Kantata Cloud (formerly Mavenlink + Kimble) provides project management and collaboration software for small to mid-sized professional services companies. Features include resource management, project dependencies, time and expense tracking, file sharing, versatile user permissions, private messaging, planning and reporting.
N/A
Trello
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
Trello from Atlassian is a project management tool based on a Kanban framework. Trello is ideal for task-management in a to-do list format. It supports sharing boards and cards across users or teams. The product offers a free version, and paid versions add greater automation, collaboration, and administrative control.
$6
per month per user
Workamajig
Score 7.2 out of 10
N/A
Workamajig is a project management system with capabilities such as file sharing, resource management, and revenue projection.
$41
per month per user
Pricing
Kantata PS Cloud
Trello
Workamajig
Editions & Modules
Premier
Contact Sales Team
per month per seat
Enterprise
Contact Sales Team
Standard
$6
per month per user
Premium
$12.50
per month per user
Enterprise
$17.50
per month per user
Free
Forever Free
In-house
$41
per month per user
Agency
$41
per month per user
Enterprise
Contact
per month per user
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Kantata PS Cloud
Trello
Workamajig
Free Trial
No
No
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
Yes
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Yes
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
Required
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
—
A discount is offered for annual billing and for larger numbers of users.
Mavenlink takes the best of what Basecamp, Harvest, and Trello have to offer and combines them into one easy-to-use, intuitive, cloud based suite. It's nice to have all of these different functionalities built into one place, that also features a dedicated customer support …
Verified User
Analyst
Chose Kantata PS Cloud
Mavenlink is not a creative agency specific system which Workamajig is. Mavenlink could use more updates to their resourcing tool, time tracking and reporting in order to be more beneficial to a creative based company.
Note: I used these in other agencies and other companies before coming to Golden Spiral. While the interfaces and mobile functionality for Asana and Trello are much nicer than Mavenlink, they just don't have the power and connectivity of MVL. Microsoft Project requires a slide …
For holistic project management and finance, Mavenlink blows these competitors out of the water, at least that was the case when we made the switch, though I'm sure both programs have been continuing to improve. As far as time tracking, Mavenlink is so much faster and easier …
While Trello is very visual, it doesn't have the same, robust abilities that Kantata has for time-tracking, burn rates, and timelines. My design and development teams love the visual aspects of Trello for QA and for Content Layout of website builds, but Trello lacks all the …
We performed an in-depth review of Wrike and Mavenlink and found Mavenlink to outshine Wrike in every category which mattered to our organization and business units. We looked at several case studies in similar companies as ours and found that Mavenlink best aligned with our …
Mavenlink is much more robust than other project management platforms that we have used in the past. The ability to match each task to a preset time, budget and invoice objective is better than their competitors. It is also worth noting that Mavenlink has the built-in time …
All of the other alternatives honestly seem low quality and just discount versions of Trello. They're essentially trying to copy what Trello has already nearly perfected, or add additional features that bloat the functionality. Trello is an established company, where I feel if …
Workamajig definitely isn't the prettiest among the project management tools I've used, nor does it have the friendliest UX/UI. But it does have some advantages when it comes to automating tasks in a schedule, automatically replacing versions of files with the same name and …
WMJ is a fully integrated system. Accounting, time management, invoicing, project management, estimating, sales CRM, all occur in one integrated package. This is ultimately why we selected WMJ. Other packages do portions of the workflow well but don't always integrate via …
It is appropriate and even exceeds expectations 90% of the time. It makes project tracking very easy and visually accessible for most cases. The only occasion where Mavenlink came slightly short was for a special project that required more interaction options among project members. I am certain there are ways to work around that issue, but we did not find them.
For teams or individuals with lots of individual tasks/details to track, Trello is perfect! It basically removes the need for a paper checklist. For those that need an overall project management tool that requires less tasks and more overarching goals, collaboration amongst various teams, and gantt charts I would suggest monday.com
If you're looking for a system to help you address accounting that's not suited for marketing agency structures, this is the right tool. It is a bit cumbersome, but it has streamlined our reporting, billing, estimating, and tracking. As for project management, it's great that it integrates with the estimating and finances, but it's just not enjoyable to use. The interface is clunky. So if project management is your main criteria, I'd choose something else. We would never use it to collaborate with clients either because I'd be afraid of making them frustrated by the tool, so we use Basecamp to do that.
With Mavenlink when starting to assign tasks to people, set deadlines and milestones, and add files to our projects we can look at it all from a variety of perspectives, including a task tracker view and a Gantt chart view
Through Mavenlink each project also includes an activity stream where we can view all project details as they come up, as well as an activity feed for all the projects it is linked to.
The Platinum version has a particularly robust time tracking system, down to a 'timer' function that can be critical for an agency like mine where you want to be accountable for billing a client arruately
The ability to make projects available only to those who are permitted to assign their time to it has apparently been very helpful during our revenue reconciliation meetings where time incurred is reviewed against scope
The mobile app, while I still feel needs some work, is pretty handy for a quick calendar check if I'm in a client meeting and cannot utilize my browser to get information
WMJ's interface is dated. Despite an html5 driven "sheets"-based interface, it takes a lot of time and effort to manage the interface, which could be streamlined considerably. On a UX/UI scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the best, WMJ would earn a 6 from me.
