Free, full-PMBOK project management — WBS, Gantt, Earned Value, risk registers, a governed knowledge base and grounded AI. Charter to closeout, built in the open, no paywall. Plus a free Learn PMP course.
VanillaPM began with a frustration: the tools that truly teach project management are locked behind enterprise pricing, and the affordable ones teach you nothing. So one developer spent three months building the platform he wished existed — the full PMBOK 8th-edition lifecycle, charter to closeout — and made it free. No trial, no seat limits, no paywall. The vision is bigger: a teaching business suite where a student, a freelancer, or a small NGO can run a real project (and learn how) in one place. We build in the open and share the numbers — the wins and the flops.
Our stack
Django + Django REST Framework on PostgreSQL, with Celery (worker + beat) for scheduled jobs and notifications. The frontend is server-rendered Django templates progressively enhanced with Alpine.js — no SPA. Files live on Cloudflare R2 (S3-compatible); rich text via TipTap; full-text search via Postgres. Containerised with Docker, deployed on a modest VPS via Coolify, with GitHub Actions CI running 2,000+ automated tests and a coverage gate on every merge. Built solo, branch-per-task, with formal change control — dogfooded as a VanillaPM project.
