Taskworld Review
Taskworld offers a good set of features and solid usability, but also some pretty steep prices. To find out whether the juice is worth the squeeze, this full Taskworld review goes over all the ins and outs of this project management tool.
Taskworld is a project management tool that’s been knocking about for a few years, but has only come into its own relatively recently — as earlier versions of our Taskworld review can attest. This long-ish runway means that it still feels a little unfinished in some places, but overall it has the makings to one day be among the best project management software — some day.
Key Takeaways:
- Taskworld is extremely well designed, particularly in the way it gives you a great overview of what’s going on in your team.
- It also has an interesting take on some tried-and-true features, which we like.
- However, all of Taskworld’s strengths are overshadowed by the hefty price you’ll end up paying for it; you can get similar or even better programs for much less.
While we really like Taskworld’s feature set and usability, it has one fatal flaw: its pricing. It’s priced as a high-end tool, while offering the abilities of something a lot more modest. With a tool like Bloo around (read our Bloo review), which has roughly the same functionality but is priced a lot lower, it’s hard to truly recommend Taskworld.
On top of that, if you are in a position to spend a lot of moolah, you can get better project management tools for the same — or even less — money. For example, both Asana and monday.com offer a lot more for the same price. Still, though, there’s a lot to like here, so we’re definitely putting Taskworld on our list of ones to watch.
-
12/04/2021
Cloudwards completed a fresh review with new criteria.
Taskworld is pretty good. It has a solid feature set and is easy to use. Its price is a problem, though.
Taskworld has a good user experience and an interesting take on kanban boards that could make it attractive to certain users.
Taskworld Review: Alternatives
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4$9.80 / month(All Plans)
- 5$15 / month(All Plans)
- 6
Taskworld: Strengths & Weaknesses
Pros:
- Good feature set
- Easy to use
- Responsive support
Cons:
- Expensive
- Poorly structured plans
- Lacks advanced functionality
Features
Overall, we really like Taskworld’s features, but we don’t like the way they’re spread out over its plans. As a result, the only way to get a fully functioning version of the tool is to get the Business plan that — as we describe in our pricing section below — is rather expensive. To better explain what we mean, we’ll go over Taskworld’s main features plan by plan.
Taskworld Free Plan
Taskworld’s free offering is pretty basic: A maximum of five users can use the kanban board and, well, that’s pretty much it. It’s not a great offering, especially since Trello (read our Trello review) offers much the same, but for an unlimited number of users.
Still, though, we like Taskworld’s take on kanban boards. For example, you can mark tasks as completed but leave them in their columns, which gives you some flexibility you won’t find in even the best kanban apps.
The only thing we actively dislike about the boards are Taskworld’s templates, which are really nothing more than pre-named lists you could easily put together yourself.
Premium Project Management
The next tier, Premium, opens things up a bit, though not as much as we’d like. The main additions here are the table view and the dashboard, which many other competitors will offer in their free plans — check out our Wrike review or ClickUp review for just two examples.
The dashboard is really good, though. Not only does it give you a bird’s-eye view of everything that’s happening in a single project, it also has some nifty filters that let you switch between your individual tasks and those of the entire team. There are also some nice statistics right there on the screen.
That’s pretty much it for the Premium plan, or at least the exciting stuff. There’s no calendar, so we guess you’ll have to hook up Google Calendar using Zapier or IFTTT. This is just one of the many glaring oversights we don’t expect from a paid plan, and the advertised built-in integrations with other apps (like Google Meet and Dropbox) don’t make up for it.
Business Plan Features
The third tier is where Taskworld finally starts to shine. The dribble of added features between the free and Premium plans turns into a massive flood of options. It’s also the first stage where you start to appreciate that Taskworld is actually very good.
For one, it finally adds a calendar, as well as a Gantt chart. Called the timeline, it lets you see what’s happening and when. Currently, task dependencies are still in the beta stage, but the quick look we took gave the impression that it will be a solid addition to the Taskworld package, maybe even on par with a dedicated tool like TeamGantt (read our TeamGantt review).
