10 Best Project Management Software for Designers in 2025 — Ranked, Compared & Reviewed

Managing a design project isn't just about making things look good. Between client feedback rounds, revision cycles, asset handoffs, contractor coordination, and billing — design work is a full-scale operations challenge.

The problem? Most project management software is engineered for software development teams or sales pipelines — not for designers who think visually, work iteratively, and manage demanding client relationships.

We've tested and ranked the 10 best project management tools for designers in 2025, evaluated on design-specific criteria: visual workflow boards, Figma integration, client portal quality, revision tracking, time tracking for billing, and overall value for money.

What Designers Actually Need in a Project Management Tool

Generic PM tools check the basics. Design-optimized PM tools go further. Here's the criteria we used to evaluate every tool on this list:

• Visual task boards — Kanban columns for design stages: Brief → Wireframe → Review → Approved → Delivered
• File and asset management — Attach mockups, PDFs, brand kits, and source files directly to tasks
• Client feedback tools — Clients should be able to comment on designs without needing to learn complex software
• Native design tool integrations — Connects with Figma, Adobe XD, or Sketch without workarounds
• Revision tracking — Clear version history so your team always knows which iteration is under review
• Time tracking and billing — Accurate hour logging for retainer clients and project invoicing
• Scalable client portals — Secure, branded spaces where clients see progress without seeing your internal chaos

With those criteria in place, here are the top 10 tools — ranked by overall value to design professionals.

1. Asana 🏆 Best Overall for Design Teams

Asana has earned its place as the world's most widely adopted project management platform — and for design teams specifically, it strikes an exceptional balance between power and usability. With 100,000+ companies using it globally, the ecosystem of integrations and templates around Asana is unmatched.

Key Features for Designers

• Timeline view — Visualize project deadlines, milestones, and inter-task dependencies at a glance
• Custom fields — Add "Design Stage," "Revision Number," "Client Approval Status," or "Asset Type" to any task
• Portfolios — Manage 5, 10, or 50 client projects from a single executive dashboard
• Native Figma integration — Embed live Figma frames directly inside Asana tasks, no browser switching required
• Adobe Creative Cloud integration — Access CC libraries and assets without leaving your workflow
• Automation rules — Auto-assign tasks when a stage changes, notify clients when reviews are ready

Why Design Teams Choose Asana

Asana's Kanban board is perfectly suited to design workflows. Build columns like Brief Received → In Progress → Internal Review → Client Review → Revisions → Final Approval → Delivered and drag tasks through the pipeline. Every team member — including remote contractors — has instant visual clarity on project status.

For agencies managing multiple clients simultaneously, Asana's Portfolio view provides a bird's-eye health check: which projects are on track, which are at risk, and which need immediate attention.

⚖️ Honest AssessmentAsana's free plan supports up to 15 users with unlimited tasks, making it accessible for small studios. The Premium tier ($10.99/user/month) unlocks Timeline view and custom fields — both essential for professional design workflows. The biggest limitation: native time tracking requires a third-party add-on.

💡 Pro Tip: Create a custom field called "Brand Hex Codes" on every client project in Asana. Generate, organize, and export your palettes first, then paste the values directly into the field so every designer always references the correct brand colors — eliminating one of the most common sources of revision requests.

Best For: Design agencies, in-house teams of 5–50, freelancers managing multiple clients

Top Integrations: Figma, Adobe CC, Slack, Google Drive, Dropbox, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Harvest (time tracking)

Pricing: Free (15 seats) | $10.99/user/mo (Premium) | $24.99/user/mo (Business) | Custom (Enterprise)

2. Monday.com 🎨 Best Visual Dashboards

Monday.com was practically designed with designers in mind. Its hallmark is a colorful, highly visual interface that transforms project tracking from a tedious chore into something that actually feels native to creative work. With over 200,000 customers and a $7.59B market cap, Monday.com has the resources to continually improve its design-specific features.

Key Features for Designers

• Color-coded boards — Assign distinct colors to project stages, priority levels, clients, and teams
• Workdocs — Built-in collaborative document editor for design briefs, creative direction, and project scopes
• Image column — Attach visual previews directly to task rows so your board doubles as a visual reference
• Automations — Trigger client notifications automatically when a design is ready for review
• Canvas view — Whiteboard-style visual planning for creative brainstorming sessions
• Custom dashboards — Build reporting views with charts, timelines, and workload data

Why Designers Choose Monday.com

Monday.com's color-coded boards feel intuitive to designers — the same spatial and color-based thinking you use in your design work applies directly to how you organize projects. The result is a dashboard that feels less like enterprise software and more like a design artifact itself.

