ProWorkflow Review

ProWorkflow is a project management tool pitched at businesses and freelancers. It has been around since 2002 and has had almost 3 million projects created on it so far. In this ProWorkflow review, we’ll take a look at how it compares to the best project management software.

It has interesting features and is a solid choice for those working alone, as well as those who are part of a team. Its homepage features a glowing selection of testimonials from clients around the world.

We found it to be strong in most areas with no major weaknesses. It is a particularly good choice for those who want to track time and cost their projects as they go. Its auditing and custom role assignment features are also strengths.

Strengths & Weaknesses

Alternatives for ProWorkflow

Features

ProWorkflow has a strong selection of features, including several that help you keep tabs on your spending.

You get between 5GB and 50GB of storage space depending on the plan you sign up for. If that’s not enough for you, take a look at our best cloud storage article for other options.

It has a return on investment calculator on its website that lets you enter a few variables and see how much money ProWorkflow could save you. It’s a useful way to get a tangible idea of what the platform can do for you. It brings home how much difference a tool like ProWorkflow can make.

If you’re trying to get your boss to sign your team up to ProWorkflow, it might be worth showing them your calculations.

For another business-focused tool that lets you calculate the return on your investment, take a look at our Easy Projects review.

It has strong features for tracking your staff and keeping tabs on how they spend their time, as well as what that time costs you. You can also view what people are working on, as well as their most recent login times from your company homepage.

You can extend it with apps. It has its own store for them, where you can browse and select from the extras. There aren’t many, but the ones we saw were free. Among them were a custom map extension, a Chrome time tracker extension and a profitability report generator.

ProWorkflow Templates

There are many templates to help you get started or you can create your own, which is useful if you have several similar projects and want to avoid repeating the initial setup for each one.

You can change how projects are created and handle project requests, so ProWorkflow is a good platform to pick if you have a lot of small projects that you’d like to manage separately.

In addition to task management, ProWorkflow helps manage your contacts, with a dedicated tab letting you view clients and the people on your team. You can give them contact information, a picture, specific permissions and leave notes on them, as well as set their drink preference. If you have a secretary, they will welcome that feature.

There’s also a note-taking tab, where you can leave notes on whatever you like. It is a great place to put general instructions about workplace practices or goals, and you can build it into a handy resource for your team.

If you want a dedicated note-taking application, take a look at our article on the best note-taking apps for good choices.

There’s a “time” tab that enables you to view a timesheet, timeline and calendar. The timesheet lets you track the time you spend on particular tasks. You can add time manually too, if you don’t want to use its tracker.

Its timeline view shows how tasks for the project fit together and lets you see when things need to be completed. There’s also a calendar view that shows you what you need to do from one day to the next.

ProWorkflow Customization

There are plenty of customization options to make your workspace feel like home. You can upload your own header and logo images.

There’s a selection of color themes to choose from or you can pick your own if you don’t like the presets. You can’t change the screen background, though. There’s also a Christmas theme that decorates your working area and adds falling snow to your header image.

You have a lot of options with respect to the roles assigned. There are three by default, but you can add more as needed. You can adjust each role type, allowing them to add, edit or delete various project elements. There are further options for defining whose work each is allowed to see and which settings they can alter.

There are also plenty of options for auditing. All types of action can be included in your audit. You can select everything or pick a particular kind of action. You can then pick any or all staff members and get a list of when they performed the actions selected.

If you’re serious about customizing the way you work with ProWorkflow, you can delve into its API. That allows developers to access its data and let you adjust it from your website or apps.

ProWorkflow doesn’t have mobile apps, but there is a special version of its website that you can use in the browser on any device.

ProWorkflow scores well in this area, with its many business-focused features making it a great choice for those who want to keep track of the time and money spent by their team.

ProWorkflow Features Overview

User-Friendliness

Signing up to ProWorkflow involves entering your mail address, following the link you’re sent, then entering more data. Some of the automated support suggestions overrun the setup forms, but it isn’t hard to get rid of them.

You can choose to start with a sample project or a blank canvas. Either way, you’ll get a quick tour once you get into the tool. Pop-ups introduce the main areas of the screen with information on what the controls do.

We were kicked out of the tool midway through using it, having moved to another window for a few minutes (screenshots don’t create themselves, after all), which was weak on the technical side.

The sample project contains tasks that encourage you to try doing different things. For example, a task has you edit the project name. That is a good way to learn your way around a new tool. We would have liked to have seen more tasks included, though.

Take a look at our ClickUp review for an example of a tool that uses its sample project to show you the ropes quickly and effectively. It’s also cheap and has strong task management.

ProWorkflow’s interface is attractive, with compact but readable icons, useful visualizations and soft but professional-looking colors. There is plenty of information on the screen, but it doesn’t feel overcrowded. Controls are self explanatory and typically have pop-up text that explains what they do.

ProWorkflow Tasks

Your projects are built around tasks, which you create by clicking the green plus icon on the tasks page.

You can assign and prioritize them, as well as give them start and due dates. You can allocate time for each one, too, which can help you arrange how everything fits together and compare your estimates to reality when the project is finished.

Tasks are ordered by giving them numbers and subtasks are created by assigning decimal numbers. The system works, but it’s cumbersome compared to the approaches some tools take. That said, some don’t offer subtasks at all.

ProWorkflow’s system also provides dependency management of a sort, but, again, it isn’t the most intuitive way to do dependencies that we’ve seen. We prefer the visual approach taken by other tools that offer the feature.

If you want a tool that is good at dependency management and makes it easy to rearrange tasks as needed, take a look at our TeamGantt review.

