Most marketing departments encounter messy spreadsheets, hit-or-miss roadmaps, and fragmented marketing campaigns. Marketing calendar software can be the tool you need to eliminate inefficiencies and rest easier after seeing your marketing processes, teams, and communications in one easy-to-access place.
I created this article to act as a foundation to help you find the right marketing calendar software by providing the information you need, including software details, screenshots, and pros and cons of each tool.
Best Marketing Calendar Software Shortlist
Here’s the shortlist of the best tools that I’ll cover in this article.
- Asana
- Microsoft Project
- Toggl Plan
- Airtable
- Basecamp
- Hive
- TrueNorth
- Zoho Projects
- Trello
- Kapost
- CoSchedule
- Notion
What is Marketing Calendar Software?
Marketing calendar software is a digital calendar tool that helps track, plan, and organize your marketing projects, tasks, and campaigns. It may be something as simple as a social media planning calendar or something more complicated as a cross departmental project management calendar to design and launch a new ad campaign across digital and physical channels simultaneously. Marketing calendar software provides your marketing teams with a planning tool that helps define your marketing strategy and share the details with various stakeholders within the company.
Overviews of the 12 Best Marketing Calendar Software
You can use the simple overviews of each tool below to understand how each tool stands out from other marketing calendar software.
1. Asana - Best integrated marketing calendar
Asana is a project management tool that acts as an integrated calendar that marketing teams can use to manage multiple types of tasks.
Why I picked Asana: I thought Asana would be a great addition to this list because it’s an integrated marketing calendar, meaning it connects different tools, information channels, and projects in one interface. It doesn’t specify any specific type of marketing calendar, such as a blog, email, or digital marketing calendar. However, Asana allows you to create workflows and processes to help everyone on your team effectively collaborate and distribute better marketing content. The platform provides a timeline view that’s beneficial for seeing complex campaigns with overlapping tasks and multiple dependencies.
Asana Standout Features and Integrations
Features that are most beneficial for marketing teams include its workload monitoring capabilities that will help ensure your employees aren’t overwhelmed or underworked. You can use this feature to monitor your team’s workloads in real-time to get a better understanding of everyone’s capacity. There’s a drag-and-drop tool you can use to reassign and reschedule tasks to rebalance work effectively and ensure everyone gets the right work completed at the right time.
Integrations are available from Asana to help bring all your systems and data together in the platform. These native integrations include Bold BI, Canva, Dropbox, Figma, HubSpot Workflows, InVision, Microsoft Teams, Pipedrive, Salesforce, Zendesk, and other software options. Asana also allows for custom integrations through paid platforms such as Zapier and a developer API.
Asana costs from $10.99/user/month. They offer a 30-day free trial + free plan available for up to 15 users.
Pros
- Easy-to-use platform.
- A lot of flexibility.
- Ranks important tasks first.
Cons
- Only one person per task.
- Limited task status indicators.
2. Microsoft Project - Best for managing campaign resources
Microsoft Project allows marketing leaders to plan projects through its dynamic scheduling capabilities that also enable them to effectively manage marketing resources.
Why I picked Microsoft Project: Marketing projects of any size will use a certain number of resources to complete, such as digital assets, previous content, and team members’ availability. I found that Microsoft Project will provide you with insights into how your teams are using resources via features such as visual heat maps that show capacity and resource usage. Through Microsoft Project’s simplified task and time management, your teams can also update resource information from anywhere.
Microsoft Project Standout Features and Integrations
Features that are available in Microsoft Projects will help you remain flexible to ensure your teams finish projects on time. You can choose from various project views, such as grid views and visual timelines. These features allow you and your team to monitor what’s coming up in the future and get ready for potential changes or challenges.
Integrations that are available from Microsoft Project include over 100 native connections, such as BrightWork, GanttPRO, Microsoft Dynamics 365, OnePlan, Project Insight, ProjectManager, TimeControl, WorkOtter, Wrike, Zoho Projects, and other software options.
