Taskade Review
Taskade is a list-based task management tool with a great free plan and some interesting features. However, it comes with some usability issues that may annoy you enough that you’ll give it a pass. Read all about it in our full Taskade review.
Taskade is a list-based piece of task management software that has a lot going for it. It has a large number of features, some of which are pretty nifty, and has great security and privacy policies. However, as your project management experts explain in this full Taskade review, some issues with ease of use keep it from our roundup of the best project management software, which you can also read.
Key Takeaways:
- Taskade is a mix of task management, note-taking and team oversight that should let you run a medium-sized operation without too many issues.
- Its interface looks good, but hides a few nasty issues that, at times, make the program tough to use.
- For all intents and purposes, Taskade is free. It offers a lot of different tools, so this may make its issues palatable for anybody running a business on a shoestring.
- Taskade is one of the very few project management tools we’ve reviewed that doesn’t use Amazon Web Services to host data.
There’s still a solid case to be made for Taskade, even if just because it’s completely free. While there is a paid plan, it only adds some non-essential extras. The full product can be used at no charge. This makes Taskade a strong contender for an entry in our list of the best free project management tools — no mean feat.
If you like the sound of cash registers not ringing and you’re a fan of list-based apps like Notion (read our Notion app review), there’s a good chance you’ll like Taskade. Its minimal interface and high degree of customizability has won it plenty of fans; maybe you’ll join them.
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Taskade Review: Strengths & Weaknesses
Pros:
- Lots of features
- Free
- Great knowledgebase
- Doesn’t use AWS
Cons:
- Features aren’t equally useful
- Some serious usability issues
Features
When it comes to features, Taskade has a lot, and we do mean a lot. In fact, just when you think you have a handle on everything the program can do, you’ll discover a new doodad that could come in handy. However, quantity does not equate to quality, and some of Taskade’s features, nifty as they are, have questionable utility.
The basics, though, are fairly solid. Every Taskade account gets a workspace, and in each of those you place a folder. These folders let you put as many tasks as you like in them and you can view them however you wish. The default is the list view, and it seems that’s the foundation of Taskade’s approach. Check out our monday.com review for a similar approach.
In fact, you have two lists, one of which is extremely basic and really just lists each task plus a few details. The “action” view is better — it does much the same thing, only with a little more detail. We like this one better, though we wish we could customize parts of the table. As it is, it’s a weaker version of the spreadsheet view like the one in our Wrike review.
The fact that we can’t remove the column for emojis is especially irksome; not everybody thinks adding a smiley face makes work a joy, after all, and being cajoled into using them rubs us the wrong way. Asana offers the same kind of vapid “work is fun” vibe with its celebrations, but you can easily switch those off, something we were very grateful for when writing our Asana review.
Beyond the To-Do List
Besides the list, Taskade also has a pretty good kanban board. Though it won’t be knocking Trello off its spot as the best kanban app anytime soon, it does the trick and gives you a lot of at-a-glance information. Pretty important for a kanban board, yet as you can read in our Easynote review, not everybody includes it.
Equally functional is the calendar, which gives you a great overview of what needs to be done. As you can assign date ranges to cards, it also doubles as the timeline, which comes in handy.
Taskade’s Advanced Features
All the above make Taskade a decent workshorse. Though there’s not much to make it stand apart from other project management apps, it gets the job done. A whole lot more eye-catching are its more exotic tools, which make it a lot more than just a way to knock out to-do lists and set due dates.
First up is the mind map view, which we thought only ClickUp had. In all honesty, it’s more of a sideways org chart than a mind map, as you can’t move the bubble around, but we guess it scratches an itch. Much like in our ClickUp review, we’re not exactly sure what to do with it.
There’s also a regular org chart, so one that works from top to bottom, which should come in handy for some. There’s a way to plan for future events using a roadmap, but that mainly focuses on planning projects ahead of time. We guess it’s handy, but it didn’t give us the overview we would have wished for. Asana or monday.com offer more in this regard.
Looking at the full picture, we see a basic feature set that places Taskade well in the middle of the pack, especially when you consider that all the above is offered for free. The advanced features have us scratching our heads a little, but considering that they don’t cost extra, there’s no harm in them, either.
Taskade Features Overview
 | |
|---|---|
| Management Views | |
| Kanban board | |
| List | |
| Calendar | |
| Timeline | |
| Spreadsheet view | |
| Gantt charts | |
| Workload planning | |
| Long-term planning | |
| Management Features | |
| Multiple project management | |
| Dependency management | |
| Native scrum management | |
| Set user permissions | |
| File storage | |
| Time-tracking | |
| Built-in integrations | |
| Reporting features | |
| General Features | |
| Free plan | |
| Free Trial | |
| Web app | |
| Windows | |
| MacOS | |
| Android | |
| iOS | |
| Support | |
| Ticket-based support | |
| Tutorials | |
| Knowledgebase | |
| Forum | |
| Live chat | |
| Phone support |
Pricing
There’s a lot to like about Taskade’s pricing schedule. It offers most of its features for free to anybody, which is always a good thing. If you want some extras, you can opt to pay $5 per user per month for the Unlimited plan, which is next to nothing compared to the pricing of Asana or monday.com’s cost. It’s a great way to show support for the developers without breaking the bank.
