10 Best Project Timeline Makers: Choose Your Free or Budget-Friendly Solution

Timelines are arguably one of the most powerful ways to visualize your plans, activity, or present certain events. With the help of project timelines, you can emphasize events, show how they should develop in chronological order, explain your project’s progress or underline milestones and deliverables.

From our recently written articles, you can learn more about online timelines. In particular, if you are not sure about this tool, you can read more about timeline examples and how to create a project timeline.

It’s time to move forward and choose a free or budget-friendly timeline maker where you will be able to work in for better performance. Or probably, you need to know more about best practices in data visualization.

Here we share the list of 10 online timeline makers that have different ways to show time frames. They will provide you with out-of-the-box and easy-to-use solutions.

But first, let’s delve into some crucial theories.

Contents: 

• What is a project timeline?
• Best online project timeline makers.

What is a project timeline?

A project management timeline is a detailed schedule for your project that demonstrates actual dates, events, or project actions in chronological order. It helps teams see what individual steps will take place and when the entire project will be wrapped up.

The best project timelines show task dependencies, bottlenecks, and the critical path for the project as a whole. You can see where your tasks hit roadblocks or which of them can be completed simultaneously.

Timelines make teams more informed. And managers should constantly monitor and estimate them to know where to alter course when problems arise. 

By the way, Capterra names improved timeline estimation one of the major benefits experienced from using a PM tool.

The quality of any timetable depends on the tool that generates it. Now it’s time to explore such tools.

Best project timeline makers that will bring your project all medals and winner’s cups

When it comes to creating a timetable or a roadmap, there is no shortage of timeline makers to choose from.

That’s true. However, the project management timeline tool that will be the best fit for you will depend on what type of timetable you need to build – is it for work, personal use, or an education project?

Of course, you can simply create a project timeline in Excel or similar tools. However, there are more powerful solutions to explore. 

Luckily for you, we’ve thoroughly searched to compile the ultimate list of the best project timeline makers available for you to use.

So, let’s get more facts about these tools.

1. GanttPRO

Good for: project management in a variety of spheres: education, software development, marketing campaigns, retail, manufacture, construction, etc.

One of the best online timeline makers that top our list is GanttPRO. It provides powerful functionality for planning and managing timetables of various complexity.

GanttPRO offers vast opportunities to visualize your projects based on a Gantt chart approach. Here, you can not only put events and milestones but define their start and end dates as well as deadlines. Also, you can track the progress of your projects. 

In general, once you create a timeline in this online timeline maker, rest assured – you get a clear picture of all your activities.

Pros:

• Online timeline maker.
• Gantt chart views online.
• Helpful Gantt chart templates.
• Easily understandable hierarchy.
• Convenient and intuitive interface.
• Customization: colors, columns, working calendar, workload.
• Integration with JIRA and other tools.
• Collaboration possibilities.

Cons:

• No free version though there is a fully-featured 14-day free trial.
• No way to create recurring tasks.

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2. Preceden

Good for: personal use, work, educational purposes, and many other cases when you need to create a nice-looking timeline.

This is a reliable timeline creator that can be used absolutely for free. However, access to advanced features requires a paid subscription.

In Preceden, with its intuitive interface, you can quickly create your timeline. The tool allows creating plans and projects and depicting historical events.

It makes it a good choice for educational purposes. But of course, this is not the only sphere where you can successfully apply it.

Pros:

• Online timeline maker.
• Different layers.
• Easy sharing.
• The export feature (even on a free plan).
• Customization options.

Cons:

• Lack of additional features (for example, no prioritization).
• Looks costly compared to the tools with similar functionality.

3. Office Timeline

Good for: educational purposes, technical and non-tech businesses.

This timeline maker is one of the most widespread solutions in the market. It provides great visual opportunities to not only create a free timeline but also use project milestones and Gantt charts. It gives users more options to present their timelines.

It is known as a fast and intuitive PowerPoint add-in that generates beautiful Gantt charts and timelines for various presentations. With its help, you’ll be able to get customers and executives on your side with nice roadmaps and reports that they can easily follow. 

Pros:

• Possibilities to create timelines in PowerPoint.
• Great choice of templates.
• Gantt chart view.
• Customization: colors, shapes, date formats, percent complete, tasks duration, etc.
• Possibilities to create, edit, and share timelines by anyone with access to Microsoft Office.

Cons:

• No possibilities to add pictures to timelines.
• Slow loading time.

4. Easy Projects

Good for: any fast-moving midsize and enterprise-level project team. 

Easy Project allows performing almost every activity related to project management. You get visual planning functionality, friendly reports, and much more. 

