Best project management apps under 50 dollars that actually let your team move fast

If you’ve ever tried to get a small-ish team running on a project management app that doesn’t quietly destroy morale, you already know the deal. Some tools look fine in the demo, but the second you introduce duplicate subtasks or permissions, it gets weird. You hit a cap, or the commenting system randomly emails everyone twice, or the timelines start randomly shifting like a haunted Gantt chart. And all that while you’re trying to stay under $50 a month. Here’s what we’ve actually used—and rebuilt—without losing our minds (most of the time).

1. ClickUp works until your automations start triggering backwards

ClickUp is the one I keep trying to walk away from. It’s affordable, configurable, and it feels like it could do everything. But the moment you start organizing more than 3 projects with dynamic dates or recurring subtasks, something stops syncing. Every single time.

I used the $5-per-user plan for a 6-person remote team running a dev content pipeline. Here’s what kinda worked:

– Nested subtasks in list view (but don’t view them in calendar—trust me)
– Assigning tasks to multiple assignees without paying extra
– Docs you can actually write SOPs in (and link straight to tasks)

But the trouble starts if you try to automate anything beyond “move task to next list.” For example, we built a workflow that should update due dates based on status changes. It fired correctly on first use—but then we noticed every single Sunday night it was re-running in the wrong direction. Due dates moved backward by 3 days. Still no real fix. 🤷

Also, the speed drag is real. ClickUp’s UX tries to do a Notion-meets-Jira aesthetic, but that also means the app loads slowly on older laptops. Offline mode is basically theoretical. And bulk editing tags across tasks? You will wait.

But at under $50/month for a team of five, it offers the most power per dollar—just don’t rely on automations. Especially not recurring ones.

2. Notion feels intuitive until your permissions eat your calendar

Ah, Notion. The clean interface. The endless templates. The days lost trying to get your database rollups to update reliably. It’s an amazing tool for solo operators, but multi-member team project tracking starts tripping over itself once you add views and filters that try to link across sources.

On the $8-per-user plan, you get unlimited blocks and collaborators, and you won’t pay more until you need fancy security features. But the actual project management features don’t handle dependencies or timelines natively—you have to build them yourself.

Here’s one real issue: we had a team dashboard that combined two linked DBs (deliverables and deadlines). It worked until someone with “comment-only” access rearranged the calendar view. Suddenly the timeline in our main view was gone—for everyone. There’s no granular permission for views themselves.

A few tips if your team still prefers the Notion aesthetic:

1. Keep one master database for anything date-related
2. Use synced blocks carefully—editing one area changes all mirrors
3. Don’t trust Board view for Kanban unless you’re okay with dragging from tiny cards
4. Always duplicate your main view layout before letting a new team member touch it 🙂
5. Never filter by a formula field—changes lag badly

Still, at five users, you’re looking at under $50 total. Just be prepared to hold a weekly “Why is this property broken again?” huddle.

3. Trello surprises no one but it also doesn’t break

For smaller teams that prefer things Just Working, Trello still quietly wins. Even on the standard plan (about $6 a user), it can handle project boards, due dates, comments, file attachments, and some decent Butler automations—all without becoming its own job.

Here’s what I liked when using it for a temp web design sprint:

– You can set up card templates without needing power-ups
– Checklists are visible without opening cards (big win for clients)
– Butler automation doesn’t overfire or break when cards move quickly

The problem? Once you need cross-board visibility or dependencies, Trello refuses. You have to duct-tape it with something like Unito or Zapier. Tags also become chaos unless you enforce naming conventions consistently (spoiler: people won’t).

Also—and this is not in the docs—if one person moves a card, it will NOT update on other screens unless someone reloads the page. I had a team full of browser tab hoarders half-working on stale views. It led to us re-doing three hours of the same copy block 😛

If your projects are linear-ish and don’t need nested structure, though, Trello never pretends to be more than it is. It just quietly gets the job done (and never emailed me a blank notification, unlike Monday.com).

