Business Choice Awards 2019: Project Management and Business Team Messaging Tools

Last year was the first time we surveyed PCMag readers about the tools they use at work to keep their teams moving and grooving, and project management apps are popular (at least with the boss) for keeping everyone on task.

The business world also has many, many options for team chat apps to keep the lines of communication open and moving, and these are the services PCMag readers deemed the best.

Project Management Tools

Business Choice seal Trello

Trello's overall satisfaction score jumped significantly this year, and was more than enough to earn it the seal of approval from PCMag readers. This online-only kanban tool goes for the visual route to keep chores and projects easily managed. It took the high scores in every category in which it was rated.

Trello broke the mold on this one; it's the first project management-specific tool to score anything higher than a 7.5 overall score (out of 10) in our surveys. That it managed an 8.0 in a software category not a lot of respondents seem to embrace (few people love the tools thrust upon them) seems nothing short of miraculous. In fact, it left last year's winner, Microsoft Project, in the dust even though Microsoft's score was the same this year as it was in 2018.

Trello's highly visual approach to project management pushed the service's scores up in other areas, too. It jumped from an ease-of-use score of 7.8 last year to 8.7 this time, and its setup score went from 7.6 to 9.2. Reliability had a similar leap from 7.3 to 9.1.

We also use the Business Choice survey to determine a Net Promoter Score (NPS) for brands, which is a way of looking at just how many people are talking positively or negatively about a tool. Last year, almost all the project management tools had a negative number (out of -100 to +100) for an NPS. This year, Trello was the only one of the contenders that went positive at +18, which is not exactly a barn-buster of an NPS, but still better than the rest.

Other contenders in these results included Jira, which dropped a tenth of a point in its overall score and at the bottom, like last year, is Microsoft Planner, a part of Office 365 Business and generally considered a lightweight in its class; even our review mentions it's missing lots of key features, so this placement is no surprise. For more expert opinion, read The Best Project Management Software.

Business Team Messaging/Collaboration Tools

Business Choice seal Slack

Slack's 2019 scores didn't increase significantly from last year, but it didn't have to do much to win this category all over again. Slack scores particularly well when it comes to setup, reliability, and overall chat/messaging—which of course is what it's all about, albeit with a lot of perks and extras.

The two top brands on this list are both PCMag Editors' Choice picks. While we like Microsoft Teams, we like Slack much more—and so did you. Slack's overall score of 7.8 doesn't seem like much (not that a C+ is that bad, kids), but it's certainly better than the C- (7.1) earned by Microsoft Teams, with Cisco Webex Teams just behind it at 7.0. And the less said about Workplace by Facebook—which tries to put a social media face on your workplace conversations—the better.

Slack's improvements in some areas since last year are minor, but it saw a nice increase in reliability (8.0 to 8.8), setup (8.0 to 8.7), and likelihood to be recommended (7.7 to 8.2). We also rated it on several values we didn't use last year, and found it on top for cost/value at 8.5 (though Slack's cost is higher than most, it's not perceived that way) and chat/messaging (8.7).

Microsoft's got a lot of entries in these areas; Projects, Planner, and Teams are all represented. But even if you combined the charts above, none would come close to matching the praise from readers that Slack and Trello received. (For more, read The Best Business Messaging Apps.)

The PCMag Business Choice survey for Project Management and Business Team Messaging Tools was in the field from September 3, 2019 through September 23, 2019. For more information on how we conduct the survey, read the survey methodology.

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About Our Expert

Eric Griffith

Senior Editor, Features

My Experience

I've been writing about computers, the internet, and technology professionally since 1992, more than half of that time with PCMag. I arrived at the end of the print era of PC Magazine as a senior writer. I served for a time as managing editor of business coverage before settling back into the features team for the last decade and a half. I write features on all tech topics, plus I handle several special projects, including the Readers' Choice and Business Choice surveys and yearly coverage of the Best ISPs and Best Gaming ISPs, Best Products of the Year, and Best Brands (plus the Best Brands for Tech Support, Longevity, and Reliability).

I started in tech publishing right out of college, writing and editing stories about hardware and development tools. I migrated to software and hardware coverage for families, and I spent several years exclusively writing about the then-burgeoning technology called Wi-Fi. I was on the founding staff of several magazines, including Windows Sources, FamilyPC, and Access Internet Magazine. All of which are now defunct, and it's not my fault. I have freelanced for publications as diverse as Sony Style, Playboy.com, and Flux. I got my degree at Ithaca College in, of all things, television/radio. But I minored in writing so I'd have a future.

In my long-lost free time, I wrote some novels, a couple of which are not just on my hard drive: BETA TEST ("an unusually lighthearted apocalyptic tale," according to Publishers' Weekly) and a YA book called KALI: THE GHOSTING OF SEPULCHER BAY. Go get them on Kindle.

I work from my home in Ithaca, NY, and did it long before pandemics made it cool.

The Technology I Use

My first computer was a Laser 128, an Apple II-compatible clone with an integrated keyboard, matched with an eye-straining monochrome green monitor. I used it to type papers in college for other people for money...until I discovered the Mac SE in the college computer room. That changed my life. My first cellphone was a Samsung Uproar—the silver one with the built-in MP3 player from the Napster days (the pre-iPod era).

I use an iPhone 15 Pro hourly and an iPad Air infrequently (but I'm always in the market for a cheap Android tablet). I have a PlayStation 5 just to play Spider-Man, and several Windows machines, including a work-issued Lenovo ThinkPad. I talk to Alexa and Siri all day long. I do the majority of my computing on a 15-inch LG Gram laptop attached to a Thunderbolt hub to run a multi-monitor setup—I overdid it on the power needed to simply work from home.

I'm most at home in Microsoft Word after decades of writing there. More and more, I turn to services like Google Docs, using tools like Grammarly. I use Google's Chrome browser due to an addiction to several extensions I think I can't live without, but probably could. I use Excel extensively on data-intensive stories, but for chart creation, we've switched over entirely to using Infogram for interactive features that are hard to find elsewhere. I do a lot of graphics work for my stories, but limit myself to the free and amazing Paint.NET software to edit images.

I'm a firm evangelist for using the cloud for backup and syncing of files; I'm primarily using Dropbox, which has never failed me, but I also have redundant setups on Microsoft OneDrive, plus extra picture backups on Amazon Photos and iCloud. Why take chances? For entertainment, mine is a streaming-only household—my kid has never seen network TV and barely been exposed to commercials, thanks to Roku and Amazon Music. The house is peppered with smart speakers from Amazon for instant gratification and control of smart home devices like multiple Wyze cameras and Nest Protect smoke detectors. I've got accounts on all the major social networks, to my horror. I have a robot vacuum for each floor of the house. I want a 3D printer, but not sure what I'd use it for.

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