GanttPRO Review

Pros

• Affordable monthly cost
• Low learning curve
• Good customer service

Cons

• Limited Features
• Limited integrations

Overview

When shopping around for a project management app, one of the most-looked-for features is the Gantt chart. The timeline-like list of tasks, projects, and milestone events is an absolute standby of the industry; most major developers incorporate at least a basic version of these charts into their designs. But what if a good Gantt chart is all you really need? I am talking about an incredibly well-executed Gantt chart that is strong, not because it meets every conceivable project management requirement, but because it is so focused on being the ultimate Gantt tool.

If that kind of thing sounds appealing to you, may want to look into GanttPRO.  GanttPRO has been in operation since 2015, to generally positive reviews. As the name suggests, this is a Gantt-focused app that seeks primarily to provide task and project management with little else in the tank. Where other project management apps boast such features as budget or time tracking, proofing, communication, and more, GanttPRO has kept the focus narrow: this app does Gantt charts.

There is something admirable about the purity of this app, and the price is low enough to keep me from being annoyed about a lack of additional features. Let’s take a closer look and see what else GanttPRO has to offer.

Web-Based (SaaS) or On-Premise

GanttPRO is web-based and does not require a download to function properly.

Pricing

GanttPRO has my favorite kind of pricing plans: like buying in bulk from the grocery store, you get the same set of features no matter what. As you add more users, the price per user decreases. It is easy to understand, and it is pretty clear you will be getting a good deal. Let’s take a closer look:

Essential Plan:

• One user
• $15/user/month

Team Plans:

• Up to five users
  • $7.90/user/month
• Six to ten users:
  • $6.90/user/month
• Eleven to fifteen users:
  • $5.90/user/month
• More than fifteen users:
  • Contact for pricing

Those are some pretty impressive prices, though they reflect a 20% discount granted to yearly subscribers. You can pay with any credit card or through PayPal and add more users at any time. As I said above, all plans gain access to all of GanttPRO’s features.

Ease Of Use

Signing up for GanttPro is easy. Enter your email and username, set up a password, and you are in. Once the app loads up the first time, you are given the option of watching a six-minute tutorial to give you an idea of how to use GanttPRO. I definitely recommend giving it a watch, because at first the UI in this app feels a little cluttered. After a few minutes of messing around, though, you should be able to start building confidence and understanding of how things work.

My overall impression of the usability of GanttPRO is that this is not a difficult app to use, but neither is it as easy as it could be. At its core, it is simple and straightforward, but some aspects of the interface just don’t make sense to me. For example, complicated charts with long-term goals may take up more space than a single window can display. It would make sense if you could click-and-drag your way around the timeline, but you can’t. Scrolling using your mouse wheel also accomplishes nothing. Instead, you have to go down to the scroll bar on the bottom of the screen to adjust your view.

Is this a big deal? Not really. But add a few other similar niggles and the annoyance starts to build. Like I said above, GanttPRO isn’t hard to use, just a little frustrating. Spend a week or so to get used to them and these issues may fade into the background; I advise signing up for the 14-day free trial.

Customer Service & Support

GanttPRO offers what I consider to be the standard set of customer support options for users, including:

• Help Center: This is a collection of articles explaining many of GanttPRO’s features and functions. It is definitely worth a perusal early in your experience with the app and can be used later for troubleshooting.
• FAQ’s: Found in the same part of GanttPRO’s website as the Help Center, FAQ’s are another great way to get initial questions answered.
• Video Tutorials: Video tutorials are an important part of any customer support suite since they can be used to literally show people how to use their newly purchased subscription.  Fortunately, GanttPRO has a section designated just for these tutorials. Unfortunately, there is currently only one video to be found there! If you do a little digging, you can find GanttPRO’s YouTube channel, where you will find a single additional clip. Not ideal.
• In-App Chat: In a helpful move, GanttPRO offers instant access to their support desk from within the app itself. You can access this helpful feature from your dashboard.

Negative Reviews & Complaints

Generally speaking, people love GanttPRO. However, as we say a lot around here, no software is truly perfect. Here are a few of the things people wish would be improved about GanttPRO:

• Needs More Integrations: I cover this a bit more below, but GanttPRO does not offer much in the way of integrations. One in particularly high demand is a partnership with Slack, which would add communication tools to this app.
• Messy Interface: While I would not call GanttPRO ugly, it does feel a little…disorganized.
• High Individual Cost: I would call the team plans a pretty good bargain, but the “essential” plan for individuals is pretty expensive, which is a downer if you need a personal project management app.
• Slow Initial Load Time: I saw a number of comments that claimed the initial load of GanttPRO takes more than a minute. Obviously, this is not ideal, but fortunately subsequent loads seem to work just fine.

Positive Reviews & Testimonials

Like I said above, people tend to quite enjoy their time using GanttPRO. I even saw one user review claiming the app is “hilarious.” Here are a few things people appreciate most about GanttPRO:

• Universal Access: Like all cloud-based apps, you can access your GanttPRO account from any computer. That is a major perk if you are in an industry that requires significant travel.
• Easy To Use: People love how easy GanttPRO is to manipulate. Creating projects is a snap, as is moving tasks around within them. For a tool that is all about those Gantt charts, the fact that they are so easy to use is extremely encouraging.
• Customizable Templates: Users love that it is easy to create your own templates for projects, making the overall process of project creation more efficient.

Features

GanttPRO is not exactly bursting with features, but it offers enough to be a good task management and passable project management app, especially when you consider the relatively low price. Here are some of the best features offered:

• Gantt Chart: This one is a little obvious, considering the app itself is called GanttPRO. That being said, this had better be a darn impressive Gantt tool based on the name alone. Fortunately, it is excellent. You can create dependencies between tasks, update progress (which is then displayed intuitively, to be seen at a glance by other members of the team), and if you have to re-jigger the timetable of one of your tasks, GanttPRO automatically recalculates all downstream items to match. Also built into the Gantt chart is a workload management system to help ensure tasks are spread evenly between your team members. Pretty slick.

• Board View: If Gantt Charts aren’t really your thing, I recommend switching to GanttPRO’s board view. Sharing some characteristics with Trello and several other project management tools, board view rearranges your tasks into a series of tiles and lays them out in a grid pattern. While this eliminates the clarity of a Gantt chart’s timeline view, it does make the tasks easier to see and understand on an individual level.
• Communication: While GanttPRO does not offer a native chat, and currently has no integrations with chat apps like Slack, that does not mean there are no communication tools within the app. Each task has a comment thread to which you can attach files and have conversations with teammates. It isn’t really robust enough if you have remote coworkers, but if you are all in the same building, I think this would suffice.
• Export: If you need to bring in outsider viewers to your chart (clients, etc), GanttPRO provides a secret URL that you can send out for them to see. It is a handy feature that I wish I saw more in the project management world.

Integrations & Add-Ons

Currently, the only integration I could find was one with Jira. Obviously, this is less than ideal, since integrations can go a long way towards creating a customized experience that will really work well for your company. Hopefully, GanttPRO has more on the way.

Final Verdict

Like I mentioned at the beginning of this review, there is something admirable about the focus of GanttPRO: the developers of this app want to make a really really good Gantt chart. Having said that, I don’t think this quite qualifies as the perfect Gantt quite yet. A few nagging issues, combined with limited integrations and communication tools, result in a product with tons of potential that hasn’t quite been realized yet.

Fortunately, the price for GanttPRO is pretty fair, and the 14-day free trial will allow you to determine for yourself if the things that frustrated me apply to you as well. So go on, get out there and get your Gantt on!