Creately Review [2024]: Best for Visual Project Management

Intuitive and Easy-To-Use Visual Workspaces for Project Management

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Even if you’ve never worked with project management, diagramming, or data visualization software, Creately’s software is easy to master. Teams can quickly grasp complex tasks and processes on Creately’s visual workspaces.

Multiple tools facilitate collaboration, including built-in commenting, notes, smart notifications, and video conferencing. But Creately’s Realtime Mouse and Text tools are the standouts here – an entire team can view and make changes to a project’s scope or tasks as if they were working from the same screen.

Creately offers a range of well-priced plans designed to meet the needs of individuals and businesses, from small to enterprise scale. A free plan and a range of free product demos allow you to test the software before you commit.

To help you decide if Creately is right for your needs, I’ve thoroughly researched its plans and features, tested its tools, and reviewed many customer testimonials.

Accessible Tools for Visualizing, Mapping, and Managing Workflow

Creately’s visual canvases and code-free workflow style helped me get organized. I was happy to find most of the popular management frameworks here: Kanban boards, Gantt charts, Scrum boards, Mind Maps, Flow Charts, and Timelines.

Pre-Purposed Templates, Shapes, and Toolkits

Creately aims to boost your creativity with thousands of templates and over 10,000 shapes. If you prefer, you can also start with one of the millions of free templates designed by the Creately community.

You can move, arrange, group, and structure any information or data in a workspace. Simply click on shapes or text to add notes/data, assign a task, add a comment, or edit.

I also like how Creately simplifies things for beginners with starter toolkits for various workspaces, including agile planning, marketing, HR organizational charts, and product roadmaps.

Collaborate and Manage Complex Projects

Teams can use Creately to work with each other, interact with clients, and collaborate with other cross-functional teams. You can assign tasks and due dates to specific team members, set limitations on who can view or make edits to a project, and more.

Once you choose a project workspace template, you can start inviting collaborators, assigning tasks to yourself or another team member, and adding sub-tasks and checklists to divide even large projects into manageable workflows.

It’s just as easy to communicate with one or more team members: point to anything in the workspace – such as a shape, icon, or text – and you’ll have the choice to leave a comment or start a discussion.

Best of all, Creately allows remote teams to work together seamlessly, simulating a shared workspace where changes are instantly visible to all. This promotes efficient communication and enhances productivity by facilitating real-time commenting, editing, and sharing of project updates.

Creately also allows users to integrate other work management tools and platforms, such as Slack, Google, Microsoft, Jira, and GitHub. You can also set up automatic data syncing with Excel and Google Sheets. Unfortunately, these features are only available on Business and Enterprise plans, which can be expensive when compared to other project management platforms.

In-App Video Conferencing

There’s nothing a quick video call can’t fix – and it’s good to see Creately include integrated video conferencing tools with all paid plans. When you click the phone icon on the top toolbar, you’ll invite your collaborators to join you on a call.

Fair Pricing but Advanced Features and Support Options Come at a Premium

Creately offers five plans: Free, Lite, Starter, Business, and Enterprise. The free plan lets you create three workspaces and add up to 60 items. You can use pre-made templates, frames, rich text formatting, and the Plus Create tool for faster diagramming.

The free plan includes core features, but many of Creately’s advanced tools require a paid plan. Small teams may want to consider the Starter Plan to access all Creately’s shapes and get unlimited workspaces, folders, and storage.

But the sweet spot for most firms will be the Business plan, which includes premium tools like password-protected sharing, guest access, timelines, grids, and Kanban Boards. It’s attractively priced at $149.00 per month, and unlike most project management software, offers unlimited users.

If you sign up for the annual plan, you’ll receive a 40% discount.

Customer Support Could Be Better

Creately offers several support options: live chat, email (via web form), Twitter DM, and Facebook Messenger. If you’re considering the service, you can also set up a call with sales.

Not all options are available, however. Paid plans will give you more support avenues – the Starter plan comes with email support, while the Business plan unlocks the live chat.

If you’re on the Free plan, you’ll only be able to contact the Chat Bot and support specialists from the “Creately Community.” Either way, you’ll get links to articles that may or may not answer your questions.

Fortunately, Creately’s Help Center has many articles to help you get the hang of the platform. In addition to the knowledge base, Creately has a blog, online tutorials, webinars, and free e-books.