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
Miro
Score 9.1 out of 10
N/A
Miro is the AI Innovation Workspace that brings teams and AI together to plan, co-create, and build the next big thing, faster. With the canvas as the prompt, Miro's collaborative AI workflows keep teams in the flow of work, scale shifts in ways of working, and drive organization-wide transformation.
$10
per month per user
Pricing
ActiveCollab
Basecamp
Miro
Editions & Modules
ActiveCollab Project Management
$8
per member/per month
Self-Hosted Plan
$999.00
license
Basecamp Plus
$15
per month per user
Basecamp Pro Unlimited
$299
per month (billed annually)
Basecamp Free
Free
Limited Capabilities
1. Free - To discover what Miro can do. Always free
$0
2. Starter - Unlimited and private boards with essential features
$8
per month (billed annually) per user
3. Business - Scales collaboration with advanced features and security
$16
per month (billed annually) per user
4. Enterprise - For work across the entire organization, with support, security and control, to scale
contact sales
annual billing per user
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
ActiveCollab
Basecamp
Miro
Free Trial
Yes
Yes
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
Yes
Yes
Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Yes
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
$6.25 per member, per month, annual billing
No setup fee
Optional
Additional Details
—
—
Monthly billing also available at $10 per month for the Starter plan, or $20 for the Business plan.
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 …
Basecamp is probably my least favorite. As a project manager, I'm always auditing our workflow and processes, so I try to run at least trials of project management software to get a feel for if they would help us do things more efficiently. I struggled the most with Basecamp.
In my opinion, Basecamp has a better interface than Asana and Jira. I remember it took me sometime to get used to Asana and even longer to get used to Jira, but adoption for Basecamp was instant. Things are so clearly labeled and displayed that I was able to get comfortable …
Miro is the best for sharing ideas on an infinite canvas with a clean and uncluttered whiteboard area, and crucially (unlike the others) clients don't need to register or login to Miro in order to view and comment on a board.
Jamboard was really clunky and didn't work well. I haven't used Figma very much but it looks like it is a potential Miro competitor and I'll keep it in mind if Miro becomes too feature-ridden for ease of use. We use a Vibe board with Miro in teaching classes a lot, and it is …
Lucidchart, Microsoft Visio, diagrams.net, Google Drawings, Canva, Google Jamboard, Mural Many of the applications listed above are really great at some things, and not so much at others. Visio is great for creating diagrams, but not as great with images, connecting documents, …
Teams whiteboard - the keyboard shortcuts and trackpad behavior isnt as intuitive as Miro Figjam - not as easily collaborative as Miro - only the Figjam owner can edit the board when the Figjam isnt in session.
Better user interface, but not easy to figure out where all the good functionalities are. It's cleaner, has more relevant templates but is too difficult in the beginning to get used to (not intuitive enough). The pricing plan is a mess (I could not figure out which plan to …
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.
Miro is a great program for detailed workflow scenarios as well as simple 3-5 step processes. I have also tried using it for large stakeholder feedback sessions, but when more than 10 people were trying to give feedback on the same screen, it got confusing and too busy.
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.
Makes internal coordination between admin team and tutors extremely painless. It's like a single place where everyone can drop ideas, get updates and notes without loss of context which usually happens in long email threads.
Versioning and board history are handled very well, which drastically reduces the workload. They help me track how a policy or math guideline has evolved, and also make it easy to revert changes if something doesn't work.
Comments stick exactly where they are meant to, making internal reviews much clearer. Admins don't have to guess which note refers to which rule or section.
Exports are clean, so even non-Miro teammates get it instantly.
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.
As a designer, I miss some more creative features. I can't even get really into designing small things (like paths). Many of my colleagues have already switched to the Figma board because it is possible there.
Things often get lost in the workflow, especially in teams. Working on the same file often leads to misunderstandings and can be frustrating. For example, if text is accidentally deleted and cannot be recovered, or if images become distorted.
The scale on the board is missing, which often leads to size differences.
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.
Miro saves my day. I would spend at least 4x more time on documenting my projects and work without this tool. It support my day to day role and helps me be successful while saving my capacity. It is not only very easy to start working on it without additional training required, but also adapts to any use case that I might need to implement
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.
I rate Miro's overall usability an 8 out of 10 because it is easy for teams to adopt, intuitive for real-time collaboration, very effective for workshops, brainstorming and visual planning. The experience is accessible even for new or less frequent users. While the usability can decline on large and complex boards, overall, it is a very usable product.
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.
I have not encountered events where Miro is not available. It is quite nice and reliable to be fair, even on my freemium version (startup) I don't have reliability issues. It does have sometimes where the screen refresh or "freezes" or "consumes a lot of data" and we have to rewind windows and the likes, this instances are very less
I took the loading quickly to be related to availability which I commented on before, so ditto with those comment on load time here. Although to reemphasize, Miro doesn't crash or just refuse to load like some other programs. The weak point of Miro for me is integration of files like Word, Excel, or PowerPoint (especially the later two). When you embed these, it gets slow, and complicated to bring them up while you're in the application.
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.
We have never reached out to or contacted support because Miro's platform has been incredibly intuitive and user-friendly. The comprehensive resources available, such as tutorials, documentation, and community forums, have provided all the guidance we needed. The seamless integration with our existing tools and the reliability of the platform have ensured that we rarely encounter issues that require external assistance. This self-sufficiency has allowed us to focus more on our projects and collaboration without interruptions. Overall, our experience with Miro has been smooth and efficient, eliminating the need for additional support
There was a series of webinars which Miro hosted with our organization that went over the basics, then progressively became more advanced with additional sections. The instructors were knowledgeable, and provided examples throughout the sessions, as well as answered peoples' questions. There was ample time and experience on the calls to cover a range of topics. The instructors were also very friendly and sociable, as well as honest. Of course Miro isn't a "God-tool" that does absolutely everything, but the instructors were aware and emphasized the strengths where Miro had them and sincerely accepted feedback.
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)
Easy to learn, Miro has a series of videos on YouTube that effectively taught this program to my team members and me. The program is drag-and-drop and works excellently. People pick up on how to use it efficiently, and it's great for organizing ideas more freely. This product is more challenging for some older audiences who are not accustomed to using a touchpad, but for most, it was very easy to use.
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.
I use both for different things really. Figma is better for design and prototype applications with coding being enabled in Figma (which isn't part of Miro's tools). As I said earlier, I use other programmes when there is a lack in Miro, in this case the coding element. Also Miro is better suited for BAU, so I can utilise this by bringing part of the business into using it. Figma isn't collaborative enough for this purpose. Miro overall has a better user experience
Maybe is possible now so... Could be useful to manage in some way source code for the projects? not to edit so when we make solutions with different components in MIro, maybe each component could redirect to the source code of this component
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.
