Comparison of task management programmes for your business (2026)

On Monday, Ewa, owner of a 14-person design office, has ten tabs open with pricing from task management programmes. The pages look similar, but the invoices, places where data is stored and ways of paying are very different. This text brings them together in one place and shows how to compare. It is not a ranking with places from first to last, because the best programme depends on your company.

The comparison was prepared by the Task Manager producer. So we ask about things where Task Manager really stands out, and in a separate section we also write what it does not have.

Four questions by which we compare task management programmes

Task management programmes have similar basics: subject, due date, people, status. The choice comes down to four questions, and the answer is completely different from different providers.

1. Where is data stored? With the service provider, on the server of a company you choose to host with, or in your company. This decides who stores it and what you tell a customer who asks where their documents are.
2. How do you pay? Monthly per person, annually per package, or once for a perpetual licence. A bill for three years works out differently with each model, so we work it out below for 15 people.
3. Is the conversation tied to the task? When decisions about deadlines and scope land in a chat app or email, after a month no one remembers who decided what. It's worth checking whether the programme keeps the conversation in a task thread.
4. Who maintains the programme? With a vendor service, the vendor does. With a programme on your own server - your company or someone you trust with hosting. That's convenience on one side and control on the other.

Ewa writes them down on paper and only then returns to the pricing cards.

Table: eight task programmes and three supplementary tools

The table shows two of four features: data location and payment model. We describe conversation tied to the task and programme maintenance below, because they can't fairly fit in one cell.

Information about other programmes comes from our separate comparisons, checked on vendors' official sites in September and October 2026. Each comparison has its own date and sources, so check the current pricing before buying. Vendors change plans and prices.

Where data is stored and who maintains the programme

Task Manager consists of PHP files and a MySQL database. Standard shared hosting with PHP 8.1 or newer and MySQL or MariaDB is enough - the installer works in your browser. The database and attachments stay on the hosting your company chooses. Details are on the Installed on your own server page.

That comes at a cost: server and backups are on your side. A programme from a vendor service removes that responsibility. If you don't want to deal with updates, the Maintenance service in the pricing includes uploading new versions to your server with a backup before each update.

One note on AI: when you enable the AI Assistant, a request with the necessary context goes to the model vendor of your choice on your key - the vendor is OpenAI, Google Gemini, Anthropic Claude or xAI Grok, and Task Manager adds no markup. Without AI, the programme works the same.

Conversation tied to the task: one thread instead of three places

In Task Manager, a task is one thread: subject, description, deadline, people and the entire conversation. When the designer asks if the logo should go on the left, the reply stays under the task description. A deadline change is recorded in the thread along with the previous date, so you see who moved it from Tuesday to Friday and when. Your team sees its tasks in the Board and in the Calendar, and separate spaces for clients and departments are Workspaces.

When comparing other programmes, ask yourself the same thing: will decisions about the deadline stay with the task, or will they end up in a chat app or email? Slack organises conversation first and foremost, whilst Task Manager starts with the task. We describe what this looks like in practice in comparisons of Slack and Google Workspace.

Subscription or perpetual licence: which model for whom

A subscription has a low entry threshold and ends with your payments. A perpetual licence requires a larger upfront investment, but the programme keeps running on your owned version. For a team that doesn't plan to change tools for a few years, the second route often works out cheaper - the calculation below shows this.

In Task Manager, the first 12 months of updates are included in the price, and renewal to access new versions is optional. No renewal doesn't disable the programme. You buy a licence for a number of seats, and a seat is taken by an active user; when you deactivate someone, the seat becomes free and their data is kept.

Amounts for the Standard variant (excl. VAT, one-time): Starter up to 8 people - 690 PLN, Classic up to 20 people - 1,490 PLN, Max up to 35 people - 2,290 PLN. Above 35 people, we apply Enterprise pricing. The Pro variant adds seven modules: Mail, Files, Automations, AES-256 content encryption, AI Knowledge Base, To-do list and AI Connections. Differences are described in the text Standard or Pro, and the current pricing is in the pricing section.

