Milestones serve as key markers for you to track the progress of a project—whether it’s a short sprint or a complex, multi-team project plan.
These milestones provide a sense of motivation and accomplishment while helping to measure how well your project is advancing against its planned schedule. By comparing your actual progress with the planned milestones, project managers can identify any deviations, delays, or potential issues early on and take appropriate actions to keep the project on track.
But unfortunately, it’s easy to drop the ball when you’re juggling multiple critical tasks and milestones. If you need help to stay on top of your milestones and project progress, these 10 best milestone software apps will get you back on track.
10 Best Project Milestone Tracking Software in 2024
What Should You Look for in Project Milestone Software?
There are a few things you should look for when choosing project management software for milestones:
- An easy way to set up milestones so that project planning takes less time to set up and manage
- The ability to create milestone charts that plot out all your tasks from the project scope
- A user-friendly visualization of your project milestones that make it easy to see how far along your project is at any given time, and how individual tasks connect to project goals
- A direct connection between your professional goal setting and the software’s milestone features to ensure each key milestone helps the project succeed
- A similar direct connection between milestones, tasks, and details helps you focus on successful project execution and overall project life cycle
Not all free project management software offers a milestone feature. But the ones that do must come with all the above benefits to ensure you fully leverage milestone tracking and management in your project planning and execution phase.
The 10 Best Milestone Tracking Software Apps to Use
Because milestones are so closely connected with project management, some of the best project management software platforms have built-in milestone tracking features. There are also several dedicated tools specifically built for only milestones.
This list covers the best of both worlds!
1. ClickUp
It’s the one project management software app for all of your productivity and project planning processes. Project management, dashboards for key deliverables, goal setting, time tracking, progress reports—you name it and we’ve got it covered.
You can easily convert your tasks into project milestones. Then, connect those milestones to goals, and attach more tasks and dependent milestones to them. You even have prebuilt and ready-to-use templates, such as the ClickUp Milestone Chart Template, to quickly create project milestones.
ClickUp best features
- ClickUp Milestones allow you to easily connect your tasks to your project goals and track your progress at a high level
- A direct connection with ClickUp Goals to ensure that all milestones and connected tasks level up to the project’s ultimate objectives
- A library of milestone templates and goal setting templates that users can draw from to begin building their project landmarks and key stages
- Flexible ways to view and track your key milestones, including Gantt, Board, and Dashboard views
- An intuitive interface that allows for fast onboarding of new users along with quick project setups, from milestones to assignments and timing
ClickUp limitations
- Extensive automation can lead to many alerts and reminders, especially in complex and multi-layered projects
- The platform’s comprehensive nature, while powerful, can make it initially overwhelming for users who only want to try the Milestone feature
ClickUp pricing
- Free Forever
- Unlimited: $5/month per user
- Business: $12/month per user
- Business Plus: $19/month per user
- Enterprise: Contact for pricing
ClickUp ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.7/5 (8,000+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.7/5 (3,600+ reviews)
2. Toggl Plan
As a visual project management tool for project managers, it’s only natural for Toggl Plan to include project milestone-tracking abilities as well. In Toggl Plan, milestones become most relevant as part of its drag-and-drop project planning timeline, where each milestone appears as a color-coded checkpoint in the larger project framework.
Toggl Plan doubles as a workload management system, which is where project management milestones can take on a unique role as well. For example, project managers who are also responsible for things like team schedules and resource planning can use this feature to connect milestones to other areas of the project’s requirements (such as budget limits) that they need to achieve.
Toggl Plan best features
- Full customization for project milestones, from the milestones’ time duration to the exact color you use to distinguish each milestone in the visual project timeline
- Cross-project functionality, in which a single overarching milestone (such as an organization-wide review of all projects) can feed into all relevant timelines
- The ability to share overarching project plans that only include project milestones, and not individual tasks, which helps project managers and external stakeholders keep a high-level overview
- Intuitive and modern interface that makes it easy to jump in and get started with a low learning curve
Toggl Plan limitations
- Relatively static web app that limits milestone functionalities for its users
- Third-party integrations are limited, with a seemingly clear objective by Toggl Plan to keep users siloed within its own software
- The intentional simplicity of the platform may be problematic for some users who are looking for more advanced project management tools beyond what’s built into Toggl Plan
Toggl Plan pricing
- Team: $8/month per user
- Business: $13.35/month per user
Toggl Plan ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.3/5 (37 reviews)
- Capterra: 4.6/5 (100+ reviews)
3. Nifty
Roadmaps, task lists, docs, chat, automation—Nifty boasts it all. And that includes robust milestone functionality.
