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.

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.

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.

It was very good to us during 6 years.

Web used Active Collab during several years in our servers. The database structure is very simple and allow us to create dashboards with user data.

Lack of features like kanban and of user interface improvements during updates

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.

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.

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.

We have been using AC for five years to manage projects in an in-house marketing and communications team. Overall, we've been able to adapt the system to our needs. AC makes it easy to stay out of email for day-to-day tasks like assigning work, reviewing work, checking on project status, etc.

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

- 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".

Simple UI, even a stupid person may understand after simple guidance

I have tried multiple task management software for our company, But anyhow I was not satisfied with other product because of no option to manage workload or time and invoice calculation or somehow workflow is difficult for non technical user to use. Activ Collab has the most simple UI and Design. Only 1 or 2 days training will be sufficient for any users to understand it. Workload segment is really simple and most important functionality it have. And the support team is really great. Most importantly - it have self hosted options which is utmost priority for us for data security and privacy and also we can reduce cost for our users.

Android app needs improvement. It doesn't comes anywhere near to desktop web version.

The native features are very adapted to our uses, and we were able to add the missing features.Especially, time and budget tracking are good to have and

Not us directly, but our customers are sometimes disturbed by the UX, despite huge leap forward recently.We sometimes find it a bit slow in terms of performance - we host it so we may be to blame - and access to data (because we have a lot of projects and customers).

It organizes my life every day.

Solid options for organization and streamlining processes that even clients can be taught to use. As a creative agency selling our time it's important to communicate quickly and efficiently with our clients. A big part of that happens at the beginning of every project when they fill out a creative brief. We've used ActiveCollab to set up standard brief templates so AC asks all the questions and they go down the list and fill it out. The time tracker works great and is a painless way to keep track of time. Email notifications are great, especially being able to respond to comments VIA email really speeds things up. Support staff is great. Always available and helpful.

The invoicing functionality is great but is missing major sorting and display capabilities. For example, if I wanted to show each time entry with its note about what that entry was for organized by project, I cannot do that. My wife has also complained about the App not having a lot of functionality, but I have not used it much personally. I also think the 'Notes' 'Files' and 'Discussions' tabs are kind of random. Haven't found a good place for those in our workflows and they're confusing for clients. I realize it's a big thing to ask, but I'd also like to see some way of incorporating something like Slack into Active Collab, so we can move away from Skype completely.

It helps me organize a great number of projects as one-man business without losing more time than necessary.

It's amazing how flexible AC can be depending on a project's needs. It can serve as a simple reminder list with great speed and simplicity but also get fully blown up for projects involving production teams and clients at once. Compared to its competition it never feels like its dictating you to use it in a certain way, it just hands you a great bunch of options and lets you use them without interference. I use other products like dropbox and dropbox paper too and it all goes together really nicely. One thing to note is a personal and genuinely helpful customer service, there have been issues and bugs here and there (not many) and in 90% of the cases they were solved within short time. I think AC is great for freelancers and small project groups working remotely I switched from Basecamp and it was one of a relief.

I personally don't like the free limitations of users. I know there's a business model behind it but I hate to delete other clients/team members just to make room for someone else.

Control of project operations

In such a complex world, where the time and control factor in operations makes a difference, it is vital to have a platform that allows access to many tasks that, otherwise, would involve and coordinate many people, this type of tools allows us to save costs and reduce involuntary human errors, in everything that refers to the necessary coordination between all the members of the project. The calendar allows to have all the tasks, meetings, and filter the tasks by projects, and if that were not enough, all this can be complemented with the participation of the members remotely, so that it is possible to follow the general state of the proyects. In case of any problem, the support team is attentive to clarify your doubts, there are still elements that we have not had the opportunity to explore, but that, surely, according to our needs we will be using them to solve the growing demands of our organizations.

As with many platforms, the versions that are used in tables or smart devices show some limitations, in relation to those that are handled by PC, it would be very important to preserve and maximize the benefits when you have other devices and not limit the functions that, After all, knowledge or traditional devices for solving problems are not always available.

Despite its lack of communication tools and the limited number of tasks, it is one of the best software for positive business performance.

wow what software!!!. it allows me to increase my output and it motivates me and my team.

Unfortunately the number of tasks is very limited and there is no communication tool

ActiveCollab keeps us organized and on task. It's a great snapshot of our client work at any given point. We have many moving parts, and ActiveCollab allows us to really stay on target with our goals and on task with our clients.

