ActiveCollab Reviews

The lifesaver for efficient and hassle-free project management.

Comments: The truth is that I have found in this project management tool a complete and reliable solution to organize my work.

Pros:

I really like it. I found it easy to navigate the platform and find all the tools and functions I needed to manage my projects very efficiently.

Cons:

Well, I would like it to have more functionalities, for example having the ability to make video calls or share screen.

A simple Project Manager's review

Comments: Overall very smooth experience for me. Fast bandwidth. Bug free experience.

Pros:

Project view grouping and filtering with grid and table layout. This is a killer feature for my use case.Very simple yet comprehensive overall system design. This is important for me as my coworkers came from different backgrounds.Activity View is very effective to have an overall view on what's going on without wasting a lot of time.Mobile Application gets the job done. No bugs, no unexpected behavior.

Cons:

The optional GetPaid (invoicing and payment management) paid add-on is honestly not for me. It's a very nice and really good addition for more simple uses case like when we just started business, but It definitely needs more attention to fit our needs. We finally opted for a more specialized product to keep track of our finance.

Streamline Your Team Collaboration with ActiveCollab

Comments: Overall, my experience with ActiveCollab has been positive. The software is user-friendly and easy to navigate, making it simple to keep track of tasks and projects. The interface is clean and intuitive, and the ability to assign tasks to team members and set deadlines is a great feature. The dashboard gives a clear overview of progress, and the ability to integrate with other tools like Google Drive and Slack makes it even more efficient. The customer support team is also responsive and helpful. The only downside I have found is that the software is a bit expensive for the small business.

Pros:

One of the things I liked most about ActiveCollab software is its user-friendly interface. The interface is intuitive and easy to navigate, making it simple for my team to quickly access the features and tools they need to manage our projects. Additionally, the software is highly customizable, allowing us to tailor it to our specific needs and workflows. The ability to create custom workflows and labels helped me to stay on top of my projects and keep everything organized. Another feature that I liked is the ability to collaborate with team members in real-time and leave comments on tasks, which helped to streamline communication and keep everyone on the same page. Overall, ActiveCollab software is an efficient and productive tool for managing projects and teams.

Cons:

One of the things I liked least about ActiveCollab software was the lack of flexibility in customizing the interface. While the overall layout and design was user-friendly, I found it difficult to make small adjustments to suit my team's specific needs. Additionally, the reporting feature could be improved with more detailed and customizable options. Another downside was the limited integration capabilities with other tools and platforms. Overall, while ActiveCollab offers a solid project management solution, there is definitely room for improvement in terms of customization and integration options.

Not Just Project Management! Superior Time Tracking and Reporting for Clients Too!

Pros:

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!

Cons:

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.

Flexible, easy to use system

Comments: 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.

Pros:

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

Cons:

- 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".

It is a beautiful app but not that useful

Comments: It was nice in the beginning but I just soon realised I needed something with easier to use features and no hidden costs. Onces a app like this becomes too complicated to navigate or customise - you will not use it as you need to daily because of that hassle.

Pros:

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.

Cons:

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.!

Very easy to use but packs a big punch

Comments: Our overall experience is absolutely positive. We get to plan out our projects, go through them daily, track everything, and at the end exactly know what to invoice the client. It really covers all the basis that we need in our process and we love it for that.

Pros:

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.

Cons:

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.

Comprehensive Project management

Comments: Despite the above mentioned short comings (search functionality and date entry on estimates), overall Active Collab is a great asset to our team and our companie's ability to track all projects and billings in one place. We find it indispensable.

Pros:

Ease of use and implementation. Simple staff on-boarding and intuitive interface.

Cons:

Poor search function and lack of ability to enter a date on estimates... crazy that such a well rounded and useful software lacks a full feature search function and doesn't allow (nor even auto generate) a date field on the estimate form.

Simple and extensive

Comments: It was very good to us during 6 years.

Pros:

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.

Cons:

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

Great all-in-one solution

Comments: Our team manages all of our projects through ActiveCollab, and that includes budgeting, tasks, and time management. Without it, we'd be lost in a sea of emails and Slack messages.

Pros:

ActiveCollab is quite feature rich. We were able to consolidate multiple pieces of software into one.

Cons:

Some of the menus are hard to find and I'd really like to see a comprehensive calendar approach to tasks, vs just per project.

ActiveCollab is suitable for collaboration and tracking

Comments: The overall experience using ActiveCollab is smooth although there are some discomfort using the dashboard. The dashboard is something that need to improve.

Pros:

My favorite tool in ActiveCollab is the task management feature. I can easily track users and comment on their task progress. I can also estimate the duration for each task and make various planning with the project goal in mind. Furthermore, I can also add attachments like images and documents from my desktop. The invoicing feature is also something I like as creating and tracking invoice is straightforward and simple.

Cons:

One of the drawback of ActiveCollab is the lack of integrations with other apps. In addition, there are a learning which new users need to overcome. However, after conquering the learning curve it should easy to use. Another dislike is the dashboard which is not so user friendly.

Collaboration on the project and task level - ActiveCollab is the middle-of-the-road solution

Comments: 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.

Pros:

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.

Cons:

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.

Great Product, Bad Support

Pros:

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.

Cons:

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.

Cheap alternative of Basecamp for small team

Pros:

Timelines.

Cons:

Not reactive interface. Terrible iOS app.

Keeps getting better

Pros:

Active Collab is efficient, friendly, and structured just right for our team's work. The reporting, activity stream, project, task, and subtask organization are all well-calibrated for daily use to organize work and to report on projects.

