Blue Review: Project Management LTD with 30 Users for $59

What Is Blue and Why Does It Matter?

Project management software is one of those expenses that quietly eats into your budget month after month. Tools like Asana and Monday.com charge per seat, and once you've got a handful of team members, you're looking at hundreds of dollars every month with no end in sight.

Blue is a project management platform that originally appeared on AppSumo back in 2021 and has returned in 2024 with a significantly more mature feature set. It covers the essentials you'd expect — Kanban boards, task management, file storage — but also includes automations, AI-powered tagging, built-in chat, wikis, docs, and forms. The fact that all of this ships as a lifetime deal makes it worth a serious look.

Plans, Pricing, and How Blue Compares to Asana

Blue's pricing structure on AppSumo is one of the most generous you'll find for a project management tool. The base tier starts at $59 and includes 30 users with no feature gating — every tier gets access to the full platform. The only differences between tiers are the number of companies and users you can add. If you need more room, you can scale all the way up to unlimited users at higher tiers.

To put this in perspective, Asana's Advanced plan (which includes automations) costs $25 per user per month. For a team of just three people paying annually, that's $900 per year — and the bill resets every year. Blue's one-time payment covers 30 users permanently. Even the starter plan on Asana limits you to 250 automations, which can burn through quickly since every card movement can count as one.

For agencies managing multiple clients, Blue scales up to 100 companies with unlimited users at the highest tier. At $1,000, that's not pocket change, but it's still less than what many teams spend on a single year of traditional project management software.

Getting Started: Setup and Initial Configuration

Setting up a new company in Blue takes just a few clicks. You'll find the option in the upper left corner, where you can name your company, customize the URL, and even set up a CNAME so your team accesses the tool from your own domain — something like projects.yourcompany.com.

Once your company is created, Blue prompts you to create your first project. You can start from scratch or choose from a solid library of templates covering blog content creation, event management, onboarding, sales CRM, social media management, and more. Each template includes a preview and a quick-start guide explaining how to use it. The templates aren't just empty boards — they come pre-configured with relevant columns, tasks, and fields to get you productive immediately.

The Blue Interface: Customization and Settings

Blue's interface centers around a left sidebar and a top navigation bar. The sidebar has two distinct sections: the first five menu items are company-wide (spanning all projects), while the lower section is project-specific. The top bar displays all available modules for your current project.

Company settings let you upload logos for each company, which is especially useful for agencies managing multiple clients. User profiles support photos, job titles, birthdays (with automatic notifications), and individual date/time format preferences. Your American colleagues can use MM/DD/YYYY while your European team members stick with DD/MM/YYYY — each person sets their own preference.

There are some thoughtful UI customizations available too. You can toggle navigation icons on or off, align items to the left, and change the capitalization style. These are small touches, but they make a difference when you're spending hours in the tool every day. Blue also includes API connections and webhooks for integrating with external services, opening the door to custom workflows and third-party connections.

Company-Wide Dashboards and Calendar

The company-wide views give you a bird's-eye look at everything happening across all your projects. The Home section shows recent activity and recently active team members. Your personal board displays everything assigned to you — assignments, checklists, and your personal calendar — so you never have to dig through individual projects to find your tasks.

The calendar view aggregates due dates from every project into a single view with a standout feature: calendar sync. Blue generates a link you can import into Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, or any other calendar app that supports subscriptions. This is something many project management tools still don't offer, and it means your project deadlines show up right alongside your meetings.

You can toggle weekends off if your team only works Monday through Friday, and robust filtering lets you narrow down by project, assignee, tags, due dates, or any custom fields you've created.

Projects and Multiple Views

Blue organizes work into projects, and each project supports multiple views of the same data. Think of it like Airtable or Notion — your records live in a database, and you choose how to look at them. Available views include Kanban board, calendar, timeline, database table, simple list, and even a map view powered by OpenStreetMap.

Projects can be organized into folders, which is handy for grouping by client or by overarching initiative with sub-projects inside. When you click into a project, the default board view works exactly like Trello — drag cards between columns to update their status. The underlying data stays the same regardless of which view you're using, so switching between a Kanban board and a timeline view is seamless.

The database view exposes all your columns and custom fields in a spreadsheet-like layout, which is great for bulk editing or getting a detailed overview of everything in the project at once.

Task Management: Custom Fields, Subtasks, and More

Clicking on any card in the Kanban opens a detailed task view with a solid rich-text editor for descriptions. You get bold, italic, strikethrough, links, file attachments, @mentions, emojis, and even Giphy integration. Above the description, you'll find fields for due dates, assignees, tags, dependencies, and bidirectional task references — so related tasks stay linked together.

The field layout is fully customizable through the "Manage Fields" option. Drag fields into whatever order makes sense for your workflow, and add custom fields whenever you need them. Need a URL field for a client's website? Add it in seconds, and it'll appear on every task with clickable and copyable links.

Subtasks in Blue are called "checklists," and they can be organized by category. Each subtask gets its own assignee and due date, which means delegating granular work is straightforward. The right side of each task shows a complete timeline of activity, and a comments section uses the same rich editor as descriptions. AI summaries are available for lengthy tasks, and you can set reminders independently from due dates — useful for getting a heads-up before a deadline hits. Task repetition is also supported with flexible scheduling: weekdays, weekly, monthly, yearly, or fully custom intervals.

Automations: The Feature That Changes Everything

Automations are often the dividing line between a basic project management tool and one that actually saves you time. Blue includes a visual automation builder — something rare in the lifetime deal space.

The trigger system is straightforward: automations fire when a new record is created or when a record moves to a specific column. From there, you can automatically create subtasks, assign them to team members, and set relative due dates (e.g., "2 days from trigger"). This is incredibly useful for standardized workflows.

