracking

As with recurring tasks, Monday does not even have its own time tracking feature. You need to make use of third-party integrations to implement it.

So, here is a list of top Monday alternatives you can avail today resulting in an equal or even higher level of user satisfaction and team productivity.

1.nTask

First up on our list of free Monday alternatives is nTask. A project management and team collaboration tool, nTask caters to teams from numerous industries with varying work patterns. nTask has a clean interface and very intuitive to learn.

With efficient modules placed neatly on the side, it helps you work with tasks, projects, meetings, timesheets, risks, and issues with ease while managing multiple workspaces simultaneously.

Key Features

Check out the following robust set of features you can make use of with nTask:

Comprehensive task management that allows you to structure your work through task creation, organization, prioritizing, assigning and sharing. You can schedule tasks on a one-time and recurring basis. You can either create projects, associate tasks or treat tasks independently. Plus, you can switch tasks between projects, which makes it easier to improvise along the way.

By integrating with Slack, you can create tasks and projects during discussions with team members as well as send updates from nTask to Slack conversations relevant to tasks and projects.

Efficient project management through timelines, percent-complete tracking, Gantt charts, efficient reporting, and resource allocation.

Track time for each task individually for better task planning.

Through the timesheet management module, employees can list down the hours spent on tasks and shows the cost incurred per resource. You can manage employee task efforts and payroll with this dedicated module.

A complete meeting management module for scheduling meetings. You can schedule meetings as one-time or recurring with sending invites to attendees, adding timing and location details as well as adding follow-up tasks and decisions.

The issue management feature helps you easily track issues through listing them down with multiple statuses and assigning an issue owner.

Identify potential risks through the risk management module. You can list down the risks assigned to a risk owner and with multiple statuses.

Send alerts, notifications, and reminders to keep teams on track.

iOS and Android mobile apps

Pricing

Free — 5 workspaces, 200 MB storage, up to 10 team members

Pro — $2.99 Unlimited members, Pay-as-you-grow, unlimited tasks and projects

Rating: 4.7/5 — nTask is the perfect choice for small teams and solopreneurs.

2.Hygger

With Hygger, you get a free Monday alternative that offers team and project management, all the while catering to popular Agile frameworks.

With Hygger, you can effectively implement Agile practices through Scrum and Kanbanboards. You can also combine both the approaches to customize the way you keep track of your team and projects.

You can avail a spectrum of features dealing with task and project management, time tracking, issue management, and customer feedback.

Key Features

Get to work with the following capabilities with Hygger:

Task and project management through Scrum and Kanban boards. Through Swimlanes or Labels, you can organize tasks on your boards. Plus, you can identify and tackle potential issues via visible bottlenecks.

Time tracking and estimation for tasks through hours, log time it took to complete a task and the hours logged and hours estimated ratio.

Project reporting through Gantt charts, percent complete tracking, milestone tracking, Burndown report for Scrum and Cycle Time for Kanban real-time monitoring.

Ideas storage and scoring

Ability to create roadmaps and share with teams

Time and expense tracking for accounting and payroll

Release management

iOS and Android mobile apps

Pricing

Free— Free forever, no strings attached.

Paid — $9.00per user/month, unlimited everything

Rating: 4.5/5 — A great collaboration tool for teams.

3. Allthings

Allthings is a Kanban based tool for project management and team collaboration. This is one of those free Monday alternatives that help you organize and monitor your work via a neat interface using drag and drop.

View tasks, status updates, send notifications, share lists and track time for efficient project planning and coordination. Plus, with Hygger, you can add your own custom fields to have more control on the way you steer your projects.

Key Features

Allthings allows you to make use of the following feature list:

Task management including creating, organizing, prioritizing and sharing tasks and to-do lists. You can set deadlines for one-time as well as recurring tasks.

Project management options including daily email of work summary and highlighted deadlines to stay on time.

Time tracking for tasks and estimation of time spent.

Comments and file attachments for added information.

Capacity and resource planning

Customization of fields

Group collaboration tool

Mobile apps for Android, iOS and Windows Phone

Multi-platform

Kanban boards

iOS and Android mobile apps

Pricing

Free — 30-day trial, no strings attached

Pro and Team plans — $3.99, unlimited everything

Rating: 4.2/5 — Great for teams and individuals.

4.Avaza

Another tool that makes it to our list of free Monday alternatives is Avaza.

Avaza covers project management from the very beginning i.e. customer quotations and to the very end, i.e customer invoicing.

This project management tool is one of our top suggestions as an alternative to Monday. Just like other basic project and team management software, Avaza also allows you to be more responsive to customers using the Questions tab.

You can also share detailed project estimates with potential clients. On approval, these estimates can be converted into a project right away.

