In today’s fast-paced work environment, maximizing productivity and streamlining processes have become more critical than ever.
From project management, manufacturing, and marketing to HR tasks, using applications Workflow Applications is a more innovative way to complete daily tasks in less time.
These cutting-edge solutions are designed to help businesses of all sizes work smarter by reducing manual tasks, allowing employees and team members to focus on strategic tasks that can improve operational efficiency and competitive advantage.
Also, with each passing year, the capabilities of these applications only continue to grow, providing even more opportunities for optimization. Rather than trying to automate individual tasks, they can implement end-to-end improvements for their business processes.
If you look forward to incorporating workflow applications in your organization, we have scoured the market to compile a list of the 17 best workflow applications for better efficiency in 2023.
What is a workflow application?
Workflow applications are software applications that help businesses automate their mundane everyday tasks.
Such applications are best for automating repetitive tasks like accepting or rejecting leave approvals, creating purchase orders, onboarding new employees, receiving budget approvals, and much more.
Workflow applications work when data is fed into the system to follow a predefined path until a task is completed.
Here are the 17 Best workflow applications of 2023
Automating workflow tasks is all about creating algorithms that work with simple commands like when this happens, do that. Workflow applications make this process super easy. On that note, here are the 17 best workflow applications of 2023.
1. Monday.com
Monday.com is a versatile workflow application that has several use cases. From designing, software development, marketing, sales, project management, HR, and operations to more, Monday.com manages workflows for several market niches.
With over 180,000+ customers, Monday.com aims to keep Monday blues at bay by automating several tasks.
Key Features:
- Customizable: Contains no code, fully customizable 200+ ready templates.
- Collaboration and communication: Easy collaboration tool to work in teams smoothly.
- Goal tracking: Track monthly goals to scale faster toward them.
- Visualization: Highly interactive workflow management with boards, views, dashboards, etc.
- Customer support: Round-the-clock dedicated and fast customer support.
Pros:
- Free to use for small businesses (up to 2 seats).
- Includes Automation and integration actions (up to 25000 actions).
- Access it on the go with its iOs and Android app.
- Up to 1000GB of file storage is available to save essential documents.
- Facilitates advanced reporting and analytics of the fed data.
Pricing:
- Free: $0 for up to 2 seats
- Basic: $8 seat/month
- Standard: $10 seat/month
- Pro: $16 seat/month
- Enterprise: Contact them to get a custom quote
2. Process Street
The process of managing workflow with Process Street’s no-code platform is super easy. Choose from in-built templates or create your process with the help of its drag-and-drop editor.
Process Street can manage workflow in several departments – finance, IT, marketing, property management, sales, retail, and e-commerce.
Key Features:
- Conditional Logic: The ability to customize workflow processes by adding conditional logic (if this, then-do-this) to create flexible and dynamic checklists.
- Mobile Notifications: With Process Street mobile app, get instant notifications when a task is completed or needs attention. Notifications can also be accessed through email.
- Advance scheduling: Allows for advance scheduling of processes and tasks that happen at regular intervals. They can be scheduled to run daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly.
- Top-notch security: Process Street provides privacy and security with the help of single sign-on, multi-tiered permissions, and data encryption. Both in-transit and at-rest data are kept safe.
- Seamless integration: Provides seamless integration with over 3000+ apps you use at work, like Salesforce, DocuSign, and Quickbooks.
Pros:
- Excellent integration with project management tools
- Allows for customizing checklists when templates aren’t enough.
- Creates systematic procedural documents with keyword shortcuts.
- Add quick, instant, multi-page, and sequential approvals within checklists.
- Forms, audio, and videos can be added to customized checklists.
- Provides team communication, collaboration, activity traction, and team progress widget.
Pricing:
- Startup: $100/month
- Pro: $415/month
- Enterprise: $1660/month
3. Wrike
Wrike is another workflow automation tool apt for streamlining all daily work activities. Wrike is preferably made for marketing, creative, design, professional services, and project management teams.
It helps them to filter tasks, automate related requests (like seeking requests for ad campaigns), monitor team progress, and much more.
Key features:
- Interactive visual charts: Kanban boards, Gantt charts, to timeline views. Wrike provides several options to define deadlines, schedule projects, and monitor progress.