The automation engine is particularly valuable for studios managing multiple simultaneous client relationships. Set it once: when a task moves to "Ready for Review," Monday.com automatically sends a client notification, updates the project timeline, and assigns the review task to the account manager.

⚖️ Honest AssessmentMonday.com's per-seat pricing adds up quickly for larger teams. The $9/seat Basic plan lacks key features; you'll realistically need the $12/seat Standard or $19/seat Pro tiers. That said, for visual teams who care about their tool actually looking good, Monday.com is worth the premium.

Best For: Creative agencies, marketing design teams, visual thinkers who hate ugly software

Top Integrations: Figma, Adobe XD, Slack, Google Drive, Zoom, HubSpot, Salesforce

Pricing: Free (2 seats) | $9/seat/mo (Basic) | $12/seat/mo (Standard) | $19/seat/mo (Pro)

3. Notion 🗂️ Best All-in-One Workspace

Notion occupies a unique category: it's simultaneously a project manager, a client wiki, a design brief tool, a brand guidelines repository, and a client portal. For solo designers and small studios who want to consolidate their tech stack, Notion can replace 3–5 separate tools.

Key Features for Designers

• Gallery view — Display design projects as visual cards with thumbnail previews — your project list becomes a visual portfolio
• Embed anything — Drop Figma frames, Loom videos, PDFs, prototypes, or live websites directly into project pages
• Client portals — Share a beautifully branded Notion page with clients for project updates and file access
• Design brief templates — Huge template library specifically for creative workflows
• Notion AI — Generate creative briefs, project scopes, client proposals, and status update emails in seconds
• Relational databases — Link clients to projects to deliverables to invoices — everything connected

Why Designers Choose Notion

Notion's gallery view is transformative for visual thinkers. Your project list stops being rows of text and becomes a visual mosaic — each card showing a design thumbnail, project status, client name, and deadline at a glance. Add a cover image to each project page and your workspace starts looking like your portfolio.

⚖️ Honest AssessmentNotion's free plan is genuinely useful for solo designers. The $8/month Plus plan adds unlimited file uploads and collaborative workspaces. The main limitation: Notion isn't built for rigorous project management — it lacks native time tracking, doesn't send deadline reminders by default, and can become disorganized as teams scale beyond 5–10 people.

💡 Pro Tip: Create a "Brand Guidelines" database in Notion with a page for each client. Include their complete color palette, typography system, logo usage rules, tone of voice, and approved imagery — all in one shareable link. Share it with clients for review and with contractors for onboarding.

Best For: Freelance designers, small studios (2–5 people), designers building client knowledge bases

Top Integrations: Figma, Loom, Google Drive, Slack, GitHub, Zapier, Make

Pricing: Free | $8/mo (Plus) | $15/mo (Business) | Custom (Enterprise)

4. ClickUp 💰 Best Free Plan for Designers

ClickUp offers the most feature-dense free plan in the project management market — and its paid tiers are priced aggressively against competitors. For freelancers or small studios operating lean budgets, ClickUp delivers enterprise-level functionality without the enterprise price tag.

Key Features for Designers

• Whiteboards — Native digital whiteboard for mood boards, user journey mapping, and creative brainstorming
• 15+ custom views — Switch between Kanban, list, calendar, Gantt, timeline, and mind map views for any project
• Proofing tool — Clients annotate images and PDFs directly on the design inside ClickUp tasks
• Native time tracking — Built-in timer with billable/non-billable hour separation for accurate client invoicing
• Clip — Record short screen recordings to walk clients through design decisions asynchronously
• Docs — Built-in document editor for project briefs and creative direction

The ClickUp Proofing Tool: A Hidden Gem

ClickUp's built-in proofing feature deserves special attention. Instead of emailing mockups back and forth, clients open the design mockup directly inside a ClickUp task and drop pinpoint comments exactly where they need changes. Comments are tied to specific coordinates on the image. This single feature can eliminate your dependency on separate feedback tools like InVision, Zeplin, or Frame.io.

