Short answer: if your team is under about ten people and your projects fit in a spreadsheet, Excel templates do the job for a one-time cost of $0–$75. Project management software — Monday.com, Asana, ClickUp, Microsoft Project — earns its monthly fee when you need many people working in the same plan at the same time, with automations and notifications. Here is the honest comparison.

What the software subscriptions actually cost

Monday.com, Asana, and ClickUp run roughly $10–$30 per user per month on business tiers. A five-person team pays $600–$1,800 every year, forever. Microsoft Project starts around $10 per user per month for the cloud plan. Against that, a complete Excel template library is a one-time purchase — our Plus Plan is $60 once for 150 templates — running in the Excel license you already own.

Where Excel templates win

• Cost: one-time purchase versus per-seat subscription that never ends.
• No onboarding: everyone already knows Excel; there is no rollout project just to adopt the tool.
• Ownership: your plan is a file you keep — no export lock-in, works offline, no vendor sunset risk.
• Flexibility: add a column, change a formula, make it yours. Software makes you work its way.

Where the software wins

• Real-time collaboration: ten people editing one Excel file is painful; ten people in Asana is normal.
• Automations and notifications: reminders, recurring tasks, and hand-off triggers happen by themselves.
• Portfolio reporting at scale: hundreds of active projects across departments want a database, not a workbook.

A simple decision checklist

1. More than ~10 people need to edit the plan weekly? Software.
2. Mostly one owner updating, others reading? Templates.
3. Budget is per-project or one-off? Templates.
4. You need automated reminders across teams? Software.
5. Unsure? Start with templates — the $60 experiment. If you outgrow them, you will know exactly which software features you actually need, and you will have lost nothing.

Start with the templates

The Plus Plan includes 150 professional project management templates — trackers, Gantt charts, dashboards, schedules — for a one-time $60. Or start with the free pack and upgrade when a project demands more.