- Custom templates: Besides pre-built templates, Wrike also allows you to create custom workflows that define the steps, transitions, and workflow stages tailored to your business needs.
- 400+ app integrations: Using Wrike also gives the flexibility to integrate with other work apps like Tableau, Adobe, Slack Okta, Dropbox, etc., for streamlined processes.
- Mobile optimization: With Wrike Android and iOs apps, you can manage and monitor the workflows on the go.
- Built-in proofing: Any editing and proofing task can be done within Wrike without using a third-party proofreading app.
Pros:
- In-app integration of collaboration tools, proofing, Gantt charts, and task management tools.
- Includes dynamic request forms with conditional logic.
- No separate workflow management pricing plan (includes its other use cases).
- Cloud storage is available for up to 15GB per user.
- Excellent integration with project management tools
- Separate dashboard and report builder to generate and analyze performance reports.
Pricing:
- Free: for up to 2 users
- Team: $9.80 user/month
- Business: $24.80 user/month
- Enterprise: Get a custom quote
- Pinnacle: Get a custom quote
4. Qntrl
Qntrl is workflow orchestration software that aims at automating workflows processes of marketing, IT, onboarding, purchasing, and more.
It eliminates the use of filling out physical forms, collecting documents, distributing tasks, approvals, etc. Industry experts consider it one of the best workflow management software.
Key Features:
- Automate requests: With Qntrl, requests are automatically routed and mention who needs to work on what tasks.
- Centralized workflow: Each team member can access everything they need to work on in a single click.
- Process Extensibility: Use APIs, webhooks, extensions, integrations, and custom functions to extract from other apps.
- Default reports: Prepares reports like blueprint usage reports, job distribution charts, stage utilization charts, etc., for each department (HR, IT, marketing, etc.) for better analysis.
- Process mapping: Visualize your workflows through form builder, workflow builder, and process logic automation.
Pros:
- Automating workflow is a four-step process – create form, design blueprint, set permissions, and review.
- Design workflow blueprints that show what happens at each stage.
- Business Rules let you set all rules (actions) concerning a particular task, from due dates to everything else.
- Excellent integration with project management tools
- Qntrl provides a 15-day free trial on Business Plan.
- Data is secured at Qntrl’s servers and data centers with video monitoring, biometric scanning, and more.
Pricing:
- Free: limited to 5 users and three orchestrations
- Business: $7 user/month
- Enterprise: Use pricing calculator (500+ users)
5. Kissflow
Kissflow is a cloud-based business process management application that offers workflow management. Kissflow, a workflow automation platform, works on KISS format – Keep It Simple and Smart.
Kissflow has kept it simple with no code requirements. Users can create customized forms using its drag-and-drop editor. They can also design workflows by adding branches and steps for purchase order requests, marketing campaign approvals, and more.
Key Features:
- Reports and analytics: It has pre-built reports to track workflow success over a period of time.
- Integration ready: Allows seamless integration with other workable apps to communicate and collaborate among team members.
- Low code, no code: It’s a low code and no code platform that requires no coding knowledge to design and automate workflow tasks.
- User-friendly interface: With no code required, Kissflow workflow management is user-friendly, and you can deploy simple to complex workflows within minutes.
- Service level agreements (SLAs): SLA management allows businesses to set rules and conditions to complete the desired tasks within standardized protocols.
Pros:
- It has a powerful and intuitive Visual Studio to automate workflow tasks.
- Automate workflow in three simple steps – create forms, build workflows, and assign permissions.
- Provides flexibility to control who can view, edit and initiate workflows once it’s published with in-built widgets.
- It contains a navigation, comment, and milestone widget for greater efficiency.
- Sits on Google Cloud without worrying about database losses and system overloading.
Pricing:
- Small Business: $15 user/month (50 users minimum)
- Corporate: $20 user/month (100 users minimum)
- Enterprise: get a custom quote (500+ employees)
6. Zapier
Zapier is a dedicated workflow automation platform that helps automate workflows for marketing, business owners, IT, and sales operation teams.
It provides several workflow solutions like lead management, customer communications, internal processes, and data management.
Key Features:
- Create Zaps: Zapier allows for automating workflows by creating zaps. Through zaps, you can create triggers and actions. Select an app to trigger and then add an Action that happens when a set trigger is activated.