To be sure, the all-in-one productivity tool doesn’t necessarily highlight the project milestones feature as a front-and-center sales point. But it’s still there, hiding among the Tasks feature to organize, prioritize, and track larger projects.
Nifty best features
- Convert lists of tasks into milestones so that a project manager can track progress on the entire list of tasks within that milestone
- Project milestones appear in its automated reporting functionality, which lets you do dynamic reporting on project processes to all stakeholders
- Sort by milestones within a project, organizing tasks according to their task level and the key checkpoints you need to hit to keep the project moving
- Native integrations with productivity tools such as Google Docs and Google Calendar keep team members in the loop, even outside of the Nifty platform
Nifty limitations
- Limited notification and reminder functions, such as an inability to set automated reminders for upcoming milestones and task deadlines
- A search function in the platform that is not always intuitive and doesn’t always return the most relevant results
- Slow loading times, which can lead to communications issues on projects that need to move fast and in real-time
Nifty pricing
- Free
- Starter: $5/month per user
- Pro: $10/month per user
- Business: $16/month per user
- Enterprise: Contact for pricing
Nifty Plan ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.7/5 (400+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.7/5 (300+ reviews)
4. GanttPRO
As its name suggests, GanttPRO focuses largely on building Gantt charts. The platform, originally designed for the manufacturing industry but applicable to all use cases, also offers alternative views (such as Kanban) to help project managers track their progress and plan their next project. Scheduling workflows, tracking project milestones, and even resource management are all possible here.
GanttPRO best features
- A Critical Path function that takes all tasks, project milestones, and timelines within a project and forecasts the best and most streamlined way to get it done
- Easy export opportunities to print and share a Gantt chart with stakeholders who are not using the GanttPRO platform
- Intuitive version control of all projects, which allows you to go back into the project’s history and restore previous project states at any time
GanttPRO limitations
- No overarching project timeline view beyond the complete Gantt chart, making it difficult for users to simply review the project milestones
- More complex than many of the alternatives in this guide, with a focus on functionality over user-friendliness, especially for new users who might not be familiar with Gantt charts
- No mobile app to track tasks, milestones, or project progress outside of the web-based platform
GanttPRO pricing
- Basic: $7.99/month per user
- Pro: $12.99/month per user
- Business: $19.99/month per user
- Enterprise: Contact for pricing
GanttPRO ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.8/5 (400+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.8/5 (400+ reviews)
5. OpenProject
As a rare open-source solution, Germany-based OpenProject shines in two areas: flexibility and data security. Advanced encryption ensures that anything you enter will be safe, while the open-source nature of the tool makes it flexible and relevant for any industry and any type of project management strategy.
OpenProject best features
- The visual and intuitive project timeline view is the default within the project management software, so you can always see larger milestones at a glance
- The clear and visual outline of relationships between project tasks, phases, and milestones provides an overview of what needs to be done, when, and why
- The Community option is always free, while still offering enough functionality to make it relevant and beneficial, especially for smaller businesses
OpenProject limitations
- Editing projects, tasks and milestones is sometimes counterintuitive, especially for users familiar with other project management software
- While the default project timeline is great, customizing it can be difficult for more unique use cases or projects
- Limited automation capabilities still require quite a bit of manual project timeline and task management
OpenProject pricing
- Community: Free
- Basic: $7.25/month per user
- Professional: $13.50/month per user
- Premium: $19.50/month per user
- Corporate: Contact for pricing
OpenProject ratings and reviews
- G2: 3.7/5 (20+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.5/5 (90+ reviews)
6. nTask
As one of the most popular project management solutions available, it’s only natural for nTask to end up on a list like this. And sure enough, milestones are a natural way to build projects with nTask, specifically for representing critical moments in your project timeline on the path from project start to project completion.
nTask best features
- A clear definition of project milestones in comparison with regular tasks, along with plenty of guidance to ensure their correct use within the entire project context
- Flexible board and calendar views that highlight milestones, and how these milestones connect with the tasks below them and the project goals above them
- The ability to report on project milestones to break projects into smaller chunks and celebrate faster wins on long project timelines
nTask limitations
- Limited guided platform onboarding, leaving users to find their way around the project management software more or less on their own
- A relatively basic calendar view compared to some of the other options on this list, including an inability to customize time frames
nTask pricing
- Premium: $3/month per user
- Business: $8/month per user
- Enterprise: Contact for pricing
nTask ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.4/5 (17 reviews)
- Capterra: 4.2/5 (100+ reviews)
7. Scoro
As a comprehensive work management software option, Scoro is optimal for agencies and other businesses in the professional services industry that are seeking team collaboration tools. The goal is to give businesses everything they need to manage their work and workflow, and milestones are an important part of that equation.