Bill for 15 people over 36 months:

monday.com's rate is €12 per seat monthly on annual payment (excl. VAT, checked 19 October 2026), multiplied by 15 people and 12 months in each year. We're not converting euros to PLN because the exchange rate would change the result. The comparison is about payment model, not features - it's not a one-to-one comparison. Add hosting to the Task Manager amount, which you may already be paying for. Amounts for other programmes, with check dates, are in their separate comparisons, and we write more broadly about the model itself in texts on subscription and perpetual licence and on the cost of a task programme over three years. The licence is described on the Pay once page.

What Task Manager doesn't have

Task Manager is a programme for tasks and communication, not a project management suite for every occasion. It doesn't have:

• Gantt chart,
• time tracking,
• sprints, backlogs and burndown reports,
• custom fields in tasks,
• import from other programmes - tasks from Asana, Trello, ClickUp, monday.com, Notion, Bitrix24 or Jira are transferred manually,
• interface in any language other than Polish,
• installation without hosting - you need an account with PHP and a database.

If your team plans work by deadlines rather than task dependencies, a missing Gantt chart is usually not a problem: a list, Board and Calendar with colour-coded deadlines are usually enough. But if your plan is built on dependencies or you bill client hours, Task Manager isn't for you.

When to choose Task Manager, and when to choose another programme

Task Manager suits a company of 5 - 35 people that wants tasks and conversations about them in one place, to keep data on their own server and pay once instead of every month per person. It also works where a Polish interface and Polish instructions are important, and the licence is purchased in PLN, via VAT invoice - what this means in practice is described in the article about Polish task management software.

If Gantt charts, time tracking, sprints, advanced CRM or connecting dozens of external services are most important to you, choose a program that has them. The table above has several, and each has its own comparison with Task Manager. A good choice is one that answers your four questions, not the one with the longest feature list.

How to check a program before you buy it

Before Ewa signs anything, she does three things. First, she takes ten recent tasks from her team's email and messenger and tries to recreate them in the program - along with the decisions made in the conversation. Second, she calculates the cost over three years for her number of people, including hosting if needed. Third, she asks the vendor exactly where the data is stored and how to export it when she wants to leave.

You can try Task Manager in Demo before you buy anything.

Frequently asked questions

Which task management programme to choose for a company of 10 - 20 people?

Start with four questions: where should data sit, how much do you want to pay over three years, should conversation be with the task and do you want to run the programme on your own. Task Manager fits when data is to stay on your own hosting and cost is to be one-off. When you need a Gantt chart or time tracking, choose a programme that has them.

How is a subscription different from a perpetual licence?

You pay a subscription monthly or yearly for each person, and once payment stops you lose access. Task Manager's perpetual licence is a one-off fee for the number of seats, with 12 months of Updates included and optional renewal. The programme works on the version you have even without renewal.

Is a free plan enough?

For a few people and simple lists, often yes. Trello and ClickUp have free plans with limits, which we describe in our comparison with Trello and comparison with ClickUp. Task Manager is not free: you buy a licence, and before purchase you can try the programme in Demo.

Does Task Manager have a Gantt chart?

No. Task Manager also does not have time tracking, sprints or custom fields in a task. You plan work on the task list, on the Board and in the Calendar.

Sources

1. Task Manager, Pricing and Plans
2. Task Manager, Pay once - perpetual licence
3. Task Manager, Installed on your own server
4. Task Manager, Tasks
5. monday.com, Pricingmonday.com · accessed 19.10.2026
6. Task Manager, monday.com or Task Manager
7. Task Manager, Asana or Task Manager
8. Task Manager, Task Manager or Trello
9. Task Manager, ClickUp or Task Manager
10. Task Manager, Notion or Task Manager
11. Task Manager, Bitrix24 or Task Manager
12. Task Manager, Jira or Task Manager
13. Task Manager, Microsoft Planner or Task Manager
14. Task Manager, Slack or Task Manager
15. Task Manager, Google Workspace or task management software
16. Task Manager, Alternative to Zapier

The Task Manager Team - we write about teamwork, AI in business and keeping tasks organised, using examples from Task Manager, software installed on your own server. Task Manager has been developed by Blue Creation Group (Piotr Łącz) since 2013 and is used by organisations including Neonet, the Military University of Technology and Polpharma - read customer reviews. We check our articles against the user guide and the latest version of the software.