Tired of juggling multiple projects, deadlines, and client requests? Our favorite project management software for creative agencies will save you from the chaos.

These 14 options are among the best at streamlining creative teams’ workflows, boosting client collaboration, and maximizing productivity.

Whether you’re a marketing, design, advertising, or digital agency, you’ll get the right one for your needs by the end of this article.

Alright, let’s get started!

14 Best Creative Agency Project Management Software in 2024

Time to get to the juicy details!

In this section, we’ll delve into key features, pricing options, pros, and cons of each creative project management software.

So by the end of the list, you’ll have all the essential information to pick the right tool for your creative team’s needs.

1. Workfront

Workfront is a good choice for mid to large creative agencies.

This creative agency project management software brings a cohesive and structured approach to centralizing data, project tracking, and team collaboration.

It covers essential aspects like tasks, timelines, resource management, creative reviews, and budget control, streamlining project planning effortlessly.

One of its strengths is offering customizable workflows, providing easy access for creative agencies and stakeholders.

It also boasts flexible communication options and a timeline creation feature. This allows team members to collaborate seamlessly together, no matter where they are located.

Yet, smaller creative agencies might find Workfront less suitable due to its steep learning curve and expensive pricing plans (starting at $30/user per month).

Key Features

Work automations
Easy-to-use dashboards
Reporting tools
Goals and Objectives
Scenario Planner
Customizable project templates

Pros and Cons

Pros of Workfront

Offer a wide range of project management features
Improve collaboration among team members and stakeholders
Adaptable to specific processes and project requirements.
Give project managers valuable insights into project performance

Cons of Workfront

Steep learning curve
Too complex for the small creative agency
Expensive pricing plans

Pricing

Contact the company for pricing details.

2. Upbase

If you’re a small creative team in search of a robust project management tool that centralizes everything in one place, look no further than Upbase.

14 Best Project Management Software For Creative Agencies. #1 Upbase

This comprehensive solution offers a package of features that covers all your needs—from project management and task scheduling to progress tracking and client collaboration.

It even handles documentation management and more.

The real beauty of Upbase lies in its flexibility.

It provides extensive customization options that seamlessly adapt to different project requirements.

The cherry on top is its simple and user-friendly interface. Unlike other feature-heavy project management software that can be overwhelming, Upbase still ensures smooth navigation.

It’s also quick to learn, making onboarding new hires a breeze.

What makes Upbase the best agency project management software?

Let’s take a closer look at Upbase’s capabilities and key features:

A. Comprehensive Hierarchical Structure

Upbase has a deep and customizable hierarchical structure:

Workspaces – Folders (optional) – Project Lists – Sections – Tasks – Subtasks (optional)

This makes it versatile enough to manage projects of different sizes. You can break down complex projects into sections, tasks, and subtasks.

But the real best part of Upbase lives in the project lists.

These are far more powerful than regular task lists.

If anything, they’re much like project hubs—each including seven tools by default:

Upbase's project lists are a unique approach for team project management, making it the Best Project Management Software For Creative Agencies.

Tasks – a centralized place to manage all project tasks.
Docs – a dedicated tool for managing all project-related documents.
Files – where you can manage, organize, and share files with others.
Links – a dedicated space for managing all project-related links.
Calendar – a tool for planning projects and managing project timelines.
Messages – where creative teams create message threads for project discussions.
Chat – supports real-time group chat and private chat capabilities.

B. Powerful Task Management Capabilities

Upbase offers powerful task management capabilities.

In the Tasks tool, you can visualize tasks in either List or Board view, organize them into sections, and drag and drop them around.

In each task, you can:

Add notes, tags, and a priority.
Assign tasks to other members, add watchers, and set deadlines to track progress.
Leave comments, use @mention, and attach files.
Set a task as recurrence.
Or break down large tasks into subtasks.

(Subtasks offer as rich details as a parent task, except that you can’t create nested subtasks.)

But that’s not all.

You can sort and filter these tasks by specific attributes.

But the tag filtering system is a real standout.

