Active Collab Software

The ability to create templates and clearly define the tasks for specific project is by far the best part of the software. That way when you start a new "Website Design" for an example, you can make sure all the tasks are already loaded in there and assigned to the right people right from the start of the project, making sure you don't miss out on anything. So, in general, organization

Pros

The best part of Active Collab is just how clean and minimal the program is. It is super easy to navigate the platform and figure out where everything is. I also enjoy the ability to send Invoices within it. I can't tell you how nice it is to not have to bug accounting to create a simple invoice that should only take a few moments.

Cons

The thing I like least about Active Collab is that you can't add emails to the platform in order to keep track of conversation topics. I understand the reason behind this might be because you can invite clients in to the software and communicate with them within it, however, I like the option of having both because some clients are more likely to email rather than to learn a new software and make notes and place comments within it.

Pros

Active Collab has been very helpful in keeping track of important tasks to complete on projects. You can divide up your customized board by project type and then inside projects you can divide up columns as well based on whatever makes sense to you. It was very helpful in prioritizing tasks and keeping up with what's coming next. It always felt good dragging the task to the complete column!

Cons

I wish there were a lot more functionality and integrations with the software. At times, the labeling function can be confusing. I also wish the active collab team was quick to update features.

Easy project management and flexibility

Pros

Easy view of tasks and milestones
Ganntt chart and its view
Email collaboration
Privacy and visibility settings

Cons

For any new fresh email, it should create a task automatically and assign to that project's manager.

I was using Active Collab to coordinate work of 25 people team across different countries. It was extremely easy to use, notify people about outstanding tasks as well as track the time they were spending on those. We also had a bug-tracking system that helped us properly manage all outstanding issues and during debugging process.

Pros

Ease of use

Cons

none, really

We migrated to Active Collab abount 2 months ago after attempting to work with Basecamp, Trello, and NutCache.

The combination of project management, team+client collaboration, time tracking, expense tracking, and project templates, API, and accounting add-on integrations made this hard to beat.

The UX is also the best that we've come across.

Pros

The combination of features, the API, the add-ons, permission management, project template creation, and UX.

Cons

We haven't found anything significant that we would improve about it so far.

Advice to Others

This is allowing us to manage software, mobile, and web application development projects with team of developers which very mixed experience. The ability to create templates has been invaluable. Permission management, and client or client+ users has been really helpful. Tracking time and expenses, project goals, tasks, and deadlines has been invaluable.

The platform is really well thought out and UX is WAY better than everything else we've tried.

The mobile app could use some work but its on its way.

I have implemented Active Collab at the beginning of January this year and I am absolutely excited to use it everyday. Its design is amazingly clean and it is so simple to use! Incredible! I love that all my freelancers got easily adjusted to it too. Moreover, I could implement my accounting system Xero which makes invoicing my clients super easy...

It would be great if we could "like" and "celebrate" comments in the tool to make it even more fun. Other than that: I love it and I recommend it to everybody! Thank you!

retainer-based clients where they are paying a fixed monthly fee for our services.

I would recommend Active Collab to any agency looking for a good overall project management tool.

Customer support is excellent and very fast in their response, which has made the learning curve much faster. But the software is easy to understand and with a few trials, you'll have your projects up and running on it in no time.. so far it's been so useful!

Pros

Ease of use. It's does all the basics very well, it's also very reliable.

Cons

Some features like check in and check out, desktop download would be great so we are not dependent on internet connection...

Advice to Others

Try it out with ONE project and see how easy it is, before moving everything on it...but it's a fast learning curve.

After trying a lot of PM tools, Active Collab works great for our company!
Very easy to use, fast and effective.
I really recommend you to give it a try (:

Pros

Task management

Cons

Some text formats, and file previews.
Improve the Gant view.

When we first started with Active Collab (2 years ago), we we're so excited by the offering. I had tried tons of PM softwares - Mavenlink, Wrike, Trello, Basecamp, 10,000ft, Podio, Asana, Paymo - you name it and I had spent a few weeks with it.

When we came into activecollab, we found it to be almost tailored to our exact needs. Project management with time tracking, project budgeting and estimating/invoicing features. It was the right amount of sophistication with each of these features where the software did the job well, but it also wasn't overkill.

Once we started using the product, we we're thrilled with the support. From basic questions to feature requests, we found that the team at ActiveCollab has done a great job of building the product and supporting it along the way. We're excited by the new features that are constantly being added which are meeting the demands of diverse teams - KanBan and Gantt style project management being two fairly recent additions to the software.

Overall, the software is very flexible. We are a small marketing agency and use it for tracking both project-based work as well as retainer-based clients where they are paying a fixed monthly fee for our services. We've found ways to make ActiveCollab accommodate both client types and have used it to manage a variety of project types - from events to website builds to multi-channel campaigns.

We've been thrilled with ActiveCollab, it's pricing model, and the overall feature set of the product. Yes, softwares like Mavenlink have much more robust resource scheduling, or basecamp having a better client-facing experience, but those softwares are also missing things. Or are ridiculously expensive! ActiveCollab is the perfect blend of features and price.