I own and operate a company that specializes in creative strategy and marketing/PR services and this is a good fit for us. I spent many months and went through quite a few trials researching a software that had as many features combined that we were looking for. We settled on ActiveCollab and we're very happy with them. It's a great option without the price tag and disorganization the later versions that Basecamp brings. I like the customization features as well as the billable categories for tracking and reports. We work with contractors in our business and we like the ability to assign tasks and hide back office items from the client. Their customer service has been very responsive and helpful throughout our set up and we're overall very happy with the product and functionality for our needs. Overall good UX / UI.

We're finding the reports options are a little bit limited, however it hasn't been a huge issue. We're getting most of the data we need. We really wish we could assign tasks to multiple people, but that seems to be a common theme among these software options. I don't understand why as we have many tasks that are worked on by multiple people. This carries over into the time tracking app. If you aren't assigned a task, it won't show up in the time tracking app for you to track against. However the work around is you can add a time report in the desktop version after the fact to any task regardless of who it assigned to. The budget feature per project is nice, however, we wish we could break it down further by task list. Their great customer service has passed this along to the management and dev team for consideration so fingers crossed it will be coming in an update at some point.

Using ActiveCollab daily for over two years felt easy, but also like a chore sometimes. Doing things manually falls within one's job, and it offers good control over how things happen, but sometimes you just want to automate things exactly to your liking. The former describes using ActiveCollab better, but as mentioned, that is sometimes a good thing.

For all intents and purposes, ActiveCollab is awesome at doing what it advertises it's doing - project and task management, with easy-to-use, uncomplicated and effective tools. And really, especially on the task level, it is great and will save you a lot of time and brain power.

On the other hand, if you're the one to experiment with your software, look for ways to improve it in new and unexpected way, I hope you're not expecting a lot of success with ActiveCollab. It is a good piece of software, as long as you stay within its area of expertise. Otherwise, you're just stopped in tracks for the most of time, with little or no ways to go forward.

Increased project efficiency, improved client satisfaction through better scheduling, better communication, and giving clients open access to interact with us on project tasks (while easily limiting them from internal discussions they don't need to see). Saved time on recording project data and improvements/lessons learned, saved time invoicing thanks to time tracking and integration with accounting software, and have a centralised document store for internal use (apart from client projects) without needing to manage a duplicate access permission system.

Lots of detailed helpful features which don't complicate the interface but are great when you start using them. Customer support has pointed some out when I put in what we thought was a feature request... but it already existed and I'd missed it. Actively developed and continually updated without annoyingly changing things unnecessarily or 'fixing' anything that isn't broken.

Using Elastic Search as the only available search feature is limiting, as it's difficult to host and especially so in a shared hosting environment. Without Elastic Search, there's not even a simple text search available for project/task/comment description. There's a couple glitches that pop up from time to time but customer support has been responsive about them and some of our suggestions have been included as feature requests.

ActiveCollab is very easy to use. With just a few clicks, you can have a new project created right away. Time tracking, invoicing, payment processing and many other features add an already large depth of features.

Support is quite bad, at least for the self-hosted release of the application. There is no ticketing support system, and instead you have to chat with staff through the activecollab.com site to be able to get issues logged. You never get professional assistance through chat. They copy and paste your chat into their internal support system. You're then at their mercy to reply back via email. If and when they do write you back to your email address, be prepared for long followups to your replies. When features are broken in ActiveCollab, if a fix is not on their roadmap to get the problem resolved, it will take a long time, if ever, to get the problem fixed. Elastic Search is not a great feature for self-hosted AC builds. However, search has always been horrible with AC since it's early days.

We ended up transferring from ActiveCollab to Teamwork fairly quickly because it caused some business problems for us. Issues were missed (especially subtasks), and we lacked the reporting structure we needed to keep a good grasp of resourcing and individual task progress. The time logging structure was also a pain point compared to alternate software options we've since pursued.

While I will say I don't like much about this software, the budget and description location/transparency works well for the task workflow. It is fairly easy to include all necessary information in an individual task, but detail tracking and dependencies are where this ease of use falls off.

