6 Best Notion Alternatives you should use 2021

We think Notion is a great project management tool, but there's many others out there to explore. When you're looking for a project management tool, you'll want to think about a few factors. The tool should be able to support your specific company size and needs.

Our research makes it easy for you to find the right one for your needs.

Here's 6 project management tools we personally battle tested for you, along with their pros and cons

Here are the tools we checked out:

• Trello
• Jira
• Asana
• Monday
• Clickup
• Basecamp
  

Monday

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Monday is a platform that allows teams to organize and plan your work, from a central view. It is highly visual, so you can add team members, assign tasks, create workflows and track progress. By using Monday, teams are able to stay on top of all your work, no matter your project complexity. You can organize work and improve collaboration, so your team can work closely together. The software improves the visibility of work, allowing everyone involved to work closely together to overcome challenges and create a synergy that improves team performance.

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Pros:

• Built for multiple users
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• Monday is great for tracking projects. In tasks, you can add an estimated time. If an issue has been created, you can assign it, and if it is not assigned to you, you can 'watch' it to be alerted at any changes. Each issue has a 'todo' list view which you can tick off, so you can keep track of items you have completed.
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• Alternative views. Although we do not offer Gantt charts, we've included a timeline view, which other users prefer. It still gives users the information they need to understand project progress and the deadlines which are approaching. The software also offers kanban boards and calendar views.
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• Our platform is a useful, cloud-based communication tool. Communication is improved as organisation members can easily invite others to view boards and timelines, whether they are internal to the company or external partners.
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• Simplified project organization and management . Our platform make it easy to centralize your work and to eliminate manually repetitive tasks so you can solve real problems.

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Cons:

• Per-user pricing limits the number of people. Monday uses tiered per-user pricing for its most popular plans. However, the more useful features are in higher plans, which makes it unattractive to some SMBs.
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• Some clients find it challenging to track time against each task and the cost for all the related tasks.
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• Some users found the interface a bit cluttered and difficult to navigate, with a high learning curve.
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• If you want to access the dashboards you have to do a lot more work on your phone.
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• Monday provides a suite of integrations today, but some users would like more integrations

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Quick Conclusion:

As a business, you need to be constantly adapting to new changes in your environment. For example, the modern landscape is moving towards remote working and project-based businesses that promote collaboration and visibility. Monday is a top contender for project management and offers tools that promote collaboration and visibility. However, it is not the answer to every possible problem. If you are experiencing problems with your current product, then it is worth taking the time to assess if you have outgrown it, or if the problem lies in its core.

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ClickUp
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Clickup, a collaboration app that is suitable for both businesses who are small and for those who have a bigger presence. Clickup works for any kind of business, whether you're a startup or a bigger company. It's built for ease of use, it can handle all your communication needs and make sure that work gets done effectively. You can assign tasks to your team and give them statuses to let you know how your tasks are coming along. It also sends notifications for you to follow up on, if you want to be updated on certain information.

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Pros:

• Suitable for both team users and solo users. Clickup is suitable for both team and solo users. It has a suite of features that are perfect for managing daily activities. The 2.0 version is especially impressive because of its improved user interface and integrations.
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• Clickup has an impressive dashboard. It's easier to navigate than many products with a similar feature set.
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• Powerful even the free version. Free versions are expected to be less powerful and sometimes even lack features. Fortunately, this is not true with Clickup because it still supports many features that are otherwise only found in paid versions of other software. For example, it has email notifications, Android/OS app, task dependencies, file attachments for tasks, and more.
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• Clickup’s focus is making sure it has the best features to suit customer needs, as evidenced by their frequently updated customer requests page.
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• We provide great customer support. Our support team are always eager to help. They're always happy to answer any questions and go the extra mile to ensure customer satisfaction.
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Cons:

• Our product is a bit hard to master. Even users who have been using it for some time find it hard to use all the features
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• Too many choice can be overwhelming for users. Even though Clickup has many options, some users require a simpler interface. Some users claim that the option to choose between done or not done is enough.
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• The calendar is difficult to navigate for some users. Although the calendar provides new UI/UX and different buttons, it doesn't make it easy for the user to input simple information into the calendar.
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• The UI needs to be improved. Because we market ourselves as one app to rule all, users get confused when they see empty windows. We also need to improve the color scheme, as some users have trouble reading the writing due to the small font and faint colors.
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• Due to time limitations, this function was not included in the initial release of Clickup.

