Projectplace Review

Projectplace has been around since 1998, making it one of the oldest products on the market. In this Projectplace review, we’ll see how it compares to more recent offerings. If you don’t have time to read through, it’s a decent platform that has plenty to like about it but suffers from bugs and slowdown.

It’s owned by Planview, which also owns LeanKit. LeanKit is one of our favorite tools and suitable for business-focused users. You can read more about it in our Leankit review.

Projectplace’s clients include Carlsberg, DHL and Eurovision, so if you want cheap beer delivered slowly while humming along to Europop you’re in the right place. More impressively, it also has Sony on its books.

Projectplace is mostly good, but fiddly to use compared to some of our favorite project management tools. Its feature set is strong, but things go wrong too often.

Strengths & Weaknesses

Alternatives for Projectplace

Features

Your work in Projectplace is kept on “boards” and they contain “cards,” which are typically tasks. You can add checklists of subtasks to each card. Cards each have a section letting you add other cards they’re waiting for and cards waiting for them, giving you dependency management and enabling you to spot potential bottlenecks in your schedule.

There are several options for each item, including time reporting, attaching files, associating them with an activity or marking them as blocked. They’re all easy to do.

Boards are laid out in a typical kanban format, with a planned column on the left, a working on column in the middle and a column for finished work on the right. You can drag tasks around to change their status or adjust their status on the card.

You can customize projects by adding your own logo or icon to help your team feel at home. There are a few options for internal communication, too.

A button at the bottom right lets you open a messaging area. From there, you can send messages to everyone else on your team. There’s also a “conversations” tab that lets you have team-wide conversations. They allow you to attach files from one of the services Projectplace integrates with, as well as notify individuals or teams about your message.

You get notified about various things, but if you find yourself dealing with too many messages, you can turn some, or all, of them off.

Projectplace Templates

If you’re repeating similar projects, you can set up templates to save time. There are seven presets, too, which can give you a head start and show you different ways to set things up.

Creating a new workspace from a template isn’t hard, but it does take time. That makes it hard to browse through what’s available. Most tools let you set up everything more or less instantly, so Projectplace isn’t a great choice if you’re impatient.

We were surprised at having to wait, but after selecting our options, it was nearly 15 minutes before our new workspace – based on the recruiting template – was ready. That’s an astonishing amount of time, considering the template only took 115KB or so of space.

The template was good and a new business that doesn’t have well-defined processes in place for any particular area could do worse than using Projectplace as a starting point.

Our ready-made recruiting system came with a kanban board to move people through the stages of recruitment, a system for tracking potential hires and even documents for following up on new hires and making sure they were fitting in.

We were allotted 25GB of storage space for our trial, which should be adequate for most needs, but the sample project was worryingly large at over 400MB. As mentioned, though, our second project was much smaller.

Projectplace integrates with other storage platforms, allowing you to access files via Dropbox or Google Drive. If you need more space, take a look at our best online storage for teams article for a roundup of options.

In addition to those options for storage, Projectplace can integrate with various platforms directly, including Evernote, Harvest, HipChat and others. There’s also Zapier support, giving you access to many more.

Projectplace has a neat feature that allows you to mark yourself as comfortable or under pressure. Allowing everyone to share how they’re feeling in general could be an asset to managers who care about their staff.

You can also add your capacity in hours and minutes per week. That’s useful if you’re freelancing or working in a voluntary capacity, and we’re sure managers will find that information of value.

Many project management platforms have ways to check if your project is on track or to work out who is underworked or overworked. 

You can use it on the go as it has apps for Android and iOS. If you’re using a mobile devices to access online platforms, take a look at our best VPN for multiple devices article to get additional security.

Projectplace’s feature set is strong, but it’s a shame it takes such a long time to create new workspaces. It scores highly, though, with many features that will make organizing your team easier.

Projectplace Features Overview

User-Friendliness

Projectplace is owned by Planview, which also owns LeanKit. When using Projectplace, you’ll sometimes find yourself moving off its dedicated website and onto pages shared with LeanKit and other tools. The Projectplace-only parts of the website work fine, but the others are a confusing mess.

