I have heard about Freelo many times in the past. Many of my colleagues worked in it, praised it and said it was fine. It didn’t seem to concern me in any way. I was using all sorts of foreign tools and thought that the main advantage of Freela would probably be that it was in Czech and you could have a beer with the founders at a community event.
I was deeply mistaken.
What is Freelo?
Freelo is an application for entering, managing and evaluating tasks. Above all, it is a complete revolution in efficiency, delegation and overall business management.
Over the course of my business, I’ve tried several types of task management and evaluation from paper slips, to Google Calendar, to Notion.
While a number of other applications (Asana, Plutio, Clickup, Nifty, Trello…) I have tried with clients and colleagues. For example, I wrote a summary impression and comparison in an article here.
However, the history needs to be rewritten.
Since I got to know Freelo, I can safely say that for my needs, competing platforms are not even close to it.
What do I require from a project management application?
Before we dive into the various aspects of Freela, it’s a good idea to take a bird’s eye view of project management applications.
What do I actually require from such an application?
Namely, two things.
- The application must fundamentally help with the systemization of the business
System is the king. An even better word is: processes, but if processes evoke a negative connotation in you, call it a system.
The system is what makes the business valuable. McDonald’s is a brilliant system and that’s why this business is valued at $9.3 billion. My business on the other hand has a valuation close to 0 as there are very few processes/systems within it and once you remove me from it, there is almost nothing left.
Changing that and making the business more systemized and processable is then one of my main goals and if I am to use an app, I need it to help me do that.
- The app needs to simplify the work at least 5x rather than adding complexity by using it
It sounds obvious, but I’ve come across a number of apps that were so annoying and difficult to use that I found it much worse as a result than just using, say, email.
I’m sure the fact that we didn’t have the tools configured optimally played a role, I didn’t want to put extra thought into how to use/learn the application effectively, etc.
Still: the complexity and intricacy is already over the top in most businesses, and if a new tool is to be launched, it needs to simplify things – not the other way around.
Freelo meets both of the above points perfectly. Which is basically a rarity in my experience with a wide variety of similar tools.
So let’s take a closer look at it.
How does Freelo work?
Freelo works on the basis of projects and to-do lists. Projects are the basic organizational unit and to-do lists subsequently group the sub-tasks within projects.
However, let’s take a closer look at both.
Project
The main unit in Freel is the project. You can think of a project… as a project.
I typically keep every website I work on as a project. If a client has multiple sites that we work on together, we also have multiple projects in Freel, and these projects are not particularly connected to each other.
My understanding is that even if we wanted to, the projects wouldn’t be particularly linked together because Freelo doesn’t offer client and contact management and because of that it certainly can’t be considered a CRM (Customer Relationship Management System), so I continue to use Pipedrive for that purpose.
To-do list
Unlike Projects, this name is less intuitive. To-do lists are basically like drawers that group together tasks for a given activity.
I have a number of such themed drawers within my site, and you can see at least some of them below:
- Monthly newsletters
- articles
- quarterly assignments
Within each of these drawers there is already a network of interrelated individual activities and tasks, both for me and for my colleagues.
So the “to-do lists” could easily be called “activities”, which would probably be more intuitive.
Overall, however, the organization system within Freela is good I think we can safely rate the clarity at 8/10.
Practical benefits of Freela for my business
Using Freela has had a number of practical implications for my business, illustrated well by the article creation process for example.
Creating an article used to look like I “somehow” wrote the article, a colleague corrected it and another colleague added it to the web and translated it into Slovak and English using Deepl.
Thanks to the templates in Freel, the process looks like this:
| Me | Colleague 1 | Colleague 2 |
| I’m prolustructing the competition; find frequently asked questions about the topic; identify key phrases that should be included in the article. | format the article, add links to it; add links from other articles to this one; Creates an original thumbnail image for the article. | translate articles in Deepl embeds them in WordPress with the exact: url, meta description, title; generate and insert article-specific structured data; format and run it in foreign versions. |
It seems like a small difference, but apart from the huge benefit that articles have been coming out regularly every week since we got our hands on Freel, we’ve also all put in about 1/3 more effort and the result is, dare I say, several times better.
To me, this is why every business should strive for systematization.
Freelo price list – or how much does Frello cost? (2023)
You can try Freelo for free for 14 days. After the trial period is over, you can either continue with the free (somewhat limited) version, or you can upgrade to a paid subscription.
| Free | Freelance | Team | Business | Enterprise | |
| Monthly price (without VAT) | 0 € | 33,3 € | 69,3 € | 144 € | from 1590 € |
| Number of users | 3 | unlimited | unlimited | 20 | ? |
| Difference compared to previous tariffs | 3 active projects, 3 invitations | Different views of tasks; rows, columns, table, calendar, Mind map | Admin functions for department managers: administration and users on projects; managing and setting up projects under one account; team reporting | Custom fields allow you to make Freelo a miniCRM or data link to your IS/ERP. Users, Projects, Teams; Advanced security: domain user management, worker replacement, 2FA enforcement Gantt chart (Timeline) | SSO, SAML, SLA; customized integration; automation; onboarding workshop; success manager, … Contact us to discuss your needs, requirements and implementation timelines. |
| Suitable for | on trial | For freelancers and their clients | For a smaller company | For a company with departments | For corporations |
All tariffs are 10% cheaper if you buy them for just one year.
Freelo vs Trello
Trello is another very popular project management tool, in the table below you can see how this tool compares to Freelo.
| Freelo | Trello | |
| Integration with Czech tools | Make, Fakturoid, Vyfakturuj and more | I didn’t find. |
| Time measurement options | Integrated timetracing and cost reports | Paid features via Power-ups |
| Task display | Row and column views | Column/category display only |
| Preset musters | Process templates | Lack of access control in the project |
| Prize type | Fixed price independent of number | Price dependent on number |
| Price | Team tariff without user limitation: 1 69,3 €/month | 10-person team in the paid version: approx. 122 €/month |
| Support | Czech chat and phone support | Does not have Czech support |
If you use Trello and are considering switching to Freelo, it is also possible to directly import all information from one tool to the other.
Main features of Freelo
Freelo offers a variety of features, and below you will find the 5 features I appreciate the most:
- The ability to record the screen directly to individual tasks;
- Easy ability to invite clients to projects;
- Czech interface;
- Easy creation and management of templates;
- Automatic notifications and the ability to set up “Relationships”, which in practice means that someone will get a notification on a colleague’s completed task if their work depends on the colleague’s completion.
How do Freelo templates work?
Freelo templates work well and intuitively.
Basically, you create a checklist of items that is re-generated every time you assign a task to someone.
If you don’t know how to create your own templates, you can use a number of pre-made templates for example for:
- SEO analysis
- webinar preparation
- content calendar
- packing for a family vacation
can be found at the following link: https://help.freelo.io/sablony.
Does Freelo offer the possibility to connect with other tools?
Yes, Freelo offers the possibility to connect with a number of domestic and foreign instruments.
You can connect Freelo to most global tools using the Make integration platform.
Among the integrated linking options, it is worth mentioning for example the linking with:
- Gmail
- Google calendar
or accounting instruments:
- Vyfakturuj
- Fakturoid
- iDoklad.
So fitting Freela into your digital gear shouldn’t be a big problem.
Final rating – 8.5/10
I’ve tried a number of tools and although I’ve been excited about a great many of them, much like Freelo, few have been able to live up to that enthusiasm and stand up to the rigorous reality test.
Freel has succeeded and I think it has a long term customer in me.
???? Let me know in the comments what your experience has been.