Scoro best features
- A flexible Gantt Chart view that you can condense into the major tasks and milestones and expand to include all dependencies and subtasks for greater detail
- The ability to add tasks to individual milestones to automatically turn them into project phases, which cover the entire timeframe for all incomplete tasks on that milestone
Scoro limitations
- It’s a more expensive option compared to the other tools on this list
- Many of the most helpful project milestone-related features, such as Gantt Chart view and task dependencies, are only available at higher pricing tiers
Scoro pricing
- Essential: $26/month per user
- Standard: $37/month per user
- Pro: $63/month per user
- Ultimate: Contact for pricing
Scoro ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.5/5 (300+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.6/5 (200+ reviews)
8. Milestone Planner
We’ve arrived at the first (and only) dedicated project milestones software on this list. Milestone Planner doesn’t pretend to be a project management software but focuses entirely on the larger planning process, making it one of the simplest and most straightforward milestone-tracking tools you can find.
Milestone Planner best features
- A straightforward and intuitive interface that works equally well on desktops, tablets, and phones
- A drag-and-drop user experience to create a project timeline and adjust milestones
- Easy Gantt Chart views where you can export Gantt charts into PDFs and other file formats
Milestone Planner limitations
- A lack of ability to use it as a more in-depth project lifecycle or task management tool (at its best, Milestone Planner is a planning tool only)
- Somewhat outdated graphics reminiscent of the mid-2000s
Milestone Planner pricing
- Professional Edition: $8.80/month (single user only)
- Business Edition: $3.21/month per user
- Team Edition: $6.38/month per user
- Enterprise Edition: Contact for pricing
Milestone Planner ratings and reviews
- G2: 3/5 (1 review)
- Capterra: No reviews to date
9. ProjectManager
Here’s a platform that shines because of how straightforward it is. Yes, the interface may look closer to Excel than some of the slicker, more visual UI designs in this list. But in return, you get a powerful project and work management platform that uses project milestone tracking as competently as any other alternative.
ProjectManager best features
- Milestones directly integrate into the platform’s reporting feature, making it easy for any user to run reports on a project schedule and track overall project progress
- Task prioritization and hierarchy under milestones help your project team focus on the most important work in a given project schedule and project lifecycle
ProjectManager limitations
- Automation can simplify some of ProjectManager’s complications, but this remains a highly complex software for milestones, so it’s likely unsuitable for small businesses or single users
- The mobile app goes largely unused due to limited functionality and features that are only available in the web-based main platform
ProjectManager pricing
- Team: $13/month per user
- Business: $24/month per user
- Enterprise: Contact for pricing
ProjectManager ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.4/5 (80+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.1/5 (300+ reviews)
10. Xebrio
Originally designed for software development teams and hardware IT teams, Xebrio can help you track any project milestones rom initial planning to release no matter your industry. Break down your project into smaller parts and phases, measure your project success within these phases, and report on those successes for even the most complex agile projects and waterfall development projects.
Xebrio best features
- A dedicated project milestone tracker that is available both within and outside of projects for easy planning and reporting of each project phase
- The ability to assign tasks and shared responsibilities for milestones with your project team members to build accountability, which is especially beneficial in fast-moving development sprints in a software project plan
Xebrio limitations
- It was originally designed for IT teams, so some of its most powerful features may be best suited for those in the IT industry
- Only the web app has notifications, meaning you can only check the platform itself to get alerts about tags, tasks, and a project’s progress
Xebrio pricing
- Requirements Management: $5/month per user
- Requirements and Test Coverage: $10/month per user
- Enterprise: Contact for pricing
Xebrio ratings and reviews
- G2: 4/5 (1 review)
- Capterra: 4.5/5 (2 review)
Track Project Milestones in ClickUp
Unless your project only involves a couple of basic tasks and it’s the only project you’re managing at any given time, it can be nearly impossible to keep track of everything without project milestone tracking tools.
Milestone tracking introduces a hierarchy and helps with minimizing project risks. By identifying key project markers, phases, and significant events in your project schedule, you can monitor your progress on a more granular level without forgetting about the higher-level project goals and timelines.
To get there, you just need the right milestone software to manage your project plan and project timeline. And with ClickUp’s Forever Free plan, you can decide for yourself if ClickUp is the right option for you.
ClickUp is the best milestone software app out there, but we know we’re biased. Try it for yourself. Sign up for free and start putting those milestones on your project tracker!
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