Microsoft Project costs from $10/user/month and offers a 30-day free trial.
Pros
- Easy to use.
- Manages resource allocation.
- Provides complete project visibility.
Cons
- Can’t handle numerous project changes.
- Some features slow task completion.
3. Toggl Plan - Best for task management
Toggl Plan helps marketing team leaders understand how busy teams are, task progression, and if there’s room for new projects. It helps ensure everyone has the proper amount of work and deadlines are spread out to prevent overwhelming everyone.
Why I picked Toggl Plan: Tasks are the lifeblood of a marketing project, so I added Toggle Plan to provide a solution that will help you manage your project’s jobs. Toggle Plan is especially useful if you’re managing multiple marketing projects. With this platform, you can quickly create color-coded team member availability, deadline, and project timelines.
Toggl Plan Standout Features and Integrations
Features within the Toggl Plan platform that will help you enhance your marketing projects include the ability to add, schedule, and assign tasks and milestones in the simple drag-and-drop interface. Toggl Plan allows everyone to see when things are due for completion through the milestones you set and get notifications and email updates when things change. The project timeline view allows you to see team availability and capacity and adjust workloads when necessary.
Integrations are available from Toggl Plan that will help you manage projects effectively, including GitHub, Google Calendar, Rambox, Slack, TimeJam, Toggl Hire, Toggl Track, and Trello. Toggl Plan also provides an API you can use to create custom integrations with your current systems.
Toggl Plan costs from $8/user/month and offers a 14-day free trial.
Pros
- Easily tracks daily task updates.
- Effective collaboration capabilities.
- Large pre-made template collection.
Cons
- Adding people is cumbersome.
- No exporting capabilities.
4. Airtable - Best content marketing calendar software
Airtable is a cloud-based collaboration software that helps businesses track content marketing workflows from creation to publication.
Why I picked Airtable: For those focusing on content marketing strategies, I wanted to add Airtable to this list because it’s a low-code platform you can use to manage your team’s content calendar. It’s not a completely out-of-the-box solution that’s ready for marketing teams, but it’s easily customizable to fit your teams and processes. To help tailor Airtable to your requirements, the platform offers various calendar templates that make it a robust option.
Airtable Standout Features and Integrations
Features that make Airtable a strong choice for marketing teams are its accessibility. Airtable has a lot of depth when it comes to its capabilities because it’s a relational database that allows you to track many data points. But, those with some spreadsheet skills or team members with this expertise will be able to quickly implement the software’s features.
Integrations available that are beneficial to marketing teams include Asana, Basecamp, Dropbox, Google Drive, Jotform, Salesforce, Slack, Trello, Typeform, Zendesk, and other software options. Airtable also provides an API that will allow you to create custom integrations with your current systems.
Airtable costs from $10/user/month and offers a 14-day free trial + free plan available.
Pros
- Excellent drag-and-drop tool.
- Creating subtasks is simple.
- Good edit and sort options.
Cons
- Customer support needs work.
- Free plan is limited.
5. Basecamp - Best for role assignment
Basecamp allows marketing team leaders to assign roles and responsibilities for every project in the marketing calendar.
Why I picked Basecamp: I believe this is an excellent option to add to this marketing calendar software list because, as a marketing leader, you’ll be responsible for ensuring everyone understands their responsibilities and who they can go to for help. Basecamp works well as an editorial calendar that will contain the dates and times of when to publish an article, and you can assign who is responsible for these tasks and recognize everyone’s capacity. After everyone understands what they need to do, Basecamp helps eliminate unnecessary back-and-forth emailing to remind everyone of schedules and due dates. With a quick look, everything is accessible for everyone to see and adjust when necessary.
Basecamp Standout Features and Integrations
Features available in Basecamp that make marketing projects more efficient are the ability to store files, documents, and images in an unlimited space. You can add files and allow teams to have a discussion on the file or image. Basecamp uses a simple drag-and-drop upload tool, and every file you add provides a complete version history.
