Wrike CRM Review

Wrike is a web-based social project management system. It’s designed to help businesses across the board, from SMBs and fortune 500 companies keep their projects, emails, and other documents in one place for streamlined project monitoring, better collaboration with the team, and increased productivity.

Owing to Wrike’s intuitive interface, robustness, affordability and handy features, several giants including UNICEF, PayPal, T-Mobile, Stanford University, McDonalds, Adobe, Holiday Inn, Alcatel, MTV Network, etc. use it.

Wrike at a glance

• Our Rating: 81/100 ( OR 8.1/10)
• Free Trial: Yes (for 15 days)
• Ideal for: Small and medium sized businesses
• Training required: No
• User limit: No
• Mass import/export: Yes
• Kudos: Won a B2B start-up competition at leWeb3 in Paris (2006), was recognized in eWeek’s annual Excellence Awards as the best productivity application (2008), was recognized as one of the Red Herring Top 100 Global Companies (2009)

Getting started (5/5)

Sign up form requires your name, email, password and… and that’s it. Alternatively, you can register using your Google Account.

You can try all the features during the 15-day free trial, besides there’s a Free Version for smaller teams (having up to five users). If you’re migrating from another system, Wrike can import data in MS Excel as well as MS Project format.

Workspace (17/20)

Wrike’s workspace is pretty simple and uncluttered. You won’t have to waste time switching between pages and windows as all your projects, tasks, files, emails, coworkers and collaborators are in one place. You can selectively share your project data with your teammates or even multiple teams, and enjoy outstanding visibility into the part they’re working on.




The best thing about Wrike is that almost every important module is present on your Dashboard. So you can do anything from creating a new Project, to assigning Tasks, to viewing the current status, requesting a status report with a few mouse clicks.

User Interface (10/10)

The UI is neat and robust with just a few necessary menus, but they’re enough to manage multiple projects simultaneously – even for a fortune 500 company. Most operations require only two steps i.e. click, update; and it is saved automatically. On top of that, the status bar shows some handy keyboard shortcuts for quicker actions.

Price (10/10)

As you add more users, most other project monitoring systems/CRMs become expensive, but Wrike becomes more affordable as your team expands. For instance, comparing Wrike to WorkEtc., Wrike is considerably cheaper. Wrike is free for up to 5 users. The priced plans, starting with the Professional Plan, suitable for 5, 10 and 15 users, is $9.80 per user per month, the Business Plan, suitable for 5 – 200 users, is $24.80 per user per month and the Marketers Plan, suitable for teams of any size, is $34.60 per user per month. The pricing for the Enterprise Plan, also suitable for any number of users, is available on application. Prices are quoted per user per month but billed on an annual basis. Free trials are also available with all the priced plans.

Customization (7/10)

Wrike has a highly customizable Dashboard that allows you to choose the most used modules and arrange them in any layout. Under Account Management tab, you can also set your personal preferences, filters and account options according to your business needs.

Integration with 3rd party apps (5/10)

Wrike has limited integration with 3rd party apps, however, you can seamlessly synchronize your data between Wrike and several other systems such as Outlook, Email, Google Docs, MS Excel, RSS, iCalendar, MS Project etc. Wrike also now supports DropBox integration. But the most advanced and useful synchronization is called Wrike’s Intelligent Email Engine.

It’s two-way smart email integration that lets you manage your projects and tasks via email, or send emails from Wrike’s Dashboard. To create a new task, send an email from your registered email id to , add title of the task and due date in the Subject field, and description in the body.

Mobile Support (5/5)

Wrike has free apps for iPhone and Android which allow you to take your office with you, wherever you go.

Scalability (8/10)

The plans offered on Wrike’s website permit adding up to 50 users. To add more users, you’ve to contact the vendor.

Customer Support (4/10)

Wrike offers customer support via email, phone and live chat. We were a bit dissatisfied with their live chat service because of the extremely delayed replies.

Back up & Security (10/10)

Wrike has one of the best security and backup strategies with servers at two trusted datacenters in separate geographical locations, and data being backed up almost every second – which is just amazing. Even your deleted files are kept at the server for two weeks. You can also have your own backup copy in JSON format, but this can’t be imported back to your Wrike account and you can take a backup once every 7 days.

They also use the industry standard 256-bit Secure Socket Layer (SSL) data encryption. To keep your data from being compromised within your organization, they’ve set rules for user authentication, data privacy & sharing, and user rights control.

Features

Let’s take a closer look at the most notable features of Wrike.