- Built-in apps: Zapier has built-in apps like Formatter, Webhooks, Zapier Manager, email parser, URL shortener, translate, Lead Score, and more to customize daily workflows with ease.
- Multi-step zap: Multi-step zaps help you simplify and add multiple actions for a given trigger. You can further add the description to each step as well.
- Private and secure: Zapier uses SOC Type II and SOC 3 compliant to keep workflow and processes secure and compliant with the standards.
- Tutorials: Zapier has tutorials for different roles for users who need to become familiar with automating tasks.
Pros:
- Regulates lead, internal, customer, and data management with automation.
- Dedicated automation workflows for different roles (IT, sales, marketing, etc.).
- Free for individuals to automate up to 100 tasks per month.
- Provides 14-day free trial on Professional Plan.
- In-built apps and 3000+ integrations.
Pricing:
- Free: free forever (up to 100 tasks/month)
- Starter: $19.99/month (up to 750 tasks/month)
- Professional: $49/month (up to 2000 tasks/month)
- Team: $399/month (up to 50,000 tasks/month)
- Company: $799/month (up to 100,000 tasks/month)
7. Ravetree
Ravetree is a workflow management tool that houses products like resource planning, financial management, time tracking, project management, CRM, and billing into one platform.
It is designed to support the automation of both traditional and agile projects. Industry experts consider Ravetree one of the best workflow management software.
Key Features:
- Repeating tasks: Automate repeating tasks with Ravetree and get notifications when the tasks are due.
- Timeline views: Use Gantt charts, Epics, Kanban boards, User Boards, and other visualizations to create interactive and custom workflows.
- Checklists: This feature enables you to break down tasks into small actions and convert them back to tasks when needed.
- Dependencies: A unique feature that helps creates different task dependencies like finish to start, start to finish, and finish to finish.
- Templates: Includes readymade templates for recurring tasks and saves your time in creating one from scratch. You can customize existing templates and add dependencies and tasks as needed.
Pros:
- Ravetree provides video conference support and live chat support to its users.
- Includes free onboarding sessions for new customers.
- Contains a free trial and several pricing options depending on the number of users.
- Full-featured calendar to track project progress, milestones, sprints, and more.
- Separate client portals to provide them access to reviewing files and subject request forms.
Pricing:
- Yearly: $29, $1450, $2900 per month for one user, 50 users, and 100 users, respectively
- Quarterly: $34, $1734, $3400 per month for one user, 50 users, and 100 users, respectively
- Monthly: $39, $1911, $3900 per month for one user, 50 users, and 100 users, respectively
8. Pneumatic Workflow
Pneumatic Workflow is a free AI-powered workflow management app. It helps manage several workflow types like SEO, video creation, product improvement, and content development. It also provides a brief of running workflows and completed workflows.
Key Features:
- Collaboration tool: An in-built collaboration tool allows team members to work on tasks together and easily pass tasks from one team to another.
- No-code-free templates can be customized to add task sequences, necessary information, descriptions, pauses, conditional logic, etc.
- My Tasks tab: Includes all the tasks assigned to a particular team member. Each team member can go to My Tasks to see their assigned tasks. They can even take back submitted tasks.
- Multiple workflows: Multiple workflows can be run from a single template. The template owners can also see task progress from Dashboard and Workflow views.
- Zero-code integrations: Engage with external users using integrated work apps like Salesforce, Gmail, Microsoft Teams, Trello, Zapier, Quickbooks, etc.
Pros:
- Includes quick filters to manage multiple workflows at a time. They can be filtered by type, performer name, and starter name.
- Assigned tasks can be cloned, shared, and returned to the previous step.
- Pneumatic workflow provides a 7-day free trial under Premium Plan and a 30-day money-back guarantee.
- Free customizable templates are suitable for HR, sales, marketing, development, and finance teams.
- Take the help of tutorial videos to get started.
Pricing:
- Free forever: for up to 5 users
- Premium: $50/month to $1000 per month (per 50 to 100 users)
- White Label: Get custom quotes (for 100+ users)
9. Projectsly
Projectsly is considered one of the best workflow management apps by many industry experts because of its unique features, which include not capping the number of projects.
