5pm - Review 2022 - Pinard Doets1995

5pm is a capable online project management app that does all the basic tasks required for managing a project, at a competitive price for small businesses. It includes Gantt chart views, workload reports, a conversation app, integration options for services that modest businesses might already apply, and an open up API. The interface is a footling dated, and information technology doesn't have whatever outstanding features that aren't already found in all the best projection management apps. 5pm won't blow your heed, simply information technology tin assistance small businesses manage projects effectively and for a fair cost.

PCMag'due south top picks amid project direction apps are Zoho Projects, Teamwork Projects, and LiquidPlanner. Compared with 5pm, their interfaces are more than polished, which may non sound important, but it goes a long manner in projection management apps because they rely and so much on visual information.

Pricing and Plans

5pm offers a few account plans at a range of prices, and the lowest-cost options in particular are competitively priced. The plans offer the same features, and they allow an unlimited number of clients to join your projects. The differences have to do with the number of supported users, active projects, and the amount of storage offered. In that location is no gratuitous account selection, which some other project management companies offer, but in that location is a 14-day free trial that does non require a credit carte du jour.

The smallest plan allows a maximum of five users, and it costs a flat $24 per month. In other words, you pay $24 per calendar month whether you have two users or v. For this packet, you can have upward to x active projects, and yous go 4GB of file storage.

5pm project management web app interface

The next tier up is $36 per month for upwardly to 10 users, 20 agile projects, and 10GB of file storage. For xx users, you pay $64 per calendar month, and get up to 40 active projects with 30GB of file storage included. At $96 per month, you lot get 40 users, 80 active projects, and 80GB of file storage. If you pay $199 per calendar month, you can accept as many users and projects every bit you lot want, and 150GB of storage is included. All plans include 256-flake SSL encryption and nightly information backups.

That'south a wide range of pricing options, and the smallest businesses will find the pricing competitive. Small businesses might also like that 5pm integrates with cloud storage providers that they're perchance already using, such as Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, and OneDrive.

Pocket-size businesses often exercise better to pay a apartment monthly fee than a per-user-per-month rate. Other project management apps that also charge a flat monthly fee include Zoho Projects and Teamwork Projects. They're both PCMag Editors' Choices, and their pricing is equally competitive.

Zoho Projects has an Express plan for $25 per month that includes 20 projects and 10GB storage, which is a better value than 5pm'due south smallest plan, except it excludes two features (Pages and a chat app). Zoho Project's $50 per-calendar month programme adds those missing features and includes support for 50 projects with 100GB storage.

Teamwork Projects has a Pocket-size Function program for $49 per month that allows for an unlimited number of users and includes support for forty projects and 20GB of space.

While 5pm and a few other project direction apps accuse a apartment monthly fee for many users, many other services charge per user. Those services tend to exist amend suited to larger organizations. For example, LiquidPlanner Professional, another PCMag Editors' Choice, charges $468 per user per year (which works out to $39 per user per month, simply there is no monthly payment choice). That'southward a lot more than than 5pm's everyman-priced option, simply LiquidPlanner is leaps and premises more sophisticated. Information technology'south as well well designed for managing many projects and large teams. On the lower end of the per-user price spectrum is TeamGantt, a very capable tool that starts at but $9.95 per user per calendar month and tops out at $14.95 per user per month for its Advanced plan.

If all these tiers of service and pricing models make your head spin, peradventure you're better off with a project management app that doesn't include so many of them. Comindware Project, for example, costs $ix.99 per user per month, and at that place are only two options: Let the company host your account in the deject, or host it on your own servers. Either way, the price is the same.

If you've never used a project management app before, I highly recommend trying out a tool that gives you a fourth dimension-unlimited gratis option and then that you lot can use it for a while and really go a feel for it. A few options are Teamwork Projects, Zoho Projects, TeamGantt, ProofHub, and AceProject. Volerro has a practiced free selection, too, merely it doesn't include any analytics.

Getting Started

It takes very niggling time and effort to become started with 5pm. You're greeted with a blank slate when you first get into the app. There are no templates, much less dummy sample content, like you find in the project management platform from Celoxis.

When you sign up for a trial with 5pm, you lot fill up in a few fields, including a visitor name for your unique URL, where y'all and your teammates log in to your account. You can get started immediately planning projects or spend a few minutes inviting others to join.

5pm has a diverseness of permission levels: administrators, users, external users, and clients. Admins tin can view and edit everything. Users can edit projects and tasks but when they're part of the team. If you forget to add together a user to the right teams, that person sees lock icons on items that they can't edit. External users accept view-just rights, and simply on teams to which they've been assigned. Clients can only view the projects if they've been invited.

