Thanks for this post. I appreciate what you said about Vanilla Forums, which I am considering as an option for an academic association I am part of.
However, I checked out Wrike.com and it currently does not have a free plan, only a free trial and it has a limit on the # of users.
I currently use Zoho Projects, which I highly recommend. It has unlimited # of projects and # of users for a much lower rate per year, and it actually does have a free plan for hosting 1 project with limited file storage size (100mb). Plus, having a free Zoho account gives you easy access to 20+ free online applications. Read my review of using Zoho Projects as an educator. http://edurhetor.wordpress.com/2011/06/04/using-zoho-projects-as-an-educator/