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Quick Conclusion:

Clickup may not be as popular as Asana or Trello, but it is every bit as powerful. Although it lacks a few features, it does more than enough for most people, and its developers are constantly updating to make it even better.

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Basecamp
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It's a flexible and smart task management app which has a design that's intuitive and well-structured. It allows users to collaborate and communicate with one another in a much easier manner, and everything is kept in one place.

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Pros:

• Easy access to all files relating to a project. It's especially useful for virtual teams. It makes searching for older files a cinch.
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• Basecamp has a simple pricing system. For the free plan, there is a limit on the number of users and projects. For the paid plan, there's an unlimited number of users and projects. You can try Basecamp for free with a 30-day trial.
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• Switch notifications on and off. Basecamp gives users the option to switch notifications on or off. You can be notified as often or as little as you like.
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• Great communication. Basecamp uses a private message system as well as a publicly accessible Campfire system.
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• Mobile capability. One other great thing about Basecamp is that it can be accessed not just on a laptop but also on Android and iOS gadgets. Everything is done the same way and the notification settings can also be controlled.
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• We've made it easy to attach important files and documents to Basecamp messages, and our portal can be connected to Google docs for easy data storage.

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Cons:

• We're currently not integrating any time tracking feature in Basecamp. This is because any project management software worth its salt should be able to integrate with an external time tracking app for a more complete solution.
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• No ability to archive discussions. Basecamp’s dashboard can easily get crowded but it doesn’t allow you to archive unused discussions. Oftentimes, these discussions stand in the way of the really important ones. Archiving them helps in decluttering without having to delete discussions that may be useful in the future.
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• Basecamp's lack of a starring feature is a pain. It would be great to add a starring feature to Basecamp so we could revisit the important tasks at any time.
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• Basecamp is deceptively simple, easy to use and a great project management tool for small businesses and teams. However, it doesn't have all of the features you might need for a big business or enterprise project.

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Quick Conclusion:

As thousands of people have realised, Basecamp is a fantastic platform for managing projects. Its efficiency is proven, and any limitations have been overcome.

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Trello
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Pros:

• Mobile Access – Owing to the global rise of mobile technology, it's essential that software is compatible with all devices. Trello is mobile friendly, letting you access Trello on any device you want
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• Trello's pricing model is straightforward and easy to understand. For example, $25 per month gives you an unlimited access package which includes an unlimited amount of members and features.
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• Notifications – Trello lets you know exactly what you need to know, when you need to know it. If you are a mobile user, you can expect push notifications for almost every task.
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• Goodbye, Paper Clutter – Trello will eliminate the distraction of paper trails.
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• The update system is instantaneous; if multiple members are working on projects simultaneously, the updates will not show delay
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• We follow the Kanban System – The Kanban system was founded in the 1950s by Toyota and has played a rather significant role in identifying issues with the development process. The Kanban system can aid in the scheduling of tasks into smaller components by using cards and boards.

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Cons:

• No data, no Trello – The main issue with not just Trello, but this type of software, in general, is the reliance on data. If you have no access to the internet, you have no access to your Trello. Data access may not seem like an issue given the age we live in, but unfortunately, there will always be situations when you cannot access data.
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• Storage is limited – There are only 250MB attachments per upload, if you are a gold member. The issue is that new users have a 10MB upload limit.
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• Commenting – One thing that needs fixing is that you cannot edit a comment once an existing comment is posted. Once a comment is posted, you will only be able to add a new comment and not edit the original one.
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• Trello is a great tool for smaller projects, but if you’re managing larger projects you might want to use something else.

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Quick Conclusion:

As you can probably see, Trello has many advantages and will benefit businesses, sole traders, entrepreneurs and pretty much anybody who has daily tasks or projects to manage. Weighing up the pros and cons shows that Trello is an excellent piece of software that can help you get those essential jobs done. Whether for personal or professional use, Trello is a winner.