Viewing a task or adding detail to one takes a click or two more than information technology should, which isn't painful, only it's noticeable. The await of the interface is a bit dated, besides. It isn't sleek or all that well designed, just it'due south perfectly functional. However, equally soon as a few squad members jump on board with a new project direction app, the space quickly becomes overloaded with information. For this reason, the design and style of whatever projection management app's interface is an important consideration. 5pm's is fine, but non bully.

Creating a new project and entering some tasks is easy plenty. The interface makes sense, and I plant it intuitive to navigate without tutorials or guides. You can add a single task or multiple tasks at a fourth dimension, which is helpful when you're starting a new project and you lot want to map out the major things that need to get done. At that place isn't a specific pick to create milestones, unfortunately.

Every task can contain a good amount of information, including start date, borderline, assignee, clarification or notes, tags, priority, and estimated number of hours for completion. You tin can assign a chore to multiple people or to a whole team, while indicating the team leader.

Subtasks are as well bachelor, as are dependent tasks. I found dependencies a little difficult to manage, however. Dragging and dropping one task on top of some other is probable the easiest manner to create a dependency, but considering of how that action appears on-screen, it isn't crystal clear whether you'll get the desired result until you lot finish the action and bank check it.

There is a Gantt chart view that shows your project mapped out over a timeline, with spanner bars indicating the expected duration for each tasks. It appears as its own tab, making information technology easy to switch between the Gantt nautical chart and task list view. Another standalone tab always within easy reach is Reports. You can easily see daily workloads, weekly workloads, and custom reports you create.

5pm's reports are decent. You can generate a number of custom reports. That said, what's offered isn't as sophisticated as the reports yous can get from LiquidPlanner. That app specializes in not just timeline views, only also scheduling, and it has the reporting tools to support information technology. LiquidPlanner has advanced features that let users enter best and worst case estimates for how long a job volition take. Those task estimates, in conjunction with the bodily time recorded, can produce a task-estimation history report, which in turn guides teams to make more accurate time estimates in the time to come. That's all much more advanced than 5pm, just carry in mind that LiquidPlanner is much more than expensive, and information technology'south ideal for teams of 50 people or more than. It can be overkill for smaller groups.

Additional Project Management Features

5pm can integrate with a number of popular services that are commonly used in business organisation. In addition to the deject storage services mentioned before, Microsoft Office 365 and Slack are also available for integration. That'southward helpful for pocket-size businesses that might not have someone on staff who can gear up upwardly custom integrations using an open API, which 5pm also has.

Dig into the settings, and you might capeesh the option to automatically assign all new tasks you create to yourself. That can exist a handy time-saver for some individuals.

Some other little perk, one that isn't immediately apparent, is that there's a timer for tracking the amount of time spent on a task. The reason information technology's not immediately obvious is considering you have to download and install a carve up desktop widget. I like having a widget more than having a timer built into the web interface considering the dissever timer remains visible subsequently yous close other windows. I've certainly had the experience of forgetting that I had a timer running in my spider web interface simply to log in the side by side mean solar day and meet I'd racked up 20 hours on a task.

5pm project management chat app

When uploading files to 5pm, you tin can see thumbnails of them in the web app, and when you click on them, they're visible in the web app, too. Unfortunately, 5pm doesn't get beyond file previewing and viewing. At that place are no options to mark up a PDF or prototype file that someone else has uploaded, which is important for teams that collaborate oft on visual materials.

Past contrast, project management app Mavenlink has a tool chosen Smart Snips, which lets you make highlighted comments on uploaded files, correct in the browser. It'south a simple fashion to discuss whatever file attached to a task or project, because in addition to making a text-based annotate, you tin can also draw a box around the section of the PDF or prototype you're referencing. Volerro has similar markup tools. If your team frequently collaborates on artwork or presentations, Mavenlink and Volerro are much improve options.

Collaboration and Communication

I'm ever happy to run across a conversation app included in a project management platform, and 5pm checks that box. A chat app lets team members message one another for quick comments and discussions that don't need to be recorded for posterity, the way some discussions do. 5pm's conversation app has a unique feature that lets you choose a task for reference while chatting. Chat apps help keep nonessential communication from cluttering up everyone's view of a projection.

If your squad already uses some other instant messaging communication system, such as Slack, you lot can certainly integrate it with 5pm, as mentioned earlier.

An Average Option

Overall, 5pm is a fine project management platform with competitive pricing for small businesses. I like Teamwork Projects and Zoho Projects more than, though, in part for having better interfaces and being slicker overall. Over time, a well-designed interface means greater time savings, as well equally a more satisfying user experience. 5pm may be preferable, however, if your principal concerns are low price and ease of use.