ActiveCollab

Vorteile

Before I decided to go with ActiveCollab a few years ago, I researched and tried all the project management softwares I could find. I ended up going with ActiveCollab for a number of reasons.

One, their interface is simple, practical, and easy on the eye. I found other project management softwares trying to hard and it essentially complicated simple things. Also, I loved how my projects can be displayed and searched. I know this sounds trivial, but when you manage hundreds of projects (websites), I need an interface that works for me. Their interface works perfectly for someone with my needs. I constantly have to go back and forth on so many notes for projects and ActiveCollab has made it user-friendly for me to do this.

Second, ActiveCollab had awesome customer service when I had any issues or questions. This was a big plus because I then knew I was in good hands.

Third, they had some add-ons other softwares didn't have so it was nice to have features I wanted to use all in one place, like time tracking and invoicing.

Fourth, it was reasonably priced.

Nachteile

While I went with ActiveCollab, I am still frustrated with some of their features:

One, I use notes A LOT. Their notes interface design looks like something from the 90's.

Two, while they have the invoicing option available, it's sub-par. There are a lot of things they can improve with their invoicing. I wish I could use it, but it's just very limited. An example of a limitation is that you can't even enter or send an invoice without "inviting" the client to join ActiveCollab. I tried testing an invoice by putting an email manually because they claimed you could, but nothing gets sent, unless I "invite" someone into my account. This is silly. Another issue I have with the invoicing is that it shows "Active Collab" as the sender and you do NOT have the option to change this. Kinda stupid.

Three, you only have a measly 3 ways to categorize or filter projects: Client, Category, and Label. This can be very limiting depending on what you're doing.

Vorteile

I really appreciate the simplicity and the power behind the features it delivers. On the surface, it offers just a list of tasks me and my team manage throughout our design and development process, but under the hood it offers task dependencies, estimates, time tracking and many other cool things that make it deceptively powerful.

Nachteile

Probably the speed of the app on some larger projects. It's lightning fast for everything small to medium, but on larger projects it can take a while to load everything.

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen

Jira, Teamwork und Asana

Gründe für den Wechsel zu ActiveCollab

Asana is a bit confusing to get into, and it can really get expensive really fast when you need more powerful features. Teamwork was probably our second pick, bit it can be all over the place, not as elegant as ActiveCollab. JIRA is just a beast and we don't need that much complexity (and power) for our everyday development.

Vorteile

It is beautifully designed so initially it seemed easier to use and navigate.
It had a client portal and I could track my jobs and invoice/do estimates all from one place.

Nachteile

It has hidden fees. Everywhere it advertises itself as only 7.50 a month. - But using the MAIN FEATURES OF WHY I WANTED THIS APP is extra, like invoicing, time tracking and using the client portal. This was not made clear initially. The client service is terrible. I would ask questions but there response was really terrible english language - not what I would expect from an international app that everyone should be able to understand. Especially a client service person called Darla. Terrible and rude manners and unhelpful.!

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen

monday.com und ClickUp

Warum ActiveCollab gewählt wurde

I wanted a app that I could use to track my projects, my daily tasks, and has a timer. Plus I can send out cost estimates and invoices from and my clients can log into to track and make note of project progress and timeline.

Zuvor genutzte Software

Todoist und Asana

Gründe für den Wechsel zu ActiveCollab

Activecollab seems to be the cheapest option where I could managment my projects, finances and clients from one place.

Vorteile

Being able to:
- upload images and files into task discussion threads to facilitate easy review of work
- easily add and archive users
- run reports at the task, project, client, and user levels

Nachteile

- No integration with Microsoft Teams.
- Limited ability to manage user groups or fine-tune user permissions.
Most needed feature:
- The ability to mark notifications "unread" or "priority".

Vorteile

Time tracking. It's wonderful. We are able to track our time down to the specific task within projects. We can also label each project by client and bill clients based on the time we've specifically tracked for each task and project. All of this tracking also allows for reporting to our clients - down to being able to let them know how much time was spent on each task. Customer service is also amazing. One of our team members has made suggestions for new/alternate features/revised functionality, and things were updated fairly quickly! So good. Thank you!

Nachteile

I'd love to see the organization of the projects in a different way. Organized instead by client on the main page. The main page is otherwise less organized than I need it to be.