Taskade Pricing
- Most features, Unlimited users
- Price is per user per month Adds versioning, user permissions & other features
- Planned tier (not yet an option), Price is per user per month, Even more advanced options
The Unlimited plan includes everything the free tier does, plus some interesting extras. For example, it removes the 25MB cap on file size, while also adding file versioning and the ability to add user permissions, which is handy.
We’re not quite as impressed with the Organization plan that’s in the works. At $20 per user per month, it would be priced at a premium, yet offer very little extra for that money. We’ll have to see what the final offering will be like when it launches.
User-Friendliness
Taskade goes out of its way to make things easy to use: There’s a solid tutorial, a good knowledgebase (something we talk about at length further down) and plenty of great options to tweak things to your liking.
For example, when you start Taskade for the first time, you’re immediately dropped in the tutorial, which gets you using the program’s many functions straightaway. A few other project management tools do something similar, and we think it’s a great approach.
The worst thing we can say about how Taskade gets you acquainted with its software is that it overuses emojis and pictograms. At times the team behind Taskade will use a pictogram just for the sake of using one, even if it isn’t directly applicable, like the sparkles on the bottom entry in the screenshot above. It makes the interface a little chaotic.
Taskade Templates
At its heart, Taskade is a to-do list like Todoist or Any.do, but you can do a lot more than just mark tasks “done” in it. A good example of the program’s flexibility are its excellent templates, which include basics like bullet lists, but also a pre-cooked weekly planner, a daily task list and even a bullet journal, which is cool.
The end result is a project management and collaboration tool that you can use to manage remote teams, but also as a place to work from, thanks to its note-taking capability. It’s easy to come to grips with, and even easier to mold to your liking.
Downsides to the Taskade Experience
However, there are some issues that make Taskade lose a few points here. Our main gripes all concern navigation, which can be a real pain at times. For one, shifting from the main workspace view to the folder view can be a bit confusing. It doesn’t help that terminology is used a bit loosely; sometimes folders are projects, but sometimes they’re not.
It’s annoying, and it means that you’re often clicking around the interface simply to get back to a view you were in only minutes ago. As a result, we kind of stuck with the folder/project view simply to avoid having to deal with the workspace view and its many counterintuitive buttons.
Speaking of clicking, another issue is the way you interact with what you see on the screen. Adding new tasks, inviting team members, all this is simple enough, but adding a new column to a list can be tricky, as can adding other details. To do so, you need to click on a tiny button and choose from a massive dropdown menu. It’s fine, even if it’s all pretty tiny.
To help you out, Taskade lets you use keyboard shortcuts. However — and this is really beyond annoying — you need to place your cursor on the same tiny field to use the shortcut. It’s enough to make you want to throw your computer out the window when you use a shortcut to only see the wrong field open up.
As much as we admire Taskade’s commitment to making a flexible and easy-to-use tool, we feel some of its interface could use some tweaking. Still, though, if you don’t mind the occasional annoyance, it’s a fine option.
Security & Privacy
Taskade’s security and privacy are solid all around. It’s one of the very few services that hosts data on its own servers, making it very attractive for anybody trying to avoid AWS’ leaky buckets. It encrypts data using top-of-the-line ciphers, so even if someone breaks into the servers, there’s not much to find.
When it comes to privacy, Taskade’s privacy policy lays out exactly what the company collects and what it uses that data for. The company claims to be GDPR compliant and overall its terms seem fair. As far as we can tell, Taskade is a perfectly safe service.
Service & Support
Taskade’s support is solid. The main place where you’ll find help is the help center, which is a knowledgebase with everything you need to know about the program. If you need help beyond that, you can contact the team via email, but we have a feeling you should be OK.
This is mainly because Taskade’s help center is excellent. There is a massive number of entries, and each goes into detail on how the function works, screenshots included. Use of language is clear and, as a bonus, the knowledgebase was put together using Taskade, so you automatically learn more about how to navigate the program.
We wish more services paid this much attention to getting you started and it’s without a doubt the program’s strongest feature.
The Verdict
At the end, we walk away from Taskade with mixed feelings. While there is a whole lot to like here, the things we don’t like we really don’t like. That said, the program is a work in progress, and it could very well be that the things we don’t like are being worked on as you’re reading this and a fix is on the way.
As it stands, though, we’re going to recommend Taskade to anybody looking for a free project management app, but only if they don’t get on with existing options like Trello or Asana. For all there is to like about it, Taskade lacks the oomph to beat these giants.
What do you think of Taskade? What are your experiences with it? Did we hit the nail on the head in our review, or did we miss an all-important feature? Let us know in the comments below and, as always, thank you for reading.
FAQ
Yes, Taskade is a reliable and easy to use project management app that you can use for both task and team management.
As far as we can tell, there are no security or privacy concerns when using Taskade; in fact, it’s a little better than most of its competitors.
Taskade has both free and paid plans, though for most people, most of the time, the free plan should meet their needs.
Taskade can be used to foster team collaboration, make sure everybody in the company is on the same page or even just to track your own tasks.