You can create unlimited projects and workflows under all its plans. Another highlight of using Projectsly is that it provides access to 50 apps at $14.99 monthly.
Key Features:
- View tasks in multiple ways: Visualize task views in different forms like Kanban boards, Gantt charts, listicles, calendars, etc.
- Goal management: Helps you create and monitor goals through burnout charts, task status tracking, and calendar views.
- Time tracking: No task should be carried on indefinitely. Time tracking integration tracks the time spend on each task and boosts efficiency.
- Team discussion: Communicate with teams about project details, share files, and add @ mentions with team discussion integration.
- Loop notifications: Keep teams connected on tasks updates through loop notifications
- Advanced Reports: Projectsly also tracks project progress with a project overview, task progress tab, productivity status, customizable reports, and charts.
Pros:
- Projectsly provides a 14-day free trial.
- Provides GitHub integration, Gmail extension, and more.
- Provides email, chat, and phone support.
- Excellent for managing repetitive tasks.
- It’s a cloud platform hosted over 6 locations with 99.5% uptime.
- Includes a built-in videoconferencing tool for communication with teams.
Pricing:
- Cloud: $14.99 per month
- Enterprise: $74.95 per month
- Hosted: Get a custom quote for white-label services
10. Next Matter
NextMatter is all in one place for operations. It’s a complete automation platform that ensures all end–to–end operations are automated effortlessly. It is also ranked as one of the best project management software.
Key Features:
- Use cases: Next Matter is used for workflows for several services like delivery services, retail and e-commerce, financial services, marketplaces, rental and fleet services, and others.
- Integrations: You can automate workflows with integrated custom apps, tools, databases, APIs, and growing native integrations when working on Next Matter
- Task management: Assign tasks to teams, people, and systems in a streamlined manner with an automated task assignment feature
- Notifications: Get mobile notifications when a task is completed and advance it to the next team in line automatically
- Scheduled: Control tasks with pauses and start and stop functions when needed.
Pros:
- With intelligent task pooling, task managers can see the tasks assigned to teams, managers, and individuals.
- Enables collaboration with external users (partners, suppliers) through secure assignments and execution.
- Create custom processes/workflows using no-code drop and drag builder.
- Several ways to integrate your favorite apps.
- EU GDPR compliant and has servers hosted by AWS.
Pricing:
- Starter: $990/month for up to 50 users
- Professional: $2490/month for up to 250 users
- Enterprise: $4990/month for up to 500 users
- Enterprise+: Get a custom quote for 500+ users
11. Height
Height is yet another exemplary project management tool and workflow automation software. It also doesn’t cap members, guests, and tasks and provides unlimited usage in each plan.
Key Features:
- Task management: Within task manager, you can create a unique ID of team members, create subtasks, chat in real-time, control private tasks, enable read-only mode, etc.
- Visualizations: Height has spreadsheets, kanban, calendars, and Gantt to create intuitive workflows that are easy to manage
- Lists and intelligent lists: A list of tasks can be customized, marked favorites, shared, exported, visualized, sent to the trash, and filtered.
- Command-K: This feature sets keyword shortcuts to any action. You can make changes using keyword shortcuts, navigate between tasks, and more.
- Integrations: Height has integrated work apps like GitHub, GitLab, Notion, Slab, Sentry, Slack, Zapier, Zendesk, and others for better automation.
Pros:
- Height is available in both light and dark mode.
- For security, Height is SOC 2 Type II compliant, hosted on an HTTP domain, and provides other data leakage prevention.
- Height has a free plan open to unlimited users with no cap on tasks.
- Offers 30 days free trial on Team Plan.
- Has Sprint Planner, a readymade template to allow teams to meet actionable goals faster.
Pricing:
- Free: $0 for unlimited users and tasks
- Team: $6.99/month per user
- Enterprise: Get a custom quote
12. Nintex
Nintex is much more than just a workflow automation program. It also provides process management, Robotic process automation, automated enterprise forms, and more.
Key Features:
- Drag-and-drop visual canvas: Nintex includes a drag-and-drop visual builder to create robust workflow tasks.
- Integrations: The ability to connect to existing business systems like Google, Salesforce, Legacy on-prem, and more.