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Jira

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Jira Software is a project management tool from Atlassian, a multinational company headquartered in Sydney. Jira Software was initially released in 2002 as a pure issue tracking software for software developers. Over the years, it has been adopted by non-IT teams for tracking any type of issue, task, and other work items, becoming a popular project management software. Many project management software today like Jira Software include issue tracking as an additional module or feature. These systems usually include information such as the date the issue was identified, a description of the problem, its priority, and the responsible person or team for resolving the issue, among others

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Pros:

• Jira has map out the big picture to help teams plan projects. The roadmap feature helps to set product vision and strategy, break it up into tasks that teams can work on, and prioritize the roadmap based on the feedback of the users.
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• Great for agile. Our tool provides a single view of all work and includes numerous reports for monitoring your team's performance, including reports such as Burndown charts, team velocity and others. You can organize work into sprints and releases, and monitor the workload and task assignments of your team.
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• available integration. the issue and project tracking software integrate with many popular third-party software. For example, integration with hipchat and slack makes it easy to communicate issues and respond to notifications. More than 3000 apps are available at the atlassian marketplace to extend the features of the software.
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• Create custom Jira applications for your unique business needs.
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• The software works for a range of people. Whether you're technical or non-technical, our software can be used by you

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Cons:

• Jira users complain about the mobile app's slow navigation and responsiveness. All the tasks in the web version are easily accessible via the app.
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• Complex migration from other application lifecycle management (ALM) platforms. Migrating from Microsoft Team Foundation Server into Jira involves manually migrating each artifact into Jira, which is very time-consuming.
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• Our reporting platform cannot be re-used. It does not allow you to save reports as image files, or share them directly, or share them in any form other than a PDF.
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• Some users find that they're limited to uploading files of less than 10 MB in size.
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• While the user interface does not vary much across the program, some may consider it overly complicated, especially if they are using atypical setups.

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Quick Conclusion:

Jira offers the best in class issue tracking and project management features that many modern companies would consider standard

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Asana

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Asana users can create a virtual workspace that can be used to collaborate on a project and finish it together. Asana can help you assign tasks to a particular person, and gives them a certain deadline. Asana allows users to add comments and files to each task, and gives users notifications when it's time to complete their projects. Asana is suitable for many different types of project, from long to short term. It helps groups organise their daily tasks, whether they are onsite or remote.

Pros:

• Asana is a free plan. Most SMBs are on a tight budget, but Asana can offer a cost efficient tool for small teams. With their free plan, they can still use their PM software.
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• Variety of integrations. With Asana’s wide range of third party integrations, it’s possible to connect it to pretty much any other piece of software you might use
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• Features that help your business be more productive. For example, setting priorities. A strong point of Asana is that you can set customized priorities for any task that will automatically update it as you complete your progress. This is also true for files you transfer via Dropbox, Google or via mobile.
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• Our security measures are great for businesses with confidential data.
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• Another key feature of the dashboard is the ability to customize the layout. The team leader can do that by allowing the dashboard to be configured depending on the team’s needs and goals. These customization options enable users to track and complete tasks easily. Aside from that, the dashboard is also useful for job applicants and customers to track their progress and raise questions, while communicating with other teams using group dashboard discussions.
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• A better way to collaborate on projects. Asana allows users to create a workspace where they can collaborate on a project. The workspace enables them to see the tasks and projects that they have access to. Managers can assign people to follow the tasks or projects that they want to be kept up to date on, or people can follow voluntarily.

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Cons:

• Users found Asana to be both friendly and not friendly. Asana is used by most experienced project managers because it helps them in their daily operations and meetings. However, for newbies, the software is intimidating because of the graphics and interface. Thus, on-boarding training can be costly and time-consuming and one of the ways to avoid this is to have a cheat sheet.
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• Too many features. Even a simple project can quickly become complicated by the sheer number of features. You have to spend a significant amount of time deciding which features you need and that might be more than you’re willing to invest in a simple project.
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• There is a cap on how many people can be assigned to a task, so each task is guaranteed to be assigned to one and only one person. However, if that person is unavailable, it will create a problem.
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• Asana does not have a time tracking tool. If you are looking for a tool that can both keep track of your tasks and who completed them, you need to use a different piece of software.
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• Limited exporting facilities. While Asana has this feature, it's only available in JSON or CSV formats, not in PDF or MS Office formats
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Quick Conclusion:

Asana has been shown to be effective in multiple contexts. Some of the below pros and cons may seem alike in number, however, they are just an indication of the variety of uses of Asana.