The relationship between tasks and subtasks is a pain point and lacks clarity/definition. Sometimes there would be dropoff when trying to upload attachments, and they would not actually post to the task. ActiveCollab doesn't have a great reporting structure (compared to Jira) for our specific needs, and that ended up being a hindrance to workflow. For as complicated as the reporting section looked, I felt it was lacking. While it isn't a functionality issue, I also dislike the visual design of the software - it feels antiquated and can be draining for such a frequently used tool. Time logging was difficult compared to the software we moved to later.

We have loved activeCollab since version 4. It is a valuable software, which really helps its users on a daily basis and is very flexible in its operation. We greatly appreciate his progress and are reassured about his future. Keep up the good work!

Very smooth operation in a team. It really helps to share information and make quick and concerted decisions.

The invoicing module is far too limited. Integration into QBO or other is not really a factor to be taken into account.

It's beneficial to have all the information, (i.e.tasks, back-log, etc) stored for future quotes. It helps the retrospect meetings to be able to see what took longer than anticipated or was not completed.

I can easily track time on each project. It also generates reports for time and budget. It's easy to see where we are on budget or if we're over budget. The tasks are all tracked and I can see who worked on which task. We have a 'status' of each project so we can see where it is in our process. Even after a project is completed, all the information is in there for future reference.

Some of our clients have difficulty using it or just refuse to communicate through this system. Sometimes there are so many people on the thread that it's difficult to determine who should be responding to the request.

I use this tool daily to assign tasks to the team. It is a good helper and in general I am satisfied with how the application works.

Creating tasks is easy. I can create subtasks, assign executors and deadlines.

I would like it if the subtasks also had a deadline.

Over the past 10 years I worked with several online project management, collaboration and accounting tools, including Basecamp, Harvest/Forecast, Freshbooks, Trello, Asana, Teamwork, Podio, Wrike, etc. Two years ago we started working with Active Collab, and it is the most comprehensive tool so far. Not everything is perfect yet, but compared to all other tools out there, it does the best job in modelling your business, enabling collab workflows and being on top of all projects developments. And it has a nice UX, which is very important if you work 8+ hours a day with an app/software/tool.

Covers almost everything you need for team workflow and managing (digital) project, nice UX, rich features, moderate price

Lacks a dashboard/cockpit, reports should be more flexible and easier to use, design of estimates and documents should be more flexible, billing options should be more flexible

It is an average tool that will get the job done for anyone that needs basic task and project management.

This tool is intuitive to use and had a pretty easy ramp-up period. Projects can be organized easily and tasks are easy to create and assign out. The comment function works well for tracking task updates and notes.

Does not have a task workflow built into it, and is not great if you have more advanced project tracking needs. The time tracking also needs improvement.

ActiveCollab has increased my productivity, my organisation and decreased the sheer volume of clutter that used to be on my desk

The ability to view information a variety of ways enables each project to be completed according to need. The flexibility of reports The fantastic customer service you can tell they put the customer first and genuinley care about you getting the most from the software The best thing about ActiveCollab however, is the ability to handle general admin tasks along side projects, something very few project managers allow for

The UI the software really needs a little colour, I know this is a little thing but I also know it is important to some people. Although the android app works well, I have a personal preference for seeing my task lists on a homescreen widget not having to access through an icon

ActiveCollab has a lot of potential because it offers great features, but it's very buggy and doesn't work properly quite often.

ActiveCollab has a ton of great features - tasks, messages, time tracking, etc. I like that you can have both internal and external teams and choose what the clients can and cannot see.

Different features break all the time. Time that you've tracked will be deleted with no warning, tasks will show up with the wrong due date, you won't be able to upload files to the message, etc. Customer Service is quick to *respond* to a support ticket but actually getting the problems fixed usually takes days or weeks.

The project management tool has many advantages and features. We've been using it for many years. A big advantage is the link with Slack and Google Drive. This gives us an optimal overview of every customer. In addition, our customers can create tasks independently and communicate with our entire team. Since the new version it is clearer and more intuitive. We can only recommend it and will continue to use it intensively.

The app itself is expandable and also the software for time recording is relatively unreliable. The recurring tasks should include more options.

+ faaast + intuitive, easy to use + almost everything that small company need in one place (projects, tasks, time tracking, expenses) + invoicing + 3rd party integrations (stripe, xero) <3 + did I mention that is fast ;) Highly recommended, not only for software development. It's highly configurable and as most of the things that you have to work on is "like a project" - you can use it everywhere.

After over two years, I see that lack of simple crm is probably only missing feature. You can use internal notes, but I don't feel it now.