Teamwork Review: Pros, Cons + The Bottom Line [2024]

Teamwork Is Easy to Use Without Sacrificing on Features

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When I started testing Teamwork, I was skeptical. It was so easy to set up a project with this software that I feared it might lack more advanced functionality later down the line.

But to my surprise, I found that Teamwork offers extensive features, ranging from the usual tasks, subtasks, and Gantt charts to more advanced tools like shared dashboards, workload management, and project time budgeting.

You can assign tasks, communicate with teammates, log time, and send invoices to clients for billable work, all from a single intuitive interface.

In addition, Teamwork lets you create tasks with a high level of granularity. You can fully customize each task, as well as create templates to reduce the chance of error and make project planning faster.

Teamwork is available in English, French, German, Russian, and 40+ other languages. It also offers a free plan and a generous 30-day trial on all paid plans.

As someone who likes simple, intuitive, and beautiful software, I give Teamwork two big thumbs up. Still, the platform is not without its limitations. Keep reading to find out exactly what I mean.

Everything You Need for Managing Projects on Time and on Budget

Teamwork creates a balance between simplifying project management for beginners and giving experienced managers the powerful features they need to oversee complex projects. We tested and compared the best project management software in 2024, but Teamwork really stood out from this point of view.

While you’ll need to upgrade to access some advanced features like portfolios, all plans (including the free plan) have:

• Project management essentials (setting up projects and tasks, adding comments, or storing files)
• List, calendar, and kanban views
• Integrated time tracking
• Tags
• Dashboards
• Triggers
• Project owner fields
• Owner and external company profiles

The free plan doesn’t have direct integrations with tools like Slack, Harvest, and HubSpot, but its single integration – Zapier – lets you connect these and more apps to Teamwork.

Before we take a closer look, it’s important to know that Teamwork distinguishes between three account types:

• Standard users have full access to your Teamwork site, and occupy paid seats. You should assign these seats to your full-time employees.
• Client users occupy free seats and have full project-level permissions (they can add tasks, set milestones, and comment on projects where they are members). They have limited access to your site, though. For example, you can only add them to five projects at a time and only to projects in their designated company.
• Collaborators are contractors you hire on a short-term basis. They can complete tasks and milestones assigned to them, but can’t edit task properties or create new tasks.

You can upgrade or downgrade users as you like, which will automatically change their permissions and access.

Highly Customizable Project and Task Management

Teamwork gives you a lot of control over managing projects and tasks. In addition to creating tasks and subtasks, you can:

• Create task list templates: Task lists help you keep your projects clean and organized. By saving templates, you can reduce time spent on adding new task groups.
• Bulk edit tasks: With bulk edit, you can move, copy, complete, delete and modify multiple tasks in one go. You can find this feature in the table and list views.
• Assign tasks to multiple users: This has to be one of my favorite Teamwork features because it makes it super easy to add multiple people to a task. Just use the ‘choose more’ option when assigning people.
• Filter data: If you have many projects, you’ll love Teamwork’s filtering tool. Whether you’re trying to locate a project with a specific tag or want updates on your team’s activity, there are filters to get you the precise information you need. You can also save your filters, so you don’t have to repeat the process every time.

If you want to add more details to your project descriptions, you can create custom fields, but you have to be on Teamwork’s Grow or Scale plan.

If there’s a downside to Teamwork’s customization tools, it’s that there are so many things you can tweak and change. Customizing projects and tasks is fun, but it can also be time-consuming and distracting.

Multiple Views for Tracking Projects

Teamwork has four views for tracking tasks: board view, Gantt chart, list view, and table view.

I have to admit, I’ve always preferred kanban views, and Teamwork’s Boards do not disappoint. The Board view is a great way to visualize your workflow and track task progression. It’s also a quick way to check if your team has the capacity to take on new tasks from the project backlog.

Plus, you can customize your boards. For example, rather than the standard “To Do, Doing, Done,” you can have “In Design, Ready for Development, In Development, Ready for Testing, Shipped” (or any other categories that float your boat).

