Microsoft Project Online Retires September 30, 2026, Ending PWA Access

ET CIO's 2026 Project Management Shortlist Sorts Tools by Delivery Style​

ET CIO's list covers Microsoft Project, Atlassian Jira, Asana, Wrike, Basecamp, Smartsheet, Zoho Projects, Oracle Primavera P6, monday.com and ServiceNow Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM). It does not say how the tools were ranked and does not describe any hands-on testing. Read it as a curated shortlist with positioning notes, not a benchmark.

The positioning is still useful because it sorts tools by how teams deliver work, not by feature count. ET CIO places Microsoft Project with Microsoft-centric, schedule-heavy planning and Jira with agile software teams running Scrum and Kanban. Asana, Wrike, Smartsheet and monday.com sit in the flexible cross-team work-management tier. Basecamp covers simple collaboration for small teams, and Zoho Projects is pitched as a cost-effective choice for SMBs and existing Zoho customers in India and APAC. Primavera P6 is framed as the standard for construction, engineering and infrastructure capital projects. ServiceNow SPM is for large PMOs tying portfolio funding to IT operations.

The guide's selection criteria are sensible. Match the tool to agile, waterfall or hybrid delivery. Weigh usability, because a tool people avoid pushes work back into spreadsheets and email. Check native connectors and APIs. Model total cost of ownership as seats and modules grow. Account for implementation, migration and regional support. Its seven-step rollout sequence runs from defining success metrics and mapping workflows, through stakeholder sponsorship, integration planning, and governance templates and permissions, to a pilot, phased rollout and adoption tracking. That is standard change-management advice. It doesn't come from a documented deployment.

The deployment rows are where the guide falls behind. Two of the ten entries describe options that are closing.

Microsoft Project Online Retires September 30, and the List Still Sells It​

ET CIO lists Microsoft Project's deployment options as "Cloud (Project for the web / Project Online) and on-premises Project Server." It prices the product as per-user cloud Plans 1, 3 and 5 plus Project Server licensing. Two of those names no longer mean what the guide suggests.

Microsoft's Planner team confirmed the first change on its Tech Community blog: "Project Online will officially retire on September 30, 2026." The retirement is narrow. This update is exclusive to Project Online and does not affect Project desktop, Project Server, or Planner. Microsoft announced the date a year ago, and announced this on September 5, 2025, giving organizations just over a year to plan their migration, according to Microsoft partner Advaiya.

The shutdown has been phased. Sales of Project Online-only SKUs ended on October 1, 2025. Advaiya reports that Project Online is still fully operational but in its final stretch, since Microsoft has already blocked new tenant creation from April 1, 2026. Some workflows broke even earlier. Construction software vendor Linarc notes that many stage-gate and change approvals built on SharePoint 2013 workflows will break even earlier, on April 2, 2026, when Microsoft removes them from existing tenants.

Customers still on Project Online face a hard stop, not a slow fade. The University of Toronto's enterprise applications group told its IT staff that after this date, Project Web App (PWA) sites and related data will no longer be available, and that Project Online users must plan and complete migration before this deadline to avoid data loss. Migration vendor Onplana goes further: "On that day PWA stops serving, the OData feed returns 410 Gone, the desktop client's sync breaks, timesheets stop, and the Enterprise Resource Pool becomes unreachable." Onplana sells a replacement platform, so its framing should be weighed with that in mind. Its central point, that data inside the scheduling database has to be exported before the cutover, matches the university's data-loss warning.

The guide's other cloud name, Project for the web, has already gone. BrightWork, a Microsoft project-management partner, reports that Project for the web retired in August 2025, with users transitioning to Planner for the web and Planner in Teams. According to the same source, the active Microsoft plan names are now Planner Plan 1, Planner and Project Plan 3, and Planner and Project Plan 5. A buyer asking a reseller for "Project Plan 3" today is buying a Planner-branded SKU. Per-seat pricing and whether a given plan is still orderable vary by country and purchasing channel, and ET CIO's guide gives no figures for its India and APAC readers, so get those from a Microsoft reseller.

What Survives: Project Desktop, Project Server Subscription Edition and Planner​

"Microsoft Project is ending" is wrong. The Planner blog states that Project desktop remains available and is not impacted by this change, and that Planner remains available and brings together Project for the web (premium plans), Planner in Microsoft 365 (basic plans), and To Do. BrightWork adds that the Project desktop client will remain available and supported, subject to the lifecycle rules of each specific version. Project Server Subscription Edition remains fully supported for on-premise setups.

One point needs care. The desktop scheduling engine keeps working, including critical path, baselines, and dependencies with lead and lag. But a desktop client configured to publish to a Project Online PWA site loses that back end. Microsoft says the desktop app is unaffected. Onplana says the desktop client's sync breaks. Both are true at different layers: standalone .mpp files keep working, and the connection to Project Online does not.

Microsoft partners describe three landing zones. Microsoft is moving customers toward Planner with premium capabilities, Project Server Subscription Edition, and Dynamics 365 Project Operations. Advaiya lists the same three. Here is how they compare:

Microsoft's stated reason is architectural. The Planner blog says its legacy architecture limits innovation and integration that enhance today's collaborative work environments, and Microsoft is prioritizing innovation within Planner, Microsoft 365 Copilot, and the Project Manager agent. If Copilot features in Planner are part of your reason to move, budget for them separately. Microsoft's product pages tie AI capabilities in Planner to a Microsoft 365 Copilot license on top of the Planner plan.