- Form designer: Use drag and drop to create custom forms with desired controls.
- Automation cloud: Enables finding apps suitable for your task through keywords.
- Collaboration: Contains collaboration tools that can be inserted while creating workflows.
Pros:
- Several use cases, from employee onboarding and loan processing to invoice management.
- Unlimited user and unlimited workflow plans.
- Ability to add free-flowing design to your workflow documents.
- Enhanced support and analytics.
- Provides Mobile Accessibility to access workflows anytime, anywhere.
Pricing:
- Pro: $25000 per year
- Premium: $50000 per year
- Custom: Get a custom quote
13. Frevvo
Frevvo provides workflow automation services for several use cases like invoice approval, expense approval, travel requests, purchase orders, and many others. It is also a process management and form automation application.
Key Features:
- Seamless workflows: Enables creating workflows with dynamic routing.
- Built-in reporting: Frevvo has built-in reporting and analytics to get performance reports.
- Integrations: APIs and connectors to seamlessly switch between work apps.
- Mobile accessibility: Get task updates through mobile app notifications.
- Cloud or on-premise: Save workflows on a cloud or on-premise server.
Pros:
- Make workflows available in multiple languages.
- Keep your private workflows safe with rock-solid security.
- Facilitate digital signature and pdf exports.
- No-code templates and built-in widgets.
- Solutions for schools, colleges, to big and small businesses.
Pricing:
Get a customized quote by filling out the form.
14. Asana
Asana is a complete workflow management tool covering project management, campaign management, agile management, and creative production solutions. Its unique features ease tasks for marketing, operations, and leaders.
Key Features:
- Workflow builder lets you create systematic workflows through Rules, integrations, and Reporting.
- Visualization: Add visualization to workflows with timelines, Gantt charts, kanban, and calendars.
- Desktop and mobile accessibility: Screen responsiveness across all devices.
- Workload: Manage team workload, capacity planning, resource allocation, and analysis with its Workload feature.
- Integrations: Integrations with 200+ external apps.
Pros:
- Includes Asana API to custom-build apps.
- App Rules and App Widgets to automate and overlook efficiently.
- Unlimited file storage, tasks, projects, and messages.
- Excellent for managing repetitive tasks.
- Free to use for up to 15 team members.
- Time tracking, proofing, and other advanced features.
Pricing:
- Basic: free for up to 15 users
- Premium: $10.99 per user/month
- Business: $24.99 per user/month
- Enterprise: Get a custom quote
15. ClickUp
ClickUp is a new yet powerful workflow automation that competes with its likes like Monday.com and Asana. It’s one tool for all business needs, from marketing, sales, HR, and design to operations.
Key Features:
- Project & Tasks: Create a plan and track tasks with different views – list, boards, etc.
- Whiteboards: ClickUp offers virtual Whiteboards to brainstorm, strategize, and map workflows.
- Integrations: Embed other work apps or custom build with API.
- Automation: Contains templates to assign tasks, update statuses, and post comments.
- Collaborate: Replaces chat apps like MS Teams and Slack with its chat app integration.
Pros:
- Email, live chat, and support through webinars.
- Includes ClickApps for work management, collaboration, organization, and reporting.
- Has a free plan for individuals with limited accessibility.
- Provides time tracking, sprint management, permissions, and other top features.
- Gives a 30-day full refund guarantee.
Pricing:
- Free
- Unlimited: $5 user/month
- Business: $12 user/month
- Business+: $19 user/month
- Enterprise: Get a custom quote
16. Hive
Hive is a workflow management tool that offers product management, resource planning, time tracking, client engagement, goal tracking, and cross-company collaboration, all under one platform.
Key Features:
- Project layouts: Kanban, Gantt, calendar, my actions view, team view, summary, label, portfolio.
- HiveMind: AI Assist to write blog posts, project tasks, and email responses for you.
- Templates: Custom project layouts to meet your business’s unique needs.
- Sync with apps: Integrate over 1000+ external apps to overlook multi-step workflows on both mobile and desktop.
- Workflow recipes: Pre-curated triggers and actions to speed processes.
Pros:
- Features reporting and analytics to track and monitor goals.
- Task management with milestones, recurring tasks, dependencies, and more.
- Hive is free for up to 10 users forever.
