Project Management Software to Boost Productivity: doBoard

Effective project management is vital in enhancing productivity and quality of work, keeping stress to reasonable levels, finishing deliverables on time, and hitting your financial targets.

As workers across all industries are expected to get more and more done (and, largely thanks to technology, this has been possible), a combination of strong management skills and tools has become essential to thriving professionally.

Among the tools that have revolutionized productivity are project management software, designed to facilitate and simplify project management. Today, we’ll be talking about doBoard, a task management platform made to help you stay on track with everything on your to-do list, whether you’re a freelancer or a project manager in charge of a team.

What is doBoard?

doBoard is a browser-based task manager created by Nevada-based IT services company CleanTalk. It was built with the aim to save teams time and resources by offering users a straightforward way to organize and manage tasks. The tool lets you create, assign and prioritize your to-dos, keeping everyone on the team updated about deadlines and deliverables in real time.

In other words, the tool boosts efficiency and project visibility by making crucial information related to your projects (like objectives) readily available to everyone involved. At the same time, through notifications, comments and an activity log, it helps team members keep track of approaching deadlines, updates and changes.

doBoard key features

Thanks to the simplicity of the interface, we were able to identify doBoard’s key features and start utilizing them within minutes of signing up for the 45-day free trial. In this section, we’ll be discussing the benefits of each and how it boosted collaboration for our team.

Task creation and prioritization

One of the first things you notice once you’re signed in is the sidebar on the left-hand side. At the very top (right where you would expect it to be) is a text button labelled “Projects”. You can view all active projects by pressing on it, or easily navigate to a specific one by collapsing your projects in the sidebar.

Creating new projects, editing or archiving existing ones, and arranging them alphabetically only requires the click of a mouse button thanks to the platform’s intuitive design.

Selecting specific projects allows you to create individual tasks for each, and group them together depending on their nature (for example: bundling design tasks together for social media post creation).

Comments and mentions

When you navigate to a project and click on an individual board or task within it, there is a comment box at the bottom where you can leave relevant messages and information for everyone to see.

To ensure your colleagues do get the memo, you can easily tag them using the @ button and selecting their name from the list that pops up, sending them a notification in real time. In addition, you can ask doBoard to email anyone on the project a copy of your message.

When it comes to typing your message, you’ll have the options to create bulleted and numbered lists to improve readability, highlight parts of your message using bold or italics, insert emojis, and attach files from your device.

As a writer, I often find myself muting the notifications coming through on our instant messenger at work. As part of a remote team, I do get tons of them at times, and they can really disrupt my concentration.

During our trial period with doBoard, I was able to keep an eye on changes and updates by leaving the platform open in a tab and periodically checking the “Latest activity” column on the right-hand side of the page. This kept me up to date with important goings-on that concerned me while allowing me to maintain my focus.

Notifications

Receiving notifications in real time can be extremely helpful in ensuring coordination between team members and the timely execution of projects.

On the main page, there is a section dedicated to Notifications which can be collapsed so that your alerts are always visible. You can easily navigate between the different types of notifications, filtering them by kind (All, Updates, Mentions, and Reactions) so that you can quickly find what you’re looking for.

When deadlines are approaching, it’s especially handy to make use of Mentions and isolate those alerts, as it speeds up the process of exchanging information and only viewing what’s most urgently needed of you.

Custom labels

Another feature I found helpful was the ability to add labels to tasks. Creating a label for “Urgent”, for example, and picking the color red for it, would draw my eyes to any urgent tasks across my projects every morning, allowing me to effectively prioritize my workload. Prioritizing within doBoard was extremely easy, too, as you simply click, drag and release your tasks in the order you wish.

In addition, the sidebar on the left of the page lets you filter all tasks within a project using labels. If you only want to see tasks of a particular kind (for example, routine or priority tasks), you simply collapse “Labels” and then choose the labels you want.

Calendar

For a fully remote team like ours, the calendar feature is particularly useful. In a matter of seconds, it lets you block out any time you will be spending away from the (home) office.

At a glance, it informs your colleagues of your upcoming absence. This eliminates the need for exchanging messages and keeping track of who is around when, making coordination around project deliverables easier.

The calendar lets you view your own tasks and their due dates, as well as your upcoming vacation days, but you can also view the same information for individual colleagues or everyone on your team.

Activity log

Another feature that enables real-time collaboration with colleagues is the activity log on the main page. It shows you the latest updates for tasks and projects as and when they happen, and you can also click on “See all activity” for a complete breakdown of your team’s actions.

When you navigate to “All activities”, you have the choice of filtering what you see using the following criteria: by team member, project, and type of action taken, as well as for actions taken during specific time periods. This makes it easy to pinpoint specific changes or updates, or view your whole team’s progress on the whole.

For us (since we have team members scattered across various cities, who also have different proficiencies in English), this reduces the need for back-and-forth messages and eliminates any miscommunication about who is doing what.

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doBoard pros and cons

After using doBoard for a few weeks, we identified multiple things that we like about the task manager as well as some missing features which we would like to see being developed in the future.