We moved from Basecamp to ActiveCollab and we couldn't be happier. We found that ActiveCollab had a lot of great features that you need to run an agency that other PM software just didn't have without additional 3rd party integrations.

And AC imported all our projects directly from Basecamp so we didn't have to start from scratch.

Ever since moving to AC it's been much easier to manage and track our time accurately ¿ and invoice for it too! AC does a great job at keeping track of what you invoiced and what you haven't.

It's nice being able to keep track of our entire team's workload. The workload report is one we use often along with the calendar. It helps us keep track of our capacity.

Communicating with clients is easy, as AC keeps everything centralized. Though it would be nice if clients had to tag at least one team member when they send a message or default to the project lead.

The overall interface is very simple to use for the most part. We do find it confusing sometimes when we try and do bulk actions, I tend to accidentally mark the task as completed instead.

I would recommend AC to any agency looking for a good overall project management tool. AC fits our needs well and that's what we like best about it. Overall I would say that if you are considering a project management software, you should definitely give ActiveCollab a try.

We looked for a long time at various project management tools and came back to Active Collab multiple times. The simplicity and ease of use are very welcome. Collaborating with and invoicing clients is easy and worked well. Clients would enter questions or feature requests as discussions. If this became work we would do, it was easy to convert those to tasks.

Simplicity can have a price ... in this case, there were a few pieces missing that we really wanted:
- create a defect or subtasks and estimate it separately
- see at a glance how much work was committed to for each "list"
- export data

I'm a user of Active Collab since version 4.x and with the introduction of version 5, I'm a proud user and contributor of this awesome tool.
With AC5 our company found a project management platform which supports all our activities by focusing on fundamentals and giving us great flexibility on how to manage our own workflows and integration with all our tools.
AC5 is helping us to reach our goals of efficiency, easiness and precise project management.
Hope it will keep improving! :)

I have been used this tool for one year now and it is perfectly fits my needs. It is easy to use, customer experience is great. Also our team easily switched from other project management tool and started to use it for our daily projects.

Pros

easy to use, very fast. Short time for team to adjust it.

I've been using this for about 6 years now, 4 at my employer's and when I opened up my own company went with it again. It's intuitive, and handles most functions that an agency needs, in one spot. I am able to use it well for internal team as well as managing freelancers, and adding them as needed.

Pros

Easy to use, intuitive, even for those not as familiar with it

Cons

Very minor, things like printing invoices or SOWs directly from system instead of downloading to my computer first

We use activecollab to manage all our projects between our studios in the U.K. and USA. It's enables us to work together smoothly and is so much easier than constant emailing. I love the ability to make our own tags to make it work for us.

Pros

Ability to customise tags.

Cons

Having to scroll to get multiple projects to load. Not being able to change tags from projects page but having to go into the project to edit. The licensing structure makes adding our next employee (number 16) a big price jump.

We landed on Active Collab after a long process during which we tried several competitor's products. As an advertising agency our goal was to have a slim, fast and complete system to manage our projects that range from small projects to national campaigns.
We use the self hosted version that was very easy to have it up and running with very thorough help from AC help desk.
One of its main pros is the price, in this range it beats hands down all the credible competitor.
Using AC has also allowed us to drop many other services we were using and concentrate all our communications and activities in one simple and friendly environment.

Pros

Price, features, ease of use

Cons

non the best GUI, somewhat confusing at time. The mobile APP ( we have android ) is still al long way from being useful

Advice to Others

Increase the number of integrations

With Active Collab we become an even better company!
Now we can have a full overview of all our projects in evey place at all time.
Our programmers love it and our managers are able to have a full overview.

Creative Outfit Inc. uses Active Collab to manage our Projects, Tasks, Hours, R&D and more.
It has been more functional, effective & affordable than everything else we've tried.
The Support is also helpful & communicative during any Troubleshooting we've done.
We use Active Collab in the Office & On-Location via the Mobile App.
It is simply the BEST!

Pros

The range of options in the Dashboard are great for any Start-up.
Our Managers & Staff use almost All of the Features.

Cons

I wish there was 'Subscription' driven Hour Tracking.
So we could balance Time against an Account that Renews every Month.

Advice to Others

The Hour Tracking around Subscriptions could be enhanced.

You should also Sell a White Labeled version. We would Buy it.

We've been in a search for a long time trying to find a PM tool for our design agency. We've tried Asana, Trello & Active Collab and trial each of them for some time. Active Collab was a huge winner. Tracking tasks, expenses, time & working with clients is simply astonishing and they've built user interface which is unbelievably easy to use. (If we take into consideration that most of the PM tools have the hard time to stay simple due to the huge amount of content).
Active Collab addresses the key issues in project management and brings your agency messy things into order!

Pros

The way how everything is built and organised. It's simple, and if you need additional features, you just add them via add-ons.

Cons

none