Workspace

The workspace contains the elements, navigation, shortcuts, and search bar. The infographic reveals the basics of Wrike work area:

Dashboard

It’s a highly customizable console where you can keep your most used modules. From here, you can manage your projects and tasks, communicate with coworkers, and view their recent actions in the activity stream.

The Dashboard actually consists of small interactive boxes called widgets. You can easily add/remove widgets and arrange their layout by drag and drop method. The widgets have overdue tasks assigned to you, overdue tasks that were created by you, tasks scheduled for the current week/day, favorite tasks, backlog, and a very useful conflict monitor (that requests you to reschedule conflicting tasks or tasks posted on weekends).

Folders (Projects)

It’s a flexible feature based on the combination of three concepts: hierarchical folders, tagging and selective sharing. Each Folder is usually a separate project which can be shared with one or more departments, assigned to users, duplicated, and monitored.

You can add all the linked tasks for a project in one Folder, add files, cross link Folders, and assign tasks to the different users. This menu also enables you to create subfolders, use templates, tag, view statistics, and follow projects.

Via the menu bar at the top, you can view your projects in the form of List, Table, Timeline or Workload – each offering unique benefits.

Timeline, however, is the most promising as you can not only view your upcoming tasks in the form of dynamic Gantt Charts, but also add new tasks at any instant by clicking at that point while holding the shift button.

Recycle bin

This, our personal favorite feature, is rarely found in any other project monitoring application. It’s pretty similar to your Windows’s recycle bin, which keeps your deleted files and folders.

Document collaboration

The document is a shared space where you can upload files, attach files to projects or tasks, edit different files without downloading them, and attach Google Docs.

In the Chrome, Firefox and Safari browsers, you can drag and drop files to upload them to your Wrike account, while for other browsers, you can do the same by clicking Attach a file link in the task details. If you upload an updated version of a file, Wrike automatically removes the older file.

Real-time reports

Reports give you an insight into different activities based on different criteria:

• By status: active, completed, deferred, cancelled,
• By person: assigned to you, assigned to others, created by you, created by others
• By time: Due date, completion date, last modified

In addition to the built-in Global Reports, you can create custom reports, and then download or print them.

Activity Stream (Newsfeed)

Wrike’s other great feature, inspired by the social media sites, is the Activity Stream. Here you can post any important activity, follow Folders, follow Tasks, comment on Activities, invite others to discussions, and apply Filters.

This newsfeed is sort of micro-blogging, and you can even tag others by using the @ before their name (just like in Twitter or Facebook). Latest activities appear at the top of the stream, giving you a quick view of what’s going on and the most relevant activities can be filtered easily.

Time tracker

No project management system is complete without a time tracker. And Wrike comes with a simple yet powerful time tracker that lets you log billable hours, add comments, create time reports, and then export or print these reports to get paid. Your Time Log also appears under the Reports menu.

Notification system

Wrike makes sure you don’t forget your important engagements, even when you’re away from your dashboard, by sending reminder emails. You can set email notification frequency and time to receive the daily emails. You’ll also receive notifications from Activity Stream or from any Folder you’re following.

Tasks and milestones

Tasks are your usual to-dos, which can be independent or linked to a project. Milestones are normally one-day task that mark your progress towards the completion of the project. To add a new task, click the little + sign at the top right and a window will pop up. If you want to create a milestone, change the type from Planned to Milestone.

Some handy tasks you can perform here are tag tasks, make a task recurrent, add subtasks, add custom statuses, or follow, prioritize, mass edit, sort, filter, and search tasks. Furthermore, if a task isn’t performed on time, you can quickly contact the responsible users for status update.

Pros

• All your projects and tasks on one page
• Quick and easy collaboration with your team
• User-friendly interface
• Several affordable plans to choose from
• Unrivaled real-time backups and topnotch security
• Real-time reporting
• Gantt charts, presented along a timeline, give you a crystal clear view of overdue and upcoming tasks
• Native mobile apps to manage your projects on the go
• Ability to add, assign and manage tasks via email
• Useful keyboard shortcuts to improve efficiency

Cons

• Subpar live chat service
• Limited integration with 3rd party apps
• Naming conventions are weird and confusing e.g. your Projects are named as Folders
• No option to add your company’s logo
• No cost tracking

Conclusion

Wrike is one of the top project monitoring systems with no real shortcomings. If you’re failing to complete your projects on time because of the dispersed data and delayed communications, Wrike’s free trial is worth a try and with a score of 8.1/10, we definitely recommend it.