What we like about doBoard

Simple interface

Perhaps the very first thing you notice as a new user is the minimalist appearance of the task manager. Although it personally took me a few minutes to get used to the look (the simplicity caught me a little off guard — that’s how used I am to being overloaded with visual information), I quickly adjusted and was able to intuitively navigate the tool with no problems.

Budget-friendly

Another characteristic that sets doBoard apart is its affordability. Starting at just $5 a month, the platform makes for an excellent solution for freelancers, solopreneurs and small teams like ours. What’s great is that even the lowest pricing plan allows for unlimited tasks and unlimited users.

Optimized for mobile

Although there is no dedicated smartphone app for doBoard, the tool can still be accessed and utilized via browser on mobile devices. This optimization allows users to view their to-dos and progress on the go without the need to download and install an application.

Long trial period

Although many products offer trial periods, their duration is usually limited to between 7–30 days — with shorter periods being the most common. With doBoard, however, you have 45-day free access which allows you to learn the tool inside and out, meaning you can arrive at an informed decision prior to making a purchase.

What we don’t like about doBoard

A little too basic

With many websites and tools out there looking colorful and visually appealing, doBoard may not be everyone’s cup of tea — and its sheer simplicity may take some initial getting used to, like it did for me. The platform doesn’t offer customization or other features like time tracking, project reports or integrations, such as with tools like Slack, Google Calendar and Google Assistant.

No built-in time tracker

Time tracking is vital in project management, as it allows you to make smarter decisions on how you price and execute your work. Although doBoard allows you to manually enter time estimates and actual duration for tasks, there is no built-in time tracker, meaning the data you input may not be quite as accurate.

doBoard pricing

doBoard currently offers 10 different plans, starting from $5 per month for 1 project and 3GB of storage space, and ranging to $115 per month for 100 projects and 300GB of storage.

With several options to choose from, you can pick the plan that most closely aligns with your needs. Regardless of what you pick, however, you will still enjoy both unlimited users and unlimited tasks for each project.

doBoard’s service is pay-as-you-go, meaning user accounts are debited automatically on the same day each month.

Buying guide

Picking the right tools for your team can improve collaboration and productivity, allowing you to meet your deadlines and enhance the quality of your work. To find the right tools, however, you need to consider both your team’s strengths and weaknesses, as well as your budget, so you can strike the best possible value.

Trying a few tools for free can be useful; you will know within a few minutes if the one you’re testing is more overwhelming and unnecessarily complicated than helpful. For me, the opposite was true when I first signed up for the free trial on doBoard: having used other task management tools before, I found doBoard’s no-frills approach refreshing.

doBoard alternatives

Though there are countless task manager and to-do list apps to choose from, let’s look at how doBoard fares in comparison to two of the most popular ones: Todoist and TickTick.

Todoist

Todoist offers subscription plans for individual users and teams. With an intuitive interface, it allows you to quickly create and prioritize tasks as well as synchronize your account with other tools you use, like Google Calendar.

For personal use, which allows the creation of up to 5 projects, there is a free plan you can choose. For businesses looking to facilitate collaboration between team members, however, monthly fees start at $6 per user per month.

TickTick

TickTick allows you to collaborate with others, organize your to-dos into lists, folders and checklists, and gamify your task progress.

There are free and paid versions to choose from, with the premium version offering a wider range of features at an annual subscription fee of $35.99. Although cheap, there is a limit on the number of users you can collaborate with on each task list: you can share tasks with up to 29 people.

doBoard FAQs

So far, we’ve talked about doBoard’s uses, features, pricing plans, and what our experience was when testing out the tool. Why don’t we take a moment to recap some of that information and answer a few questions?

Q: Is there a free plan available?

Although there is no freemium plan, doBoard offers a 45-day free trial which allows you to thoroughly explore the tool and its capabilities before committing to a monthly subscription. The subscriptions, on the other hand, start at just $5 per month.

Q: Is there an app available?

All you need to use doBoard is a web browser and internet connection, be it on desktop or a mobile device. No downloads are required, and the task manager has been optimized for use on any device.

Q: Can doBoard be used for Scrum?

Sure! You can start by creating boards under your project, each board representing a Sprint, and then adding the team members you wish to assign each task to, as well as your time estimates for every to-do.

The verdict

Our small, remote team found doBoard particularly useful, with the calendar, activity log and mention functionalities standing out to us the most. That’s because those features kept everyone on the same page while reducing the need for (our often lengthy) IM exchanges. (Me and my editor were especially grateful for the less frequent pings!)

In my opinion, if you’re looking for a more robust project management software with integrations and a wider range of features, then doBoard may not be the right fit for your team. If, on the other hand, you’re looking for an easy-to-use, affordable task management tool that lets you organize and prioritize your to-dos, then there is no reason to look further.

Whether you work on your own or as part of a larger team, doBoard’s to-the-point interface and carefully chosen features should more than do the trick.

Use doBoard today for free

Our rating methodology

To calculate our rating, we evaluated the platform based on five criteria: its ease of use, the number of features offered, the quality of customer support provided, pricing, and competitor analysis. We scored each criterion from 0 to 100%, and then calculated an average across all five categories to assign a star rating from 1 to 5.