Scenarios where ActiveCollab works well 1) ActiveCollab works well for small teams specifically T&M teams.Its invoicing feature is unique & can make your life easy. 2) It is very easy to use & posses good range of filters like on the task list, we can drag/drop tasks, Filter by assignee's, tasks lists, due dates, or completed tasks. 3) It has some simple but awesome features like when you're in the middle of writing something i.e a comment on story and get interrupted, it retains what you wrote. 4) It allows you to tag team members in threads of comments to grab their attention, its really needed when teams are distributed. Thus helping team members to collaborate easily & stay on same page. 5) It integrates pretty well with other web apps like quickbooks , Slack, Trello, HubSpot, Zapier etc Scenarios where ActiveCollab did not work well 1) Tasks can not have multiple assignee's here so if two members are working on same task it did not allow you to reflect that. 2) Sorting capability is not their under invoicing 3) It did not work well for larger teams 4) Search option is not very detailed & you may end up wasting lot of time searching one particular bug or issue.
I would absolutely recommend Apptivo! We have used Apptivo for years, and we wouldn't consider another platform to keep all of our contacts together in one place. It's easy to export certain lists for certain mailings and to add/remove new contacts and move things around as needed over time. There's freedom to adding new contacts and the pricing is phenomenal
It isn't possible to set members of staff as part time, so if someone is unavailable on certain days you must manually enter them as OOO every single day that they are not in, that other teammates work. Hours also can't be edited individually - everyone is treated as working the same hours in a day, rendering capacity planner useless for flexi working teams
Subtasks cannot be assigned their own hours and deadlines, meaning the To Do list view can't be seen in actual date order and capacity planner does not reflect all time allocated to an individual's schedule unless every task is set up as a separate task rather than subtask
There is no way to see all tasks of a certain type across multiple campaigns (e.g all copywriting tasks vs all technical tasks) - support team suggested exporting data and making spreadsheets
Kanban view isn't available for people's own task lists ('board' view here shows a list)
Not possible to have one task be assigned to more than one person
Notifications are not sent when tasks are updated, so you have to leave comments and tag people each time
Without a doubt, the best thing about Apptivo is that it has become a perfect internal and external communication platform. This platform will allow you to know who is taking care of certain tasks with clients and control all projects with your clients. With very affordable plans for your pocket, it has a free version for up to 3 users. It far surpasses quite a few CRMs in the same category. Apptivo CRM allows you to customize many details and work with it does not consume time or resources. You are faced with a very comfortable software to use, simple and well designed.
We have not required support for ActiveCollab as it works pretty seamlessly. We didn't have any issues with using the platform or with any billing issues. The self-service aspect of the platform is robust and easy to navigate so we have not encountered any errors that required assistance from the support team.
Apptivo is always quick to respond whenever we have had a problem over out time of using the program. The customer service reps are always very polite and professional in their responses and are very knowledgeable! I have never gone to them with a problem that they don't do everything in their power to help solve, and most times they have (abbreviating states is the only issue we weren't able to solve).
If you are starting a business and want a free app or nearly free app that can grow with you....then apptivo could be for you. However if you grow faster than them then you will be quickly seeking alternatives
ActiveCollab is easier to use and simpler in its setup. It has the right mix of features and simplicity. It's also project-oriented which is important for our workflow. Other tools are often too task-oriented, making it hard to track projects. Overall, ActiveCollab has a great mix of simplicity with good features.
The price was right for what we needed to use Apptivo for (the CRM and the contact management/project management models). And, we needed something basic and easy to implement so we could get up and running with little down time. The other systems we evaluated didn't seem to have the exact pricing and features/functionality we were looking for so we made the determination that Apptivo would be the best fit.
