Project Management Software for Technology Startups in Chicago
Chicago's startups often sit next to trading firms, insurers and logistics operators that have run technology budgets for decades. ShipSprint's free plan is sized for the five-person team, not the department it's pitching to.
Selling into a city of much older budgets
A surprising amount of Chicago's technology work happens inside companies whose core business isn't technology at all, trading firms, insurers, logistics operators, decades into running their own IT departments. A young startup selling into or spinning out of that world inherits none of the budget or process those companies take for granted, but it's still expected to show up looking organized, roadmap and cost-per-sprint included, on the same day it's still figuring out who owns hiring.
That's the ordinary Tuesday for an early Chicago team: four or five people, each doing more than one job, with no spare hours to configure a workflow builder sized for a department twenty times their headcount, and no budget for a tool sold in add-on tiers.
ShipSprint's free plan runs five users and two projects, forever, on the full product, billed in rupees by a company based in India, a plain fact about the invoice rather than a claim of local presence.
What a vendor-review-ready startup actually needs
None of this needs a department's headcount to be useful.
Forecasting, the wiki and time tracking are included at five users and two projects, permanently, matching what a Business customer pays for. Upgrading happens only once those numbers are genuinely outgrown.
Engineering, HR, marketing and operations keep their own templates and vocabulary on the same account, so a founder covering two or three jobs isn't also reconciling four software invoices.
A new workspace opens with a sample project already loaded, so there's a real board to work from immediately, with no procurement process standing between signup and first use.
Early-stage decisions get revisited often, especially when a startup is trying to sound credible to a much larger prospective customer. The wiki keeps that reasoning next to the work it affects, with page history.
The first thing on screen after login is today's list, followed by a quick way to log hours and a single tap for "I'm stuck," which pulls in whoever can actually clear it, context included automatically.
Free that doesn't quietly turn into a sales call
A lot of the tools a founding team tries first offer something called free that's really a two-week trial, or a seat cap tuned to force an upgrade before the second sprint ends. ShipSprint's Free plan has no expiry date. Five users and two projects run indefinitely on the exact product a Business customer pays for.
ShipSprint is built by Quantuva Technologies Pvt. Ltd., based in India. Billing runs in rupees with an invoice for each charge, and there's no Chicago office. For a founding team selling into or working alongside larger, audited businesses, every workspace is an isolated tenant, admin actions are logged, and the workspace exports as JSON on demand, useful if a prospective customer's vendor review asks for it. See pricing for current numbers.
Crossing five people or two projects moves a team to Team at ₹299 per user per month, a number built around a founder's budget rather than a trading desk's. Business brings forecasts, scorecards, the owner command center and SSO into the same subscription for ₹599 per user per month, either payable annually once that's simpler to reconcile.
Questions from Chicago startups
No. Five users and two projects run on the Free plan indefinitely, on the same underlying product as Team or Business, with no time limit attached. You move up only once your team or project count genuinely outgrows those numbers.
You're billed in rupees, by card or invoice, with a receipt provided for every charge, standard SaaS mechanics otherwise. The main practical effect is price: per seat, it tends to run at a fraction of comparable US-market tooling. See pricing for current figures.
Not for setup, but it helps for diligence: every workspace is an isolated tenant, admin actions are logged, and the workspace exports as JSON on demand, which tends to answer a prospective customer's basic vendor review directly.
No. No screenshots, no keystroke logging, no activity tracking. Scorecards reflect delivered items and logged hours, visible to the person they describe, adjusted for leave.
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