Cons:

I wish AC integrated with Jira. Our development unit uses Jira, but the complexity means it's a no-go for our unit's daily use. The lack of integration means that sometimes members of our team have to ping-pong between both products, or fail to understand what's happening there. A preview of a Jira ticket in AC would be totally sufficient.

Pros and Cons of ActiveCollab

Comments: Although we have to wrestle with ActiveCollab on a regular basis, it does allow us to stay organized between projects and client communication. Something we would be unable to do through email alone.

Pros:

Working at an agency with 50+ people, where there are many moving parts and everyone wears a lot of hats, Active Collab allows us to stay organized and hold conversations in tasks, with or without clients. Tasks are easy to schedule, reschedule and conversate in.

Cons:

Overall, these are the issues we experienced with ActiveCollab on a regular basis: - The ActiveCollab timer erased logged time regularly - Documents were unable to be uploaded to tasks from time to time, which halted communication on certain topics - The customer service is very slow. If you're having an issue with the software, it takes weeks to resolve the issue - Sometimes the software is so slow or won't open for an unreasonable amount of time, ultimately wasting time

After extensive research, our team settled on AC for its simple interface and robust structure.

Pros:

- Simple, clean UI - Easy to learn - Clear structure (teams, projects, categorized task lists) that works well for us - Ability to sort things in the My Work list, so I can arrange my priorities for the week and then easily reorder things as tasks are completed. - Integrates well with Dropbox - Powerful customizable reports (ex. can easily see what got done in the past week on project A, or can get a clear portrait of what employee B did for the last month) Also, when you're in the middle of writing something (ex. a comment or a note) and get interrupted, it *retains* what you wrote (even if you didn't submit it and no one else can see it). This has saved me so much effort, since it's hard to juggle doing things with documenting them.

Cons:

- The Asana importer didn't work for me. This resulted in a huge amount of effort migrating projects and tasks by hand. - AC emails you every time you're added to a project, and you need to be part of a project to see what's going on in it - we use this for workplace transparency, so there are a lot of projects and the notifications are irritating - Can't easily transform a task into a project - The My Work interface doesn't automatically refresh when there's an update on one of my projects, so I can be in AC all day and still miss some notifications (unless I enable email notifications, which I dislike).

My favorite software for Project Management

Comments: It helps keep us on task and updated on day to day projects with our website programmers. This is the best tool i have found to stay organized.

Pros:

I love that you can create projects and upload content & give explanation of the project as well as tag different contacts for responsibilities. This helps us keep so organized!

Cons:

I have no issues with anything using Active Collab.

Great features when they work.

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

Pros:

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.

Cons:

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.

I have been an advocate of Active Collab and I have been taking it with me with every new company

Comments: It's a great contractor\agency tool. But you don't have to be an agency, its great for in-house too

Pros:

Easy to use, affordable, logical, logical, really helps. The latest version has greate GUI and I have been using this tool for last 4 years. I first used it at Xivic, then took it with me to Get My Auto, Everything Online, Digital Advertier, and now my own consulting firm.

Cons:

I wish it would connect to other project management tools such as basecamp, asana, etc. I work with many contractors and vendors and if I could do everything in active collab, then it would create a ticket in their platforms, it would be awsome.

Used well, this is all you need to keep an eye on business

Pros:

I like the fact that everything is contextually linked, you can dive into a task from a calendar, report, email - anything really. As a manager it's great for checking workload and distributing tasks efficiently. I've been using ActiveCollab for a while now in different organisations, so much so I recommended we get the self-hosted version.

Cons:

The inability to email direct to other modules like conversations and files unlike Basecamp which does allow it. That and not being able to add tasks from the calendar. That would be awesome.

Could of been great

Comments: It's run's our agency and we want scheduling integrated but, it's not being supported.

Pros:

New version is clean and nice, posting old data from hosted versions is simple. Almost hit's it out of the park fopr use in any ad agency.

Cons:

It's no longer supported. We looked to invest a bit of $ to move from a self-hosted to their cloud for AC3 and the support response was crickets. They have a scheduler but, it is not for hourly limits, jsut due dates. If you are trying to schedule against hour constraints you'll need to look elsewhere.

Active Collab Has upgraded our operation of business to a more professional standard.

Comments: Organization and follow up on projects to make sure nothing gets lost between the cracks.

Pros:

Active has been amazing for our company, the ability to create tasks and sub tasks for each of our client projects has organized our way of operation. We can then assign each task to its appropriate department and assign who needs to work on it. Furthermore, we keep track of notes and discussion added to each tasks. Recurring tasks is also something very useful. Active Collab is the best thing that happened to us!! We've been advising many clients to start using this software.

Cons:

One thing is that the 'Search' option is not very detailed..

Excellent project management program. Have used several and we chose ActiveCollab.

Comments: Changed the way that we manage projects and tasks. Really increased visibility for teams about where their projects are, who is responsible for items, and what needs to happen to move forward.

Pros:

Very intuitive and easy to use. Has most of the features of the larger competitors. Being able to self-host was a key consideration for our industry, most others are only cloud based. It makes managing projects and teams very easy, and everyone can see what is happening in real-time.

Cons:

Don't have many dislikes. Would like to see more flexibility with the time and expense tracking, as well as more admin control over notifications and preferences.

Easy to use tool that works smoothly.

Comments: Our company's organization and productivity increased greatly.

Pros:

ActiveCollab is really easy to use and on top of all it works really fast and smooth. We used to use JIRA for our project and task management but compared to it, AC is way faster and really better overall for managing a lot of smaller projects. Also, the option choose to see task lists in Lists or Columns is an amazing feature that gives you a lot of flexibility.

Cons:

When the internet connection is not good, some pages seem to never load. Also, sometimes the Timer application is a bit too generous when logging work hours.