I’m always on the lookout for good tools to manage and communicate with a fast growing number of contractors, partners and clients. This is a list of some really interesting tools worth exploring. It is also hopelessly incomplete because almost every month it seems like there are new project or team management tools popping up everywhere. But I feature these based on my own list of requirements. Which are:

• Ability to email a task
• Must be web based
• Affordable
• Preferably, no need for clients, staff or contractors to sign up the service but will allow them to view and track task status
• Must be mobile accessible

Not all of the tools will have these and these are only a few but top requirements.

Hiveminder – so far the one that fits most if not all of my requirements. What I really do not like which causes me to stop using it is this. Whenever I send someone a task to their email, they need to accept/decline the task. I guess this is good to combat spam. But that also makes it awkward when communicating with clients.

It also has a lot of unnecessary, confusing links and instructions at the bottom of each email. I guess that is good but wish I can turn it off. I need to ask them if this can be edited out for paid accounts.

Basecamp – everyone likes this. I don’t. I can’t really put my finger on it but I just don’t like it. I guess the biggest thing is I don’t like having to log in to respond nor requiring my clients to log in to respond. This may have changed now. And maybe one day I’ll get the hang of it.

My ideal solution is one that both parties can continue to use email like they already do but at the same time, like a silent assistant it will archive all communication in proper threads so that both me and the client can go to the site to refer. It should also be able to track due dates for me.

5pm – this looks highly promising. I’ll probably try it out soon.

TaskAnyone – I think this will hit the sweet spot for me. But it seems a tad pricey to me. Wish it had a free trial.

HiTask – I like the look/feel simplicity of this but team members have to signup for an account of their own.