The Gantt chart, on the other hand, is rather basic. Luckily, Teamwork is Beta testing a new (easier to use and more appealing) Gantt chart feature. You can enable Teamwork’s Beta program in your account settings to try out the new Gantt tool before its official release.

It’s still not as sophisticated as Smartsheet’s Gantt1, but it does a good job. You can drag and drop tasks, assign them, and track the project’s critical path. You can also export your Gantt Chart.

Then there’s the table view, which looks like a simplified spreadsheet. It lists out tasks and has bold labels to ensure you can quickly grasp the information displayed.

Built-in Time Tracker

You can use Teamwork’s built-in time tracker from your web browser, the Teamwork mobile app, or by downloading the desktop timer app. It’ll help you track time spent on tasks and make more accurate estimations when planning and budgeting for your projects.

Unfortunately, the desktop app is pretty clunky and time-consuming. It was frustrating to have to add tasks individually to the timer. It’s not so bad if you’re dealing with a few tasks, but it can get pretty slow when you have several tasks to track.

On the other hand, I had no problem tracking time on the web. You can track time for entire projects or individual tasks. And when you log your time, you can choose to mark it as billable or non-billable.

You can add billable time entries on Teamwork to a personalized invoice for your clients, which can be sent as-is or exported to QuickBooks or Xero.

Dashboards & Everything

Dashboards are a great way to see your projects’ progress at a glance. In Teamwork, each project has a dashboard page that shows details like the project owner, budget (and how much you’ve expended so far), a timeline, and active/completed tasks.

You can filter your project reports to see each team member’s activities and personalize the dashboard with your company logo or even the project’s logo.

There’s also a Dashboard feature on the home page that lets you create and customize multiple dashboards. You can add several panels to these dashboards to view key metrics, such as task list burndown.

The higher your plan, the more widgets you can use, so before you commit, you’ll want to check out Teamwork’s pricing plans to see what you get at each level.

You’ll also find a section in your Teamwork workspace named ‘Everything.’ And let me tell you: It shows you EVERYTHING. At least, everything you have access to on the site.

The Everything tab shows all active and completed tasks, links, milestones, messages, comments, files, and even time logs. So basically, if you’re having a tough time finding something, check your Everything.

You can bulk edit tasks, not just across task lists but across projects, too. And the filtering tool helps you generate comprehensive reports.

Extensive Product Suite and Integrations

Teamwork integrates with 50+ apps, including Zapier. Its Google Drive integration makes it easy to access and add files to tasks. You can send out invoices with Harvest, instantly turn Slack messages into tasks, and stay on top of your marketing needs with HubSpot.

Beyond project management, Teamwork also offers a suite of tools to make your business processes more productive. These include:

• Teamwork Spaces – Collaboration tool for working on company content with teammates.
• Teamwork Chat – Instant messaging app.
• Teamwork Desk – Help desk and customer support software for managing tickets, client requests, and more.
• Teamwork CRM – CRM software for organizing your sales processes.

All tools are available as standalone products but integrate well with one another.

Teamwork Is About as Simple as It Gets

Launching a Teamwork account is fun. The platform is designed with simplicity in mind and has a clean layout that makes navigation easy.

Labels are clear, and features are easy to find and use. Basically, Teamwork has almost no learning curve – meaning you can focus on your work from the get-go.

Getting Started with Teamwork

Setting up a Teamwork account is straightforward. First, you should claim your 30-day free trial. By default, Teamwork starts new users off with the Grow plan, but you can downgrade to the Deliver plan anytime during your trial.

Next, you’ll provide your details and company information (industry and employee count).

In that same window, you’ll create your first project! I needed about 10 minutes to do this.

Teamwork guided me through naming the project, adding my first three tasks, then creating task lists, and choosing my preferred task view (definitely, Board view).