Besides views, the Business plan also adds a ton of other little quality-of-life improvements. These include a time-tracking tool (a must-have for accountants, lawyers and anybody else who bills by the hour). We also like how you can now add tasks to several similar projects at the same time — a great time-saver and also a great way to manage many tasks simultaneously.
Its advanced features are a little lacking. For example, Taskworld’s workload view is a little disappointing compared to that of Asana, as you can read in our Asana review. The Business plan is the best version of Taskworld overall. The only step remaining is the Enterprise plan, which mainly adds specialized security features that are outside the scope of this article.
We really like Taskworld at its zenith, but it’s a shame that it takes two upgrades to get there. This puts us in the strange position where we find it hard to recommend Taskworld to most users, despite us praising its features. This is in no small part due to its odd pricing structure, which we discuss next.
Taskworld 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 | 14 days |
| Web app | |
| Windows | |
| MacOS | |
| Android | |
| iOS | |
| Support | |
| Ticket-based support | |
| Tutorials | |
| Knowledgebase | |
| Forum | |
| Live chat | |
| Phone support |
Pricing
Taskworld’s pricing isn’t great. As we described in the “features” section, it only comes into its own when you pony up for the Business plan. At $15 per user per month (when paying annually), this plan is a little on the steep side, especially considering that an equivalent package elsewhere is around $10 — read our monday.com pricing article for one example.
Taskworld Pricing
- Kanban view only, Maximum of five users
- Price is per user, Adds list & calendar
- Price is per user, Full functionality
- Price is per user, Removes all caps
Storage Allotments
Taskworld also offers a set amount of storage per plan. Though not as versatile as our best cloud storage services, Taskworld is a lot more generous than many of its competitors on the project management market.
| Free: | Premium: | Business: | Enterprise: |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1GB | 100GB | 1TB | Unlimited |
One thing we don’t like about Taskworld’s pricing page — and something we’re seeing more and more of lately — is that it presents an extremely rosy picture of its abilities at the top of the page, while burying the bad news in the fine print beneath several collapsible tabs.
As a result, on your first visit you may think Taskworld is extremely generous with its plans — and able to easily snag a spot on our best free project management software list. This illusion is shattered when you give it a second glance. The free plan offers just a kanban board with some extras, even the list is hidden behind the first paid tier.
The Premium plan suffers from the same handicap, offering just a handful of extra features and views for $8 per user per month. Compared to, say, Wrike’s $9.80 per user per month for the same tier, that may seem like a good price, but only until you see that Wrike offers a lot more for that extra $1.80 (read the details in our article on Wrike’s pricing).
The first Taskworld tier worth mentioning is the Business plan, which unlocks the full potential of the program. It’s really good, and we like this plan a lot, but we doubt it’s worth the $15 per user per month you’re going to pay for it. If you take a look at Asana’s pricing, you get roughly the same features for just $11 per user per month there.
Taskworld Free Trial
Interestingly enough, Taskworld offers a free 14-day trial of the Business plan when you sign up. This means that when you see Taskworld first, you see it at its full strength — minus the advanced features of the Enterprise plan.
However, once the trial ends, you’ll either need to cough up $15 per user per month or downgrade, and we’re not sure it’s worth it. Overall, we think Taskworld would be a lot more attractive if it dropped the price of the Business plan by a few bucks, maybe down to the $11 or $12 mark. As it is now, we can’t really recommend it.
User-Friendliness
Taskworld handles really well, up there with the best project management options. The interface is responsive, you always get a good overview of what’s going on and communication with colleagues is handled well. That said, it’s still a project management tool; it’s not one tailored to chat and it won’t win a spot in our best alternatives for Slack piece.
