Item: Wrike
Rating: 8
Author: Casey Gold

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

When I used Wrike, I was at a startup. We were a small group focusing on consulting with healthcare organizations on utilizing new technologies to improve patient outcomes. Wrike was used by the entire company to help communicate where we were at with different pieces of projects. It especially came in handy when one of the team members was out of the office or working from home. With the ability to add and rearrange tasks and simple timelines quickly, the program helped keep everyone on target.

Pros and Cons

Creating tasks for team members and having the team have access to the tasks to show what is coming up.
The ability for Wrike to work with many different programs and platforms. We used it with Dropbox and Gmail and the integration was seamless for adding tasks and subtasks to calendars.
The layout is simple and easy to use. As updates happen, elements have gotten easier to use. The ability to drag and drop items should be part of every project management program.
The Gantt charts were easy to work with (and make updates to) and print for our weekly status meetings. Many PM systems do not have this capability.

Wrike worked very well for our small group. At the time, the scale-ability to be used with a larger company would not have been possible. The capabilities were not there.
At the time, we did not have the functionality to duplicate folders for future use. Wrike has subsequently added that feature now.
Having all of the notifications sent to Gmail and added to your calendar can get overwhelming quickly.

Return on Investment

I believe that it had a positive impact on our business. It allowed us to communicate quickly, especially when team members were off site.
Having the integration with other programs was very useful because the notifications pop up on phones allowing for on-the-go updates and comments.

Alternatives Considered

Salesforce.com,Asana,Central Desktop

Comparing Wrike to Asana- at the time, Asana was very new to the task-type software and did not have a lot of the features that it has today. Wrike has offers more flexibility and better integration with other programs. Wrike is not as robust as Salesforce and Central Desktop's SocialBridge but then they both come at a much high price point. Both of those software programs were more than what we needed.

Wrike was a great blend of price and features for the small mobile team that we had.

Likelihood to Renew

I would continue the use of this for small agencies and startups. Moving up to a larger agency, I believe there are better options out there. There are few project management systems that offer as much in content and features that satisfy both left and right brain thinking. Using the tools for checking on tasks was one of our favorite because we could see actual work performance. The Track Time feature was not available when we had it, but it looks like a nifty tool to help evaluate task timing for billing.

Likelihood to Recommend

I believe this program would be great for small companies and startups looking for a piece of project management software for those that don't like "project management programs." The ease of use is great without a lot of upfront "behind the scenes" setup when first buying the software. The setup happens at the beginning of each project. During the selection process- make sure to see if this program is right for the number of people in your company. The learning curve was very small in terms of learning the basics of how the software worked.

Support Rating

Their support was done mainly through email and depending on their work lord, could take longer to get a response. But the response was still within a reasonable time frame and courteous every time.

Wrike Customer Support Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
Quick Resolution Good followup Knowledgeable team Problems get solved Kept well informed No escalation required Immediate help available Support understands my problem Support cares about my success Quick Initial Response	None

Premium Support

No - N/A

Exceptional Examples of Wrike Support

I would say that every time was a time that Wrike provided our team with exceptional support. I remember ony having to send one email to them on a question concerning a billing question in which they handled within 24 hours.

Wrike for Small Agencies and Startups, Wrong for large Companies

Overall Satisfaction with Wrike