Active Collab is a project management solution built around features such as task management, collaboration, time tracking, and invoicing.
$8
per member/per month
Basecamp
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Basecamp is a web-based project-management tool. Basecamp offers features standard to project management platforms, as well as mobile accessibility, unlimited users, and 3rd party integrations. Basecamp is priced by space requirements and concurrent projects.
$15
per month per user
Deltek Vision (legacy product)
Score 7.4 out of 10
N/A
Deltek Vision is enterprise resource planning (ERP) software for project based companies. It is a legacy product, and has been superseded by Deltek Vantagepoint.
We chose Active Collab overall because we liked its easy to use user interface, project management suite and agency/vendor/client interaction capabilities. We also chose it primarily because it was offered as a web-based platform that offered very clean and easy mobile access …
ActiveCollab has similar features to Basecamp for both project management and communication purposes. However, Basecamp has a better interface for organization of projects within clients and allows for linking to specific comments. However, ActiveCollab is more affordable than B…
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 …
We've been using Deltek for many years and we aren't likely to switch anytime soon. I've only looked at Zoho a little bit as an alternative to our current document management software. It's much more user-friendly than Deltek!
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.
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.
It is very well suited for Project Accounting - we have thousands of Project codes in the system. I wish it were easier to make changes to data already entered. You have to jump through hoops to make any changes or corrections and timing is everything.
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.
Deltek is a very integrated system for accounting purposes. It stores documents as support for postings (e.g. AP invoices) so you can easily access the source information.
Time tracking for our consultants is a must and Deltek has a good platform for tracking time and for accounting for time.
Deltek has the ability to run almost any kind of report that you could possibly think of! There are fields for almost everything and if there aren't specific fields you can add them.
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.
Deltek Vision's use of the desktop browser interfaces could use some major upgrades. It's not very user-friendly. When a field is left blank it would prevent the user from saving the timesheet but would not clearly inform the user where the error has occurred.
Deltek Vision should provide a simple method to print summaries like have its own built-in pdf export program instead of relying on a 3rd party program like Adobe.
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.
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.
It's on the verge of being awesome. Right now it's a matter of money -- if you have the money to hire consultants round the clock, yeah this is awesome.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
We have used Deltek Vision and previous versions (names) of the product since the early 1990's. We are engaged in the system and are committed to the continued use of the product. I have long supported the value added to our company and benefits realized by our users.
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.
We went from using a DOS-based accounting system that all the management had to go to Accounting for a weekly printout of status reports, and there wasn't much visibility into the network. Deltek Vision gave our PMs and management information at their fingertips, without having to wait on someone else to get the info.
A lot of quality control was handled outside of an electronic system through Microsoft Excel forms. With Deltek Vision's user-defined functions, we were able to bring those functions into a system that could then be reported on, send automatic reminders, and create dashboards. This has been hugely beneficial in not losing sight of action items etc.