Getting Started With Taskworld
Signing up for a new Taskworld account is easy: Just click on the right button on the website, fill out a simple form and you’re good to go. Once you’re in the program, you’ll be greeted by something you don’t see enough of: a dialog box that gives you the choice of whether or not you want to see the tutorials. We like that we’re given the option to say no.
As the tutorial explains, Taskworld uses projects as its foundation. Each project can represent an actual project (an app under development or an editorial calendar, for example), or can be used to divide work up between team members or departments. Taskworld doesn’t limit you here, so you can arrange things to your liking.
Task Management
Managing tasks and staying organized is pretty simple in Taskworld. It handles a lot like monday.com (read our monday.com review) in many ways, though with some interesting differences. Unlike our top contender, Taskworld has you create tasks and manage them in the board view, not in the list or table.
The way workflow is set up makes it easy to follow — you may not even need the tutorials if you’re an old hand at project management — and even if you get lost, there’s always help available.
Like any of the best project managers, Taskworld also makes smart use of color. You can tag task categories as you wish and important details (like due dates) are color coded. Another good example is the timeline, which color codes tasks according to how and when they are assigned.
Mobile Apps
Currently, Taskworld is entirely web-based, so there aren’t any desktop apps. However, there is a mobile app available for Android and iOS. It was recently updated, but we recommend that it be given another once-over as it’s not great.
We’re not sure exactly what went wrong, but for some reason the app only works in portrait mode, despite the fact that the kanban board is laid out lengthwise. It makes it frustrating to use and we don’t see much utility in it — except maybe if you want to shoot a quick message to other team members. Even then, there are better apps for that.
Setting the mediocre mobile app aside, though, we really like how Taskworld handles and praise its interface. Clearly, the designers thought long and hard about what they’re doing, and it shows.
Security & Privacy
Your data is safe with Taskworld. It has a well-written set of documents that lays out its policies concerning security and privacy, and we found nothing particularly out of the ordinary, except for a mountain of legalese.
Security is good; all data is stored on the servers of Amazon Web Services, which means it’s safe from breaches, but may suffer from leaky buckets. We’re not sure why these issues haven’t been fixed yet; if they’re an overriding concern for you, we recommend using a project management tool that allows you to host your data yourself. Read our Redmine review for one example.
Taskworld and Private Data
Going over the privacy policy, it seems your data is safe with Taskworld. The parent company is based in Germany, meaning it falls under GDPR regulations, which prohibit data sales. However, there could possibly be a loophole, as the company’s main subsidiary is based in Singapore, where there are fewer restrictions.
That said, you could also praise Taskworld for being honest about the subsidiary, as many other companies wouldn’t divulge this information (*cough* Avast *cough*) and the document is pretty open in every other respect. Overall, we feel Taskworld is trustworthy.
Service & Support
Taskworld support is pretty good. It’s one of the very few project management tools that offer phone support (though only on the paid plans) and replies come as fast as greased lightning over email. As we mentioned in the user-friendliness section above, we also really like the tutorials, even though they’re a little overbearing.
However, as with most software, the best place to get support is in the knowledgebase, called the help center. In all honesty, it’s a bit of a mixed bag. There seems to be little rhyme or reason to the way articles have been grouped, and the quality also varies.
For example, some queries have detailed guides with GIFs and step-by-step instructions, while others are just a quick pic and a single line of explanation. In the end it all works, but we can’t help but feel that things could be done a little better.
Taskworld Review: The Verdict
Overall, Taskworld is an odd duck. We enjoyed using it, yet we aren’t able to recommend it due to its ill-conceived pricing scheme. Were the price of the Business plan lowered, or the progression between plans changed, we might revisit this verdict, but until then we’re giving Taskworld a thumbs down, albeit an hesitant one.
That said, for people looking for a quirky Trello alternative, the free plan is worth looking into, and you could always give the trial a spin to see if it is worth $15 per user per month to you; maybe it scratches an itch no other program can.
Have you ever used Taskworld? What did you think of it? Do you agree with our assessment? Let us know in the comments below and, as always, thank you for reading.
