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With a quick search on the web, you’ll find lists with 20+ marketing agency project management software tools—no shortage of options. Unfortunately, this is also the perfect recipe for decision paralysis.
So we took a different approach for this page right here: instead of listing all the tools under the sun, we selected the best in terms of user-friendliness, effectiveness, and popularity for specific facets of project management.
We hope this will help you find the best project management software for your marketing agency.
What do marketing agency project management tools do?
Marketing agency project management software helps you manage and assign project work. If you run or work at a marketing or advertising agency, you’ll need these tools to help you:
- Plan and schedule projects, including timelines, phases, and milestones
- Understand team capacity to assign work realistically and know when to use contractors to complement your team
- Track time and billable hours so you can bill clients correctly
- Generate reports that help you optimize efficiency and how your team’s time is spent
- Keep all data in one place so you can manage assets more easily
(PS: When managing projects, you may find you need more powerful features on one aspect of project management, e.g. resource planning or capacity management. If you need to dig deeper into which tools would work well in these cases, check out our comprehensive listicles on resource management software and capacity planning tools.)
8 marketing agency project management software options to evaluate now
The tools below receive robust reviews for the project management tasks a marketing or advertising agency may need to carry out. The list isn’t exhaustive, but it should add some clarity on which features or solutions you can evaluate to make a more informed decision.
✅ Best project and capacity planning tool for growing advertising and marketing agencies: Float
1. Float
🏢 Founded in: 2011
🎯 Primary software category: Resource management
🏆 G2: 4.2 (1,200+ reviews); Capterra: 4.6 (1,580 reviews)
🧪 Free trial: Yes, 14 days.
Float (hello 👋) is one of the first dedicated resource management tools—it’s been around since 2011, and is designed with the needs of agencies in mind (our founders come from agency backgrounds themselves!).
Often praised for its user-friendliness and intuitiveness, Float enables you to plan projects, visualize workload, and allocate project work with confidence. It offers agencies an accurate view of capacity at a glance, assisted by a useful color-coded schedule.
Imagine this: projects and requests keep coming in from clients and you need to assign them to your team. But how do you find the people with the right skills and availability? In Float, you can do this easily from the schedule. With the visual interface, you can keep track of who’s working on what and make changes easily without dropping the ball or accidentally overworking your team.
Japie Stoppelenburg
Founder
Truus
“There was no way for us to do this company with this amount of clients, with this amount of big brands, and deliver all this work without [Float]. There are so many projects happening at the same time that, for a small agency like us, there is no way to handle that amount of [..] projects without having a visual planning tool.
“Ninety percent of our work is delivered on time because people know when they're supposed to do it.”
⭐Float features
- Real-time capacity and workload management features such as tracking time off and future availability
- Efficient resource planning, including the ability to add and manage skillsets and roles
- Phases, milestones, budgets, and multi-project timelines to plan projects weeks or months ahead
- Useful reporting, including estimates vs actuals to help you make better planning decisions
- Powerful filtering, with features such as saved views that you can share with your team
The right project planning tool for advertising and marketing agencies
See capacity at a glance, allocate work, and plan projects with confidence. Eliminate guesswork about who’s working on what, and deliver work efficiently.
Try for free
💰 Pricing
1. Starter. $6 per person per month, billed annually. Every resource scheduling capability you need, with unlimited projects and powerful reporting. Best for teams of up to 30 people.
2. Pro. $10 per person per month, billed annually. Everything in Starter, plus built-in time tracking, single sign-on (SSO), and workflow features designed to scale. Best for growing teams of 30+ people.
3. Enterprise. A custom plan that includes everything in Pro and is designed for larger organizations with heavier compliance and support needs.
🔥 You can learn more about Float’s pricing plans here.
🗓️ Best task management for individuals and small agency teams: Trello
2. Trello
🏢 Founded in: 2007
🎯 Primary software category: Project management
🏆 G2: 4.4 (13,400+ reviews); Capterra: 4.6 (23,000+ reviews)
🧪 Free trial: Yes, 14 days.
For smaller agencies that want a visual and easy way to manage tasks, Trello is an excellent choice. Its popular Kanban-style view and drag-and-drop functionality make it easy to create and adjust project work. Its setup offers a good way to manage incoming requests or ideas—keeping them organized in columns until they ’re assigned.
Trello also has a wide range of integrations (called Power-ups) and many information fields, making it the most customizable tool on this list. Though lacking the ability to manage real availability and understand how your team’s time is spent, it’s still useful as marketing agency project management software focused on task management and moving work forward.