⚖️ Honest AssessmentClickUp's free plan is genuinely unlimited on tasks and users — a rarity in this space. The interface has a steeper learning curve than Trello or Asana, and with so many features, it can feel overwhelming for simple workflows. The $7/month Unlimited plan adds custom fields, integrations, and removes feature caps — well worth it for professional use.

Best For: Budget-conscious freelancers, small agencies wanting all-in-one tools, teams replacing multiple apps

Top Integrations: Figma, Sketch, Adobe XD, Slack, Google Drive, Zoom, GitHub, HubSpot

Pricing: Free | $7/user/mo (Unlimited) | $12/user/mo (Business)

5. Trello ⚡ Best Simple Kanban for Solo Designers

Trello pioneered the digital Kanban board and remains the gold standard for simplicity. For solo designers or two-person studios, Trello's zero-learning-curve design workflow setup is its superpower. You'll be managing projects within 10 minutes of signing up — no onboarding sessions required.

Key Features for Designers

• Power-Ups — Add Figma preview embedding, time tracking, calendar view, or custom fields with one click
• Card covers — Attach visual thumbnails to project cards so your board becomes an at-a-glance gallery
• Butler automation — Auto-move cards when checklists are completed, due dates pass, or labels are applied
• Custom board backgrounds — Make your boards actually aesthetically pleasing (a small but meaningful detail for design teams)
• Unlimited cards — The free plan's card limit is truly unlimited

⚖️ Honest AssessmentTrello is perfect for simple workflows and actively inappropriate for complex ones. There's no native time tracking, no client portal, and limited reporting. The $10/month Premium tier adds timeline view and dashboard reporting, but at that point, ClickUp or Asana likely offer more value. Use Trello when simplicity is the feature you care most about.

Best For: Solo freelancers, 1–3 person studios, designers who want simplicity above all else

Pricing: Free | $5/user/mo (Standard) | $10/user/mo (Premium)

6. Linear ⚙️ Best for Design-Dev Teams

Linear was built by and for engineers — but its blazing-fast interface, keyboard-first design, and deep GitHub and Figma integrations have won over product design teams embedded in engineering organizations. If your design team reports to a CTO or works alongside a software engineering team, Linear creates a unified source of truth.

Key Features for Designers

• Figma integration — Embed Figma design previews directly inside Linear issues — no link-sharing, no context switching
• Cycles — Sprint-based planning that aligns design and development work in the same two-week cadence
• Triage view — Rapidly prioritize incoming design requests before they hit your sprint
• Roadmap view — See design work and engineering work on the same product timeline
• Blazing fast UI — Keyboard shortcuts for everything; no lag, no loading spinners

⚖️ Honest AssessmentLinear is not suitable for client-facing agencies. There's no client portal, no time tracking, and the interface is built for technical power users. But for SaaS product designers embedded in engineering teams, Linear is the best tool available — and the free plan is genuinely functional for small teams.

Best For: Product designers, UX designers at tech companies, design-engineering teams at SaaS companies

Top Integrations: Figma, GitHub, GitLab, Slack, Notion, Sentry, Intercom

Pricing: Free | $8/user/mo (Standard) | $16/user/mo (Plus)

7. Basecamp 💬 Best for Client Communication

Basecamp takes a fundamentally different philosophical approach to project management: it prioritizes communication and clarity over feature complexity. For design studios where client relationship management is as important as the design work itself, Basecamp's opinionated simplicity is a genuine advantage.

Key Features for Designers

• Message boards — Centralized, threaded client communication per project — no more email chains
• Client access controls — Clients see exactly what you want them to see; internal team discussions stay private
• Campfire — Real-time group chat organized by project
• Automatic check-ins — Schedule recurring questions like "What did you work on this week?" to team members
• Flat-rate $299/month plan — Unlimited users, unlimited projects — ideal for growing agencies

⚖️ Honest AssessmentBasecamp's client portal is the cleanest in the industry — clients get a simple, uncluttered interface without accidentally stumbling into your internal team discussions. The flat-rate $299/month plan becomes exceptionally cost-effective for teams of 20+. The downside: no native time tracking, limited visual features, and no Figma-native integration (requires Zapier workaround).

