Coordinator vs Microsoft Project & Planner
Microsoft is retiring the Project tools people actually used and steering everyone into Planner tiers. If you're re-evaluating anyway, compare the destination — Coordinator runs client work, scheduling and money in one free system, no licensing matrix required.
Free. No card. About two minutes to set up.
MS Project, side by side
The classic enterprise scheduler, mid-transition: Project for the web retired, Project Online retiring, Planner absorbing both.
| What you're paying for | Coordinator | MS Project |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $0 — everything | ~$10–$55/user/mo or $680+ desktop |
| Users | Unlimited, free | Per-user licensing |
| Licensing clarity | One plan: free | Renamed tiers, retiring products, migration deadlines |
| Gantt & critical path | Timeline view (no critical-path engine) | Best-in-class |
| Client collaboration | Clients follow work from their own workspace | Internal-facing; sharing via M365 guests |
| Client sign-off that gates completion & billing | Included — recorded, auditable, one click for the client | |
| Real invoicing & accounting attached | Included — full books, statements, payments | |
| Job costing & per-project profit | Included — revenue, bills, time and payroll per job | |
| Booking pages & staff shifts | Included | |
| Public storefront & marketplace | Included |
MS Project pricing and plan limits are approximate, from their published plans as of August 2026 — check their site for current figures. Coordinator's column doesn't change: $0.
The MS Project line on your P&L
The new lineup runs $10 (Planner Plan 1) to $55 (Planner and Project Plan 5) per user per month, with desktop licenses at $679.99–$1,129.99 — and the migration itself (Project Online retires September 2026) is a cost most teams are paying right now in consulting and confusion.
Users: Per-user M365 licensing; plan names recently reshuffled.
What you get that MS Project doesn't give you
Project Online users must move by September 2026 anyway. Moving to a free system beats re-licensing into a renamed tier of the same complexity.
MS Project computes schedules; someone still runs the client, the billing and the team elsewhere. Here they're the same system.
$55/user/mo for full Project features is enterprise pricing. Free is small-business pricing.
What MS Project users complain about — answered
Recurring themes from public reviews and forums (G2, Capterra, Reddit), paired with what changes here. We only list complaints Coordinator actually solves.
“Project for the web is dead, Project Online dies next — and we have to migrate again”
No product line to retire out from under you: one application, continuously maintained, free.
“The plan renames made licensing impossible to explain”
The licensing conversation here is one sentence long.
“Planner is a demotion — no resource pools or cost rates”
Coordinator carries what a service business needs from that list: people's real availability, bill-out and cost rates, and per-job economics.
“It never facilitated actual teamwork”
Chat on the work, shared client views, approvals and handoffs — collaboration is the core, not an export.
What they love about MS Project — kept
Honest answer: for critical-path programs, keep it. For everything else the business runs on, this replaces the stack around it.
Kept: whole-project templates with stages, owners and gates.
Where MS Project may still fit
No tool wins everything, and we'd rather you pick with open eyes.
Critical path, resource leveling, baselines and earned value for dependency-heavy programs — construction and engineering PMOs genuinely need this, and Coordinator doesn't attempt it.
If your whole world is Teams and SharePoint, Planner's native fit counts.
For the client-and-team work living in Project or Planner, export tasks to CSV and import them as staged projects. If you truly need critical-path math, keep MS Project for that one schedule and run the business here.
Free. No card. About two minutes to set up.
The free Microsoft Project & Planner alternative, summarized
If you're searching for a Microsoft Project & Planner alternative, the short version: Coordinator is free for unlimited users — no tiers, no usage meters, no renewal-day surprises — and it covers what MS Project does for project management alongside the rest of a small business's operations: real accounting, projects with job costing, booking pages and staff scheduling, client records and forms, team chat, and a cross-company network where your invoice lands in your client's books. MS Project still fits some buyers — see the fair print above — but if the complaints on this page sound familiar, switching is usually an afternoon.
Explore the project management side of Coordinator on free-project-management-software, see everything it does, or read why it's free.
Keep the MS Project money
Set up free in minutes, import what you have, and put the subscription line to better use.
Free. No card. About two minutes to set up.