Then I invited my teammates (A.K.A., my other email accounts). The onboarding process ended with a quick guided tour of important sections like Milestones, People, Settings, and the Home tab.

Intuitive Design With Many Smart Shortcuts

Teamwork is customizable and intuitive, with a system that predicts essential features and helps you quickly access them. It also has keyboard and on-screen shortcuts to help you save even more time.

One that stands out for me is the Switch Project feature on the top bar, which lets you switch to any project from any part of the website.

While I discovered it much later in my review, you’ll find it helpful in saving time.

Teamwork also has a modern and appealing UI (user interface), which makes it pretty fun to use. You can customize your dashboard by changing colors to suit your brand, adding your company logo, and even setting the latter as the favicon for your dedicated Teamwork domain.

Start Projects Fast with Project and Task Templates

You can create projects from scratch or use templates. Teamwork offers about 20 predesigned Project templates to help you launch similar projects.

While there aren’t many, Teamwork’s templates cover the essentials that service providers need, from Design Request and Client Onboarding templates to Product Launch and Event Planning templates.

You can check out more templates on Teamwork’s homepage by clicking on the Templates link on the top menu.

I tested a few, and it was clear they weren’t haphazardly put together. Teamwork’s templates come loaded with well-thought-out task lists, tags, and dependency allocations to help you get an actual project off the ground.

You can also save your past successful projects as custom templates, so your team always hits the ground running.

Meanwhile, task-list templates help you avoid repeating processes. You can add saved task templates to projects or even set a default one if there’s a regular pattern to your team’s tasks.

Generate Reports on Everything With a Click

In Teamwork, you can quickly generate project, task, activity, and even time reports — all with a simple click. The platform also makes exporting easy and supports Excel exports as well as PDF downloads.

There’s a Reports section with three dashboards you can use to track your projects:

• Planned vs. Actual shows whether tasks are being completed on time or after their due dates.
• Project Health shows you which projects are going according to plan and which ones are off track. It summarizes info like the total expense incurred on the project and the percentage of completed tasks.
• Utilization lets you evaluate your team’s workload. This report shows you when an employee is being overworked or underutilized. Armed with this data, you can easily reassign work and resources as needed.

Feature-Rich Collaboration Tools Perfect for Remote Teams

You don’t have to run a remote team to use Teamwork, but if you are part of one, this software makes collaborating with your colleagues real easy. Teammates can share feedback and leave comments from within the app to make task management more efficient. Plus, there’s a built-in chat app.

Team Dashboard & Communication

You can share dashboards with colleagues and even members of external companies on Teamwork. The Deliver plan lets you share one dashboard, while the Grow plan gives you up to three. But keep in mind that users with the collaborator license cannot view dashboards.

Adding colleagues as observers or followers on tasks helps you communicate effectively. You can also add comments on tasks to share relevant ideas with teammates, which are unlikely to get buried and forgotten like traditional emails.

Use @your-teammates-name to notify people of remarks meant for them and respond to comments via email, so communication keeps moving quickly.

Members of a project can use the ‘Message’ feature to lead conversations relating to the project and relay updates.

Lastly, Teamwork’s built-in messaging app, Teamwork Chat, is the platform’s version of Slack. Teamwork Chat can be bought on its own or added (for free) to paid Teamwork plans.

You can form channels in Chat for projects or teams and have 1-on-1 messages. You can even create tasks from within the Chat app. Chat also has a video call feature, but it’s pretty basic. Still, it might get better after more iterations.

File Sharing

Keep your files accessible by uploading them to individual tasks/projects on Teamwork or linking a Google Drive folder. As you collaborate on documents, you can upload updated versions and even choose users to notify of changes. Previously-uploaded files remain on your Teamwork account.

Unfortunately, Teamwork has no markup functionality. If your team collaborates on many visual assets like graphic designs, this will be a significant limitation.

On the other hand, content teams will love Notebooks. Notebooks help you gather contributions and feedback on texts. You can also use them to share information with your team. They have versioning too, and project admins can lock Notebooks, so they retain exclusive edit access.