Signing up requires you to agree to its terms of service and master user agreements. Investigating those led us to the same horror show of a page Planview subjects LeanKit users to. Clean and simple it isn’t. We advise caution for those of you who like to know what you’re agreeing to.

After filling its form out and clicking your activation email, you get sent to the application. Curiously, you get what looks like a loading screen while Projectplace sets up your project, but you don’t have to wait too long (at this point, at least).

Once the app was ready, we didn’t see a tutorial or introduction welcoming us at first. The message awaiting us in our in-tray was not the usual welcome, but a self-promotional note telling us Projectplace is now even better.

Soon, we realized the little green circles peppering the screen were pop-up tips. At first, we mistook them for an interface layering issue, but once we figured out what they were, they did their job well enough.

Looking around more, we quickly found that the sample project used hints and tips as its tasks. Following them made learning our way around much easier. That said, the second time we logged in, it looked like the project view had changed, and though the cards were numbered, we had a hard time finding the next one in the sequence.

Items contained links to help text that weren’t clickable, too. Another item invited us to watch videos but didn’t link to them or provide them as attachments. The design could have been smoother in many areas. If user-friendliness is important to you, read our ClickUp review to see an example of a platform that gets it right.

Projectplace First Project

Moving on from Projectplace’s tutorial to set up our own board was much better. We could create and modify tasks easily, as well as move between the views.

There are many filters that allow you to sort tasks. You have several useful options here and can view all tasks assigned to a particular user or those that are unassigned and those with or without time estimates. You can also search most of the types of information Projectplace allows you to use.

Trying to add members to our team was harder than usual. We entered a name at first and got a message telling us the format was invalid. The same thing happened when we entered an email address.

Almost every other tool we’ve tested makes it easy to add other users. Most go out of their way to encourage you to do so, so it was a shock to find that we couldn’t with Projectplace.

Given that we were the only team member, we wondered what would happen if we clicked the option next to our name to remove us from the team. Perhaps, the project would be left in limbo. We didn’t dare click to find out. Eventually, we found an “invite” button on a separate “members” tab, so were able to populate our project.

The interface is bright and breezy. The colors are soft and there’s lots of white space. The text could be larger, but it isn’t hard to read. Worryingly, we encountered major delays while using it. It timed out navigating to the “boards” page and we found ourselves having to wait for upwards of 10 seconds while clicking around.

As mentioned, the sample project used over 400MB of our allotted 25GB, which is a lot, so maybe it isn’t as efficient as it could be under the hood.

Projectplace’s support page has a technical section that includes a latency tester, so perhaps speed is something it has had issues with before. It also gives you information about system requirements and outages.

Though we found speed issues and several things that didn’t work as well as we would have liked, using the interface to do and change things works well and it’s generally intuitive. There’s also a lot of scope for getting things done quickly and easily once you get to know the platform.

Navigation is idiosyncratic, though. You need to learn how to find the views you want because clicking and exploring isn’t always as clear as it could be. At one point, we clicked a task to no response, and after trying again a couple of times, the task focus area started flickering on and off. We had to navigate away to get things back to normal.

For an alternative platform that nails usability and is our newly-crowned overall favorite project management tool, check out our monday.com review.

Projectplace gets a decent score in user-friendliness. Individual components work well, but navigation is confusing and bugs and slowdowns affect the overall experience.

Cost

Standard	$ 29.00/ month
Enterprise Contact for details Details	FREE

Projectplace has a single regular plan, priced at $29 per user per month. That isn’t cheap, but its system is at least simple. Its pricing page has text saying “US customers only,” but its support told us that refers to its pricing only and the platform is available anywhere in the world.

It also has an enterprise tier, which includes several extra features and boasts “military grade security.” You’ll need to contact Projectplace directly to discuss the price.

If you’re interested in a platform that’s cheap for large teams, check out our Basecamp review.

There’s a two-week free trial if you want to check it out, and no credit card is required. A cheap or free tier would be nice, but not offering one isn’t a deal breaker. Projectplace gets a good score for its simple system and free trial.