Here's a practical example: you're running a content production pipeline, and when a task moves to the "Publishing" column, Blue automatically creates subtasks for your social media team — "3 Facebook posts," "1 X thread," "2 YouTube Shorts" — each assigned to the right person with a two-day deadline. The beauty of this approach is that team members only see tasks when they're actually actionable, not when they're blocked or waiting on upstream work.

For teams coming from Asana's starter plan with its 250-automation limit, Blue's unlimited automations on every tier is a significant upgrade.

Wiki and Docs: Built-In Knowledge Management

Each project in Blue includes both a wiki and a docs section. The wiki functions as a single, always-available document that auto-saves in real time — there's no save button. It uses a capable text editor with markdown support, text highlighting, attachments, full-screen mode, and Giphy integration. Think of it as your project's living reference document where you keep important context that the whole team needs access to.

Docs, on the other hand, let you create multiple documents within a project. The editor is identical to the wiki, but you can maintain a library of separate documents — meeting notes, specifications, guides, or anything else that benefits from being its own standalone page. Recent docs are listed for quick access when you return to the section.

The distinction between wiki and docs could be clearer in Blue's UX — they use the same editor, and the difference is essentially "one persistent document" versus "many documents." But once you understand that mental model, both features serve their purpose well.

Built-In Chat for Team Communication

Blue includes project-level chat, which gives your team a space to discuss work without leaving the platform. The chat uses the same rich editor found throughout the tool, so you can format messages, attach files, and add emojis or GIFs.

Each chat instance generates a shareable link, which you can reference inside tasks or docs. One limitation to be aware of: chat in Blue is project-wide, not person-to-person. You can't DM a specific team member — all conversations are visible to everyone in the project. If your team relies heavily on direct messaging or needs channel-based communication with API integrations for monitoring and alerts, you'll still want Slack or a similar tool alongside Blue.

File Management and Storage

The file section provides a centralized view of every file uploaded to a project. You can upload new files directly, and each file supports sharing via public link, downloading, and previewing. Blue offers unlimited file uploads, though individual files are capped at 5 GB.

File sharing is handled through a toggle that generates a public link, and there's a preview system for images and other supported formats. The preview experience is functional but minimal — you won't find sharing options or file details within the preview window itself, which is a minor UX gap. Audio and video previews can be a bit unreliable.

For most teams, the file system works well as a project-specific document repository. It won't replace Google Drive or Dropbox for heavy media workflows, but for project assets, deliverables, and reference files, it's a solid built-in solution that means one less external service to manage.

Forms: Collect Data Directly Into Your Projects

Blue includes a form builder that lets you create public-facing forms whose submissions feed directly into your project boards. The builder uses drag-and-drop fields — start date, end date, custom fields — and maps to the same field system used in your tasks.

Each form can be configured to route submissions into a specific column. A suggestion form might feed into an "Ideas" list, while a support request form goes straight to "Pending Support." You can auto-assign new records to specific team members, apply tags to indicate the source, and redirect users to a thank-you page after submission.

Sharing options include direct links, embed codes for your website, and QR codes for print materials. The form styling is basic but clean, with customizable button colors and the option to hide Blue's branding. For teams that need a simple intake mechanism — client requests, feedback forms, support tickets — this eliminates the need for a separate form tool entirely.

People, Roles, and Permissions

Adding users to Blue is straightforward. Each person can be assigned a role — admin, client, or a custom role you define. View-only and comments-only access levels are also available, which is important for client-facing projects where you want stakeholders to see progress without accidentally modifying tasks.

The role system keeps permissions clean and makes Blue viable for agencies that need to give clients visibility into project status without full editing access.

Templates and Custom Links

Once you've configured a project with the right columns, automations, fields, and structure, you can convert it into a reusable template. This is essential for agencies and teams with repeatable workflows — set it up once, then spin up identical projects for each new client or initiative with a single click.

One thing to note: converting a project to a template removes it from your active project list. It becomes a template-only entity, so you'll want to make sure you're done with it as an active project before converting. Your custom templates appear alongside Blue's built-in templates when creating new projects.

Blue also lets you add custom links to the left sidebar. This is a small but practical feature — pin links to external services, client websites, or frequently accessed resources so they're always one click away within the project context.

AI Features: Smart Tagging and Summaries

Blue has integrated AI in a few meaningful places. The most visible feature is AI-powered tagging — select a batch of tasks, click the AI tag button, and Blue will analyze the content and apply relevant tags automatically. This is a real time-saver when you're onboarding an existing project with dozens or hundreds of untagged tasks.

AI summaries are also available at the task level, letting you get a quick overview of lengthy task descriptions and comment threads without reading through everything. These aren't revolutionary features on their own, but for a lifetime deal product, having any AI integration at all is forward-thinking. Most tools in this price range haven't even started thinking about it.

Final Verdict: Is Blue Worth It?

Blue scores a 7.9 out of 10. It's a remarkably complete project management platform that checks nearly every box: Kanban boards, automations, task management with subtasks and dependencies, built-in chat, docs, wikis, forms, file storage, calendar sync, reporting dashboards, AI features, and generous user limits.

The areas holding it back from the 8+ range are primarily design and polish. The interface is functional but could benefit from a UX refresh — a professional designer's pass would elevate the entire experience. There are occasional hiccups, like the file preview system freezing and some inconsistency between the wiki and docs concepts. The 5 GB per-file limit is reasonable but could be a dealbreaker for video-heavy teams.

For teams and agencies currently paying monthly for Asana, Monday.com, or similar tools, Blue represents significant long-term savings without sacrificing the features that matter most. The automation system alone — unlimited, on every tier — makes it competitive with tools costing ten times as much annually.

Watch the Full Video

Prefer watching to reading? Check out the full video on YouTube for a complete walkthrough with live demos and commentary.