6 Best Microsoft Planner Competitors and Alternatives for 2023

Apr 24, 2024

6 Best Microsoft Planner Competitors and Alternatives for 2023

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Looking for an alternative to Microsoft Planner? Our comprehensive guide covers the top Planner alternatives, their key features, pricing, pros, cons and more.

Microsoft Planner is one of the many business solutions available in a Microsoft 365 subscription. It offers classic project management tools like different work views for personalization, integrations with outside apps and task-tracking options. With the subscription, you get access to several other Microsoft applications as well. The software itself is great, but it may not be the best fit for everyone.

In this list, we explore a number of competitors and alternatives with similar features. If you want to learn a little more about Microsoft Planner and its capabilities, you should first see our review of the software.

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If you’re looking for quick facts on the software featured in this article check out the table below.

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Teams that don’t have super complex projects and prefer something easy to get started with can appreciate Trello. It’s beginner-friendly; and while it may not be overflowing with features, it thrives in minimalist design.

For more information, read our review of Trello.

ClickUp is a project management tool for all-purpose needs. You will have access to automation, custom work views, collaboration and high-level security. If you’re looking for an array of tools and features to personalize your workspace and stay on top of projects, then you should consider Clickup.

For more information, read our full ClickUp review.

Zoho Projects, like Microsoft Planner, is part of a suite of business software solutions. It can integrate with Zoho’s brand — full of applications to help with marketing, analytics and collaboration. If you’re looking for another powerful tool that comes with more for the price, then Zoho Projects is worth taking a peek at.

For more information, read our full Zoho Projects review.

Asana is a popular project management tool with some of the best capabilities for collaboration, such as multiple work views, customization, integrations and the ability to add unlimited guests to a paid account. If you don’t need full access for every collaborator, Asana is one way to get powerful functionality while offering cost savings.

For more information, read our comparison of Asana and Microsoft Planner.

Evernote is an affordable choice for personal, freelance and small team projects. If your workflow includes taking endless notes and saving research, ideas and drawings, then Evernote is worth looking into.

Basecamp is a project management tool designed to be budget friendly for bigger teams with equally big projects. They have a subscription for smaller teams as well at $15 per user a month, but their unlimited users plan for one monthly fee of $299 makes them especially useful for bulk needs. You can stay on top of tasks with reporting and direct message teammates in the software.

For more information, read our review of Basecamp.

Microsoft Planner is brimming with functionality. Teams have multiple ways to personalize their workspace and can access their data from desktop and mobile versions while on the go. You can get specific insights into individual task status using pie and bar charts.

If your team has been considering a Microsoft 365 subscription, then Microsoft Planner is certainly an added benefit. The cost can get expensive if you have a large or growing team, but with it comes top-tier productivity tools.

You will have access to PowerPoint for presentations, Word for writing up reports on instructional materials and other Project management tools like OneNote. Teams with multifaceted projects that need to store and organize large volumes of data and research can greatly benefit from classics like Excel and Access.

Whether Microsoft Planner is the best choice for you comes down to whether your team has used and enjoys using Microsoft applications. A Microsoft 365 subscription is a great deal for the price, but it will never be worth it if you’re only buying it for one application.

With a project tool like Microsoft Planner, there is so much that you can do with it. However, it can be a double-edged sword for some. While it doesn’t include all possible notes, the table covers some important pros and cons:

Teams that want to use Microsoft Planner will need to buy a Microsoft 365 subscription. You can get the software in the Business and Enterprise plans. All plan tiers are priced per user per month and billed annually.

The lowest-priced Business plan is Microsoft 365 Business Basic, which costs $6.00 per user per month. The highest offered tier is Microsoft 365 Business Premium, which will set you back $22.00 per user per month.

In the Enterprise offerings, the lowest plan is Microsoft 365 F3 at $8.00 per user per month, and the highest is Microsoft 365 E5 at $57.00 per user per month.

Microsoft Planner is a highly integrated software in the Microsoft 365 subscription, and it can lose its value to you personally if you don’t need or want that subscription. Teams that aren’t used to Microsoft products may experience a higher learning curve and will need to plan to adjust their tech stack to do so.

If you’re unsure or want to decide as a team, check out all of the software on this list. Many of them have free plans you can use to test drive the software. For those that don’t have a free plan, you can watch some YouTube tutorials of the application together with your team. The people who can help you choose the best project management tool are the ones who plan to use it.

When it came to making this list, we considered alternatives that could offer more affordable services as well as software well suited to bigger companies. Microsoft products are full of high-end office features, but for alternatives, we included project management software for users that aren’t huge Microsoft fans. Each application on the list has its own unique assets for all sorts of project needs.

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