Integrations in Basecamp include native integrations, such as Bridge24, Everhour, Harvest, Klipfolio, Project Buddy, Proposify, ScrumDo, TaskClone, Unito.io, Zoho Flow, and other software options. Basecamp also allows you to create custom integrations with its API, or you can use a paid Zapier account.
Basecamp costs from $15/user/month and offers a free 30-day trial.
Pros
- Efficiently manages projects.
- Updates tasks in real-time.
- Centralizes all communications.
Cons
- Mobile app isn’t stable.
- No options for subtasks.
6. Hive - Best for flexible project layouts
Hive provides flexible project calendar layouts to provide an accurate overview of all aspects of your team’s work.
Why I picked Hive: Your visual requirements for a marketing calendar might differ from others, so I wanted to add a platform that offers flexible calendar layouts to fit your specific needs. The project layouts that Hive provides include a Kanban view that will help you see the progress across tasks and projects and allow you to visualize a project’s status, due dates, and assignees. The Gantt view allows you to view your marketing plan’s baselines, timelines, dependencies, and milestones, and you can easily share this information with internal or external stakeholders.
Hive Standout Features and Integrations
Features with the Hive platform that will enhance your marketing campaign efforts include team collaboration tools that allow you to connect with your team no matter where they are. You can quickly connect with team members in the chat tool either in a group, individually, or project message.
Integrations include over 1,000 connections that will help maximize your team’s efficiency, including native connections such as Asana, Box, Dropbox, Github, Google Calendar, Google Drive, Microsoft One Drive, Microsoft One Drive, Microsoft Teams, Slack, Trello, and other software options. You can also link your favorite systems through a paid Zapier account, such as ActiveCampaign, Freshbooks, Freshdesk, Harvest, HubSpot, Marketo, Pipedrive, and Zendesk.
Hive costs from $12/user/month and offers a 14-day free trial + freemium plan.
Pros
- Easy to use.
- Easily tracks tasks.
- Trackable employee hours.
Cons
- Reassigning tasks are complex.
- Mail function is glitchy.
7. TrueNorth - Best for hitting growth goals
TrueNorth allows everyone involved in marketing tasks to see what they’re working towards. No matter what your goals are, TrueNorth will visualize your growth strategy to get you there and break everything down into achievable milestones.
Why I picked TrueNorth: The main goal for every business is growth, so I added TrueNorth to this list because its focus is helping you and your teams hit growth goals by connecting your marketing activities to results and growth goals. TrueNorth doesn’t just map marketing activities on a calendar; it also helps track marketing spend and how campaigns contribute to objectives and overall progress. You can also import data from multiple sources to accurately help forecast your growth.
TrueNorth Standout Features and Integrations
Features that are unique to TrueNorth that will help with your marketing calendar needs include the Ideation Sessions. In the platform you can request and prioritize ideas from everyone in your marketing team and implement them in the future. With this feature, you can keep your marketing calendar full of new experiments and ideas.
Integrations are limited within the TrueNorth platform. However, the software provides an in-depth Google Analytics, and HubSpot connection that parses data from over 100 channels and also allows you to overlay actual growth against growth projections.
TrueNorth costs from $99/month and offers a 14-day free trial.
Pros
- User-friendly.
- Easily tracks communications.
- Simple to learn.
Cons
- Very limited integrations.
- Difficult to add names.
8. Zoho Projects - Best for communication tools
Zoho Projects provides ample tools to help your teams effectively communicate and collaborate with each other.
Why I picked Zoho Projects: When working on projects, I want to keep open lines of communication with other team members to ensure all tasks are completed as expected. So, I decided to add Zoho Projects because I understand communication tools are essential to marketing strategies. Zoho Projects offers a chat box that is right on the project workspace that allows everyone to ask questions about the campaigns or tasks their working on without changing apps. There’s also a simple integration with Zoho Meeting, which allows you to add a Meet Now button on certain pages, and clicking it creates an online video or audio meeting in a new tab.
