If 2023 — the so-called “Year of Efficiency” — has taught us anything, it’s that modern teams need the right tools and technology to survive. The number one requirement is a powerful work management platform that empowers team members to do much more with far less.
But which platform to choose? With so much project management software on the market, the choice might seem overwhelming at first. One such option is Hive, which has gained in popularity since its launch in 2015. It’s a great solution for organizations (especially those with small teams and freelancers) to centralize their work, share and collaborate on tasks, and visualize and manage ongoing projects.
However, if you’re looking at project management tools, you’ll know that there’s a certain investment required, both in terms of resources allocated and the time it takes to learn. That means you should be sure the work management software you choose is suitable for your organization not only for today, but also for tomorrow — as you grow.
With that in mind, we’ve put together a list of all the top Hive alternatives available, including Asana, ClickUp, and Monday.com. Discover the pluses and minuses of each option, and learn why, when it comes to supporting your team through challenging times, Wrike is the all-in-one solution you need.
What is Hive?
Given how busy us worker bees are right now, you have to give Hive top marks for its cool name. Just like it sounds, it’s a central hub for teams to collaborate, manage, and analyze their work. With a range of features including planning project maps, Gantt charts, and templates, teams can use Hive to collaborate, plan, manage, and execute projects of all sizes. They can also create and assign tasks, along with due dates, prioritizations, and workflow automation.
As a cloud-based project management software solution, it’s a good choice for modern teams that need to work together across different locations and departments. Founded in 2015, Hive says it’s “the only project management platform for hybrid work, shaped by users,” but many Hive competitors might feel their platforms also cater very well to hybrid users, and are built and adapted in response to user needs.
The good part about its pricing model is that scaling teams and organizations can pay to add on extra functionality as they need it. Of course, the downside to this is that its initially affordable offering can quickly start stretching the budget.
Hive pros and cons
Like any project management software, there are benefits and challenges to the Hive project management tool. Some will matter more to you than others, but here we’ve outlined a couple of the most-mentioned ones to give you an idea of what’s on offer.
Pros of Hive
- Easy to use: Busy teams don’t have time for lengthy onboarding and steep learning curves. One of the big attractions to Hive is its ease of use, which takes very little getting used to.
- Time tracking tools: As managing resources becomes even more crucial than ever, the ability to track time is fast becoming a crucial piece of any work management kit.
- Multiple project views: Unlike some Hive alternatives, this platform has six different work views, including the ever-popular Gantt charts and Kanban boards, as well as calendars and tables.
Cons of Hive
- Restrictive hierarchy: Without spaces, folders, and contextual subtasks, Hive’s flat hierarchy makes it challenging for businesses to organize their work as they grow and scale.
- Limited efficiency: While it has automation at the project level, Hive doesn’t yet have any automation for a single task or for a larger unit of organization.
- Reduced integrations: Hive only has 12 integrations, which is a low number compared to most of Hive’s competitors (for example, Wrike has 400+ available integrations).
Reasons to upgrade from Hive
Every team, department, or organization is different, with a variety of needs and requirements. Hive might be serving your purposes well right now but if you’re thinking about making a change, here are five reasons why now might be the time.
- Scale: While Hive works great for small businesses, organizations that want to future-proof their software should look at more robust and comprehensive alternatives.
- Budget: The free version is perfect for small teams, but if you find yourself paying for extra add-ons such as analytics, timesheets, and resource management, it might be worth reviewing Hive alternatives to see if there is a more all-in-one solution available.
- Integrations: Find yourself regularly using certain third-party apps such as Adobe Creative Cloud or Salesforce? You might prefer project management software that enables native integration with more than just 12 other platforms.
- Templates: While Hive offers templates for Agile development, client-based agency/branding project, content calendar, new hire onboarding, product roadmap, and strategic planning, most organizations will require much more than this, especially if they have multiple teams or departments.
- Customization: Unique teams need unique software. While the Hive platform does include some customization, it doesn’t have anything like Wrike’s custom item types.
Hive alternatives for project managers
Project managers need a variety of features, capabilities, and tools, which means there are lots of software solutions that might suit. Wrike’s work management experts have highlighted the below options as the best Hive alternatives available today:
Wondering where to start? We’ve prepared a detailed overview of the top four alternatives to Hive: Wrike, Monday, ClickUp, and Trello.
Hive vs. Wrike
Wrike will often come up as the number one option when comparing project management software solutions. That’s because it’s the most powerful, versatile, and flexible option on the market.
While Hive is well suited to small teams and startups, Wrike offers a more complete solution — one that can cater to small teams and large, complex enterprise organizations alike. It offers the perfect combination of simple solutions and complex capabilities. That means that teams can onboard and start working in Wrike fast, but also adapt the platform to suit their expanding needs.
This is supported by a better end-to-end ecosystem that works seamlessly alongside your business’s existing operations and tools. Combined with Wrike’s strong nested hierarchy and ability to manage complex projects simply, this allows teams to grow quickly — exactly what you need in a tumultuous, competitive market.
Ultimately, the choice between Wrike and Hive depends on your specific requirements and preferences. But there are a number of important questions you should ask yourself before deciding between the two:
- How complex are our projects? Wrike can make even the most challenging, organization-wide projects easy with expert project management capabilities, pre-built templates, and executive dashboards.
- Is our budget fixed or flexible? Wrike’s pricing plans are simple, straightforward, and all-inclusive. That means you won’t be facing extra fees every time you want to access a basic feature.
- Do we need a wide range of integrations? If you only need a dozen or so integrations, Hive might be for you. If you’d prefer more than 400, Wrike is a better choice by far.
