Microsoft Project vs. Pivotal Tracker

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Microsoft Project
Score 7.5 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft Project is a project management software. It provides core PM functionality, including agile workflow support and resource management. Project can be deployed in the cloud or on-premise.
$10
per user/per month
Pivotal Tracker
Score 7.9 out of 10
N/A
Pivotal Tracker is a project management program primarily for software developers. It is built from the ground up to facilitate the agile development cycle, and is optimized for structuring projects in sprints, or “stories.” The solution is now owned and supported by VMware, and is part of the Pivotal / Tanzu product line up.N/A
Pricing
Microsoft ProjectPivotal Tracker
Editions & Modules
Project Plan 1
$10
per user/per month
Project Plan 3
$30
per user/per month
Project Plan 5
$55
per user/per month
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Microsoft ProjectPivotal Tracker
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Microsoft ProjectPivotal Tracker
Considered Both Products
Microsoft Project

No answer on this topic

Pivotal Tracker
Chose Pivotal Tracker
Pivotal Tracker is the easiest to use of all of these tools. We embraced the simplicity and ease of this tool over all of the others.

Rally Software Development looks old but is very powerful. VersionOne looks incredibly good and is very powerful. Both are extremely expensive. …
Chose Pivotal Tracker

We selected Pivotal Tracker because of its simple, elegant workflow. This is the ideal; it's where we want to be. So we continue to improve, and as we get better, we get more out of the software.