Security & Privacy

Projectplace makes several reassuring guarantees when it comes to privacy. It promises secure deletion of your data within 30 days of deleting your project. It also promises that none of your personal information, other than the necessary contact information, is visible to sales or support staff.

Its encryption ensures that nobody can view your data other than you, even if they want to. It makes regular backups to keep everything safe, too. To keep data safe on your own system, take a look at our how to encrypt your hard drive guide.

Its privacy policy is surprisingly readable compared to much of its website. The privacy policy details Projectplace’s compliance with the U.S. Privacy Shield framework. Projectplace’s servers are in Sweden, and it claims to give your data protection from legislation such as the USA Patriot Act.

We found an option to submit a request to its “data subject access request portal” in case you want your data removed. We didn’t go through this process ourselves, but we wonder what happens to your data if you neglect to carry out the procedure.

The form you use isn’t as disturbing as Projectplace’s terms and conditions page, but doesn’t look friendly, either. Still, it’s there if you look for it.

Projectplace gives you the option to view the information it stores on you in .json or .xml format. The .xml option didn’t work for us, but the .json did. There was nothing we objected to, especially because we seemed to have made another of our absent-minded mistakes when entering our phone number to register.

If you have concerns about what information you’re leaking to online services, read our how to protect your privacy article.

It uses AES 256-bit encryption for storage and TLS for transit, meaning your data is safe and secure. It also boasts 99.98 percent uptime, so outages should be rare. It has an ISO 27001 certification, too.

You can customize your team’s password requirements, but there aren’t too many options. You also get SAML-based single sign-on.

It has two-factor authentication, giving you an extra layer of protection if your password is compromised. That helps keep you safe from cybercrime.

Projectplace scores well in security and privacy because of its strong encryption, two-factor authentication and a commitment to keeping your data secure.

Service & Support

If you get stuck, there are “help” and “customer support” options in Projectplace’s menu, along with a “feedback” option if you want to share your thoughts.

Selecting the “help” option takes you to a well-designed page with a reassuring picture of a plant on it. From there, you have several options.

There’s a “getting started” page that includes an introductory video and plenty of detailed, text-based tutorials explaining how to use the platform. There’s an FAQ with around 25 questions linking to a mix of text and video-based answers. There are also around 27 videos and articles explaining almost everything you’re likely to need.

The “customer support” page is similarly comprehensive. If you want to get in touch directly, a contact phone number is offered, as well as a contact form and live chat, so you have plenty of options if you need help. Support is provided in six languages, covering the Anglosphere and northern Europe, each of which have dedicated phone numbers.

We tried to ask Projectplace a question about a couple of issues we wanted clarification on. When we tried its live chat — on a weekday at 8.20 p.m. Eastern Standard Time — we got a message saying none of its agents were available.

We submitted our query via its support form instead. After clicking submit, we were sent to its “customer success center” without acknowledgement that our query had been received. It got back to us on the same day, though.

If you need a service with blistering response times, take a look at our Wrike review. Its team got back to our inquiry in just three minutes.

Projectplace offers webinars, as well as the chance to view old webinars, but we couldn’t get them to work. We had to register specifically for the webinar, but after filling in our details, we got a “video unavailable” message for our troubles.

Projectplace also offers whitepapers and e-books. Annoyingly, they require individual sign-up and registration, as well, and we were also asked to verify our company from a list of suggested matches based on our data.

If you have a large team that you want to move onto the platform, you can take advantage of a strong selection of onboarding and training options. In addition to online training, you can have its team come and work with you on site. Consulting is also available to help you make the most of the platform.

Projectplace covers every base. You have options when it comes to getting help with the platform. Not everything works properly, but there’s lots of help material and its support responded quickly to us. It gets a decent score.

Final Thoughts

The best project management software gets most things right when it comes to the interface and usability. Projectplace makes a few too many errors, but it’s only a few bug fixes away from being a much stronger platform.

It does well on service and support, as well as privacy and security. It could improve in usability, but is far from a disaster. Once you get the hang of it, it offers plenty of power and is worth checking out. We’ve had better experiences elsewhere, though.

If you’ve tried using Projectplace, please let us know what you thought in the comments below. Thanks for reading.