Having trouble communicating with your remote team? You shared the wrong file with your team, and it takes 3 hours to send it back to them one by one again. Your remote team misunderstood the milestones and even the goals of your project? This conflict never feels good when it comes to carrying the pressure of completing a project, but you can eliminate this problem by using online project management software.
The rise of remote teams has led to the production of several online project management systems, which are great for solving team problems facing productivity issues and the need for real-time updates. Online project management software not only breaks distance barriers by providing instant communication to collaborators, but also provides them with a shared environment where every teammate can get the same updates, same files, and same documentation.
10 Best Project Management Software for Remote Teams
It is only a matter of time for you to find them, but we decided to introduce you to 10 online project management software that provides you with many useful features such as task management and sharing, real-time updates, file sharing, and even an online wiki. Forget about trouble in every aspect of project management, now you only need to log in on the web to access the all-in-one project management system!
activeCollab
ActiveCollab helps collaborators through time-saving and easy-to-use features. The project leader can set milestones for the team, add team members, assign tasks, and get notified by email of updates on the project. Also, when replying or posting a comment, you don’t need to be logged into the system, you can reply and send comments via email.
With ActiveCollab, team leaders can provide real-time updates to their contractors/clients by giving them access to the system itself. I personally use this, and I’ve seen that it’s flexible enough to give users permission on what features to use.
File sharing, time tracking, invoicing, project management, and notification—all in one place: on your web server.
Assembla
Assembla has a ticketing system where teams in remote locations are given tasks via tickets. I’ve used this, and I found it a little confusing at first, but after spending some time with it, I understand exactly how it works. It’s like one of those online forums where people talk about a lot of things, only here, it’s the project leader who controls most of the game.
There’s a built-in wiki to help new users navigate their way through, and Assembla encourages its users to read and follow instructions.
Basecamp
Created by 37 Signals, a company that believes less is more, Basecamp focuses on communication between users to achieve optimal performance. Instead of emailing multiple people, users can post directly to Basecamp and let people get involved in the post, eliminating cluttered email threads in everyone’s inbox.
When it comes to sharing files, Basecamp supports every popular file format, from Word documents to images to all file types. When it comes to revisions, files uploaded with the same filename won’t overwrite existing files, and older files will be archived so people can see what changes were made. For uploaded images, users can preview uploaded images before downloading the file.
Central Desktop
Just like any online project management software, using Central Desktop will allow you to work anywhere as long as there is an internet connection. It’s a good thing to have a cloud-based platform to work with, eliminating clutter on your clients and thereby keeping yourself organized.
Users can get an instant time tracker, real-time web conferencing (which is essential for any collaboration tool), built-in instant messaging, instant document editing (like Google Docs), and much more.
Central Desktop also has sleek Twitter-like features where users can post status updates about their tasks. It also features a discussion forum for teams to discuss their ideas, (which is a good thing, especially when people live in different time zones).
Meeting
If you are a wiki user, then Confluence will be easy to use. While this isn’t your typical wiki, it still incorporates many similar features, such as content creation for all users, smart search, discussion, and more. File sharing is carried out via drag and drop. Meeting, unlike other project management software, focuses more on documenting and sharing information. For large projects, proper documentation is definitely the key to a more organized execution.
Like WordPress, there are also several user-installable plugins for the system, each serving its own purpose. And as people have said, the best feature is the ability to integrate with Microsoft Office. That in itself, says a lot.
Kapost
Kapost is the perfect publishing management software for bloggers and authors working in collaboration. It is a virtual newsroom where users can present drafts and have them approved by editors. There are three types of users here, editors, contributors, and subscribers. Editors can approve, assign, and reject ideas for contributors.
Kapost also has a built-in feature for paying per post, although I haven’t personally tried it I think it’s a really cool feature, especially when working with a very diverse team on result-based payments.
The thing about Kapost is that it makes its users more concept-focused, increasing the quality of the content. It’s like an actual newsroom where people brainstorm together.
Productev
Producteev works like an online to-do list that informs you in real time about what’s happening via email, IM, or iPhone. Team leaders can create virtual workspaces and assign collaborators there, create tasks and assign them to people, increase deadlines, and generate productivity reports.
Teambox
Is your inbox out of control? Teambox solves this problem by intelligently organizing projects, telling you which conversations to view, which to prioritize, etc.
The nice part I see here is that users can post status updates, much like Facebook, except that they notify project members of their progress. Unlike other systems, Teambox is probably one of the few pieces of software out there that won’t leave you looking for help files because everything is so simple and intuitively easy to understand.
Team Lab
TeamLab is a free management platform for small and medium-sized companies. Using TeamLab is similar to having a social network inside your company. You can create blog posts that can be seen by the entire company, and the platform is also getting other social-friendly features like company-wide announcements so no one gets left behind, and public opinion polls, among many other things. Members can even start their own discussions in the forum, getting the whole company involved in any activity they like.
Another notable feature is the in-house chat messenger that connects each member, eliminating the use of other IMs for work communications.
Time Doctor
The Doctor’s time allowed me to reduce wasted time dramatically, as in the world we live in today, time can make or break an entire company.
Its main features include optional screenshot monitoring for remote employees (which is a little invasive, in my opinion, but will do the job), automatic generation of daily reports, tracking what websites and apps are used, and many other features that track every action taken. may be done by the user on his computer. I have to say, if you want to be assertive with every penny you pay, Time Doctor is what you’re looking for.
