Buying guides
Project, Planner or Excel: choosing the right planning tool
Three Microsoft tools, three very different jobs. A quick guide for teams tired of spreadsheet Gantt charts.
Excel is where most project plans start and where most of them break. Here is when to graduate.
Stay in Excel if
Your project has fewer than 30 tasks and one person owns the plan.
Use Planner if
Your team already lives in Teams and needs lightweight boards and checklists.
Move to Project if
You manage dependencies, resources, budgets and baselines — or you report to stakeholders who expect a real Gantt chart. Project 2024 Professional is a one-time purchase, so it also avoids the per-user-per-month cost that makes Project Plan subscriptions hard to justify for a single planner.
Questions?