⭐Trello features
- Flexible drag-and-drop interface
- High customizability with 100+ available integrations
- Multiple views, including board, calendar, timeline, and map
- Workflow automation
- Dashboard where you can build various reports (e.g. by labels or progress)
💰 Pricing
1. Free. Best for individuals and small teams.
2. Standard. 5$ per user per month, for unlimited boards and checklists.
3. Premium. 10$ per user per month, which includes timeline views and dashboards, and more security options (e.g. domain restrictions).
4. Enterprise. 17.5$ per user per month, including unlimited workspaces, advanced permission settings, and enterprise support.
⚡Best for task management of a large volume of projects: Monday.com
3. Monday.com
🏢 Founded in: 2012
🎯 Primary software category: Work management
🏆 G2: 4.7 (10,000+ reviews); Capterra: 4.6 (4,500+ reviews)
🧪 Free trial: Yes, 14 days.
Monday.com is one of the most popular project management tools, used by over 180,000 customers. Like Trello, it doesn’t allow for a deep understanding of capacity and resource management, but it’s more effective with tracking projects of high complexity.
Monday.com is especially useful for marketing agencies as it includes ways to track and report on campaigns, manage requests and briefs, and keep digital assets organized.
⭐Monday.com features
- Color-coded, visual interface with drag and drop functionality
- Customizable dashboards for different reporting needs
- Various views, including Kanban, lists, and maps
- Document management and sharing
💰 Pricing
1. Free. Up to two seats for individuals to keep track of work.
2. Basic. $8 per seat per month. A plan that helps you manage your team’s work with unlimited items and 5GB storage.
3. Standard. $10 per seat per month. Everything in Basic, with additional features like timelines and Gantt charts.
4. Pro. $16 per seat per month. Everything in Standard, plus time tracking and more automations.
5. Enterprise. Advanced reporting and analytics, and multi-level permissions.
⏰ Best for time tracking: Toggl Track and Float
4. Toggl Track
🏢 Founded in: 2006
🎯 Primary software category: Time tracking
🏆 G2: 4.6 (1,500+ reviews); Capterra: 4.7 (2,200+ reviews)
🧪 Free trial: Yes, 30 days.
Toggl Track is a beloved time-tracking tool—the core product of the company Toggl, which also offers Toggl Plan and Toggl Hire.
Toggl Track is free to use for up to five users. Reviews on Toggl Track often praise it for its user-friendly interface and mobile app. It integrates with multiple tools (e.g. Jira) and platforms (desktop, mobile) to ensure you can track time no matter what your setup is.
⭐Toggl Track features
- Built-in timer
- Client billing based on tracked hours and billable rates
- Useful reporting, such as project profitability and cost projections
- Time estimates (including for recurring projects)
💰 Pricing
1. Free. Up to five users for unlimited time tracking.
2. Starter. $9 per seat per month. This plan adds features like billable rates and time estimates.
3. Premium. $18 per seat per month. Everything in Starter with additional solutions such as timesheet approvals and project forecasts.
4. Enterprise. Custom pricing for more complex organizations that need multiple workspaces and priority support.
5. Float
Yes, it’s us again 👋. We’re not attention-seekers, we promise—but our tool is the only one whose advantages and use cases we know inside and out. And, time tracking is a feature that has been used extensively by some of our agency customers.
Our time-tracking capabilities are offered in our Pro and Enterprise plans and enable you to keep time tracking data in the same place where work happens. Time tracking is seamlessly integrated with our project planning and resource management solution. You can keep your plans and timesheets side by side and use reports to make better planning decisions.
Specifically, by using Float for time tracking, you can take advantage of:
- A built-in start/stop timer. The timer helps team members track their hours worked and automatically logs the time to the corresponding task. No more guesswork about how much time each task takes!
- Pre-filled timesheets. With our timesheets, you can log the time worked for each task with a single click, making the process a breeze for the team.
- Estimates vs actuals reporting. This kind of insight helps you see how accurate your predictions are and where your team’s time is spent.
- Budget reporting. The more hours your team logs, the more your budget is consumed. You can see when budget estimates are almost depleted to inform your clients (and even renegotiate) sooner rather than later.
How A—B increased time tracking adoption from 20% to almost 100% with Float
Design agency A—B implemented Float to consolidate data on capacity, budgets, timesheets, and timelines. Time logging in Float was so frictionless that, within months, nearly everyone on the A—B team was consistently tracking their time.
Read the full story🆓 Top project management software for a marketing agency (free): Asana
6. Asana
🏢 Founded in: 2008
🎯 Primary software category: Project management
🏆 G2: 4.3 (9,600+ reviews); Capterra: 4.5 (12,000+ reviews)
🧪 Free trial: Yes, 30 days.
Asana is one of the most popular task management tools which offers some capacity planning and time tracking capabilities on top.
Though it is similar to Monday.com when it comes to most project management features, it has a more comprehensive free plan that can be used by small teams too, and not just individuals. This is because, with Asana’s free plan, you can collaborate with up to 10 teammates on unlimited projects and tasks—which is more effective than Monday.com’s two-seat-only free plan.
It’s a great choice for small marketing agency teams and you can easily upgrade to the premium plan when you need to without losing momentum.
⭐Asana features
- Essential task management features, such as Gantt charts, subtasks, and calendar views
- Project planning and multi-project timelines
- Useful reporting, such as portfolio insights and real-time charts
- Workload management and time tracking (available on the Advanced and Enterprise plans)
💰 Pricing
1. Personal—Free. Project management for individuals or teams just getting started.
2. Starter. $10.99 per user per month. Track and plan projects with timelines and milestones.
3. Advanced. $24.99 per user per month. For companies that need to manage portfolios and work across multiple departments.
4. Enterprise and Enterprise +. Custom pricing for complex organizational needs.
🤝 Best project management software for team collaboration: ProofHub
7. ProofHub
🏢 Founded in: 2011
🎯 Primary software category: Project management
🏆 G2: 4.5 (85 reviews); Capterra: 4.6 (95 reviews)
🧪 Free trial: Yes, 14 days.
ProofHub is a project management and team collaboration software that checks all boxes for essential project management, such as tasks and planning features.
However, as marketing agency project management software, it stands out because of useful collaboration features that other tools lack—including discussion boards, chat, proofing and approvals, meeting notes, and announcements for sharing progress.
It is also one of few tools in the project management market offering flat pricing (not a per-user fee), which can be really cost-effective for growing marketing and advertising agencies.
⭐ProofHub features
- Team collaboration, including chat, proofing ability, and discussions
- Project planning with Gantt charts and timelines
- Workflow management
- Custom roles and templates for easier setup and customization
💰 Pricing
1. Essential. $45 per month billed annually, for 40 projects and unlimited users.
2. Ultimate control. $89 per month billed annually, for unlimited projects and additional features such as custom access roles, IP restrictions, and priority support.
🌐 Best for centralizing tools and asset management: ClickUp
8. ClickUp
🏢 Founded in: 2017
🎯 Primary software category: Project management
🏆 G2: 4.7 (9,000+ reviews); Capterra: 4.7 (4,000+ reviews)
🧪 Free trial: No, but free plan.
ClickUp is an all-in-one platform aiming to centralize all tools needed to run project work. Apart from the ability to create and see projects in multiple views (e.g. timelines and lists), it also offers other solutions in one platform. For example, you can brainstorm ideas on whiteboards, keep important docs, or manage forms for requests.
While not going deep into functions like capacity planning and resource management (e.g. optimization or forecasting), it still can show you insights into current workload and availability, too. As a marketing agency project management tool, it can work well if your aim is to have only one platform for all your PM functionalities.
⭐ClickUp features
- Full task management (create and assign tasks)
- Document creation and management
- Whiteboards and chat for better collaboration
- Reporting with visual dashboards
- Time tracking
💰 Pricing
The below plans are billed yearly:
1. Free. A plan for personal use, with collaborative docs, Kanban view, and more.
2. Unlimited. $5 per member per month. A plan for small teams with unlimited storage, Gantt charts, and more. Includes resource management.
3. Business. $12 per member per month. A plan for mid-sized teams that includes everything in Unlimited, along with SSO, time tracking, workload management, and timelines.
5. Enterprise. You need to contact ClickUp for a custom price. This is a plan for large teams.
What’s the absolute best digital marketing agency project management software?
The answer depends on what your needs are and how much you need specific solutions. For example, if your pain point is not being able to see capacity which causes your team to miss deadlines, then we recommend you give Float a try!
If you’re more concerned with breaking down projects into manageable tasks, a pure project management tool like Asana or Monday.com will get the job done.
Make sure you have your requirements down and know what problem you’re trying to solve—and choosing the right tool will be so much easier!
Is your agency ready to give Float a try?
See how you can easily plan projects, schedule work, and get insights on estimates vs actuals. Get a view of real-time capacity at a glance to allocate any work coming your way, with confidence.
Try now free