This timeline maker has an intuitive interface that can be easily understood and mastered.

Pros:

• Advanced planning and scheduling.
• Handy drag & dropping.
• Custom fields.
• File sharing.
• Email notifications.
• Desktop notifications.
• Image annotations.

Cons:

• More custom charts options are needed.
• Many default notifications.

5. Timeline Maker Pro

Good for: many cases when you need to create a nice-looking timeline for marketing, IT, operations, software development, and other projects.

This maker combines timeline charts, a Gantt diagram, and chronologies. It finds its application in a variety of spheres. Business managers, researchers, forensic investigators, project managers benefit from using this tool.

Here, users can choose different timescales, from seconds to years. Moreover, there is a possibility of creating a history timeline with BC dates here.

Pros:

• Five chart styles, embedded themes, and styles library.
• Sharing options.
• Automatic spell-checking.
• Built-in presentation mode.

Cons:

• The minimum license of 1 year.
• A learning curve is required.

6. Time Graphics

Good for: educational purposes, business, project planning, and personal use.

The key advantage of Time Graphics is that it’s free. You can easily embed your content here. 

Users love this tool because it is even better than some paid solutions. Here, you can put together any data you need and easily see, for example, cause-and-effect relations.

This online maker is available in 7 languages.

Pros:

• It’s free without watermarks or ads.
• It is possible to embed timelines on your website.
• Online timeline maker.
• Possibility to download and print.
• Integration with the leading services (including Google Calendar, YouTube, and Vimeo).

Cons:

• It is possible to create only one project with the free version.
• Only one timeline template.

7. Toggl Plan

Good for: small and medium-sized teams’ projects from various spheres and industries.

Toggl Plan makes planning a piece of cake by combining a reliable Gantt chart with scheduling functionality. 

With the help of this timetable maker, you can organize your projects from start to finish and assign specific tasks to each teammate. 

A handy visual roadmap will ensure your tasks never fall behind schedule.

The tool is free for teams of five people or less that makes it different from other Toggl Plan alternatives.

Pros:

• Timeline and board views.
• Simple scheduling. 
• Drag & dropping.
• Consolidated data.
• Construction planning.
• Simple and intuitive UI.

Cons:

• No task dependencies.
• Limited mobile app version.

8. SmartDraw

Good for: educational use, businesses, and personal purposes.

Being one of the best solutions, SmartDraw offers timelines and more than 70 diagrams. 

As a timeline maker, it will meet the requirements of anyone who needs to depict something historical, build a business development process, show a criminal case, etc.

Pros:

• Online timeline maker.
• Possibility to download as PDF.
• Dozens of ready-made templates.
• Integration with MS Office and PowerPoint.

Cons:

• Weak collaboration features.
• Many admit that the program takes a long time to install.

9. Lucidchart

Good for: educational purposes, project planning, and many other cases when you need to generate a robust timetable.

Lucidchart is also a powerful online timetable maker known worldwide. Using an intuitive drag and drop interface, you can build custom timelines here in no time.

The platform is widely used in project management – it will show you all your milestones and deadlines and give you all the power of a Gantt chart.

Pros:

• Online maker.
• Shape library.
• Easy to learn.
• Visio import and export.
• Integrations with JIRA and some other tools.

Cons:

• Templates are not diverse.
• Not full functionality in the free version.

10. Vizzlo

Good for: professionals who strive to convey their project timelines ​more effectively and compellingly.

This timetable maker increases productivity by providing intuitive tools for building and managing designer-grade timelines and charts in no time. It is fabulous for creating educational, historical, and business projects.

Vizzlo helps track progress, prepare marketing reports, financial forecasts, and various timeline events. It is easy to use, and it perfectly suits distributed teams.

Pros:

• Online timeline maker.
• Attractive charts.
• Handy interface.
• Data visualization.
• Team collaboration.
• Visual aids for presentations.

Cons:

• Limited choice of charts.
• You get watermarks when downloading files in the free version.

What timeline maker looks more beneficial for you?

You can quickly create a project timeline in PowerPoint, Excel, or other popular tools. However, now you know about more powerful software solutions to do it. 

But the fact is, project planning and scheduling are not so easy. Whether you use a free and straightforward timeline maker (like Tiki Toki) or subscribe to the best professional project management platform (like GanttPRO), your team will inevitably have to make last-minute changes or add new tasks into their calendars. 

A powerful project timeline builder will help everyone who’d like to save time on re-planning or get their projects off to a flying start. It will allow understanding task duration, resource use, and team workload. 

So, if you are planning to try an online timeline generator for you or your team, look no further! You can start now by giving one of the mentioned solutions a try. 

Analyze them one more time and make your choice!