If you make minor edits, you can mark the “This is just a little change” field to avoid creating a new Notebook version.

File storage is pretty good. You get 100GB of file storage on Teamwork’s Deliver plan, which will last a while if you aren’t storing many large multimedia files.

Mobile App

One thing I don’t like is that Teamwork has two mobile apps, one for the project management software and the other for Teamwork Chat. I understand Teamwork Chat is a standalone product, but I still wish I could chat and manage tasks from one app.

The Teamwork mobile app lets you access some project management features, but it doesn’t cover everything you get on the web. For example, it doesn’t display dashboards, portfolios, reports, and other companies.

Still, you can add and complete tasks and use the Personal Tasks section to handle your private projects. You can even track and log time.

Support Is Fast and Helpful: Just Don’t Call the Phone Lines

Teamwork offers help via email, live chat, phone, and support tickets. These channels are available on business days between 7am to 12am IST.

I love 24/7 support, so I wasn’t happy to see a 17/5 support plan. But I have to admit that the support agents are helpful and prompt, aside from a few hiccups.

I decided to test the phone, live chat, and support ticket channels.

Calling Teamwork support was certainly a disappointment. I tried the US and Irish support lines during their work hours, but the calls kept disconnecting. Finally, the fourth time I called, it rang, but no one picked up.

Next, I sent a ticket. Asking questions via the support ticket was simple, but note that you need to have a Teamwork URL.

I created a fictional agency for this review, so I wanted to know how to set up a project for temporary freelancers. I also wanted to see if I could import project data from other project management software like Smartsheet1 and monday.com1.

26 minutes later, Teamwork gave me a call (surprisingly, they can indeed communicate via phone). The agent on the line explained all the tasks I could accomplish. Her explanation was comprehensive, and she even arranged for a follow-up email to connect me with my Account Manager. This manager would then assist me in the process of configuring my workspace.

Teamwork’s live chat support is instant, and the team is polite and helpful. I tested it out twice to be sure, and the standard remained the same. When I asked questions, an agent responded in a matter of seconds.

Also, it was clear to me that the support team is knowledgeable about the software itself. Every response I got was to the point and accurate. The reps sent me help docs that addressed my questions, but only after they’d given me clear answers themselves.

Keep in mind that you can only use the live chat if you are on a paid Teamwork subscription.

Alternatively, Teamwork has an extensive knowledgebase.

There are volumes of up-to-date help docs to answer any questions you might have on using the software. Its help docs are always to the point, which I love. There are also hundreds of YouTube video tutorials, and you can watch some of them from within the app.

Plus, you can sign up for one of Teamwork’s frequent webinars to gain insights from experts.

Fair and Affordable With a Free Plan

It turns out Teamwork’s plans are reasonably priced and feature-rich. Even the free plan offers a lot more than you’d expect. Teamwork has four pricing tiers: Free Forever, Deliver, Grow, and Scale. There’s also a 30-day free trial on all plans.

On Teamwork’s Free Forever plan, you can add up to 5 standard users with full access to your account and an unlimited number of collaborators.

To add client users, though, you have to upgrade to the Deliver plan or higher. But you can always add your clients as collaborators if you don’t need them to do a lot (like create tasks or view dashboards).

The real limitation on Teamwork’s free plan is that you can only have two active projects. So, if you have many projects to manage, an upgrade would be the way to go. File storage is also small – 100MB – which is okay for a free plan, but some software offer more.

With a subscription of $5.99 per user/month, the Deliver plan will cover most of the project management needs of a small business. If features like project time budget, custom fields, and intake forms are not deal breakers for you, this plan will give you the best value for your money.

Plus, you won’t have to worry about the cost of meeting the 5-seat limit on the Grow plan.

Teamwork’s pricing is affordable in the long term because you don’t have to pay extra for client users and collaborators, unlike with other project management software.