4. Basecamp avoids complexity by giving you way too little

Technically, Basecamp makes the under-$50 mark for up to 10 users on its personal plan. But that plan is severely limited. So we tested the Business tier at $15/user, keeping it under budget for a small team.

And boy…they really meant it when they said “opinionated software.” Basecamp gives you a fixed set of tools: To-dos, Docs & Files, Campfire chat, Schedules, and Pings. You cannot customize much at all.

In one case, this actually helped. A non-technical client needed a project hub with very little room for error. Basecamp’s rigidity meant they couldn’t break it. But for our internal team, the lack of views and filters was brutal.

No color tags. No way to build a custom dashboard. You can’t even assign a due date range—just a single date. And notifications behave like an old-school forum. People miss stuff that was sent after 5pm unless they browse manually.

Also, the desktop app is just a dressed-up browser, and when your internet goes out, your text field dies. Learned that one the hard way.

Basecamp fits under budget flawlessly, and for a very specific team like a family-run wedding planning studio—it’s fine. But that’s it.

5. Freedcamp tries to do Asana without the polish

I only discovered Freedcamp by rage-Googling alternatives when Asana started nagging me daily to upgrade. For under $50, you get real Gantt charts, issue tracking, Kanban boards, and team wikis. But the UI feels like Joomla, and onboarding non-engineering teams was a heavy lift.

We spent more time figuring out what each setting meant than completing tasks.

Here’s a strange defect: If you change a task’s start date **after** adding it to a Gantt view, that Gantt item won’t update unless you delete and re-add. It’s not documented. Makes version control super annoying.

Still, the time tracking and built-in invoicing actually helped one of our freelance collectives manage projects *and* payments in one place. That alone was worth the dated UI. But to make it bearable:

– Use the simplified Kanban view, not the fancy dashboard
– Avoid editing project templates mid-use (it breaks task order)
– Never rename users—just remove and re-add them

You’ll definitely have to train your team, but Freedcamp fills weird gaps.

6. Asana becomes weirdly passive aggressive at the limit

People like Asana because it looks friendly and lets you press Tab+Q for quick tasks. It’s charming. But the free tier locks you fast, and the paid tier for teams gets just under $50 only if you stay below five users.

Which I tried. We used Asana for managing editorial calendar tracking during a merger project where stuff changed daily. The timeline view is great—when it loads. But every time I assigned a task with dependencies to someone new, two things happened:

1. The new assignee couldn’t see the dependency unless they were project members (which we didn’t realize until much later)
2. The placeholder tasks from the other project broke the timeline span

Also, if you transition from free to paid, your archived tasks sometimes disappear from the “My Tasks” personal view, unless the project remains active. Support told us this wasn’t a bug, but offered no real fix.

Asana automations are simple and mostly stable, but when your team is large enough to actually benefit from them, the monthly cost ramps up. Some of my team literally refused to check off tasks because “the swimlanes glitched out again.”

Great notifications and mobile UI though. Especially handy when I was in an airport trying to close a task over spotty Wi-Fi.

7. TeamGantt is friendly until someone deletes a dependency

For teams that truly care about visual timelines, TeamGantt might be the most human-looking Gantt-style PM tool that still fits the price range. Five user seats on their Lite plan keeps you right around budget.

We tested it on a non-profit video production timeline where trackable dependencies mattered. TeamGantt lets you drag timelines live, and that’s usually accurate. But if one person deletes a dependent task in Board view, the Gantt chart silently removes that connection without alerting anyone.

We lost a week of alignment because of that.

Also, while the mobile site is responsive, there’s no app with offline editing. When we were on site at a community center with no data, we just… couldn’t do anything.

But it’s one of the few affordable PM tools where dependencies are elegant and timeline export actually works without spending another $20.

If you pair it with Google Workspace or Slack (with real integrations, not just calendar sync), it can earn its keep—but someone has to monitor the connectors closely.

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In every case I ran into that stayed under budget, I could get 80% of what I needed working fast. But that last 20%—especially around automations, permissions, and unexpected behavior—is where things start crumbling. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