ActiveCollab vs. Novatime (discontinued)

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
ActiveCollab
Score 4.5 out of 10
N/A
Active Collab is a project management solution built around features such as task management, collaboration, time tracking, and invoicing.
$7
per member/per month
Novatime (discontinued)
Score 4.5 out of 10
N/A
From Ascentis, NOVAtime was a set of workforce management solutions providing timekeeping, payroll, leave management, and employee scheduling needs. Ascentis was acquired by UKG in March of 2022, and along with NOVAtime, will be discontinued.N/A
Pricing
ActiveCollabNovatime (discontinued)
Editions & Modules
ActiveCollab Project Management
$7.00
per member/per month
Self-Hosted Plan
$999.00
license
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
ActiveCollabNovatime (discontinued)
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup Fee$6.25 per member, per month, annual billingNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Features
ActiveCollabNovatime (discontinued)
Project Management
Comparison of Project Management features of Product A and Product B
ActiveCollab
3.7
13 Ratings
68% below category average
Novatime (discontinued)
-
Ratings
Task Management6.112 Ratings00 Ratings
Resource Management1.08 Ratings00 Ratings
Gantt Charts3.07 Ratings00 Ratings
Scheduling1.011 Ratings00 Ratings
Workflow Automation7.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Team Collaboration6.513 Ratings00 Ratings
Support for Agile Methodology7.07 Ratings00 Ratings
Support for Waterfall Methodology7.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Document Management3.08 Ratings00 Ratings
Email integration4.09 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile Access1.510 Ratings00 Ratings
Timesheet Tracking2.09 Ratings00 Ratings
Change request and Case Management1.08 Ratings00 Ratings
Budget and Expense Management2.07 Ratings00 Ratings
Professional Services Automation
Comparison of Professional Services Automation features of Product A and Product B
ActiveCollab
5.7
8 Ratings
26% below category average
Novatime (discontinued)
-
Ratings
Quotes/estimates6.97 Ratings00 Ratings
Invoicing6.96 Ratings00 Ratings
Project & financial reporting1.07 Ratings00 Ratings
Integration with accounting software7.94 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
ActiveCollabNovatime (discontinued)
Small Businesses
FunctionFox
FunctionFox
Score 8.3 out of 10
Jolt
Jolt
Score 9.5 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
SAP Ruum
SAP Ruum
Score 9.0 out of 10
Paypro Workforce Management
Paypro Workforce Management
Score 9.5 out of 10
Enterprises
Quickbase
Quickbase
Score 9.2 out of 10
Calabrio Teleopti WFM
Calabrio Teleopti WFM
Score 7.9 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
ActiveCollabNovatime (discontinued)
Likelihood to Recommend
3.9
(13 ratings)
5.3
(8 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
2.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
7.1
(3 ratings)
8.3
(4 ratings)
User Testimonials
ActiveCollabNovatime (discontinued)
Likelihood to Recommend
ActiveCollab
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.












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Discontinued Products
We continue to remain the only professional baseball team that utilizes NOVAtime for our scheduling of staff, mostly because it was designed to schedule hospital workers. The lag time when updating the ASM is extremely time consuming and the inability to work in multiple internet tabs or windows makes it that much more inefficient. I am sure it is a fantastic system for other organizations but it continues to be a challenge for us.
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Pros
ActiveCollab
  • 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.
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Discontinued Products
  • The report database is very extensive--there is a report for everything
  • Easy to use
  • Various ways for EEs and supervisors to access information
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Cons
ActiveCollab
  • 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
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Discontinued Products
  • There does need to be more support and knowledge when it comes to alternate workweek schedule types (9/80, etc.), as there have been a few unique challenges with those.
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Likelihood to Renew
ActiveCollab
No answers on this topic
Discontinued Products
The overall satisfaction within the organization has been luke warm, at best. The software may be more conducive for a hospital but I believe there is a reason why we are the lone baseball team utilizing it.
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Usability
ActiveCollab
No answers on this topic
Discontinued Products
On the employee's side of things, Novatime is pretty intuitive and fairly easy to use. All they have to do is either press a button to punch in or punch out. If they are entering in their hours, all they have to do is type in the number of hours per day. On the manager's side of things, Novatime is also fairly easy to use. It highlights in red any missed punches and in green any OT that the employee has. There are links on the homepage of the manager's page that will lead them to a list of all their employees' missed punches for a pay period and they can fix them all before payroll is due. Novatime becomes a bit more complicated on the administrator's side. The issues I have run into with Novatime normally come after updates/upgrades to their system. They have been getting better, but the administrator's side is still a bit clunky and takes a while to find what you are looking for. It is not as intuitive as the other sides and takes a bit of computer knowledge to figure it out.
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Support Rating
ActiveCollab
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.
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Discontinued Products
The program itself can be customized in many different ways to meet the needs of the company/organization that it is working with. The charts/graphs on the new homepage are somewhat helpful and link to useful information. It has some really nice scheduling features that allow managers to see the difference between hours expected to work and actual hours worked as well as overtime, absences, and non-scheduled shifts. Processing payroll is quite simple. PTO request off is straightforward.
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Alternatives Considered
ActiveCollab
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.
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Discontinued Products
The product is easy to use, and everyone picks up on it quickly. It is less expensive, and has more to offer than any other product I’ve found.
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Return on Investment
ActiveCollab
  • 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!).
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Discontinued Products
  • We have had a few scenarios where the PTO accrual dropped off and it did take 3 attempts of reaching out to customer service to get it sorted.
  • The customer service team has collaborated with me in creating new PTO categories to automate certain needs to save me some time.
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ScreenShots

ActiveCollab Screenshots

Screenshot of Dashboard and overview of projects.Screenshot of Multiple task views curently showing a Kanban view of the tasklists and tasks.Screenshot of Overview of all recent activity.Screenshot of Calendar view with task dependencies.Screenshot of Permission settings (owner, member, client, client+).Screenshot of List of available Add-ons.