Despite the amount of documentation available, there is a distinct lack of clarity in that documentation, and it doesn't fully cover everything you would expect. Branching thoughts, for instance, are not addressed. Additionally, because there are two editions of the software online, there are two support sites that aren't sequestered. So information from both commingles, creating confusion.
Support is available on an email and phone basis. They strongly encourage you to use email, however, and they are resistant to phone time. This is likely because the support staff is limited in number, but has a great depth of knowledge. If you want immediate phone support, however, YOU ARE OUT OF LUCK. You are placed in a queue and the odds of same-day help are low. For email, the response is usually within an hour, but when you are stuck with a configuration issue, or need to generate a report and don't know how to do something, waiting is not optimal. That said, the support team is TERRIFIC.
Although the company I currently work for does not use the product I have recommended that we do switch to Mavenlink. We will be opening some new sites internationally this year and I can see that Mavenlink would be a great product for us to use
I am very likely to renew Trello, because it doesn't cost anything to do so. I am also very likely to use Trello's upgraded features in the future because a lot of my team's data is stored on there and they have already gotten used to the platform. Trello is very easy for new team members to pick up, making the onboarding and usability very streamlined.
I think Kantata is one of the most robust and best project management tools out there for an organization like ours. However, some of our staff feel like it isn't as user-friendly as it could be. From a Director point of view or a Project Manager point of view, Kantata is exceptional. From the point of view of a task-doer, it could be more visually appealing. Also, the mobile version isn't great.
Trello is incredibly intuitive, both on desktop and mobile right away. It is also full of helpful features that make it even easier to use, and is flexible enough to suit almost any organizational need. Onboarding for the software is thorough, but concise, and the service is frequently updated with even more QOL improvements.
Very good integration with Google apps. Some complexity is called however in the synchronization between Google Tasks and Maven links tasks. This can sometimes lead to duplicate records in Google Tasks. It has been dissolvable that becomes cumbersome if not properly curated.
Kantata support is fantastic! Any issues that arise are always handled quickly and efficiently. Granted, we haven't had many issues to report. Typically, my team tends to only reach out to support if they need assistance remembering how to do something or asking about an improvement. We had Kantata build an integration when we first started using the software, and the support team worked hard to listen and improve the integration.
I haven't reached out to their support very often and their support is very limited anyway for the free users. They do have tons of great articles and videos in their Help Center and constantly send emails with updates and add-ons to the product. The fact that I've barely ever had to contact their support team means that they've developed a great product.
We prepared questions in advance, and our trainer was an expert in what Mavenlink was and wasn't able to do. We were able to have multiple people trained at once.
The training was very well-organized. We were able to send questions in advance so the instructor knew what to cover, and the brought up related topics to maximize the usefulness of what they were teaching us.
Dedicate as much internal time to the implementation effort as possible, even if you're using a 3rd party or Mavenlink services. Your team knows your processes the best
For our small business, getting a few of us started well on Trello was the key, I think. As long as a couple of us were really comfortable with the interface, we could lead others and help them with any questions. From now on, anyone who works with us just naturally uses Trello for information sharing - it's just part of what we do.
We have since switched over to JIRA and let me tell you, it was probably the best decision we have made as a company. We chose Mavenlink based on promises from the sales team about future roadmap work that really never happened. We thought Mavenlink would easily integrate with our billing software but we couldn't have been more wrong. We ended up never utilizing Mavenlink invoices as they don't even allow you to fully customize your invoices that go out to clients!
Trello is more simple and not as "robust" as the other tools, but it's easier to use and manage and understand and ACTUALLY get stuff done with. It's simplicity is part of the beauty of using it. You don't need a million options that nobody uses, you just need to get stuff done.
Workamajig was selected over a decade ago when there were very few project management platforms that has integrations with other platforms, support for Agile, KanBan, etc etc. Most of the other offerings did not offer the type of security available with us hosting an on premises server behind a VPN although now there are plenty of cloud based solutions that have security compliance greater than what we can provide (fedRamp, etc.)
Manvenlink is perfect for showing expenses and income over time and across people.
Manvenlink is adaptable for the integration and automation of the processes of each of our projects in order to optimize resources and improve operational performance.
Mavenlink allows us to determine if our projects are profitable or not, as well as save significant time by automating components such as recurring tasks and having templates, among other things.
Manvenlink is advantageous for our operations due to its simple portfolio management of our projects: manage several projects at once and receive a complete perspective of the development of each one at a glance.
Manvenlink kindly provides us with robust discussion threads, access restrictions, and built-in document management, allowing us to contextualize communications.
Trello keeps me organized, focused, and on track. I could filter the Trello board to only see my issues and understand what I needed to work on and when.
Trello helped our team implement an agile structure. It's a very simple kanban method of viewing all of your team's tasks and statuses. You can completely customize the columns to your team's specific workflow and create tags relevant to your work.
Trello helps reduce unnecessary communications between teams. When I want to request translations, I simply create a card on the localization Trello board -- no need to directly message anyone on the team, and I can watch the status of the card change from "in progress" to "in review" to "translated," all without having to directly ask for updates.
The agency switched to an hourly allocation so our clients were subject to a certain amount of hours each quarter. JIG helped us keep track of who was going over hours or who had some to spare. Once the clients went over we would use JIG to help charge the additional fees for going over. It helped keep clients accountable.
It was used to keep track of time sheets and through those time sheets, the directors were able to make a case for more employees on certain accounts. The corporate team hired 3 additional people that were truly needed and our time sheets helped reflect that.