Roadmap/Timeline

I'm looking to create a roadmap/timeline that pulls from an excel spreadsheet that houses the raw data. I have tried the Microsoft Gantt chart but it isn't the most user friendly and certainly not the most visually appealing. I have an image below showing how it's been created in the past using just Excel but as you likely know, it's a completely manual process that I'd like to automate. Please note, this is just a quick mockup and not the actual roadmap and would typically have a lot more info on it. Any ideas or tips/tricks would be greatly appreciated! If I left out any needed info, please let me know. Ideally, I would add a drill-down feature so you could select the project on the roadmap and drill-down to get project costs, etc.