Key Features

Task management including group tasks, task views via Kanban, Gantt and List

Project management including project budgeting, Gantt charts, reports, project burn-down charts, and project progress dashboards

Time tracking for tasks

Activity feeds

Comments, file sharing and collaboration

Timesheet entry and payroll management

Online payments (partial payments, PayPal payment integration)

Invoices and online billing

Cloud accounting

Credit notes

Invoice, Quotation and Estimation

Billing and expense management including multi-currency expenses, invoicing, payments, credit notes, and support for split payments across invoices

iOS and Android mobile apps

Pricing

Free — Free forever, no strings attached

Startup — $9.95, great for small teams

Rating: 4.1/5 — Great for teams and individuals.

5.Project Insight

Our 5th pick for free Monday alternatives is Project Insight. Catering to project and portfolio management, avail numerous features through a centralized interface including task and project management, team communication, resource management, expense estimation and more.

Plus, you can customize themes, labels, and fields as required.

Key Features

Here are key project planning features you can avail with Project Insight:

Task management including customization for fields, forms and other elements.

Project management including project dashboard reports, Gantt charts, status updates, project budgeting, reporting and scheduling.

Time tracking

Team collaboration and discussion channel

Cross-project resource allocation

Resource management

Expense assessment and management including Budgeting and costing

Capacity planner for resource management

Workflow and approvals

Pricing

Free — Basic functionality. Free forever.

Business — $45.00, unlimited everything

Rating: 3.8/5 — Great for teams and individuals.

"The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain an agnostic.” - Charles Darwin

The startup experience is pretty easy to imagine. First, you have a great idea, assemble a rock-star team and read all the books you can get your hands on. You are an Agile master determined to run “lean”. Even with such a promising, solid start, there is a faint, nagging voice that asks a simple but important question: with so much to do across so many aspects of the business, how do you get organized and manage all the moving parts effectively?

Not so difficult, you think. Just reach out to fellow entrepreneurs in the community.  The problem is that you often wind up with more answers than you know what to do with.  For almost every aspect of your business, there is an avalanche of solutions.  Slack, Hipchat, Skype, Yammer and many others to stay in touch. Google Hangouts, Skype, GoToMeeting and ScreenHero for video meetings and sharing screens. Trello, DaPaluse, JIRA, Pivotal, 10000ft, etc., to track your progress across development, product and marketing.  Before you know it, you have a full-time project on your hands just figuring out how to manage all of these tools, let alone managing the needs of your team and internal processes.

What the hell is going on here? I thought we were supposed to run “lean”?

If any of this sounds familiar, you are not alone.  We are about three weeks into our launch and the endless tool options can be a bit overwhelming. Figuring out how to run a business should not get in the way of launching a business.

In the spirit of collaboration, perhaps our experience can help in your quest to be the most lean, highly-connected, highly-efficient startup you can be. Taking a step back, we applied the same iterative and measurement practices that are the guiding philosophy of rMark and began to filter our options.

First, what are our goals for the next 90-180 days?  For us, this was easy to answer: obtain additional funding, continue customer development and develop the MVP.

Second, what is the minimum process our team members need?  Like many companies today, we are a remote team.  We work across multiple time zones, with multiple roles (management, development, design, science) each with our own needs to be successful. 

Third, what do we believe we will actually use?  We all love the “shiny new toy”, however, I have watched too many teams spend more time tool-hopping than integrating and using them to be successful.

Fourth, are we actually saving time and money using these tools? We need to ensure that any tool we utilize actually increases our communication and productivity across our respective roles and time zones, therefore saving us cash.    

After using a dozen or so different tools, we determined these were the best ones to help us today and for the next 180 days, and here’s why:

Product Management & Development: First, to help us drive our development efforts we went with what we know.  Our developers are well versed in the standard Agile methodologies.  We have used JIRA, Bitbucket and Confluence for years and we know how they work.  They’re straightforward and we can track our progress easily.

Project Management & Planning: Second, to help maintain focus across all the various projects, fundraising, product development, marketing, etc., we decided to go with DaPulse.  It provides a complete picture at once, while also being able to dive deep and capture the day-to-day conversations around the individual task.

Communication & Collaboration: Third, we decided to go with Slack and Screenhero for our communications.  We love these tools and their integrations.  As we grow, our foundation and habits of communication and process will be in place. In addition, we chose Evernote for our collaborative knowledge-base. Evernote makes it easy for us to capture and share websites, articles and data in well-organized notebooks.

In the end, to make sense of the intimidating excess of options, we applied the same model of test/measure/adjust when evaluating which tools best solve our needs for today’s goals. As we grow, we will reevaluate our processes and tools. Until then, the goal is to release our product, rather than spend all of our time and resources on managing tools. We picked the bare minimum we needed in order to gain insight, capture progress, measure and make modifications.

Stay tuned for further posts and let us know what works best for you in your launch experience.

Cheers!