- Provides 14-day free trial under Teams plan.
- Other add-ons like proofing, timesheets, dashboards, custom emojis, etc.
Pricing:
- Free: for up to 10 users
- Teams: $12 user/month
- Enterprise: Get a custom quote
17. Fluix
Fluix is yet simple to automate workflow, with no code platform to do much more than automate workflows. Apart from workflow automation, it also provides business transformation and business process management solutions.
Key features:
- Use cases: Checklists, work orders, reports, time cards, purchase orders, contracts, invoices, training logbooks, etc.
- Process builder: Create workflows with drag and drop builder and easy integrations.
- Automated workflows: Facilitates automating tasks with collaboration and approval tools, task assignment, and conditional logic.
- Security: Uses single sign-on, file sharing control, and retention policy to secure processes.
- Integration: Allows for integration with multiple third-party apps.
Pros:
- Provide free built-in storage.
- Dynamic pricing plans with a free trial.
- Design new forms to start your workflow mapping.
- Add individual add-ons in existing plans at the extra price (like conditional logic for $5 per user, form prefill for $10 per user, etc.) Training, workshops, security audits, and more under the professional services plan.
Pricing:
- Fluid core: $30 user/month to $22.50 user/month (10 to 1000+ users)
- Enterprise-grade: Get custom quotes.
- Professional Services: Get custom quotes.
Benefits of workflow applications and software
Here are the benefits of using workflow applications and software:
- Improved Efficiency: Workflow applications streamline the whole process of carrying out daily tasks like seeking approvals, raising invoices, project planning, or placing a purchase order. These apps can automate routine tasks to improve operational efficiency.
- Increased Productivity: Workflow applications are also helpful in increasing productivity as collaborating and communicating with team members are as smooth as a glider. Everything starts following into place seamlessly with the help of work app integrations and readymade workflow templates.
- Increased Control: You have better control over the tasks when things go as you desire. Workflow management tools help you organize your daily tasks with the help of intuitive and interactive workflow builders. Such applications also show work progress and other analytics that provide a sense of task completion and better control.
- Improved Compliance: Seeking permissions and approvals with the desired team member becomes smooth with workflow application. It also helps keep a record of the same. Time tracking, milestones, notifications, and other such features also help enhance compliance.
- Reduced Errors: The scope of errors is minimal if you use workflow applications. Every task is automated and requires little human involvement in approvals, rejections, and task assignments. With constant reminders and notifications, workflow applications also help meet all timelines systematically.
- Improved Accountability: Accountability or answerability is immensely improved through workflow applications. There are no accountability issues with task tracking, reminders, sprint management, collaboration tools, reporting features, and analytic capabilities.
- Profitability increases (due to reduced costs): Workflow management applications are affordable for all business types and sizes. The pricing plans are set accordingly. Moreover, workflow applications allow users to automate less critical tasks while focusing and spending time on more important tasks. Automating tasks thus helps businesses achieve their goal faster with reduced costs.
Features to consider when choosing workflow applications.
Down below are some of the considerations to make when choosing a workflow application:
- Drag and drop workflow builder: This is a must for a workflow application. The simpler it is to create your workflows, the better the efficiency of completing tasks. The capability of adding multiple concurrent tasks in a single workflow is a must.
- Integrated tools and apps: Ability to effortlessly integrate with popular apps that most team members use, like Salesforce, Google Drive, Microsoft Teams, and more. Consider looking at the provided integrated apps before making your final choice.
- Readymade and custom templates: Look for features like readymade and custom templates. Readymade templates prevent designing workflows from scratch. Custom templates are essential for creating tasks per your business’s unique needs.
- Mobile accessibility: Mobile accessibility is also a key feature to look for in a workflow application. A workflow application that can be accessed through a mobile app gives the flexibility to manage workflow, get instant notifications and updates, and track work progress on the go.
- Visualizations: Visualizations are another feature to look for in workflow applications. This feature helps you view your task in different layouts like Gantt charts, kanban boards, lists, calendars, and more. Each of these view types makes tasks more interesting and easier to understand.
Executive Summary
Workflow applications are a need of the hour. From marketing, IT, sales, and operations to finance, workflow applications can streamline the workflows of all your departments in a single place.
