Project Management Software for Technology Startups in Manchester
Manchester's Northern Quarter produces a steady stream of new startups from its universities. Most of them start with a founder and a handful of graduates, not a finance department.
A graduate pipeline, and a very small founding team
Manchester's tech scene grew up without needing London, and a lot of that growth comes from the city's universities feeding graduates straight into local startups instead of the usual pull south. What that produces at the earliest stage is a founding team built from a handful of recent graduates and one or two more experienced hires, working out of a shared desk near the Northern Quarter with a product to build and not much runway to build it on.
That team is doing engineering, first hires, and the beginnings of marketing all at once, because there isn't yet a person whose whole job is any one of those things. The tools it buys have to work for whoever's wearing the hat that week, not for a department that doesn't exist yet.
ShipSprint's free tier runs 5 users and 2 projects permanently, which covers a founding team through its first product cycle without a bill. Past that, one subscription handles engineering, hiring, marketing and operations together, so a team growing out of Free doesn't also have to go shopping for four separate tools at the exact moment it can least afford to.
The workday itself reflects that same crunch. Nobody has time to read a whole project top to bottom before figuring out what to do next, so the workspace opens straight to "my day": today's items, a five-second time log, and one tap to say "I'm blocked", which pulls in whoever can actually help instead of a message that waits in a busy inbox.
What an early Manchester team actually needs
5 users and 2 projects, free permanently. No countdown, no forced upgrade the moment the product's actually shipping.
Engineering, hiring, marketing and operations each run on their own board and vocabulary, under one subscription, so a small team isn't juggling four vendors.
No onboarding call, no configuration project. A founder or first hire can have a working board up before the first standup.
Decisions and context sit next to the work, with page history, so a new graduate joining the team doesn't have to reconstruct reasoning from a Slack scroll.
Everyone opens to "my day": today's items, a five-second time log, and one tap to flag being blocked, pulling in whoever can actually help.
Watching every line, without pretending to be bigger than you are
A lot of software aimed at growing teams is priced for the company a founder hopes to become, not the one that exists today. Per-module add-ons, a minimum seat count, a sales process built around a budget a six-person team doesn't have yet. That mismatch is exactly what makes early hiring decisions harder than they need to be, since every new tool competes with the next hire for the same limited cash.
ShipSprint charges per seat, with time logging, the wiki and forecasting included at whatever plan the team is on rather than sold separately. A team of five pays nothing. A team of fifteen pays for fifteen seats and gets the same product underneath, not a scaled-down version that quietly nudges them toward a bigger plan.
ShipSprint is built by Quantuva Technologies Pvt. Ltd. in India, and billed in rupees, which is a fact about invoicing rather than a claim to a Manchester office. Your card converts at your bank's rate on the day, the same as any other overseas subscription, and prices shown exclude any tax that applies on your side.
A graduate hire's first month shouldn't come with the feeling of being watched on top of everything else that's new. Nothing here logs keystrokes, captures screenshots or tracks activity, on Free or any paid plan. A scorecard exists instead, built from delivered work and hours the person logged themselves, adjusted for leave, and it belongs to them, not to whoever's managing that first month.
Questions from Manchester startups
It's permanent. Up to 5 users and 2 projects, no expiry date, with the same underlying product a paying team uses at that scope. Plenty of Manchester teams run their entire first year on it.
Only what you actually need right now. Set up the engineering board first, and add a hiring pipeline whenever the first real recruiting push starts. Both live in the same subscription, so adding one later doesn't mean buying a second product.
No. There's no screenshot capture, no keystroke logging and no activity tracking. Time logging is self-reported and takes about five seconds, and each person's own scorecard is visible only to them, adjusted for approved leave.
Team is ₹299 per user per month, or ₹2,899 per user per year, up to 40 users. Business is ₹599 per user per month, or ₹6,499 per year, adding forecasts, scorecards, the owner command center, priority support and SSO, with unlimited projects. Every paid plan opens with a 14-day full-access trial, no card required. Details are on the pricing page.
Related pages
See it on your own work.
A workspace your whole company will actually use is 60 seconds away. No card, no risk, nothing to install.
14-day full-access trial · sample project included · no card required