MeisterTask Review: Masterful Project Management Made in Germany?

What do Ritter Sport, Allianz, and EXPERTE.com have in common? We've all used MeisterTask to digitize workflows and manage projects. But just how good is the task management platform from Germany?

In this review, you'll discover what MeisterTask offers, how it differs from other project management platforms, and which workflows it's more or less suitable for

MeisterTask* is a cloud-based task management platform operated by MeisterLabs GmbH, based near Munich in Vaterstetten. The company first made a name for itself with the release of the MindMeister mind mapping tool in 2009, followed by the task management platform in 2014. In 2018, they added MasterNote, a wiki-style tool for project documentation.

In this review, we'll focus strictly on MeisterTask.

First and foremost, you'll need to create a Meister account. During setup, you'll be asked a few questions about your background, business, and team.

You'll automatically start a 13-day trial period, after which your (free) account will be downgraded to the software's free version — unless you decide to purchase a premium plan.

Immediately after registration, a brief tutorial guides you through your first project setup. You then land directly on the MeisterTask dashboard, where you'll manage all your tasks and projects from that point forward.

From the dashboard, you can access all features of MeisterTask with just a few clicks. The left navigation bar shows different views and workspaces, such as your projects, tasks, and reports.

Widgets are located in the upper right: Use these to search through tasks, review the most important assignments, consult your checklist, or read notifications.

Overall, MeisterTask's easy-to-use dashboard is polished and elegant, offering a cohesive look and feel. A few customization options — from backgrounds to buttons and colors — give the interface a personal touch.

Of course, its simplicity does come with trade-offs: you'll quickly become familiar with all the features and settings, mainly because there are so few. At its core, MeisterTask is little more than a collection of Kanban Boards and some extras.

You'll spend most of your time in MeisterTask on the Projects page. Each project is a sort of Kanban board divided into several vertical columns, which you can add and name yourself.

These columns can map the workflow of your project or the tasks associated with it from left to right (e.g., "Open" --> "In Progress" --> "Done").

Each project comprises many different tasks. You can create a task within a project column with a click on the plus sign and move them between columns using drag-and-drop.

When you click on a task, a detailed menu opens where you can further edit each task. Here, you add subtasks, checklists, descriptions, and much more (more on this below).

Due to MeisterTask's Kanban focus, the selection of views is somewhat limited. There are primarily three:

If you want to view your projects from various perspectives, MeisterTask might not be the best choice, as other project management tools are significantly more versatile.

We particularly miss regular lists or tables where your tasks are listed one after the other, as well as detailed filter options. There also aren't detailed calendar, gallery, or card views.

Overall, MeisterTask is primarily a Kanban tool with a timeline. Here's how it stacks up against the competition:

With the MeisterTask smartphone app, you can view your projects and tasks on the go.

The app is well-executed: Thanks to the column design, which also translates well to smartphones, and the relatively limited range of features, it's pretty easy to operate MeisterTask on mobile. With just a few taps, you can create new tasks, edit existing ones, or quickly add checklist entries.

MeisterTask is a user-friendly Kanban generator with a few nice extras — no more, no less. If you manage your tasks according to the Kanban principle and have no need for tables, lists, and other views, MeisterTask might have everything you need.

As soon as you want to organize your projects differently or view them from other perspectives, you'll notice the platform's limitations. This Kanban focus is, of course, deliberate, but competitor Trello shows that ease-of-use doesn't need to come at the cost of versatility.

Tasks are the smallest organizational unit in MeisterTask. For every activity that needs addressing — whether standalone or as part of a broader project — you should create a distinct task on the MeisterTask dashboard.

These tasks can then be distributed across your lists in typical Kanban fashion and moved through predefined phases.

To create a new task, click on the plus symbol in the column that you'd like to add it to. You only need to provide the task title.

The task is immediately added to the column but starts as a blank entry. Clicking on the task opens a detailed menu where you can further define the task.

In this detailed menu, you have several options including:

In the menu to the right, you'll find a few more features and elements, such as:

If the above options aren't enough, you can add custom fields to your tasks. These are set up in the Project Settings under the Custom Fields tab on the far right. Just click on "+ Add Custom Field" to get started.

Unfortunately, the selection is limited: custom fields can only be text or dropdown menus. This limitation is due to the Kanban focus, as different field types aren't really necessary if there aren't enough views and visualizations to leverage them.

Most other project management tools from our comparison offer significantly more options to personalize tasks with custom fields:

Subtasks allow you to break your tasks into smaller steps. A subtask has the same setting options as a regular task but is linked by a dependency to the overarching task.

To view subtasks in your project list, click on the filter menu to the right of your project screen and toggle the "Show Subtasks" switch.

It is also possible to establish dependencies between different tasks. You can group related tasks, block tasks from other tasks, or show task duplicates. This helps you monitor how different tasks in your project are interconnected.

What's missing is the option to organize project progress with milestones or define goals for projects (e.g., a specific number of articles per quarter). Here's a comparison of MeisterTask's advanced task features:

We're going to say it again: MeisterTask is a Kanban platform with Kanban tools. Within this framework, you can adapt and organize your tasks flexibly, including with dependencies and subtasks.

However, tasks cannot be customized to your exact preferences, which makes sense within the confines of the Kanban approach. Overall, MeisterTask's options are fit for purpose.

You can use MeisterTask alone, with your team, or even to collaborate with individuals outside your organization. To work together on projects, you first need to invite your colleagues to your project.

