We Switched PM Tools Four Times in Two Years. Here's the Field.

JS James Sun · co-founder · 8 min read

Picking project management software for a five-person team should not be hard. It is, every time. The features overlap, the pricing pages all read the same, and the demos are designed by people who've never run a sprint with an engineer threatening to quit.

We've now lived inside Linear, Notion, ClickUp, and Asana. Each one was a different mistake.

• Linear — the cleanest UI in the category. Also the most opinionated. If your team doesn't already work in shipped / in progress / canceled, you'll fight it.
• Notion — endlessly flexible. Endlessly customisable. Endlessly also a doc tool, and a wiki, and a CRM if you squint. Six months in, nobody remembers where anything lives.
• ClickUp — everything in one place. Including features you never asked for and can't turn off.
• Asana — boring, in the best way. Until you need anything custom.

So which one is actually best for a small team? Not my opinion. Yours.

Vote with your real experience — the company you're at now, not the one you wish you were at. The aggregate is more useful than any G2 review, because it's actual usage, not paid placement. We'll check back in a month and see if the order moved.