Zoho Projects Standout Features and Integrations
Features that are beneficial to marketing calendars from Zoho Projects include a resource management report the platform calls Resource Utilizations, which is available for Premium and Enterprise subscribers. This feature will help you see which team members have too much, not enough, or just the right amount of work throughout a specific period. Zoho Projects shows its resource report as a timeline with color-coding to show when someone has adequate tasks, is unassigned work, is almost over-assigned, or has too much work.
Integrations within Zoho Projects connect with a suite of business apps from Zoho, including Zoho Meeting, Zoho Books, and Zoho Invoice. Other integrations are available natively from Zoho Projects with systems that are popular among marketing teams, such as Basecamp, Box, Dropbox, Gitlab, Google Drive, Jira, Microsoft Office 365, Microsoft Teams, Slack, Zendesk, and other software options. Zoho Projects also allows you to create custom connections through a paid Zapier account.
Zoho Projects costs from $4/user/month and offers a 10-day free trial + a free plan available for up to three users.
Pros
- User-friendly interface.
- Customizable project workflows.
- Excellent reporting and analytics tools.
Cons
- Steep learning curve.
- Mobile app isn’t effective.
9. Trello - Best for social media marketing calendars
Trello helps marketing teams organize and process social media calendars visually in a Kanban board.
Why I picked Trello: I added Trello to this article because it’s one of the most popular calendar tools that help organizations manage their social media marketing. The easy-to-customize Trello boards enable you to plan social media campaigns and map out a content post publishing schedule. You can add assignment cards to your boards for each social network and create a to-do list for each team member, which allows you to easily track your publishing schedule and individual tasks to ensure positive progress.
Trello Standout Features and Integrations
Features of Trello that make Trello stand out from other options are its ability to automate workflows with the Butler tool. You can use Butler to create rules, buttons, and commands to automate most actions in the platform. Butler will also recognize repetitive actions you and your team perform and suggests automations based on those actions that you can enable in one click.
Integrations are available in the Trello platform and will help you discover new ways to effectively get work finished. These integrations include Chanty, Google Calendar, Google Drive, Hootsuite, Intercom, Mailchimp, Microsoft Teams, Salesforce, Timecamp, Zendesk, and other software options. Trello also allows you to create custom integrations with a paid Zapier account.
Trello costs from $5/user/month and offers a 14-day free trial + free plan available.
Pros
- Clean interface design.
- Integrates well with other systems.
- Simple to implement.
Cons
- Steep learning curve.
- Can be tedious.
10. Kapost - Best for marketing campaign calendars
Kapost provides marketing campaign calendars that allow marketing teams to view all active campaigns and activities.
Why I picked Kapost: When creating new marketing campaigns, it’s important to lay out content marketing plans and their workflows. So, I added Kapost to this list because it can enable your marketing teams to align new content with your target audiences’ personas, their buying stages, interests, and other crucial factors. With Kapost, you can map out content for every stage of your audience’s buyer journey to increase engagement.
Kapost Standout Features and Integrations
Features available from Kapost will help your teams visualize content strategies, allowing everyone to focus on customer-centric content that supports business objectives. It helps your teams work together effectively by eliminating Ad Hoc content and delivering results faster by removing organizational silos.
Integrations are available with Kapost to help you create an effective content operations hub. These include native integrations such as Asana, Basecamp, Box, BrainShark, Brightcove, Curata, Drupal, Google Analytics, HubSpot, Marketo, and other software options.
Kapost costs from $3,500/month and offers a free demo.
Pros
- Efficient roles and permissions.
- Easy to set up workflows.
- Assigning stakeholders is simple.
Cons
- No customization capabilities.
- User interface needs work.
