ActiveCollab

RATING:

4.5

(396)

About ActiveCollab

ActiveCollab is a project management solution for creative professionals. It offers cloud-based subscription plans or a self-hosting license. Projects are split into tasks and subtasks. Tasks can be filtered by the due date, assigned users, or custom labels. Dependencies between the tasks can be set, so there’s always an exact order of tasks. Automatic rescheduling allows for the child tasks to follow the change made to the parent task automatically. Tasks can be viewed as a timeline (with shown dependencies), a kanban board, a calendar, or a list. Users can track time and budget spent on each task, set hourly rates, send invoices directly from a project, and export reports. Automatic reminders for clients can be set when payments are overdue. ActiveCollab offers a p...

Awards and Recognition

FrontRunner 2021
Software Advice's FrontRunners report ranks top products based based on user reviews, which helps businesses find the right software.

ActiveCollab Pricing

Plus: For smaller teams that need a platform for collaboration and managing projects. Annual Billing: $9.5 for 3 members / per month Monthly Billing: $11.00 for 3 members / per month Pro: For teams and companies that need to overview the entire workflow in one place. Billed per member. Annual Billing: $8.00 per member / per month Monthly Billing: $9.00 per member / per month Pro+Get Paid: For teams that need to track time, organize, and invoice their projects. Billed per member. Annual Billing: $11.75 per member / per month Monthly Billing: $14.00 per member / per month

Starting price: 

$11.00 per month

Free trial: 

Available

Free version: 

Available

ActiveCollab Workload is a visual resource management tool built for agencies and creative professionals
Slide 1 of 5

ActiveCollab Reviews

Overall Rating

4.5

Ratings Breakdown

Secondary Ratings

Ease-of-use

4.5

Customer Support

4.5

Value for money

4.5

Functionality

4

Most Helpful Reviews for ActiveCollab

1 - 5 of 386 Reviews

Ricardo

2 - 10 employees

Used less than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra
This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you.

OVERALL RATING:

5

Reviewed September 2021

Palaciobox using ActiveCollab

User Profile

Sinoun

Verified reviewer

Internet, 2-10 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra
This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you.

OVERALL RATING:

5

EASE OF USE

5

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

4

Reviewed December 2018

Great, but a lot of improvements can be made.

Overall, I like ActiveCollab, but I want to so bad love it more. There is a lot of potential with AC and room for improvement, and I really hope they listen to people's suggestions and needs! Either way, I do highly recommend ActiveCollab, especially if you're a web designer like me who manages hundreds of sites.

PROS

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.

CONS

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.

User Profile

Jolie

Verified reviewer

Consumer Goods, 51-200 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra
This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you.

OVERALL RATING:

4

EASE OF USE

4

VALUE FOR MONEY

4

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

3

FUNCTIONALITY

4

Reviewed August 2019

Active Collab makes working together simple

My team is spread across the country and Active Collab allows us to work together on projects seamlessly. Our outside partners are also able to work with us easily.

PROS

Great tool for managing complex projects with multiple stakeholders Pretty robust feature set Simple to access and easy to invite collaborators in & out of my company

CONS

Upgrades have been a bit buggy and while the team are responsive, they don't always believe that they've broken something

Reason for choosing ActiveCollab

Pricing and features

Reasons for switching to ActiveCollab

Better features competitive pricing All around, Active Collab is a more flexible tool that is easier to use

Anonymous

2-10 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra
This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered

OVERALL RATING:

3

EASE OF USE

3

VALUE FOR MONEY

2

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

2

FUNCTIONALITY

3

Reviewed April 2021

Good choice for a basic project management tool but lacking when compared to Basecamp

ActivaCollab is still at the initial stage in terms of features even though they have been in the market for a couple of years. It serves our initial purpose of tasking team mates and tracking task conversation and progress but not more than that. Based on that, our usage is limited to basic tasking and we are considering and exploring migrating to a different system.

PROS

Onboarding is easy, interface is easy to use and understanding. It's also one of the cheapest option in the market. For features that are not available, the ActiveCollab team is keen to consider adding that feature though during our usage, we didn't really see the feature being rolled out.

CONS

I used to use Basecamp and when compared, there are a lot of features that are lacking in ActiveCollab such as being able to create a Gantt timeline, quite messy grouping of projects on the main home page, not able to add vendors (only can add clients, yet we do not use ActiveCollab to collaborate with clients). As a project management tool, we also would like to see how we can gauge the workload of each team mate and if each team mate might be overload within the day or week, this function at the moment is not available. Completed tasked are being archived and under archived, the completed tasks are not organised according to task list. Some features such as invoicing and budget management cannot be adopted by finance team as they uses a more advanced thou legacy system which includes a whole lot of other functions on top of merely invoicing.

Vendor Response

Appreciate the detailed feedback shared! We would recommend you to reach to our support teams to schedule a Calendly meet as we might have some workaround options to share with you that might help organising your work.

Replied July 2021

Anonymous

1,001-5,000 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra
This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you.

OVERALL RATING:

4

EASE OF USE

5

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

5

Reviewed November 2020

Self hosted or hosted, an excellent team tool

We have a global team that work on projects together, ActiveCollab keeps us progressing them. We also use it for collaboration, requests and idea sharing.

PROS

We tried many alternatives, but the simplicity and the ability to self host won us over. Task lists, Kanban Style boards, Time tracking, Notifying and Assigning all work well.

CONS

I feel the file sharing (or at least referencing a file you have already uploaded) could be simpler. Apart from that we're really happy.

Reason for choosing ActiveCollab

Primarily the ability to self host, and have a large team accessing without paying by user per month.