The other software products we evaluated were too complex, and we found that …

Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Microsoft ProjectPivotal Tracker
Project Management
Comparison of Project Management features of Product A and Product B
Microsoft Project
8.0
107 Ratings
6% above category average
Pivotal Tracker
-
Ratings
Task Management9.0106 Ratings00 Ratings
Resource Management6.9103 Ratings00 Ratings
Gantt Charts10.0103 Ratings00 Ratings
Scheduling9.9105 Ratings00 Ratings
Workflow Automation8.582 Ratings00 Ratings
Team Collaboration7.795 Ratings00 Ratings
Support for Agile Methodology7.679 Ratings00 Ratings
Support for Waterfall Methodology8.279 Ratings00 Ratings
Document Management7.276 Ratings00 Ratings
Email integration6.081 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile Access7.966 Ratings00 Ratings
Timesheet Tracking8.472 Ratings00 Ratings
Change request and Case Management8.462 Ratings00 Ratings
Budget and Expense Management6.382 Ratings00 Ratings
Professional Services Automation
Comparison of Professional Services Automation features of Product A and Product B
Microsoft Project
7.0
76 Ratings
6% below category average
Pivotal Tracker
-
Ratings
Quotes/estimates7.053 Ratings00 Ratings
Invoicing7.044 Ratings00 Ratings
Project & financial reporting6.973 Ratings00 Ratings
Integration with accounting software6.949 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Microsoft ProjectPivotal Tracker
Small Businesses
Stackby
Stackby
Score 9.8 out of 10
Craft
Craft
Score 8.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
SAP Ruum
SAP Ruum
Score 9.0 out of 10
GitLab
GitLab
Score 8.9 out of 10
Enterprises
Quickbase
Quickbase
Score 9.2 out of 10
GitLab
GitLab
Score 8.9 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Microsoft ProjectPivotal Tracker
Likelihood to Recommend
6.5
(107 ratings)
8.0
(32 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(3 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(5 ratings)
6.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
8.2
(34 ratings)
8.0
(9 ratings)
Implementation Rating
5.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Microsoft ProjectPivotal Tracker
Likelihood to Recommend
Microsoft
Microsoft Project Online is suited to Turnkey Projects where more Collaboration is required in Project Progress monitoring, risk assessment and conveying, issue recording and tracking. It is less appropriate when ERP Suites other than MS Dynamics are used, i.e when Enterprises need to integrate Finance / Accounting with It and having straight project management workflow
Read full review
VMware by Broadcom
The UI of the Pivotal tracker is really beautiful and amazing, which looks trivial, but we have it open all the time, so it's nice for us. In Pivotal tracker for me its very Easy to create tasks or stories anytime without facing any problems. Pivotal tracker provides us a ton of features to track the tasks and manage a team and the projects. Pivotal tracker allows for a entire team to be on the same page of the tool in regards to where is the project right now, right status of every task, what is being worked on and by whom.
Read full review
Pros
Microsoft
  • I love the Gantt Chart that Microsoft Project offers me, because it provides me with a view from various aspects, it provides me with exact details about the fulfillment of tasks over a period of time, it also allows me to make comparisons with the necessary data and the fulfilled data. by the employees, in order to know exactly if the project's expectations have been met.
  • I love the Gantt Chart that Microsoft Project offers me, because it provides me with a view from various aspects, it provides me with exact details about the fulfillment of tasks over a period of time, it also allows me to make comparisons with the necessary data and the fulfilled data by the employees, in order to know exactly if the project's expectations have been met.
  • The alert system for the fulfillment and delay of assignments is perfect. Microsoft Project allows me to configure the task system, I can assign the necessary tasks to fulfill the project, and the software alerts me immediately if the managers are fulfilling the assignments.
Read full review
VMware by Broadcom
  • It's great for tracking milestones and reporting team velocity per sprint.
  • Maintaining a prioritized backlog that is sharable with different members of your team is relatively simple.
  • There's a free version of the product for up to 3 collaborators working on 2 projects and the starting price for larger packages is relatively low.
Read full review
Cons
Microsoft
  • Seems overly complicated for users sometimes in using Project and its functionalities
  • Hard to share files for those folks who do not have MS Project, and then have to print out for them
  • Can be confusing since it looks and feels like MS Excel
Read full review
VMware by Broadcom
  • In-story task management is still a weak point. The ability to @mention users in tasks and mark tasks as 'in-progress' would go a long way.
  • Epics do not span projects. This becomes troublesome when scaling Pivotal Tracker's agile methodology to multiple teams.
  • Splitting stories is often confusing for team members as there is no concept of a 'parent' story with child stories that have split off of it. There are only two levels: Epic & Story.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Microsoft
I like using Microsoft Project. It simplifies building a schedule
Read full review
VMware by Broadcom
I love the simplicity, non-configurability, and price/performance of this tool. Hands down my favorite project management tool for agile.
Read full review
Usability
Microsoft
Microsoft Project was for many years the reference tool when you were talking about project management software, even if it has some gaps. However, in the last several years, other tools emerged and covered those gaps and are getting more and more users. Microsoft needs to keep up with the trends as they did with adding Project Server. However, that needs a significant rework.
Read full review
VMware by Broadcom
It works good enough. I didn't have many problems with that. The user interface is a bit confusing though. The team took some time to understand where some configurations were.
Read full review
Support Rating
Microsoft
Microsoft in recent years has transformed itself and gives a positive feeling when one interacts with the company. The company is focusing on its customers and willing to go extra mile to make customers happy.The company continues to invest in its products and bringing new features from time to time. Overall it is a positive feeling to be associated with such an iconic company.
Read full review
VMware by Broadcom
We've never had to request support in the 5 years I have been using it. A solid solution! Everything I have had questions about is on the website. New features are in their newsletter with more details on their website. Often I am using the new features within a few minutes of reading the article.
Read full review
Implementation Rating
Microsoft
I wasn't part of it so I don't know
Read full review
VMware by Broadcom
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Microsoft
While many of the above tools are extremely well-versed, Microsoft Project's largest advantage comes from it being related to the largest business productivity company in the world. Project does have its sharing limitations - but regardless, offers one of the most robust tools in the market today. Microsoft Project is built with large-scale projects in mind but is more than up to the task for smaller projects as well. However, there are options available (especially cloud-based options) that may be more fitting for higher-level projects that do not require going into the weeds.
Read full review
VMware by Broadcom
We have had employees in the past look at Drupal, and other open source project management tools to assist in our needs. Unfortunately each solution took too much time to implement, design and configure that we could not stop the work we were doing for clients to complete a full set up of a project tracker. Thankfully Pivotal is a predefined solution with no configuration needed. Simply input your projects, design your Stories with Tasks and begin your tracking.
Read full review
Return on Investment
Microsoft
  • Project saved me, as the project manager, countless hours of digging through tickets and schedules to plan everything out. It also saved me time in adjusting the project triangle as needed, since it does so much automatically.
  • It is costly, and since it requires extensive training to master, it's not just the high licensing cost that you need to take into account.
  • The reporting features - even just printing out Gantt charts - makes it far easier to communicate with stakeholders. That means less time for PMs doing all of this manually, and it means less follow-up questions and delays moving forward.
Read full review
VMware by Broadcom
  • Time is money with development and a lot of things can fall through the cracks. Having a good system for making sure you're building the most relevant product for customers is really important so it was well worth it for us.
  • The process we used worked for us and it helped us streamline our development which reduced a lot of things falling through the cracks and headaches. I'm sure there are other products that can do the same job just as effectively but Pivotal Tracker worked well for us.
Read full review
ScreenShots