Best For: Design studios with 10+ active clients, agencies running many concurrent projects, remote teams

Pricing: $15/user/mo | $299/mo flat rate (unlimited users)

8. Airtable 🗄️ Best for Design Asset Management

Airtable sits at the intersection of spreadsheet and database — and creative teams have found inventive ways to use it: managing asset libraries, tracking brand guidelines across clients, building client intake forms, and maintaining design request queues at scale.

Key Features for Designers

• Gallery view — Browse assets, mockups, and deliverables with visual thumbnails — true visual asset management
• Design intake forms — Clients submit design requests through a branded form; submissions auto-populate your project tracker
• Automations — Trigger Slack notifications or emails when a design is approved or a deadline passes
• Rich field types — Attachments, dropdown menus, checkboxes, ratings, formula fields, and linked records
• API access — Build custom integrations with design systems and internal tools

⚖️ Honest AssessmentAirtable's intake form workflow is a genuine superpower: instead of design briefs arriving via email in 10 different formats, every client fills out the same standardized form — and their submission automatically creates an organized, searchable project record. That said, Airtable isn't a traditional PM tool and lacks task dependencies and native time tracking.

Best For: Studios managing large asset libraries, high request-volume agencies, design operations (DesignOps) teams

Top Integrations: Figma, Slack, Google Drive, Zapier, Make, Salesforce

Pricing: Free | $10/user/mo (Team) | $20/user/mo (Business)

9. Teamwork 💳 Best for Design Agencies Billing Clients

Teamwork is the only tool on this list built explicitly for client-facing agencies. While other tools have billing features bolted on, Teamwork's entire architecture is built around the reality that agency profit depends on accurate time tracking, proper retainer management, and knowing whether each project is financially healthy.

Key Features for Designers

• Retainer management — Track billable hours against monthly client retainers in real time
• Profitability reporting — See budgeted vs. actual hours per project — know exactly whether you made money
• Client portal — Branded client access for progress updates, file downloads, and deliverable approvals
• Billable vs. non-billable hours — Separate client work from internal overhead automatically
• Invoice generation — Generate client invoices directly from logged time data
• Resource scheduling — See designer capacity across all projects to prevent burnout and missed deadlines

10. FigJam 🧠 Best for Design Brainstorming

FigJam is Figma's native whiteboard and collaborative planning tool. While it's not a full project management platform, it fills a critical gap: visual project planning that lives inside the design environment itself, eliminating the awkward handoff between "planning" and "making."

Key Features for Designers

• Full whiteboard toolkit — Sticky notes, shapes, connectors, freehand drawing, stamps, and reaction emojis
• Voting and reactions — Perfect for design critiques, retrospectives, and prioritization sessions
• Sprint planning templates — User journey maps, flowcharts, affinity diagrams, and retrospective frameworks
• Live cursor collaboration — Real-time brainstorming with distributed teams, with audio and video built in
• Seamless Figma handoff — Jump directly from a FigJam planning board into Figma designs — same file, same ecosystem

Full Comparison Table: All 10 Tools at a Glance

How to Choose the Right Tool for Your Design Workflow

The right project management tool depends entirely on your business model, team size, and client relationship type. Use this decision framework:

Solo freelancer, 1–5 clientsStart with Trello (free) or Notion (free). Zero learning curve, visual enough for creative work.

Small studio, 2–10 peopleClickUp or Asana offer the best feature-to-price ratio with scalable team features.

Agency billing on retainersTeamwork is purpose-built for this. Its profitability and billing features are unmatched.

Product designers with devsLinear or Asana with Figma integration keeps design and engineering synchronized.

Heavy client communicationBasecamp's client portal and message boards are cleaner and simpler than any alternative.

Need everything in one toolMonday.com or ClickUp — both support docs, boards, time tracking, and client access.

Get Your Design Assets Organized Before Your Next Project

Once you've selected your project management tool, the next critical step is ensuring your design assets — especially color palettes — are documented and accessible to every team member and contractor from day one.

Inconsistent color usage is one of the most common causes of revision cycles and client frustration. Before starting any new project, build your client's complete color system:

• Generate a complete palette with all shades, tints, and semantic colors
• Run an accessibility contrast check (WCAG 2.1 AA compliance)
• Export as CSS variables, JSON, or Figma tokens
• Attach the file to your project in Asana, Notion, ClickUp, or your preferred tool
• Share the palette link with every designer and developer on the project

This single upfront step can eliminate 20–30% of revision requests caused by color discrepancies.