Windows, Linux, Mac OS X official site GNU General Public License - license for private or comercial use more. GanttProject is project management application. It is a good alternative to such commercial applications as Basecamp, JIRA, Redmine, TaskJuggler, Microsoft Project, etc. With this recession small businesses will find it utmost difficult to buy Microsoft Project which normally costs $1000 and can easily use the free alternative. It contains many features of Microsoft Project and apart from Windows, it works on Linux as well.
Microsoft Project is a project management software program, developed and sold by Microsoft, which is designed to assist a project manager in developing a plan, assigning resources to tasks, tracking progress, managing the budget, and analysing workloads. But since product comes from Microsoft, it is not free.
But at the same time if you do not do proper planning for your project it might effect the delivery and also lead to many other issues. So even for small companies proper planning is required. If you company cannot afford Microsoft Project, you can try out the free alternatives available. So here is the list of best Microsoft Project Alternatives you can pick. ProjectLibre: (previously also known as OpenProj) is open source project management software that openly mentions itself as a replacement for Microsoft Project. It’s compatible with MS Project 2003, 2007, and 2010, and Linux, MacOS, and Windows, so it covers almost everybody. It also supports several languages and a pretty good alternative as well.
GanttProject: is a cross-platform desktop tool for project scheduling and management. It runs on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X, it is free and its code is open source. It can create work breakdown structure, draw dependencies, define milestones and also assign human resources to work. Open Workbench: Unlike other free and open source tools, is specifically for Windows. You can create milestones, and assign tasks, resources, and dependencies. You can also track and compare budgetary allowances. It all works, but the learning curve is steeper than the others.
The interface is not as intuitive as the other apps. Gantter: Unlike the previous desktop apps, is a free web based alternative for MS Project. This app comes with quite a lot of tools and also has Google docs integration, so that you can save the documents online and also access from your smartphones.
2-Plan Desktop: is an integrated project management software that combines several tools for project planning and project execution. It has portable PM tools on notebooks, handhelds and iPhones. It has network and online PM tools in several languages for geographically dispersed teams. Its basic design principle leverages on what knowledge professionals have to offer both in the planning and execution stages of a project.