The simple way to evaluate PM Engine: from desktop trial to team rollout

Most self-hosted project management tools make you commit before you can even try them. Spin up a server. Install a database. Wire up a container stack. Only then do you find out if the tool fits your team.

PM Engine skips that step entirely.

It installs like a normal desktop app. No Docker, no database to configure, no server to provision first. You try it on your own machine, in minutes, and decide from there whether it's worth rolling out to your team.

Start on your own machine

Download PM Engine and install it like any other app on Windows, macOS, or Linux. There's no server to set up first and no network configuration to get through before you see the product.

A small tray app runs quietly in the background. It starts the local server for you, so you don't touch any settings you don't care about.

Open PM Engine in your browser, create your admin account, and you're in your first workspace. Start planning a real project. Build a backlog, move cards onto a board, get a feel for how the tool actually works, on your own, before anyone else needs to be involved.

Back up your work in one click

Your project data lives in a single database file on your machine. When you want a safety copy, open the tray app and create a backup.

That's it. PM Engine packages your database and any attached files into one archive. No separate backup tool, no manual file hunting.

Keep that archive somewhere safe. It's your project, portable and yours, whether or not you ever bring PM Engine onto a server.

Bring your team in when you're ready

Once you've decided PM Engine fits, move it to a place your team can reach: a server your company already runs, or a virtual machine on a cloud provider you trust. PM Engine doesn't ask you to change how your organization already hosts things.

Install PM Engine on that server the same way you installed it on your desktop. Then restore the backup you made earlier. Your projects, your boards, your cards: all there, on day one, on a server your team can reach together.

Invite your teammates, and you're working as a team on the same instance you started alone.

Keep backups running on their own

Once your team depends on PM Engine, don't rely on remembering to back it up. Schedule it.

PM Engine's backup command works with the scheduling tools your operating system already has: Task Scheduler on Windows, launchd on macOS, cron or systemd timers on Linux. Set it once, and a fresh backup archive lands on a schedule you choose, with no one needing to remember to run it manually.

Store a copy somewhere other than the server itself. That's the whole point of a backup: it should survive whatever happens to the machine PM Engine runs on.

The point of all this

Self-hosted tools ask you to trust them with a full infrastructure project before you know if you'll like the product. PM Engine offers a simple path.

Try it alone. Back it up with one click. Move to a server only when your team is ready to join you. That's the whole path, and none of it requires becoming an infrastructure expert along the way.