Avaza is a software suite targeted for all business sizes. It includes modules for project management and collaboration, resource scheduling, team chat, time tracking, expense management, quoting and invoicing. Depending on their business needs, companies can use as many, or as few, of the modules as they need. Avaza offers reporting functionality, and the project management module is designed with both list view and Kanban style task management, so users can choose…
Flowdock is a collaboration tool built around a chat and team inbox interface. Flowdock is available via app or as a browser-based solution.
It was originally offered by Rally Software Development, which was acquired by CA Technologies, which was acquired by Broadcom in 2018.
Avaza's time tracking capabilities are much more detailed than Upwork's. Upwork focuses on simplicity, using a simple on/off button and a spot for taking notes about each project, but Avaza gives you more to work with, allowing you to add detailed notes and specify tasks.
I've used Trello before, but Avaza has way more features and is more applicable for cross-team collaboration. We selected Avaza for it's ability to not only project manage, but also for invoicing, expenses and it's ability to track time. We've gotten more accurate with estimate …
This is miles ahead of ActiveCollab. It has more features, the interface is easier to use and the invoicing is easier to use. Across the board better. We migrated from ActiveCollab, but that was just essentially a Fancier Wunderlist. If you just need one project and a few tasks …
Slack is a better product. They're taking the spirit of the startup and moving quickly towards IPO. In my own experience, Slack provides enough software integrations with hope for future releases that continue to improve the product. The early days of Flowdock were very …
There are teams who work hard, and there are those who work smart. Avaza helps you be the latter--it's is a great tool for any team collaborating on several projects, especially multiple projects with a lot of simultaneously moving parts. It has just about everything you need - from team schedules to timesheets, down to the task and sub-task monitoring. The best part for me is that we can switch from List View to Kanban to Gantt charts!
Flowdock is well suited for small teams and to environments that doesn't need too much reliability. I think it has some management problems that can make your life difficult if you have to manage a big amount of users. If you want just a tool communication with basic features (without using any integration or robust features) it can be suitable for you. You should try Flowdock using its free version for a small team and compare with others similar products. Flowdock delivers team chat and collaboration features, but is not necessarily the best product. Maybe some usability problems that disturb me won't be so relevant to you.
Possibility to integrate with external services such as e-mail (send messages to a flow inbox from your e-mail), twitter, github, confluence, jira, single sign-on, etc. Using those integrations you can easily improve your team productivity by centralizing all useful information in just one point.
Very easy to configure. You can get it running for your company or team in a few minutes. Furthermore, almost all platforms (Windows, Linux, Mac, iOS, Android) have an app to install and there is a web version that can also be used.
Powerful communication tool. You can separate differents subjects in to separated "flows" or channels. In addition, you can invite people to join just one channel increasing privacy for others members.
Free version up to 5 users. If you are a non-profit organization or have a student project, they say that is possible to work with that too. In other case, you have to pay per user/month.
One thing a little bit annoying is that a lot of links to others Flowdock sections (preferences, external services, etc) will open a new window/tab. Each click may take you to a new window and you can get lost easily.
There isn't a quick access list to members of your organization to start a private chat. I took a while to find how to do that. The interface and usability could be better.
There isn't an app for Windows Phone.
Sometimes you try to load some conversation and it doesn't show anything. It is not frequently but happens sometimes.
I go with the flow because I'm a newer employee and Flowdock works as advertised. If it were my decision to choose a team communciator for the organization, I'd recommend we go with Slack for its robust features and ever-changing/evolving software integrations. Slack is the outright innovator in the space and will continue to hold that role for some time.
I've used Trello before, but Avaza has way more features and is more applicable for cross-team collaboration. We selected Avaza for it's ability to not only project manage, but also for invoicing, expenses and it's ability to track time. We've gotten more accurate with estimate project hours, and therefore create more accurate proposals
Private chat or channels are well implemented in both softwares and both are also very easy to setup.
Besides of some usability problemas I think Flowdock is still better than Slack in this user experience and design.
The second point is the price. Flowdock is half price of Slack ($3/month). If you are a student or a non-profit organization, you are able to get some special license.
Increasing productivity by reducing idleness, e-mail flooding, miscommunication and accidentally deleted files. We have increasead about 30% our productivity since whe start using Flowdock.