11. CoSchedule - Best for centralizing all marketing activities
CoSchedule helps businesses centralize marketing efforts and tasks in a single platform. It provides a simple overview of marketing strategies and helps prioritize urgent actions.
Why I picked CoSchedule: If you need calendar software that organizes multiple marketing types, such as a blog or social media content, CoSchedule is an option I recommend considering. CoSchedule is a secret weapon to help you see, schedule, and share marketing from a single calendar. You can see what everyone’s working on across multiple mediums in one view and quickly make changes to the calendar with the drag-and-drop functionality.
CoSchedule Standout Features and Integrations
Features that are available within CoSchedule include free marketing calendar templates in Excel and PDF formats. These templates help you see everything that’s happening in your marketing campaigns, so you can get complete visibility and keep your projects on track.
Integrations available within the CoSchedule platform include over 30 options, including ActiveCampaign, Asana, Basecamp, Constant Contact, Google Analytics, HoneyBook, HubSpot CMS Hub, Mailchimp, Trello, Wrike, and other software options. CoSchedule also allows you to create custom integrations through a paid Zapier account.
CoSchedule costs from $29/user/month and has a free plan available.
Pros
- Helpful color-coordination capabilities.
- Complete company transparency.
- Provides clarity into workloads.
Cons
- Slow to implement.
- Steep learning curve.
12. Notion - Best for note taking
Notion works as a distraction-free writing tool that allows marketing teams to take notes and record creative campaign ideas.
Why I picked Notion: While it’s not a traditional marketing calendar solution, Notion acts more as a combination of documents and sheets that everyone can see and use to manage marketing campaigns. It uses epic task lists, Kanban boards, and sprint organizers that helps your teams manage and complete tasks. For example, when working on campaigns, you can use Notion to jot down ideas that are accessible to your content strategist so thy can perform SERP analysis and keyword research to identify whether it’s a suitable topic idea.
Notion Standout Features and Integrations
Features that make Notion a helpful choice for marketing teams are its artificial intelligence tool. If you find that many of your campaign’s notes are messy, you can use AI to summarize important and actionable details. You can also analyze meeting notes, and the AI will instantly provide the next steps for everyone to follow.
Integrations are available in Notion, such as ChatGPT, Empiraa, Google Drive, HyperWrite, LiveDocs, MakeMySummary, Momentum, Rambox, Slack, Trello, and other software options. Notion also connects to Zapier, so you can create custom integrations from a paid account.
Notion costs from $8/user/month and has a free plan available.
Pros
- Very customizable.
- Easily fits multiple needs.
- Flexible and versatile.
Cons
- Steep learning curve.
- Cluttered user interface.
Other Options
Here are a few more options that didn’t make the best marketing calendar software list:
- Monday.com - Best for building custom dashboards.
- Kantata - Best for up-to-the-minute progress views.
- Wrike - Best for remote teams.
- ClickUp - Best all-in-one productivity platform.
- Smartsheet - Best for marketing process management.
- Jira Software - Best issue and project tracker.
- Runn - Best for professional service firm resource management.
- LiquidPlanner - Best for predictive scheduling.
- Bitrix24 - Best for running departments efficiently.
- TeamGantt - Best drag-and-drop Gantt charts.
- Workzone - Best for updating team members on changes.
- MeisterTask - Best for intelligent automations.
- Nifty - Best for marketing workspaces.
- Birdview PSA (was Easy Projects) - Best single source of truth tool.
- GanttProject - Best open-source marketing calendar software.
Other Types of Marketing Software
The marketing landscape is constantly changing, and adapting to these changes will help your business spread the word about offers, attract customers, engage with them, and convert them to ensure they return. Failing to do this means your company will fall behind the competition. So, to help, you should consider implementing various types of marketing software, including:
- Best Marketing Software
- Marketing Management Software
- Digital Marketing Platforms
- Marketing Dashboard Software
- Content Marketing Platforms
- Social Media Management Software
How I Selected the Best Marketing Calendar Software
Perhaps you're wondering how I selected the best marketing calendar software for this list? To build this top 10 list, I evaluated and compared a wide range of marketing calendar software with positive user ratings.
