ActiveCollab vs. Basecamp vs. Clockify

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.

Incentivized

Basecamp is a wonderful tool for teams of varying degrees of technical knowledge, teams managing lots of different types of "agifall" and waterfall projects, and teams that are remotely distributed. It's probably less useful for more strictly agile-focused development teams, compared to other more flexible software applications like Jira and Asana.

Incentivized

Clockify is an easy 10 over 10 recommendation for me. I would recommend this anyone especially if they're required to track their time and productivity while on the job. Office workers, tellers, bankers - any desk jobs really can very well use the awesome features of Clockify to the fullest extent. It is easy to use, very simple to set up, and doesn't require that much resource from your computer for up-keep

Incentivized

• Great for project and task assignments, project workflow and communications.
• Solid web-based platform that doesn't require software downloads, also includes great mobile platform.
• Great reporting tools for managing billing, estimating, project workflow and other essential project details.
• Allows for both the agency and its clients to interact on a single platform using role-specific permissions.

Incentivized

• Task management - It is very easy to add, organize and discuss tasks within Basecamp's interface.
• The "Campfire" function is great for communicating when you just have a quick question for someone on the team.
• Notifications - Basecamp lets you decide how often and about what you'd like to be notified. The ability to respond to messages in Basecamp directly via email saves a lot of time.

Incentivized

• Clockify records exact times on a per project basis when you click Start/Stop.
• User interface is very easy. It is easy to add a project on the fly, change the times I just recorded if I forgot to click Stop for example. The interface is intuitive and gives me the flexibility I need.
• Reporting gives me everything I need from times, hours per project, billable or not, per client and any tags I've created. This provides enough flexibility for many different use cases.

Incentivized

• 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

• High Learning Curve. It's true that it can be easy to use, but to use well and effectively takes some time to learn. It's recommended to have an agreed-upon system in your team of what tools to use and when.
• Notification Overload. If people aren't careful they could send a notification to everyone when only a couple people were meant to be prompted. And since emails are sent by default, you could have your mailbox overloaded with unnecessary updates. This is where it takes a bit of training in your team to have an agreed-upon system.
• Lack of organization with Archived Projects. I will often need to reference an archived project to make a new one, but there is only a list of archived projects in alphabetical order, with no way to organize by archive date, or even search.

Incentivized

• In general, manuals or how to use instructional videos are always welcome - just covering the very basic are very good to get everyone up and running.
• Maybe work on your scalability - the main reason why we switched to a different provider is because the company was ramping up and the competitors have more features that come with not just time and productivity tracking.
• I always like the classic blue and white pallets on the app but sometimes I just wish there's more option to customize how it looks just to give it a little more flavor.

Incentivized

When I bring new people onto a project, it's immediately obvious how to use Basecamp. I don't have to worry about teaching them the features or walking them through it, it's just incredibly user-friendly. For this reason, I'll continue to renew my subscription even as new people are brought onto production jobs or the client changes.

I'm using the free version at the moment and loving it. What a great product, easy, responsive and has better up time than Yahoo Mail. :) What isn't there to like?

Incentivized

It is easy to use, even for clients who have no experience with the platform. It can only get a little cumbersome to ensure that a client can't see certain documents you might want to keep in the Docs & Files folders. And sometimes, getting a client to actually use an unfamiliar platform can be a challenge.

Incentivized

Very affordable, accessible and simple. For this very reason I would say, it culminates to Clockify being very beginner and start-up friendly. It is its strongest suit after all, and this is the main reason why I would recommend this to anyone. I am very thankful for me ex colleague who recommended this to me, we're no longer working together but I still hear that he's still using Clockify to this very day on his own business

Incentivized

I've never experienced downtime while using Basecamp, or been unable to access it when I needed it. That's not to say they've never had downtime, but I've been lucky enough not to encounter any, and I work odd hours, including late nights when maintenance is often undertaken.

Incentivized

I have never had an issue logging in or it not being available. I use Clockify every work day during the week, frequently starting/stopping projects. I've had past experience with other systems that suddenly aren't usable for an hour and that is something I have never experienced with Clockify. They are doing something right on their backend. Nice job, Clockify folks

Incentivized

I already mentioned how it feels light across the wire. Pages load fast in the web browser. I have not tried the browser plug-in nor the mobile app. I give it a 9 instead of 10 as the desktop app seemed to hesitate when I clicked the start/stop of a project/task

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

For the many reasons I've given, Basecamp is a very strong program. There are a few features I can imagine that might make it even better, but I don't have a basis for comparison to be able to say that there is definitely a better one out there. I've noticed that Basecamp has evolved a bit from the time I started using it until now, so that makes me think that the producer of this program values it and believes in continuous improvement. If you could use the features offered by Basecamp, I would think you could use it with confidence.

Incentivized

I dealt very little with customer support because Clockify is so easy to use. That being said, the few times I did, I got fast responses and any issues that I did have were solved in a very fast manner.

Incentivized

Decide the process before implementation - i.e. when it's due 8/9 does that mean 8am, noon, 5pm, 11:59pm? Check your to-do list frequently Set-up templates - just not with the dates (they can be funky)

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.

Incentivized

Pretty good, but [Basecamp] has its drawbacks. Honestly I find the interface non-intuitive and sometimes have trouble figuring out how to change the status of a task. Perhaps it has something to do with the way it was originally set up by the admin, but I'm not sure. I liked Jira's drag and drop obvious functionality, but the project management side of the software was lacking. Smartsheet has excellent project management functionality, but the task management isn't as good.

Incentivized

Harvest is very similar to Clockify. The only difference is that Harvest also has an invoicing and billing system built into it. So if you're billing your clients based off of time directly, Harvest may be a better option as far as that goes. Of course, Harvest only has minimum billing increments of 6 or 10 minutes, there is no 10-minute option so that's something where Clockify has them beat. They are both very easy to use.

Incentivized

Because it feels light on the wire and runs so smoothly with great up-time. I have to assume that the same is true as it scales. I'm a single user so maybe I don't see if there are any scalability issues. With the way it seems architected to run so quickly across many platforms (desktop, mobile, web, browser plug-in), I have to think that it is using recent technology that provides scalability options

Incentivized

• Allows our team to stay organized and keep conversations on tasks.
• The To-Do List email every morning helps me mentally prepare and know exactly what I should be doing as soon as I start work.
• Powerful and useful integrations save lots of time (Google Drive, Slack, Dropbox, Zapier and more!).

Incentivized

• It has saved me time when having to get the same message out to multiple restaurants
• It has helped us make smarter operational decisions because we can all collaborate on an answer in a shorter amount of time (instead of calling a meeting!!!)
• The calendar function allows us to plot out our marketing agenda for the month and add/change it together as needed. The chef will post his recipe, the managers will cost it out, the social media manager will post pictures on it, and ultimately we will get that information out on an info sheet to the staff by printing the page.

Incentivized

• The free plan really did everything we needed for the 6 months or so we used it. Without Clockify, we would have had to pay roughly $40+/month for a software tool.
• When we upgraded to the paid version, it was still only $10/month and helped us be able to have minimum billing increments which is a huge monetary increase.

Incentivized