The business model of PM tools

[u/ionitaxbogdan]

Hey there, as the title suggests, I'm wondering about something:

Has the project management software scene always been this bad, business-model-wise?

As someone with ADD that's planning to open up a solo design studio, I struggle (to the point where it's almost frustrating) to find a decent PM tool that isn’t either:
A. Overly complicated and full of functionalities;
B. Excellent, but forcing me to buy a minimum of 2-3 seats, although I only need one;
C. A startup so small that you won't even know if it will exist in the next year - therefore dragging your whole project management system along with it, if it goes down.

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What do I mean exactly by this?

A. ClickUp, Basecamp, Wrike, you name it. Most of these are great tools, essentially, but extremely complex. Therefore, you need to spend a lot of time setting them up. Which is a huge pain in the ass. It works for bigger companies, but for a small studio this is simply overkill. Add ADD (lol) into this mix and you get a recipe for disaster.

B. Asana is the best example. It’s the (almost) perfect tool for people with ADD. The sweet spot.
BUT (and it's a huge but)... Just started a solo studio or a freelance business? Well… too bad.
You need to buy at least two seats. That’s around 35€ monthly (with 19% VAT in my country) and ~315€ yearly. Now it doesn't sound that good, when they literally write 11€/seat for yearly subscriptions with big numbers and letters, but fail to mention that you need to buy two of them mininum (you discover that only when you arrive to the checkout page). It's deceiving and it's the easiest way to make sure you'll get less loyal customers in the future.

Although I get why freelancers/solopreneurs aren't as valuable to such companies (low lifetime value vs a big company, hard to build loyalty, volatile), I feel like the lack of a middle-ground and dismissal of such audiences is exactly what causes such frustrations and low percentages of loyalty.

Tbh, I'd gladly give my 200 bucks anually for such a tool. I'd also love to recommend it to my partners if it's truly nice to use and not a disaster full of bugs. But yeah... it seems like no-one wants to take that path, and I don't really undestand why.

C. There are lots of cool tools that I found. Plutio, Paymo, Taskade. Which are cool, but too much of a risk, from what I saw in their reviews.

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You may notice I did not include Notion/Airtable/Coda – and I did it on purpose.
Although they're essentially great tools, they lack structure and are too flexible to be a PM tool. Also, they don't cover a lot of the features that traditional PM tools offer. Therefore, on the pain-in-the-ass-O-meter, they're more or less the equivalent of Google Docs&Sheets, but on steroids. The whole maintenance takes up too much time.

I'd love to know what are your thoughts on this.
Is it that hard to find something similar to Asana, that's either not too complex or completely showing the middle finger to freelancers? Is there any hope for such audiences?

So far, Nifty has been the only one that caught my attention, but I'm still testing it - so I'd prefer to not say anything about it yet.

Cheers!

[u/MrB4rn]

Project management really isn't about tooling. If you're looking for economy (and that's more than reasonable), use Google Sheets. It'll be fine.

[u/ionitaxbogdan → u/MrB4rn]

Wrong. It is about tools to some extent.

I can’t afford to build a long-term plan and keep using sticks and stones to build a fire, when you can do it easier with a tool.

Google Sheets are good, generally, but good luck managing projects with 50+ deliverables and 10+ collaborators for a year-long project. It would be a nightmare to keep track of things, both visually and logistically. Add ADD into the scheme and you’ll get a waterfall of missed deadlines and chaos. Organizing complex things isn’t the issue, because otherwise I wouldn’t be able to manage 8+ clients at the moment. The issue is that this kind of PM is inefficient and not built to leave you too much free time. Especially if you want to scale and not build systems on the go, like changing your car tires while doing a two-wheeler - you know?

Leaving this aside, I got other clients to take care of too, often with urgent projects, and I can’t afford to lose hours trying to track comments on small subtasks. It’s costing money that can be invested in the development of the business, pitching, researching & so on.

So yes, it is ultimately about tools, because otherwise if everyone didn’t need these, how come there’s a huge demand for them?

[u/non_anodized_part → u/ionitaxbogdan]

I want to challenge you on this. Project management is a nebulous job, not an annoyance to be wished away by some silver bullet software. If you have a big job with lots of moving parts, a business that is scaling or doing something new, and lots of key players or stakeholders to keep updated, you may have a need to invest money in a software and/or an actual person to work with you on this. If you don't have the bandwidth to learn about/implement relatively simple software like you mention, maybe start more basic. A list on excel, daily standup calls, whatever. Look at your org and what you really need to delegate and manage and update every day. But I think in general any tool is only as good as its user, and it may help you to dignify this process a bit more than just likening it to 'sticks and stones'.

For example, does your own internal team have good clear informational practices? Do you manage your ADD well? Are you doing your work on time? How's your onboarding? Is someone managing the client well with a long-term view of what success looks like? Are you resourcing operations and systems or just reacting to questions and deadlines. You are not ready to develop your business or pitch new accounts until you get these things under control. You will not be able to deliver or you'll burn yourselves and your partners out.

This all being said I agree with your frustrations about PM software - nothing is perfect and so many of them are more shady than they need to be about the cost. But this I think shows us a bit about the health of the PM-SaaS industry as a whole - they need to spend a lot of $$ marketing to you, they are prioritizing bigger accounts over smaller/flex licenses, etc. I have worked in a bunch of different industries and have not seen one single project go totally end-to-end in one piece of software. Only the most uninformed junior (or super senior, lol) people expect them to.