- Does our work require advanced features? If you’re dealing with a variety of project types, clients, or customers, you will need a wide range of features. Only Wrike can equip you to deal with everything that comes your way.
- Will this software support us in the future? Wrike has been pioneering AI in work management since 2006. It’s lightyears ahead of others in terms of machine learning, smart prioritization, and time-saving automation.
If you’re still debating the answers to these questions, the safest solution is Wrike. It’s the one you won’t need to replace in a year or two’s time, when you start butting up against all of these challenges and more.
Hive vs. Monday.com
If you’re looking for an alternative to Hive, Monday.com will appear online regularly. That’s because it’s one of the more comprehensive work management solutions available, helping teams of all sizes to improve their “alignment, efficiency, and productivity.” It has a full feature set, including all the most popular additions such as dashboards, automation, Gantt charts, and Kanban boards. Like Hive, Monday.com has a free plan (for up to two users). Its paid plans do have minimum users (or seats), with a starting price of $24 per month (billed annually).
The biggest difference between Hive and Monday.com is the sheer range of features. Monday.com is a more complete solution, offering more advanced work and resource management capabilities, in addition to the more task- and project-based approach of Hive. That said, all of this comes at a cost: Hive has a more flexible pricing solution for smaller teams as it allows users to add one more member at a time, whereas Monday.com’s plans may include user numbers not needed yet.
Users looking for a complete work management solution that represents real value may want to compare Wrike’s offering to Monday.com’s and Hive’s. Wrike’s free plan is available for unlimited users (not just two like Monday.com or 10 like Hive), offering a great opportunity for growing teams to scale up without added costs.
Hive vs. ClickUp
Another of the most popular project management tools, ClickUp is a close cousin to Monday.com, in that it offers a “productivity platform and project management software program that helps teams get more done.” It’s another robust solution that can help to support multiple use cases with work, project, and task management features including automation, templates, Gantt charts, and more.
Its ‘free forever’ plan has a strong offering of basic features, including Kanban boards and 100GB of storage. It’s also available to more than 10 users, which is an immediate plus on its side of the board.
When comparing ClickUp to Hive and leading work management platforms such as Wrike, many users (especially those in the creative and marketing spaces) will be looking closely at proofing and approval capabilities.
While both Hive and ClickUp can provide these services, they’re limited in different ways. In Hive, HTML proofing isn’t supported and there’s no way to filter out ‘accepted’ comments on a proof, which means the space can get cluttered and confusing quickly. ClickUp offers the ability to mark changes or leave comments on up to six uploaded file types, but it doesn’t have approval tasks. Unlike Wrike, neither has native integrations with popular design tools such as Adobe CC or DAM platforms such as MediaValet, which means users will have to go outside the platform to upload and publish creative assets.
For this reason and more, marketing departments, creative agencies, and freelancers may find that Wrike is more suitable for completing projects from start to finish in one easy-to-use platform.
Wrike’s 360° workload view allows users to drag and drop tasks, check budgets, and monitor progression to prevent delays and burnout. It’s a much simpler and more dynamic choice if your organization needs to maximize its resources this year.
Hive vs. Trello
One of the original task management platforms on the market, Trello still holds a special place in our hearts. Whether you used it for planning a party, tracking projects in high school, or getting to grips with a busy work schedule, it was — and still is — a great Kanban board-based solution.
Since then, it’s grown and developed into a wider offering, with automation, templates, and workflows now added to the standard boards, lists, and cards. Like Hive, it helps to facilitate better communication, in the latter’s case by using @mentions.
Both have good free plans, although Trello’s is available to the whole team, while Hive is limited to 10 users. However, if you want to move beyond tasks and projects — for example, developing goals, business plans, or strategies — you’ll probably need more holistic project management software such as Wrike.
If you’re comparing Trello with Wrike and Hive, make sure you shortlist all the features you’d like to include in one plan — without integrations or extra costs. It’s likely that only Wrike will meet your needs.
Making the switch from Hive to Wrike
As a task management tool, Hive ticks a lot of boxes. It smooths communication and centralizes work in one easy-to-use space. But it’s also been referred to as a “one trick pony” with a paid plan that “feels thin.” If you’re thinking about making the switch to a more complete, long-term solution that can help streamline and accelerate every facet of your work, Wrike is a clear winner.
An all-in-one platform
Wrike offers a lot of functionality such as proofing and analytics as standard, whereas these involve extra costs with Hive. Similarly, Wrike has more than 400 native and bug-free integrations, whereas Hive relies on Zapier and similar solutions to connect with many of those everyday use third-party apps.
Internal and external collaboration
Wrike offers the ability to collaborate at much more than task level. Wrike’s full-functionality mobile app, real-time chat, powerful proofing features, and ability to share tasks and projects across teams will unite disparate teams everywhere. In addition, external stakeholders can interact with tasks using Wrike — not just view them as in Hive.
Future-proof solutions
Wrike is the only choice for teams who want to sail confidently into an AI-powered future. It’s packed with advanced capabilities in automation, reporting, and customization that will help teams stay ahead of the curve — and competition. Its simple pricing structure will help to weather budget fluctuations too, as each plan is a self-contained suite of versatile features.
If you want to see for yourself just how powerful Wrike’s platform is, dive into a two-week free trial today. No credit card, no commitment, and no downloads needed — just easy access to the world’s most versatile project management software.
Don’t waste time or money on stopgap solutions. Partner with Wrike to strengthen your team — for today, tomorrow, and for all the years of growth ahead.