Though there’s a lot there, ProWorkflow isn’t the easiest tool to use, and it sometimes takes thought to figure out how things fit together. If you want something that lets you manage tasks as simply as possible and arrange them in a kanban view, read our Trello beginner’s guide.

There are spelling mistakes in ProWorkflow’s support materials, but that happens to the best of us. The live chat button in the bottom right gets in the way sometimes, with controls often directly beneath it.

Using ProWorkflow is a good experience, though. Most things work well, and on the occasions you need to figure something out, there is plenty of help available. That said, there are missteps. For example, core task management features could be easier to work with. ProWorkflow gets a decent score here.

Cost

Solo 1 User	$ 9.00/ month
Professional	$ 18.00/ month
Advanced	$ 27.00/ month

ProWorkflow has three tiers to choose from. The cheapest is the Solo plan, which is pitched at individuals who want to manage their own projects. That’s the first time we’ve seen a project management platform offer something specifically for individual users. At $9 per month, it isn’t too expensive and has plenty of features.

The other two plans — $18 and $27 per month, respectively — are for teams. They give you access to optional plugins for quotes and invoicing. Those cost an extra $10 per month, but that gets everyone the feature, so it’s not too expensive.

If you want to give it a try before committing, there’s a free 14-day trial available. You don’t need a credit card to sign up and you can access the features of the Professional plan. Its sales team didn’t get back to us regarding payment methods, so we suspect it’s credit card-only if you do sign up.

We got messages from salespeople telling us they’d tried calling but couldn’t get through. It seems we made, er, a mistake entering our phone number when signing up. Don’t be surprised to get sales calls during your trial if you enter yours correctly.

Another sales message we got, automated this time, didn’t have an unsubscribe link, but instead demanded we contact them via a form if we wanted to discontinue the emails. That’s poor.

ProWorkflow scores well on price. It isn’t too expensive, but there are cheaper options. There’s also a free two-week trial, which is a bonus. We’ve knocked a few points off for the excessive sales contacts though.

Security & Privacy

ProWorkflow has a decent selection of security and privacy options and does what you’d expect when it comes to protecting your data.

It stores data using 128-bit encryption and daily backups are made to keep your data safe. Its data centers are SAS 70-compliant, which is good to know, but it’s not as rigorous as the SOC certification some platforms have.

If you need a platform that has earned several SOC certifications, read our LeanKit review. It’s another business-focused platform that can help make you money and improve the performance of your team.

ProWorkflow created a listing for us in our project contacts, which included a Google Maps shot of our location and text in our user profile that said we take one sugar in our coffee. We weren’t sure whether to be amused or shocked at the prospect of having our beverage prepared wrong. Either way, we prefer to enter that kind of data ourselves.

If you’re concerned with keeping your private data private, reading our how to protect your privacy article is a good idea.

Its in-app settings allow you to choose which file types are filtered out of uploads. We haven’t spotted that anywhere else, so if you want to limit what your team can upload, ProWorkflow lets you do so.

It doesn’t have two-factor authentication, which is a shame. If you need that feature, take a look at our Wrike review. Wrike is our favorite project management tool and has excellent security, to boot.

There are several plugins that handle SAML single sign-on via external services, so you can get extra security that way.

ProWorkflow ticks most boxes when it comes to security and privacy, but we’ve seen platforms that do it better. Still, it gets a pretty good score here.

Service & Support

ProWorkflow’s customer support page includes several ways to get in touch. The most prominent is a quick and easy support form.

Beyond that, you get email addresses and a phone number for its head office. It’s based is in New Zealand, making it a great choice for those in non-U.S. time zones. If you’re outside the U.S., you may be used to having to wait for customer support to get back to you, but ProWorkflow seems to have people available most of the time.

It also has a separate support page for urgent issues that’s intended for critical outages, which we feel is a neat feature. There are times we can wait for support and times when we can’t, and it’s unusual to be given the option like that.

It has a chat window in the bottom right which you can click when you need assistance. You are prompted to search its knowledgebase first, but you can send a question to a representative afterward. There is also a support link at the top right of the screen that gives you a form to fill in.

We found the answer to our first question in its knowledgebase. Our second question, about two-factor authentication, wasn’t in there, so we asked its support team. We got a response almost immediately, but it was asking what two-factor authentication was.

We tried explaining briefly, but a more thorough explanation is available in our what is two-factor authentication article.

After a quick chat, the representative told us the feature wasn’t available. Six minutes is an excellent response time for a technical inquiry, though, especially because we asked outside of New Zealand business hours.

If you’re after another service that responds quickly to requests, read our monday.com review. monday.com responded to us in an impressive four minutes when we requested help.

ProWorkflow’s support page also has a dozen or so YouTube videos that show you how to do various things, most of which are quite basic. There are around 180 videos on its channel.

They are only a minute or two long, but there are a few that run over half an hour and go into more depth. Even the short ones have a lot of content, though, and with so many of them, it’s more than likely that you’ll find a useful one if you get stuck.

ProWorkflow gets a strong score here. It has plenty of learning options and its support responded quickly to our inquiry.

Final Thoughts

ProWorkflow is a useful, business-focused tool with a lot of features. There isn’t much wrong with it and it has some great ways to track your business.

Its support is fast and it has plenty of learning materials available to help you. Like most tools, its interface has a few quirks but is pleasant to use overall.

If you are an individual freelancer it has a plan for you, but, overall, we feel ProWorkflow is a good fit for managers who want to keep a close eye on the details of their projects. It will also be useful to those who handle the purse strings and want to track costs. Our cloud accounting articles can also help with that.

If you’ve tried ProWorkflow, please let us know how your experience was and whether you agree with our assessment in the comments below. Thanks for reading.