For readers looking beyond Microsoft, ET CIO's list is a starting point. Primavera P6 and ServiceNow SPM are the options closest to Project Online's portfolio role, and the guide describes both as quote-based with no public free trial. Smartsheet, Wrike and monday.com are closer to Planner's work-management model. ET CIO says ServiceNow SPM integrates with Microsoft Project and Azure DevOps, which matters for PMOs that want to keep desktop schedules. That integration list is ET CIO's claim, so check it in a pilot.

Jira Data Center's 2029 End of Life Reshapes the Self-Managed Option​

ET CIO lists Jira as available in "Cloud (SaaS) and self-managed Data Center for large enterprises" and names "scales from small teams to enterprise Data Center" as a strength. Atlassian's own licensing FAQ undercuts that. Data Center end of life for affected products takes effect on March 28, 2029, at 23:59 PST. On that date, Data Center subscriptions and their Marketplace apps expire and the products become read-only.

The wind-down has already started. Since March 30, 2026, new customers cannot buy new Data Center subscriptions or new Marketplace Data Center apps. A company choosing Jira Data Center from a 2026 buyer's guide will find it cannot, unless it is already an Atlassian Data Center customer. Existing customers can keep buying new Data Center subscriptions, Marketplace apps and expansions until March 30, 2028. Renewals cannot run past March 28, 2029, and 12-month renewals that would cross that date are prorated. Until then, Atlassian says it will provide technical support, security fixes for critical vulnerabilities, and connectors from Data Center to Atlassian Cloud.

The scope is specific:

• Jira Software Data Center, Jira Service Management Data Center, Confluence Data Center, Bamboo Data Center and Crowd Data Center are included, along with Data Center mobile apps and Marketplace apps for those products.
• Bitbucket Data Center is excluded, and existing customers get a Bitbucket Hybrid License covering both Data Center and Cloud.
• Jira Align Data Center is also outside the end-of-life announcement.
• Atlassian says it will offer extended maintenance beyond March 28, 2029 only by exception, through an account executive.

Atlassian also warns against running expired Data Center instances in read-only mode while connected to the internet, because security fixes stop after end of life. It recommends backing up historical data before subscriptions lapse. For regulated buyers, it says FedRAMP High and Impact Level 5 cloud environments will be ready to submit for authorization before the Data Center end of life. It also concedes that some data-sovereignty and classified-data requirements are still being worked out. For Indian and APAC enterprises that chose self-managed Jira for data-residency reasons, the real decision is whether Atlassian Cloud's residency options meet their compliance needs before 2029.

The Rest of the Field: Categories, Pricing Models, and the Unverified Numbers​

The other eight entries mostly hold up as category descriptions. Each gets a feature summary, an integration list, an audience and a pricing model, plus short pros and cons. Some examples:

• Basecamp's flat per-account pricing for unlimited users can be cheaper at scale, though it is light on Gantt scheduling and reporting.
• Smartsheet is the natural next step for teams outgrowing Excel.
• Wrike's strongest features sit in its Business and Enterprise tiers.
• monday.com's flexibility can lead to inconsistent setups.

These are editorial judgements, and none comes with measurements.

Most of these tools are cloud-only SaaS, which suits Microsoft 365 shops. The integration lists name Microsoft Teams, Microsoft 365 and Power BI for Asana, Wrike, Smartsheet, monday.com and Zoho Projects. Those are ET CIO's claims. Before you commit, confirm in a trial tenant that each connector does what you need, whether that's Teams tabs, Power BI data refresh or Entra ID sign-in.

Two numbers in the guide's introduction are best treated as colour. It says only 34% of organisations "mostly or always" complete projects on time and on budget, and that the project management software market will grow from USD 7.24 billion in 2025 to USD 12.02 billion by 2030. The first is attributed to a Wellingtone State of Project Management report and the second to a Mordor Intelligence forecast. Neither could be checked against its original source, so don't put them in a business case. The guide's closing forecast about agentic AI, digital twins and AI-driven resource allocation is a prediction, not any vendor's committed roadmap.

What this means for you​

If you run anything on Project Online, act this week. Everyone else can use ET CIO's list as a category map, as long as they check each vendor's deployment and licensing status before buying.

• Organizations with active Project Online PWA sites should export schedules, timesheets, resource pools and reporting data before September 30, 2026. Microsoft has announced no read-only period.
• Project desktop users with standalone .mpp files are not affected by the retirement. Desktop clients connected to Project Online lose that back end on the same date.
• Buyers reading "Project for the web" or "Project Plan 3" in any 2026 guide should translate them to Planner and "Planner and Project Plan 3," and price Microsoft 365 Copilot separately if they want Planner's AI features.
• Teams that need an on-premises Microsoft option should evaluate Project Server Subscription Edition. Project-based businesses that need financials alongside delivery should look at Dynamics 365 Project Operations.
• New Jira customers cannot buy Jira Software Data Center. Existing customers should treat March 30, 2028, as the last date for expansion purchases and March 28, 2029, as the date self-managed Jira becomes read-only.
• Enterprises in India and APAC should get region-specific pricing, data-residency commitments and local support terms in writing from each shortlisted vendor, because the guide gives none of these.

ET CIO's guide gets the broad shape of the market right: scheduling engines, agile trackers, flexible work platforms and portfolio suites each have a place. But deployment models are changing faster than annual buyer's guides are updated. Microsoft closes Project Online on September 30 and moves its cloud project management into Planner. Atlassian has put a 2029 end date on self-managed Jira. Whichever tool you pick in 2026, confirm that the edition you're buying will still exist for the length of your contract.