After determining my long list of top choices, I further honed my list by using the selection criteria below to see how each platform stacked up against the next one. I also drew on my years of marketing experience to pinpoint the features that add a lot of value.
Selection Criteria
Here’s a short summary of the main selection and evaluation criteria I used to develop my list of the best marketing calendar software for this article:
Core Functionality:
When selecting appropriate marketing calendar software for this list, I kept a few core functions in mind to help ensure you get the best possible options. Here are the primary vital functions of marketing calendar platforms:
- Ability to create a digital, shared calendar that tracks various marketing activities (preferably with multimedia support for visuals, sound, and text)
- Focus on marketing projects and tools or ability to integrate with software with a similar focus
Key Features:
The proper features in a marketing calendar platform will help you simplify marketing processes and help plan marketing activities and campaigns. Here are the key features I looked for when adding each marketing calendar software to this list:
- Internal and External Views: Your entire marketing team should be able to view the marketing calendar according to their permission levels to make it easier to share data and communicate.
- Team Organization: Marketing calendars should assign ideas to the person who creates them and keep assignments visible to relevant team members.
- Goal Progress: Successful marketing strategies start with goals, so the marketing calendar platform should allow you to set campaign goals and organize data for those initiatives while also allowing you to view activity progress to help you determine whether campaigns are aligned with objectives.
- Team Collaboration: Your marketing calendar software should allow team collaboration so all team members can keep relevant communications inside the tool instead of in multiple external locations to help prevent confusion.
- Real-Time Updates: As soon as there’s a change to the central calendar, the platform should reflect this change everywhere for everyone to ensure your calendar remains current.
- Content Previews: While a marketing calendar is visual, if your strategy consists of creating content, this feature will provide a small thumbnail preview you can expand to a full-size, true-to-life preview of the asset.
Software Integrations:
Marketing calendars shouldn’t exist in isolation, and since other project planning and management aspects are now digital, your marketing calendar should be too. When choosing the platforms on this list, I decided to look for tools that integrate with other systems that are commonly used to plan, implement, and manage marketing campaigns. The marketing calendar you decide to use should allow you to import, export, and sync data with your current systems and the software you decide to implement in the future.
Value for Price:
After setting a budget, understanding what value you’ll receive from a marketing calendar tool can help narrow down your choices. Some options offer free versions with limited access to features, while others offer a free trial. Afterward, the vendor will charge a monthly fee and the amount will depend on the subscription plan that fits best and provides the most value. These scenarios will help you see what features you’ll get and how much work you and your teams can complete when using it.
People Also Ask
When creating this list, I found that there are some common questions people ask when searching for the best marketing calendar software. Here are the top questions people also ask and answers that I believe will help you when searching for new marketing calendar solutions.
Who uses marketing calendar software?
What are the benefits of marketing calendar software?
What are the different types of marketing calendar software?
Other Marketing Planning Software Reviews
Marketing software comes in all shapes and sizes, from social media platform management to website and product reporting. You'll probably need several tools to cover the whole gambit of needs. Here are some other software review lists that I recommend checking out:
- Best Marketing Software
- Social Media Management Software
- Marketing Management Software
- Affiliate Marketing Software
- Marketing Collaboration Software
- Marketing Planning Tools
- Marketing Workflow Software
- Field Marketing Software
Final Thoughts
Marketing calendar software is quickly becoming a necessity to ensure that daily promotion and advertising efforts put you ahead of the competition. While writing this article, I noticed that marketing calendar tools are highly variable, and while many have some similarities, each one focuses on handling different marketing areas.
If you need help handling other marketing areas in your organization, you should sign up for The CMO newsletter to receive new software suggestions and advice from marketing professionals.