ConceptDraw PROJECT vs. CoSchedule Marketing Suite

Getting started - using the Gantt chart to enter tasks in any order and then using those tasks to initially define a MindMap to further explore alternative dependencies. The alternative works better when initiating a project with significant unknowns.

CoSchedule is great for businesses or agencies who need an overview of all their marketing efforts, and who want to establish collaboration between multiple departments. The calendar view is one of the best we've worked with and makes it easy to see exactly what's happening. There is some slight clunkiness when it comes to admin-related tasks, and a few things aren't easy to find, but there's great support.

Incentivized

• Integration with ConceptDraw Mindmap makes work breakdown very easy.
• We have cross-functional teams where team members often work on different projects in parallel. The multi project management feature has been a blessing over these years.
• Another import feature is the availability of many different predefined report generation templates that made it very easy to communicate different aspects of the project to different stakeholders.

• Visually represent your content in one centralized place
• Heavily customize your calendar settings (project types, icons, tasks, filters, etc.)
• Better implement approval procedures
• Create read-only calendars for stakeholders so they can view the upcoming items on your calendar

Incentivized

• Non-intuitive keyboard shortcuts
• No advanced reporting or estimates

Incentivized

• The import Google Doc to WordPress functionality never worked successfully or reliably for me. So I just manually copy and paste Google Docs to the WordPress editor instead.
• The social sharing counter was not that helpful, because it only counted Facebook and Google+. Who uses Google+ anymore? Plus, now they don't even show the social counter in the monthly calendar view. so you can't see the numbers without doing some extra digging.
• In the monthly calendar view, some titles get cut off if they don't wrap cleanly in the day's box. So I would make it look cleaner instead of having words broken up by a hyphen.

Incentivized

Online tutorials always available + chat, email and phone. Questions answered promptly and completely.

I didn't have to use their official support, but I can say that they put out a lot of content online to help users. Their YouTube page has quite an array of tutorial videos explaining how things work and how to get the most out of their tools. If you're struggling, before picking up a phone or blasting off an email, try searching for your problem on YouTube or their forums.

Incentivized

ConceptDraw has a much simpler licensing and pricing model. Perpetual license and ability to use in offline mode was an important criteria for us. Perfect bundle for small and medium business.

CoSchedule provides collaborative planning of projects. The calendar view is very well designed. Meetings and tasks can be scheduled and tracked easily. Whatever is being done, no matter how big the task/project is, it gives a bird-eye view of everything. Additionally, it also integrated very well with WordPress. Their customer service team is also very helpful.

Incentivized

• Inexpensive way to present a professional project plan when needed

Incentivized

• Probably too early to tell for certain but it is definitely value priced right now. Fully developed content management platforms are running in $15-$20k per year range and more. You can get into a CoSchedule solution for $
• Team has found it easy to sign on and review tasks so this is a big time saver. More could be done to enable Guests easier access to content they need to review
• It's way faster that other scheduling apps we have tried. The fact that it runs on a cloud based app or inside your Wordpress app is a real plus. Auto save feature also means you don't have to remember to save your content.