Active Collab is a project management solution built around features such as task management, collaboration, time tracking, and invoicing.
$8
per member/per month
MindMeister
Score 3.2 out of 10
N/A
MindMeister is an online mind mapping tool that lets users share maps with an unlimited number of users and collaborate with them in real-time. MindMeister is used to brainstorm ideas, plan projects, take meeting minutes, develop business strategies, and create presentations. MindMeister runs in any standard web-browser as well as on iOS and Android devices, so users can access, edit and present their mind maps anytime, wherever they are. With MindMeister, users…
$45
every 6 months per user
Wrike
Score 8.6 out of 10
Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
Wrike is a project management and collaboration software. This solution connects tasks, discussions, and emails to the user’s project plan. Wrike is optimized for agile workflows and aims to help resolve data silos, poor visibility into work status, and missed deadlines and project failures.
$240
per year 2 users (minimum)
Pricing
ActiveCollab
MindMeister
Wrike
Editions & Modules
ActiveCollab Project Management
$8
per member/per month
Self-Hosted Plan
$999.00
license
Personal
$45
per 6 months per user
Pro
$75
per 6 months per user
Business
$114
per 6 months per user
Wrike Free
$0
per month per user
Wrike Team
$10
per month (billed annually) per user (2-15 users)
Wrike Business
$25
per month (billed annually) per user (5-200 users)
Apex
Request a quote
per month per user
Pinnacle
Request a quote
per month per user
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
ActiveCollab
MindMeister
Wrike
Free Trial
Yes
No
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
Yes
Yes
Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Yes
No
Yes
Entry-level Setup Fee
$6.25 per member, per month, annual billing
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
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MindMeister offers 6-monthly and yearly subscriptions. Discounts for educational users and non-profit organizations are also available. Up to 22% discount for yearly pricing.
Every premium plan begins with a 14-day trial period.
ActiveCollab is 100% better than any of the other tools we have used. We had previously spent thousands of dollars trying out different software that was comparable, but this has been one of the best decisions we have made as a company. It's also the cheapest ongoing option, …
ActiveCollab - the version from around 2013 was great. My current employer tested a newer version of ActiveCollab but it didn't give us the functions the old AC had. In the end we opted for Wrike.
Teams Planner (Microsoft) - we started to use this 6 months ago to get an overview …
monday.com is popular and it's easy to understand why. If you're looking for a low-commitment personal task manager, it might be for you. I found it was complicated in the wrong ways and too simple where I needed it to be complicated. I also found it distracting to use. …
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.
MindMeister is ideally suited for building mind maps, site maps, or similar types of data maps in the cloud without needing to install extra software. I find that it isn't quite as ideal for other types of diagrams (ERDs, flowcharts, etc) as some other tools, though it definitely can handle those things as well.
I believe it's well suited if you have multiple jobs/projects that you need to keep organized. We work with multiple job types from print/creative to web, copy and digital ads so it helps us stay organized. I don't think it would be suitable for a company that doesn't have a lot of jobs to manage. We average over 1,200 requests a year.
The UI is well laid out and easy to use. The workflow makes perfect sense and makes creating tasks a breeze.
The collaboration features make brainstorming not only easy but fun! Everyone enjoys using the tool, which was not the case with other collaboration software we used.
I love being able to get all of my thoughts and ideas on the screen to see them and then be able to connect them in a logical way.
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
I wish that Wrike had more drag and drop functionality that would be connected to assignee and also I wish that the finish date of a task would update to the date where you checked completed. It does not do that. Also finishing a task doesn't move the start date of the next task it "protects your time in that way", but our management team wants us to quickly see what we have down the pipeline rather than having to scroll down the list of upcoming tasks.
It does take some time and work to really understand and use it properly, but I think the accessibility to help and documentation make that completely feasible. Once you know how to use it, I find it to be very user-friendly, and have very few complaints.
Over two years of (almost) daily usage without outages. Don't remember any errors. I give it 9 only because some Wrike plugins (for online document edit) are based on NPAPI architecture. These types of plugins are being phased out in new browsers, and NPAPI plugins are disabled by default in recent versions of Chrome so you have to do some browser adjustments when you switch browsers or move to another computer.
Wrike tasks loads fine, but I hate clicking files and wait for a bit of time since it is powerpoint or word, Wrike assumes I want to open those on Wrike. My suggestion is to link it to office 365 so we do not need Wrike based decoder for PPTX and DOCX
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.
Never had an issue with customer support, though we never really needed anything major as far as technical help. I do not believe they offer 24 hour customer support but we don't need it as MindMeister is not the type of tool we need need 24 hour a day support for. Overall, very happy with the level of support.
During my learning phase with Wrike, I initially struggled with setting up automation rules and request forms. However, Wrike support was always my go-to, resolving issues within seconds or minutes. Their assistance made the learning process much easier. My best experience was receiving step-by-step screenshots to follow, with the support team on standby until I was completely satisfied.
I love the Wrike training options. Wrike Discover has tons of courses, learning plans, certifications, etc. This is an area where Wrike definitely shines! I wish these resources were more in your face for new people, because it seems like a lot of coworkers didn't know all of this training was available to them.
There are a lot of bells and whistles in Wrike, and not all of it is easy or intuitive to understand once it's plopped in your lap. It's easier when there are a few choice people who understand Wrike as a platform and articulate it in such a way where it makes it easy to pass it along to others in the group
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.
I have also used LucidChart and Google Draw to create mind maps and concept maps in the past. I think that MindMeister is by far the cleanest and most user friendly of the three. Google Draw does not have anywhere near the same functionality. LucidChart tends to be clunky and the options to create your map are not always clear and intuitive.
Jira did not at all help us get our work done as content creators. I think that was because Jira wasn't quite right for our uses. Wrike fits our needs so much better. I can't tell you enough the relief I felt when we adopted Wrike and I never had to use Jira again.
The sky is the limit for what can be done in Wrike. We started with 1 use case and within 5 months we migrated several key business practices over to Wrike because they were easier to manage. Use cases so far: process improvement, management review, corrective actions, maintenance requests, month-end financial closing, and document management. As we grow, it's easy to imagine putting even more into Wrike where it becomes a cornerstone for how we do business
Different teams (e.g., contracting, compliance, provider relations) can view updates in real time, comment directly on tasks, and escalate items when needed.
Wrike allows us to template the contracting process (from intake to signature) to ensure consistency across payers and reduce administrative overhead.
Leadership can see the status of negotiations at a glance, identify bottlenecks, and prioritize resources accordingly.