Introduction

For project management, we used Redmine, an open source project management web application which is based on Ruby on Rails framework. We installed the whole application on a separate server and had also to maintain the tool (updates and so on). Because we usually have no time to install updates, I searched for an alternative, and I found Planio.

Planio

Planio is a project management platform which is using Redmine. I can use now my favorite project management tool and don’t need to care about the infrastructure. It just works. There are 4 different price models:

For my purposes, I have chosen the enterprise, which is more flexible and unlimited. I can also define my own domain. But if you deactivate old users which aren’t involved anymore to your projects, the gold and platinum model would also fit. Further Information and also the possibility to create a test account can be found here: https://plan.io/pricing/

Features

Basically, the tool has everything which is needed for planning and coordinating a project. Tasks can be viewed in list form, gantt or also in a calendar. Each list can be filtered, grouped and arranged. It is possible to assign members to the tasks and also watch tasks to get e-mail notifications if someone updates it. When users answer to an e-mail notification the related task gets updated automatically. There are dozens of other nice functions on a project like attaching files, creating a wiki or even record time. A full description of the functionality can be found here: https://plan.io/task-management/

iPhone app

There is also Planio iPhone app in the Apple app store. This version 1.0 can list tasks and users are able to edit task. Let’s see what is coming in the next versions.

Conclusion

This tool has enough features to maintain projects and doesn’t need any software. With this hosted solution, it is also not necessary anymore to maintain a server and care about updates. For me, the perfect solution!