Online project management is a crowded space.  It takes a clean approach to stand out and Clutterpad is doing a good job of offering a simpler, faster interface for the busy small business owner.

Clutterpad is a collaborative platform for small business owners that want a simple-to-use workspace where employees can keep track of a project or customer.  It can help you track time and tasks, keep messages and files in one place, and manage customer contact details.

While not a full-blown customer relationship management (CRM) solution, it gives you a great way to input or import contacts and then manage your conversations and customer contacts.  Anyone who touches a contact can input information about them and what took place so that others can instantly see it.   If you post a comment or write a message or create just about anything, Clutterpad asks you if someone else should be notified about this entry, making it easy to keep a team up to date.

The fully free version is pretty light; if you want to get an idea of what’s really available you will need to pony up with your credit card for a one-month free trial.  You can’t see all you can get from the “forever free” account.  NOTE:  Sign up for the version you think you might want — you cannot upgrade to a free trial of a higher version from the free account.

What I Liked:

• The app is user centric, not company centric.  This means that you can use it for multiple companies or departments to see all your to-dos and messages in one place.  For example, if you are a consultant with a range of clients, and you manage your projects through Clutterpad, you would see your entire client workload in one dashboard.

• The online video tutorials are well done. They explain each topic thoroughly and move at a good pace.

• Basic CRM for managing contacts.

• Fast, easy to understand dashboard.

• In the paid versions, you can upload files and track your time as well.  The free version lets you create documents and export them as text or PDF.

• I liked that you could have a focused work area for messages around any aspect of a project or customer interaction, outside of e-mail, but that I could send myself an e-mail update of comments or messages.  Unlike other systems, Clutterpad didn’t force me to integrate my inbox with it — a plus, in my view.

What Could Be Better:

• Some file upload capacity even at the free level would be nice (although you could cut and paste existing documentss into the editing tool).

• I didn’t like the signup process where you had to give a credit card to get a paid version trial. However, that varies across the web-based application (SaaS) industry, and Clutterpad isn’t the only player that asks for a card to get started.

Overall, Clutterpad offers a solid project management tool at an affordable price.  It is elegant in that the design gives you one-click access to almost every function you need in one navigation bar.  For small business consultants and others looking for ways to manage collaboration, track time and do it all in one place, it is a worthwhile solution.

Learn more about Clutterpad.

From Small Business Trends

Review of Clutterpad: Small Business Project Collaboration