While most agency project management software out there supports one-tag filtering, Upbase allows you to flexibly filter tasks by as many tags as you want.

Besides, Upbase offers a “My Tasks” page where you can easily manage tasks assigned to you and tasks you create.

C. Internal and External Collaboration Tools

Creative projects often require collaboration among team members, clients, and stakeholders.

Upbase excels at facilitating seamless communication, file sharing, and feedback loops.

It offers many beneficial features like real-time chat, comments, watchers, assignees, message boards, and version control for creative assets.

The best parts?

Upbase offers unlimited users and unlimited tasks.

Plus, it doesn’t bill you for clients.

After inviting clients to your workspace, you can granular-control what they can access and see. This ensures you only share what’s necessary and maintain confidentiality.

Don’t worry, convincing your clients to try such an easy-to-use tool like Upbase is no challenge.

D. File and Documentation Management

Have difficulty dealing with large media files?

Upbase can solve your issue!

This agency project management software solution provides separate tools for managing files and documents.

Upbase’s Files tool enables you to centralize project files from everywhere in one place. You can upload files and file versions from your computer or embed Google Drive folders into the app.

If wanted, you can organize them into folders.

Now, let’s talk about Upbase’s Docs.

Many content marketing teams love this tool because of its minimalist interface, intuitive navigation, and easy organization.

You can create native documents or embed Google Docs, Slides, or Sheets into the app, then organize them into folders and subfolders if wanted.

But the best part is:

Native documents support slash commands with various formatting options.

This lets you quickly customize the content with very few mouse clicks.

Upbase's slash commands with rich formatting options

For collaboration, both Docs and Files tools offer many features, such as comments, @mention, watchers, and abilities to share internal or external links with others.

E. Robust Schedule Tool

Scheduling is a critical aspect of managing projects.

That’s why Upbase offers a dedicated schedule tool to help the creative team quickly grasp the progress, stay on track, and meet deadlines.

Creative agencies can also share a schedule with their clients. This allows them to easily track progress and expected completion dates, fostering better communication and trust.

Upbase’s Schedule tool stands out from other agency project management software solutions for its multiple view settings:

Daily Planner
Weekly Planner
Weekly Calendar
Monthly Calendar

It allows users to plan and schedule tasks by day, week, and month.

Additionally, it offers parallel integration with Google Calendar.

Upbase preserves the original color-coding of Google Calendar events when displaying them on its calendars and planners

F. Upbase’s heavy focus on productivity

Not only project managers but individual team members also love Upbase because of its additional productivity features.

A typical example is the Daily Planner view.

In it, you can create and prioritize daily tasks, then drag and drop them onto the calendar and adjust their duration.

To boost productivity, this view also includes a notepad, daily notes (aka a daily journal tool), and a Pomodoro timer with various ambient sounds.

Besides, Upbase offers dark mode, keyboard shortcuts, bookmarks, and a Minimize Tray feature.

Upbase Pricing

3. Asana

If your creative agency is seeking a project management platform with powerful task management capabilities, look no further than Asana.

It offers a wide range of features for task management.

Right from its free version, you’ve offered a bunch of essential features like deadlines, priorities, subtasks, assignees, collaborators, tags, etc.

Upgrading to the business plan, you’ll benefit from all of Asana’s advanced features. E.g., task dependencies, follow-up tasks, milestones, and the function of marking a task as approval.

But that’s not all.

This creative project management software also offers essential features for project tracking, team collaboration, reporting, and resource management.

There are multiple views in Asana, such as Kanban boards, Calendars, Lists, and Gantt charts.

Read Full Review: Asana Review.

Project managers can take advantage of features like Goals, Portfolios, and Reports to streamline project planning. Team members stay focused on their work, thanks to the “My Tasks” page and the “Message I’ve sent” feature.

While Asana offers powerful task management capabilities, it still has some limitations.

For example, you can’t assign a task to multiple assignees in this creative project management software. The lack of a native time-tracking feature makes it tough to track the time spent on a task or project.

And Asana also falls short in a file management system.