Worklenz REVIEW A Project Management Tool Built on the Hard Work of Simplicity

Worklenz combines project management, resource planning, time tracking, and self-hosting flexibility into a clean and easy-to-use platform designed for businesses of all sizes.

I have been on the hunt for nearly 15 years for a project management tool that would help me with keeping track of projects. I have found many on this quest that are great for others, but for me, they are not. My ADHD brain has always struggled to keep focus on entering data when a system is bloated with features that I don’t need. I found this to be the case when I was a straight Windows user. The unclean interface and the lack of focus on the design and the user’s needs made it difficult for me to stay on task.

When I made the switch to Mac so many years ago I started having a real appreciation for the simple elegance of the OS. The clean design made me feel like I was in control of my computer and not the other way around. Just because it looked clean didn’t mean they didn’t have a lot of features packed in. It just meant that like me they felt design was more important than filling your face up with broken bloated features that looked good on paper but didn’t have much of a use for. So, when I started the search for a project management tool, I wanted the same type of setup. A system with clean design and a very focused way of entering information. This is what I get with Worklenz.

Worklenz is an open-source project management platform focused on delivering powerful project tracking, resource management, and collaboration tools through a clean and approachable interface.

I saw a Steve Jobs quote and thought it would go well here.

“It takes a lot of hard work to make something simple.”

—Steve Jobs

With that said let me tell you a bit about Worklenz.

About Worklenz

Worklenz was founded in 2022 by Kalinga Gunawardane, a full-stack developer with experience building a variety of digital products, including mobile games, utility applications, and web platforms. The idea for Worklenz emerged from challenges his own team encountered while managing software projects using existing project management tools.

According to Gunawardane, platforms like Jira and Asana were part of the team’s daily workflow, but they often found them either too expensive or overly complex, particularly for non-technical users. During Sri Lanka’s economic crisis, foreign exchange restrictions also made maintaining cloud-based software subscriptions increasingly difficult. Rather than continue struggling with existing solutions, the team decided to build a project management platform tailored to their own needs.

What started as an internal tool eventually evolved into Worklenz, which remains the company’s primary focus today.

Growth & Milestones

After nearly two years of development and internal testing, Worklenz launched publicly and has continued to grow steadily. One of the platform’s most significant milestones came in 2024 when the team decided to make Worklenz open source. The response from the community was immediate. The project’s GitHub repository has surpassed 3,000 stars, while the cloud version of Worklenz has grown to more than 20,000 users worldwide. In addition, dozens of organizations now operate self-hosted Worklenz installations on their own infrastructure. The team notes that growing interest from larger organizations evaluating alternatives to Jira, Asana, and ClickUp has been one of the most surprising developments since launch.

Who Is Worklenz For?

Worklenz initially targeted startups, software development teams, and small to medium-sized businesses. Over time, the user base has expanded significantly. Today, the platform is used by organizations across a wide range of industries, including construction, architecture, marketing, event management, software development, and other project-driven businesses. While each industry has unique workflows, the common need for project visibility, task management, resource allocation, and team collaboration makes Worklenz a versatile solution. According to the development team, the ideal Worklenz user is any organization that needs a clear view of tasks, workloads, resources, and project progress.

Features & Functionality

Worklenz combines project management, resource planning, collaboration, and reporting tools within a single platform. Core features include task management through list views, Kanban boards, and Gantt charts, allowing teams to visualize work in the format that best suits their needs. The platform also offers integrated resource management tools that provide visibility into team workloads across multiple projects. Additional capabilities include time tracking, analytics, project finance tracking, client portals, reporting tools, and mobile applications for managing work on the go. One of the platform’s key differentiators is its focus on resource management, helping managers understand team capacity and workload distribution in real time.

Key Features

• Project management and task tracking
• List, Kanban board, and Gantt chart views
• Team collaboration tools
• Resource management and workload planning
• Real-time team utilization tracking
• Time tracking and timesheets
• Project analytics and reporting
• Project budgeting and financial tracking
• Client portals
• Task assignments and project permissions
• Custom statuses, labels, and project phases
• File attachments and task comments
• Activity logs and project history
• Project templates
• Real-time updates and collaboration using Socket.IO
• Multi-project management
• Team workload visibility across projects
• Web-based application with cloud hosting
• Self-hosted deployment via Docker
• Open-source platform (AGPL licensed)
• iPhone and Android mobile applications
• Apple Silicon Mac compatibility through the iOS app
• GitHub community and contributor support

Design Philosophy

The Worklenz team designed the platform around a simple goal: create a project management solution that is powerful without becoming overwhelming. Rather than requiring users to learn complex workflows, Worklenz emphasizes a clean and approachable interface that can be understood quickly. Tasks can be created from multiple areas throughout the application, and organizations can customize statuses, labels, and project phases to match existing workflows. This flexibility allows both technical and non-technical users to work comfortably within the platform without extensive training.

