Wrike

Wrike Review: Enterprise Work Management With Genuine Resource Planning Depth

Wrike sits in the space between lightweight PM tools and true enterprise project portfolio management software. It is more complex than monday.com or Asana, less specialised than Microsoft Project, and more feature-rich than most tools in its price range. For the right organisation — typically 50–500 person teams with structured project workflows — this positioning is a genuine advantage.

Background

Founded in 2006 in San Jose, Wrike was acquired by Citrix in 2019 and then spun off to Vista Equity Partners in 2021. It currently serves 20,000+ organisations across marketing, operations, IT, and professional services. The platform has grown through acquisition and organic development into one of the most feature-complete work management tools available.

Gantt Charts and Scheduling

Wrike's Gantt chart is one of the strongest in the SaaS PM category. Dependencies between tasks are visually mapped with finish-to-start, start-to-start, finish-to-finish, and start-to-finish relationship types. Critical path highlighting identifies which tasks gate the project completion date. Baseline comparison lets project managers snapshot a plan and compare actuals against the original schedule — a standard feature in traditional PM software that many modern SaaS tools omit.

This Gantt depth is the primary reason teams choose Wrike over monday.com or Asana. For project managers who need to communicate schedule risk and baseline variance to executives, Wrike's output is more credible than simpler tools.

Workload and Resource Management

Wrike's workload view is one of the most useful in the SaaS PM category. It shows each team member's allocated hours against available capacity, highlights overallocation in red, and allows reassignment by dragging tasks between team members. For teams managing 20+ people across concurrent projects, this view prevents the common failure mode of unknowingly overloading key contributors.

This feature is available from the Business plan and above. The Team plan omits it — which is a significant limitation for the tool's primary value proposition.

Creative and Marketing Workflows

Wrike includes a native proofing tool for image, PDF, and video review. Stakeholders can leave timestamped or frame-accurate comments directly on assets, with approval/rejection workflows that route through defined approvers. For marketing, creative, and agency teams that currently route proofs through email or external tools like Ziflow, this integration saves meaningful context-switching overhead.

Interface Complexity

Wrike's depth comes with a complexity cost. The interface has more layers and configuration options than most teams expect. The left-panel navigation system, multiple project views (List, Board, Gantt, Table, Calendar, Analytics), and nested folder structure require deliberate onboarding. Teams that skip the learning phase and explore by clicking tend to create chaotic workspace structures.

For organisations without a designated Wrike administrator or PM team, the tool's complexity may exceed the team's capacity to maintain it well.

Verdict

Wrike earns its place for teams that genuinely need Gantt scheduling, resource management, and creative proofing in a unified platform. The feature depth is real and the Gantt chart is category-leading. The complexity overhead and pricing structure make it a poor fit for small teams or organisations whose PM needs are lighter.

Score: 8.0/10 — Best-in-class Gantt and resource management for enterprise teams; interface complexity and tiered feature gating are genuine barriers for smaller users.