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ProjectManager vs Wrike - Comparison 2025

ProjectManager vs. Wrike

Last updated on

Reviewed by Camin McCluskey

Stackfix Co-Founder & CTO

CM

Wrike and ProjectManager serve distinctly different project management needs. Wrike is better suited for larger organizations with complex project management requirements, offering extensive customization options, sophisticated task management, and comprehensive templates. Its steeper learning curve and more complex features make it ideal for teams willing to invest time in setup for a more powerful solution.

ProjectManager, conversely, excels as a straightforward, easy-to-use tool perfect for smaller teams or those prioritizing quick implementation over advanced features. Its superior ease of use, better customer support, and comprehensive export capabilities make it ideal for teams needing efficient, no-frills project management.

ProjectManager Product Logo

Advantages of ProjectManager

ProjectManager offers superior data exportability compared to Wrike
We found ProjectManager's export capabilities to be comprehensive, allowing teams to export all key data, reports, and dashboards to PDF and Excel formats. While Wrike also offers exports, ProjectManager's implementation is more robust and user-friendly, making it particularly valuable for teams that need to regularly share project data with stakeholders or maintain detailed records.
ProjectManager is significantly easier to use than Wrike
With an intuitive interface and straightforward functionality, ProjectManager requires only about an hour of training for new users to become proficient. In contrast, Wrike's complex interface and features typically need 1-2 days of learning to master. This makes ProjectManager particularly valuable for teams that need to onboard new members quickly or organizations that prefer minimal training overhead.
ProjectManager provides better customer support than Wrike
ProjectManager offers fast and helpful personalized support via email and phone, complemented by comprehensive self-serve materials. In comparison, Wrike relies heavily on template bot responses and FAQs. This difference is particularly important for teams that need reliable, human support for complex project management challenges.
Wrike Product Logo

Advantages of Wrike

Wrike offers better task management capabilities
Wrike offers advanced task management capabilities, including deeply customizable templates, automated workflows, and OKR/goal setting capabilities. This makes it particularly suitable for complex project environments. ProjectManager's task management is more basic, lacking the sophistication of Wrike's features.
Wrike has better form-based task creation
Wrike includes the ability to create tasks via forms, allowing team members or clients to submit requests that automatically become tasks. This is particularly valuable for teams handling multiple incoming requests or managing client interactions. ProjectManager lacks this feature entirely.
Wrike has superior project templates
Wrike's template system is exceptionally comprehensive, offering an extensive list of templates for various business use-cases, along with custom project types that modify project terminology. This is particularly beneficial for teams that frequently start new projects and want to maintain consistency. While ProjectManager offers 14 templates, Wrike's offering is more extensive and flexible.
Wrike is significantly more customizable
We find Wrike offers extensive customization options for templates, workflows, automation, reports, and project types. This level of customization is particularly valuable for organizations with complex project management needs that require tailored solutions. ProjectManager, in comparison, offers more basic customization options.

ProjectManager is best for

  • Businesses with a moderate number of active projects (5-10 projects at a time)
  • Who need efficient task management and basic workflow automation for day-to-day operations
  • And/or who want comprehensive project visibility through ready-made reports and dashboards.

Wrike is best for

  • Businesses with a high number of active projects (10+ projects at a time)
  • Who need sophisticated workflow automation and extensive project templates
  • And/or who want deep task management customisation

ProjectManager is less good for

  • Businesses with a high number of active projects (10+ projects at a time) requiring sophisticated document creation and custom reporting capabilities
  • Who need advanced workflow automation with extensive third-party integrations and email templates
  • And/or who want sophisticated approval processes and built-in team chat capabilities.

Wrike is less good for

  • Businesses with a low number of active projects (3-5 projects at a time)
  • Who need built-in chat functionality for quick communication
  • And/or who want a simple learning curve with minimal setup time for workflow automation

Gallery

ProjectManager logoProjectManager
ProjectManager screenshot
Wrike logoWrike
Wrike screenshot

Pricing, features & ratings

ProjectManager logo

ProjectManager

Starting at

$16

user / month

Billed monthly

Pricing calculatorVisit Website
Wrike logo

Wrike

Starting at

$0

Billed monthly

Pricing calculatorVisit Website
Stackfix Verdict
Functionality
6

Functionality

6/10

<p>ProjectManager has most of the functionality that any team will need. More importantly, these features are done well. Reporting, automations and task management are all strong and easy to use. However, none of ProjectManager's features are exceptional - they do the basics and they do them well - that's it. For example, automations are only offer 12 action and 7 trigger functions and no integrations with email, slack etc.</p>
8

Functionality

8/10

<p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Wrike has most of the sought after features and is deeply customisable, offering customisable templates, automated workflows and types. It also supports OKR/goal setting and has additional features which act as a cherry on top like AI work creation and effort management.</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">However, it lacks a few things which may be useful for real time collaboration like a realtime chat between team members or any sort of messaging service. Also, although it allows files to be added to tasks, it doesn't offer a shared space for docs and files or any way to create a company wide wiki which is important for larger companies.</span></p>
Ease of Use
8

Ease of Use

8/10

<p>The learning curve here is not steep at all - the product is usable right from the word go. We estimate that a start-up employee would require about 1 hour and some guidance to be comfortable using all key functionalities.</p><p><br></p><p>Most key functionalities are very intuitively located. However some are hidden. For example, automations are not well-labelled on the UI.</p>
5

Ease of Use

5/10

<p>Overall, Wrike has a generally well planned UI which makes it <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">intuitive to use overall. </span></p><p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">It falls short on a few aspects though, some of the language used to relate tasks is quite complex and it's difficult to build a complex workflow in the beginning. We estimate that an average startup employee would take around 1-2 days to get their hands on this tool and be able to leverage its functionality efficiently.</span></p>
Look and feel
6

Look and feel

6/10

<p>ProjectManager has some colour customisation available. That being said, it could do with a touch more finesse in places. It is by no means an unattractive piece of software but it's nothing special.</p><p><br></p><p>Loading times are fast at ~ 1 second per page.</p>
7

Look and feel

7/10

<p>The software is visually appealing generally and has a simplistic UI which makes it easier to understand what's happening on a page. The load times for any page are quite fast and has an overall attractive look and feel, except the gantt chart which looks slightly blocky/shaky.</p>
Customisability
5

Customisability

5/10

<p>ProjectManager could do better here, but still has some good customisation. You cannot create a custom report in ProjectManager - there are only self-serve reports available. However, the level of filtering available when choosing which projects, tasks, tags etc. should be measured when creating these self-serve reports is extensive. Automations, on the other hand, could do more customisation wise. They offer basic automations - but no email templates or integrations with 3rd parties, e.g. sending a message in Slack.</p>
8

Customisability

8/10

<p>Can customise quite a bit of the product, including custom fields, workflows, automation, reports, templates and types. However it's not open source which means that it may not offer the same amount of customisability as a tool which you can actually go ahead and tweak.</p>
Ease of Setup
7

Ease of Setup

7/10

<p>Offers a self-serve free trial and allows purchase without needing to talk to sales. Getting started and setting up a few tasks and subtasks should take 20-30 minutes, but it lacks a rich library of templates. Full setup should take less than a day.</p>
6

Ease of Setup

6/10

<p>Offers a self-serve free trial and allows purchase without needing to talk to sales. Getting started and setting up a few tasks and subtasks should take 20-30 minutes, because it has a good sample project space, but it lacks a rich library of templates. Full setup should take a day or two at most.</p>
Customer Support
7

Customer Support

7/10

<p>Personalised support is not available via in-app chat but is available on email and and over the phone. Responses are fast and helpful.</p><p><br></p><p>Self-serve materials are of great depth and quality. In particular, their onboarding materials essentially tell you all you need to know to use the ley functionality and leaves you feeling in control of the product.</p>
5

Customer Support

5/10

<p>Has tried to build a chat service but you can't actually ask many questions on it, since you normally just get template responses that a bot provides. It does however have an extensive set of FAQs and a project management guide which should help users get started.</p>
Integratability
5

Integratability

5/10

<p>ProjectManager integrates with some tools natively but relies heavily of Zapier for most integrations. For example, Salesforce, Jira, onedrive, dropbox are all available only through Zapier.</p><p><br></p><p>However, ProjectManager offers an API to build custom integrations where necessary.&nbsp;</p>
5

Integratability

5/10

<p>Supports a few integrations like Google, Outlook, Slack, JIRA and a host of other mobile applications. However, it doesn't support a few key integrations natively like Github, Zapier, Freshdesk and Zendesk which other tools do.</p>
Ease of Migration
8

Ease of Migration

8/10

<p>Exports of all key data, reports and dashboards are available to PDF and/or excel.</p>
5

Ease of Migration

5/10

<p>Has robust options to make self-serve exports of data in excel, csv or pdf and also gives API access. However it doesn't have the same number of pre-built native integrations which other tools may offer</p>
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