Open Source and Self-Hosting

One of Worklenz’s most notable advantages is its commitment to open-source development. Organizations can use the cloud version or deploy the platform on their own servers using Docker. The self-hosting option gives businesses complete control over their data and infrastructure, making it particularly attractive for organizations with privacy, compliance, or data residency requirements. According to the development team, this capability remains one of the platform’s most overlooked strengths. The open-source approach also encourages community involvement, transparency, and collaboration through GitHub and Discord.

Available Platforms

Worklenz is available as a web application that can be accessed directly through a browser without any setup requirements. Mobile applications are also available for iPhone and Android devices. The iOS version is compatible with Apple Silicon Macs, allowing users to run the mobile app on macOS systems powered by Apple M-series processors. The issue is that it’s still sized for iPhone so using it on Mac is painful.

Technology & Security

Worklenz is built using a modern development stack that includes React, TypeScript, Redux Toolkit, Ant Design, and Tailwind CSS on the frontend. The backend is powered by Node.js, Express, Socket.IO, and PostgreSQL. Security measures include parameterized database queries to prevent SQL injection attacks, UUID-based validation, input whitelisting, and multiple layers of data validation. Organizations running self-hosted deployments retain complete ownership and control of their data. The development team also uses Worklenz to manage Worklenz itself, providing continuous real-world testing of workflows, features, and project management capabilities.

Community and Support

Worklenz offers multiple support channels, including in-app chat, email support, GitHub issue tracking, Discord, and social media platforms. The company actively engages with users and encourages community participation. Feedback from users plays an important role in shaping the platform’s development roadmap. Feature requests, bug reports, and workflow suggestions submitted through GitHub and Discord are regularly reviewed and incorporated into future releases.

Looking Ahead

The Worklenz roadmap includes several major initiatives aimed at expanding the platform’s capabilities. Future updates are expected to introduce AI-powered project management tools, including intelligent scheduling, automated task breakdowns, and project planning recommendations. Additional planned features include Forms, Notes, GitHub integrations, expanded third-party integrations, enhanced reporting tools, CRM functionality, HR management modules, and white-labeling options for agencies and businesses.

The company has also confirmed plans to release dedicated macOS and Windows desktop applications, with availability currently targeted for early 2027.

Understanding the company’s background and design philosophy is important, but what ultimately matters is how Worklenz performs in daily use. To find out, I integrated it into our review workflow and used it to manage active projects across the MacSources team.

User Experience

Getting your Worklenz account set up is pretty straightforward. You start on the web app with a short “Tell us about yourself” questionnaire. You identify your organization (agency, small business, individual, etc.) and your role (CEO, designer, etc.). Then, you identify your needs (task management, time tracking, etc.) and whether or not you used other systems in the past. The third step is a simple “How you heard about Worklenz” marketing question. Once you get through that part of the wizard, you start your first project either from scratch or with a template. From my experience, this is fairly typical from project tracking software.

I started with a blank project so that I could customize it how I wanted. Then I spent time entering all the tasks into that project that I wanted to track. After I set up the first project, I broke out other tasks into separate projects, too. For my purposes, I’m tracking our review process and progress with our various team members. Since we work remotely, having this type of system is essential to keeping things on track and organized. One of my favorite features of Worklenz is that I can set up my team to have access to just the projects I want them to see. It gives us plenty of room to grow and expand as needed.

Why move to Worklenz

The previous system I was using gave me a headache because it had way more features than my team needed, and there was no way to turn off or hide these extras. After trying to onboard a team member, I realized I needed something more Mac-like. A system that was friendlier and simpler.

When things are too complicated, I tend to avoid them, whether it’s elaborate photography setups or software. I prefer things that just work without getting in my way, and that’s where Worklenz stands out. I really appreciate its clean interface and the intuitive flow.

Learning Curve

Worklenz as a whole is a much newer project management tool compared to others that have been baking in the oven for years. With this younger age comes with a learning curve for both the developers and the users. New users take on the task of learning while veterans are torn between the choice of a brand new clean system or a bloated old system they currently know. Once you get around that learning curve, you will find that Worklenz is very simple, and it makes it very easy to onboard someone to the system, regardless of whether you are new or have worked in this area for years.

Day-to-day Use

On a daily basis, I find that the system is intuitive. When a product arrives for us to review, I enter it into the appropriate project and then assign it to the proper person for review. Any background information we have on the item is added into the description or as an attachment. We will even take a photo of the box so that we can add that onto the record. When someone mentions that they are actively working on a review, we will update the status to “In Testing” and if an article is ready for publishing, we move the status to “Draft”.

Our last stage is “Published” and that’s where we add the URL for the final published review as a comment to the task. Throughout the process, if we have correspondence from the PR rep or company who sent the product, we will note it in the comments section. Before this process, we were literally keeping track of all of this through email. Since email can get lost, we knew we needed to move to an actual tracking system. This is much better for team visibility, too.

Resource management is one area where Worklenz separates itself from simpler task managers. Being able to see workloads across projects helped me understand who had capacity for additional assignments and who was already at their limit. For teams managing multiple contributors, this visibility can prevent work from piling up on a single person.

Performance & Areas for Improvement

Overall, I think the web and mobile apps are responsive and I don’t see many delays. The pages do load quickly, but I do also think that might be dependent on how much information you are storing in your database. There is a small delay when switching between projects, but it’s usually less than a second. Again, I think that has to do with how much information is part of the project.

The mobile app is pretty strong. I’ve seen a lot of project management systems that have a ‘companion’ app that is more for viewing the project than managing it. The Worklenz mobile app does feel more robust than a simple companion app. It doesn’t have quite as many features as the web app, but it does function well. I’m typically able to use it throughout the day to manage our process, but I do see room for improvement.

Worklenz has given one of my writers some issues, and as much as I don’t want to admit it, lately it’s given me the same. The issues I have been experiencing are mainly around syncing. I will drag an item from Drafts to Completed, and sometimes the status won’t update correctly. On my end, it will look normal, like everything is fine, but then once I leave and come back, it’s often still showing up in Drafts. This doesn’t happen too much, but enough to be noticeable.

I am sure this is growing pains for the platform, and over time I expect Worklenz to grow into a powerhouse.

Platform Availability

I am sort of a stickler when it comes to work. I want my tools to be where I need them, when I need them, and how I need them. This means I need web-based, MacOS, iOS, and iPad apps. I need them to be intuitive and easy to use.

Worklenz currently only has web-based access and iPhone apps. The Mac-based app looks to be in their development plans for 2027, but I don’t know about the iPad version.

That’s a big problem for me since I jump between all of these devices multiple times a day. I have been able to make it work with just web and iOS access, but it wears on me. If this is something you find yourself using in your current workflow, then it’s going to be a deal breaker for you.

Thanks to the clean interface I have been able to let it slide for me.

Pricing

Worklenz offers both cloud-hosted and self-hosted options, giving organizations flexibility in how they deploy and manage the platform.

The cloud version is available in two tiers:

Free Plan

• Unlimited team members
• Up to 3 active projects
• 100 MB of storage

Pro Plan

• $5.99 per user per month
• Unlimited projects
• Advanced reporting
• Resource management features
• Additional business-focused tools

Compared to many competing project management platforms, Worklenz is competitively priced. Tools such as Asana, ClickUp, Monday.com, and Jira often require higher-tier subscriptions to unlock advanced reporting, resource planning, and team management capabilities. Worklenz includes many of these features while maintaining a lower entry price.

For small businesses, agencies, and growing teams, the combination of a generous free tier, affordable Pro plan, and self-hosting option makes Worklenz one of the more accessible project management solutions currently available.

Conclusion

Worklenz offers a surprisingly robust feature set, including project management, resource planning, time tracking, reporting, and self-hosting options, while maintaining an interface that feels uncluttered and easy to understand. Throughout my testing, I found it intuitive to use and easy to integrate into our existing review workflow. The ability to control project visibility for team members and track projects from assignment through publication proved especially valuable.

If you’re looking for a project management solution that prioritizes usability without sacrificing functionality, Worklenz deserves serious consideration. It may not be perfect yet, but it is one of the most promising project management platforms I have used in years, and one I plan to continue using as it evolves.

For more information, visit worklenz.com