When you click the "Share" button in the project menu, you can share the project with other users and team members. In addition to the administrator role, you can choose from four permissions:

Project members can only access the project you've invited them to. For colleagues within your company or those with whom you collaborate closely across multiple projects, you can also create a team to simplify collaboration.

To access team management, you need to click on the "My Team" button in the upper MeisterTask menu bar. Here, you'll find all current users listed and can invite new team members.

Team members have a key advantage over project members: They can add new members and quickly share the project with others (such as different departments).

Additionally, there are extra settings for team members, such as the ability to restrict access to team projects to certain IP ranges.

MeisterTask's collaboration features are limited to the essentials: you can assign tasks to users and communicate (via comments) with them. It's possible to react to comments with emojis.

That's about it: real-time collaboration is not possible with MeisterTask's built-in tools. Private messages, live chats, group discussions, or advanced features like whiteboards or collaborative document editing are not supported by default.

These are only possible through integrations or other Meister tools (more on this in the next section).

Other project management tools offer significantly more collaboration features in their standard packages without integrations, as you can see below:

Collaboration features are not a strength of MeisterTask: When it comes to digital collaboration, the task management tool is limited to passive cooperation in the form of comments and assignments.

For real-time teamwork, you'll need other applications or make use of MeisterTask's integrations.

Of course, MeisterTask includes many features we haven't explored yet, including tools for crafting more complex workflows. Let's start with the reporting features, which can be found on the Reports screen.

MeisterTask’s reports provide data-driven insights into your projects. There are two types of reports:

You can save the report settings of custom reports, so you don't have to set up the filters each time.

Reports can be exported as .xls (Excel) and .csv files.

You can track and record the time spent on specific tasks directly within MeisterTask. This feature allows you to see how long each team member has worked on various tasks.

Can't represent a desired work process with MeisterTask's out-of-the-box features? This is where the platform’s automation functions come into play, found in the project settings under the “Automations” tab.

Click on “Add Automation” to open a list of automation possibilities:

Currently, there are 11 such automations available:

MeisterTask's handy automation features are easier to set up than the often more complex automations of other tools.

However, due to this relatively narrow limitation to predefined applications, they are also less flexible and cannot be used to create more complex workflows on their own. For example, it is not possible to link automations with subtasks to automate the creation and processing of subtasks.

Other programs (Airtable, Trello, or monday.com) are much more versatile in this regard and allow users to create complex automations with triggers and reactions.

When it comes to integrations, MeisterTask doesn't have much to offer: only a few programs, including Slack, Google Calendar, Microsoft Teams, Spark, and GitHub, are supported.

If you want to integrate MeisterTask into other programs, you'll need to use Zapier or its native API.

On top of its solid Kanban foundations, MeisterTask offers a few nice extras, but it's less flexible and refined than other project management tools.

As usual: despite a few handy advanced features, MeisterTask is less versatile than other platforms. Automations are restricted to a selection of pre-made workflows, and the range of integrations is limited.

The upside is that MeisterTask's automations are far more user- and beginner-friendly than those of its competitors. In addition, its reports are solid, and time tracking is built into the dashboard.

Additionally, for those seeking to link MeisterTask with other applications not directly supported, there is an option to use the Zapier connection.

MeisterTask's help center is quite well-equipped. On the homepage, you'll find everything you need: a search function, article categories, selected FAQs, and contact options.

The support articles are sensibly divided into subcategories and sub-subcategories (e.g., "Getting Started," "Team Management," "Account & Billing"). Articles are well-written, easy to understand, and include videos, screenshots, GIFS, and links.

Additionally, the MeisterTask Academy offers several video courses that cover all the basics and advanced features of MeisterTask in just over an hour.

The direct contact options depend on your subscription plan. Generally, there is email and phone support, with the latter available starting from the Business plan. From the Pro plan onwards, there is also priority email support, which responds to inquiries somewhat quicker.

Unfortunately, we experienced some delays: our standard email support inquiry was only answered after 12 days, with the note that there was currently a "higher than expected volume of requests".

Overall, MeisterTask's support content is good, but if you're looking for a more human touch, you'll need to be patient. If you prefer to seek advice from other MeisterTask users, you can post in the Meister Community, which has around 5,000 members.

MeisterTask offers four subscription plans that can be booked either monthly or at a slightly reduced annual rate: Basic, Pro, Business, and Enterprise.

Here’s an overview of MeisterTask’s pricing tiers:

MeisterTask is pretty pricey — especially its lowest-priced subscription, which has many unnecessary limitations. In the following chart, we've compared the prices of various project management solutions for ten users and unlimited projects:

If you plan your projects in Kanban style, MeisterTask may have everything you need: you can create and intuitively organize as many Kanban boards as you want on user-friendly dashboards. You'll also get a few nice extras, such as built-in time tracking and pre-made automations.

However, if Kanban alone isn't enough, MeisterTask may fall short: the platform is fairly rigid, and even the most basic views (e.g., tables or lists) beyond Kanban are not covered. Considering its lack of features, MeisterTask is a bit on the pricey side, too.

How satisfied are MeisterTask customers with the platform? We've looked into feedback on review sites and summarized the insights:

Looking for a platform that also relies on the Kanban method but doesn’t put all its eggs in one basket? Trello might be worth a look, as it supports other views despite its Kanban focus.

Need a solution that also serves as a communication platform for your team? In that case, Teamwork or Basecamp might be worth considering.

You can find more of the best alternatives to MeisterTask here: