Skip to main content
TrustRadius
ActiveCollab

ActiveCollab

Overview

What is ActiveCollab?

Active Collab is a project management solution built around features such as task management, collaboration, time tracking, and invoicing.

Read more
Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

Active Collab has become an essential project management tool for two teams within our organization, as it offers a seamless transition …
Continue reading
Read all reviews

Popular Features

View all 18 features
  • Team Collaboration (13)
    6.6
    66%
  • Task Management (12)
    6.1
    61%
  • Mobile Access (10)
    1.6
    16%
  • Scheduling (11)
    1.0
    10%

Reviewer Pros & Cons

View all pros & cons
Return to navigation

Pricing

View all pricing

ActiveCollab Project Management

$7.00

Cloud
per member/per month

Self-Hosted Plan

$999.00

On Premise
license

Entry-level set up fee?

  • $6.25 per member, per month, annual billing
    Optional
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://activecollab.com/pricing

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Return to navigation

Features

Project Management

Project management software provides capabilities to streamline management of complex projects through task management, team collaboration and workflow automation

3.7
Avg 7.5

Professional Services Automation

Features that support professional services organizations

5.7
Avg 7.4
Return to navigation

Product Details

What is ActiveCollab?

ActiveCollab is a project management software designed to give users complete control over work. The tool is equipped with features to help users organize work and keep free from distractions, even when working remote: workload management, time tracking, project profitability, task dependencies, invoicing, collaborative options, third-party integrations, etc.

The vendor states that ActiveCollab will give companies a boost and an enjoyable transition towards remote work, with their 90-day trial offer.

They further state that ActiveCollab is used by teams of all backgrounds - from large teams in international corporations to small startups, and everything in between.

ActiveCollab Features

Project Management Features

  • Supported: Task Management
  • Supported: Resource Management
  • Supported: Gantt Charts
  • Supported: Scheduling
  • Supported: Team Collaboration
  • Supported: Support for Agile Methodology
  • Supported: Document Management
  • Supported: Email integration
  • Supported: Mobile Access
  • Supported: Timesheet Tracking
  • Supported: Change request and Case Management
  • Supported: Budget and Expense Management

Professional Services Automation Features

  • Supported: Quotes/estimates
  • Supported: Invoicing
  • Supported: Project & financial reporting
  • Supported: Integration with accounting software

Additional Features

  • Supported: Time Tracking
  • Supported: Task Dependencies
  • Supported: Discussion Boards
  • Supported: Group Calendars
  • Supported: Project Management
  • Supported: IT Project Management
  • Supported: Percent-Complete Tracking
  • Supported: Project Planning
  • Supported: Time & Expense Tracking

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.Screenshot of Online payment options.Screenshot of ActiveCollab Workload is a visual resource management tool built for agencies and creative professionalsScreenshot of Everyone’s availability at a glance. You'll know immediately who's available and who's not. Say no to updating spreadsheets! Everyone will be on the same page.Screenshot of Multiple task views currently showing a Kanban view of the task lists and tasksScreenshot of List of tasks with high priority options, assignees, due dates, and task dependenciesScreenshot of Break down your entire work into tasks your team can tackle right away. Deadlines will never surprise you again. Actual priorities are given priority, and everyone is accountable for their work.

ActiveCollab Videos

ActiveCollab Walkthrough - A 7-minute video that covers the basics of using ActiveCollab.
The calendar in ActiveCollab shows everything that has a due date. Just to make sure you never miss a deadline.
ActiveCollab is great if you need to manage all your people in one place. Instead of inviting users one by one, simply create a team and invite them all at once.
ActiveCollab is about people working together. Learn how to get started and invite your team.
A brand-new ActiveCollab is finally here! Bigger and better in just about every way possible, with a whole slew of awesome new and enhanced features.
ActiveCollab Workload is a visual resource management tool built for agencies and creative professionals
ActiveCollab is THE software for project management! Ideal for all types of industries, it supports the workflow, from creating an idea to getting paid. Create project estimates and collaborate directly with your clients. You can invite an unlimited number of clients to your...
 Show More

ActiveCollab Technical Details

Deployment TypesOn-premise, Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsWindows, Linux, Mac
Mobile ApplicationApple iOS, Android
Supported CountriesAll Countries
Supported LanguagesBrazilian Portuguese, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Dutch, English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Lithuanian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, or Turkish.

Frequently Asked Questions

Active Collab is a project management solution built around features such as task management, collaboration, time tracking, and invoicing.

Basecamp, monday.com, and Teamwork.com are common alternatives for ActiveCollab.

Reviewers rate Integration with accounting software highest, with a score of 7.9.

The most common users of ActiveCollab are from Small Businesses (1-50 employees).
Return to navigation

Comparisons

View all alternatives
Return to navigation

Reviews and Ratings

(35)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

Active Collab has become an essential project management tool for two teams within our organization, as it offers a seamless transition from HP ALM for our agile scrum framework. Its billing and invoice features have been particularly helpful for teams working on time and materials projects, allowing us to easily generate invoices and allocate costs to team members. With Active Collab, we have gained the ability to have a snapshot of our team's work, budget spent, and project deadlines and responsibilities across multiple projects. This platform has become our primary project management system and workflow tool, enabling us to effectively manage projects both onsite, offsite, and even while on the go.

Active Collab is versatile enough to cater to both traditional and digital services, helping us manage agile workflows, timelines, and tasks effectively. We utilize this platform throughout our entire organization and it seamlessly integrates with our billing department. It serves as our main ticketing system, tracking internal tasks, projecting progress, managing client requests, and facilitating internal and external communications. The comprehensive features offered by Active Collab ensure that day-to-day operations of the company and client projects stay on track without anything slipping through the cracks. It enables us to manage projects, resources, and various activities efficiently. In addition, Active Collab acts as an invaluable tool for establishing meetings, delegating tasks, and supervising activities based on the specific requirements of each project. Its extensive functionality makes it the preferred project management tool for web design/digital marketing companies like ours due to its reasonable pricing structure.

Active Collab provides valuable support to our client services department by enhancing communication and collaboration with clients. Its workflow processing capabilities make task completion timely and facilitate seamless project handovers to clients. Not only does Active Collab assist in managing tasks related to design, development, and marketing within our organization as a whole, but it also serves as a dedicated platform for our support team's specific projects. Using Active Collab allows us to effectively manage sprints, assign tasks, track time, monitor progress, and identify any impediments that may arise. The platform's flexibility also helps categorize and estimate future tasks, enabling efficient planning and execution. Overall, Active Collab has proven to be an indispensable tool for our organization in successfully managing projects, collaborating with clients, and ensuring smooth workflow processes.

Effective Billing and Invoice Feature: Many users have found ActiveCollab's billing and invoice feature to be highly effective for time and materials teams. They mentioned that the current version, ActiveCollab version 5, allows for direct time tracking to tasks using the Timer app, making it convenient to create invoices based on the time entries.

Useful File Sharing Capability: The file sharing feature of ActiveCollab was highlighted as very useful for distributed teams. Users can easily share files and screenshots, improving collaboration and communication.

Easy-to-Use Interface: ActiveCollab is often described as easy to use by many users. With just a few clicks required to create a new project, they appreciate the well-laid-out dashboard and options, which are easy to navigate.

Cons: Lack of Support for Scaled Agile Frameworks: Some users have expressed frustration with the platform's inability to provide support for scaled agile frameworks like SAFe, which is available in competitors like Rally and Agilecraft.

Platform Stability Issues: Several reviewers have mentioned that they experienced occasional disruptions in accessing the project management tool due to issues on the platform's end, resulting in lost productivity.

Ineffective Search Functionality: A number of users have found the search functionality to be lacking, as filtered searches often exclude projects that should have been displayed. Additionally, some reviewers were unable to find tasks or items even when using relevant keywords.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-13 of 13)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Score 1 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Our team attempts to use ActiveCollab to keep track of tasks allocated/in progress/delivered across a number of project types and clients - as the workload/scheduling function, in my opinion, is impractical and has a number of issues preventing its usefulness, we primarily use ActiveCollab as a store of task briefs and a place to communicate about tasks and share related files that is simpler to relocate things in than email threads/slack threads.
  • Notifications when people comment on tasks
  • Ability to upload files to tasks
  • Can assign tags to tasks in order to filter
  • Can manually enter time off so that team recieves OOO updates
  • 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
If you have a very tight budget and cannot afford a better tool, I feel having this is better than nothing.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
ActiveCollab allows us to manage each of our sprints (which last two weeks) and our tasks within those sprints. Tasks are assigned accordingly, and we can track our time as well as the progress of each task and any impediments if necessary. We can also see tasks that other people are working on and add time to those (or view the status) if needed. We can categorize tasks where appropriate and get an idea of how long future tasks in that type of category will take.
  • Track time for projects
  • See which tasks are easily assigned
  • Move tasks over from one project to another
  • Add notes for a particular project that carry over
  • Categorize tasks appropriately
  • Does not maintain default categories for tasks
  • Makes information difficult to share with others not on AC
  • Relies on other people to track their time correctly in categories for estimates
  • Mobile app is very hard to use and not user-friendly if you are working with multiple projects
ActiveCollab is great for managing all scrum/sprint tasks. We organize our sprints into projects and name them with the week and the sprint the project will cover. It can get cumbersome to have all the sprints, but we generally only focus on the current or previous sprint, so we don't need to categorize the others. We also keep a backlog of tasks that are not in a sprint. ActiveCollab allows you to move tasks in and out, so this backlog has been useful. If you have a lot of projects you are juggling at once, this may be a more difficult interface to use, or you'd have to categorize things very well in order to find them. ActiveCollab works great on a desktop, which is how I primarily use it. However, I found the mobile app frustrating and not user-intuitive. I try to avoid using the mobile app whenever possible and just enter my time via the desktop.
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
ActiveCollab is used by the client services department for communication with clients regarding their projects. Having a centralized platform for reviews allows all parties to be included in discussions and questions about their services.
  • Easily add clients as guests and control the amount of access.
  • Clients can start discussions and respond to existing discussions via email.
  • Discussions have good formatting options to allow for improved readability.
  • Individual comments cannot be linked to. This makes it more difficult to reference a comment or question.
  • Unnecessary features cannot be turned off. Since we use it primarily for communication, it would be ideal to turn off tasks etc. that are not needed or be able to move discussions as the first screen.
  • There isn't an easy way to set up different projects under the same client.
ActiveCollab is more suited for people looking for project management software since the tasks and project management tools are the primary focus. The time tracking and invoicing components are valuable for this. It is less useful as a communication portal as the project management features actually get in the way and hamper the usability.
Mike Muller | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
ActiveCollab is being used in our company as a project management tool. We utilize it for our traditional and digital services. For our digital services, we use it to manage agile workflows along with timeline and task management. It's used by our entire organization and feeds our billing department as well.
  • Simple interface.
  • Flexible setup of tags and categories.
  • Handles agile and waterfall type workflows well.
  • Could use more flexibility in setting up categories.
  • It would be nice to have multiple Kanban boards inside a project.
  • The search functionality could be improved.
ActiveCollab is well suited for small to medium-sized organizations that want strong project management tools at an affordable cost. It's nice that we can use the self-hosted version to help control costs and utilize the current hosting infrastructure. It's not as appropriate for very large organizations or organizations requiring many different task categories.
Joshua VanMeter | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our support team utilizes ActiveCollab to manage projects that are specific to their department. Overall, it's a fine enough system, but there are some quirks and challenges that need to be addressed before the system can be utilized fluently. We're still working through these challenges, but the system seems to be working as expected.
  • Simple project management
  • Organized task lists
  • Solid user management tools
  • Uninspired design
  • Very basic text editing features, minimal support for screenshots (you get 1 per task/message update)
This is a system built by engineers for engineer-minded people. Nothing fancy, but it does do exactly what you expect it to.
Julia Romanchenko | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
ActiveCollab is used across the whole organization to manage tasks of design, development, and marketing.
  • Activity log to see the general picture.
  • Ability to manage different projects.
  • Daily email report on things discussed the previous day.
  • Subtasks cannot be managed as full tasks, with comments.
  • No ability to make several assignees.
When you manage a project or a task it is convenient to assign it to the appropriate colleague and track its status. ActiveCollab's user interface and design are a bit unusual after using Wrike for several years.
Ali Zakeri | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
ActiveCollab is used at my company as the main ticketing system. We rely on ActiveCollab for:

  • Tracking internal tasks
  • Projecting progress
  • Client requests
  • Internal and external communications
It helps to keep on top of things and ensure nothing slips through the cracks.
  • Project Management - Makes it very efficient to manage projects using Gantt Charts, daily email reports and custom reports!
  • Collaboration - Allows to collaborate with team members, tag them in tasks, send files/attachments.
  • Task delegation - With just 2 clicks you can delegate tasks to other team members/users.
  • Search functionality - The search functionality is not so promising and I'm unable to find the tasks/items that I need even though I use the keywords that are in the ticket/comments -- Definitely something that needs to be improved.
  • No snooze functionality for tasks - If you work on multiple projects and deal with large number of tasks/tickets then things can get messy in your "workspace." An easy feature that can resolve this is to add snooze functionality. That way users can snooze tasks and optimize their workspace until when they really need to work on the task.
  • No ability to color code tasks - I'm a visual person and deal with a large number of tasks on ActiveCollab. Seeing my huge pile of tasks in the same color makes me lose track of things and slows me down. It would be very helpful for me if task color coding was added to Active Collab -- I'm sure there are others out there who benefit from this feature, too!
Overall, ActiveCollab is a great project management tool. If you're looking for a platform for your team to track their tasks, communicate with one another, share files, etc., then ActiveCollab is the exact right choice. It even allows you to invite external users to collaborate with (such as clients) and lets you set up custom visibility for them.
Chris Lesner | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
ActiveCollab helps us run the day to day operations for our company and our clients. Our whole team uses ActiveCollab in order to keep everything moving in the right direction. It helps us keep track of everything we do and where any project as at in its timeline.
  • They give you the source code to use on your own server.
  • It is easy to sort clients and campaigns.
  • The email notifications work perfectly when tagging and talking to people. They allow you to subscribe to tasks as well to keep in the loop on what is going on.
  • They don' do Gantt charts well
  • Integrations aren't awesome yet
  • They don't have task dependencies
We have a marketing company. If you are an agency of any size and work with clients, it's easy to give your clients full access to whatever you want them to see. We allow our clients to see how their projects/tasks are going, but there is even a hidden from clients button on any task that allows you to give full visibility into any task for any and all clients.
Daniel Pacheco | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
ActiveCollab is used throughout the company to manage projects and manage company resources. Each idea, plan, execution, project, management, acquisition, new tool. They discuss, talk, repair ActiveCollab.
It is the ideal platform for the current IT industry, it gives us a great comfort to establish meetings, dictate tasks and supervise the activities delegated to the assigned team, according to the project.
  • Very nice interface for all user roles in the system.
  • Effective notification of pending tasks and optimal management of the equipment.
  • Organized work flow, productive tasks and correct execution.
  • Creation of filters to better locate artifacts for daily use.
  • It is confusing when a review is made, before buying the product.
  • It lacks animation and pleasant forms for the user.
  • Does not allow effective communication when activities are reported. Since it does not provide a direct message chat.
  • The reports that are generated are basic, they do not have personalization characteristics.
Intuitive and flexible to use all kinds of extension components. Simple and pleasant, it has amazing features and is highly secure.
When they lack animation and explosiveness at the user level, it expires due to the rich user experiences offered by today's website.
ActiveCollab is a safe investment when talking about dynamics and production in projects, also in the management of the fair of the working group.
Sourav Singla ,Safe Agilist, CSP,  ICP-ACC, CSM, CSPO, SSM, LSSG | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized

For two teams Active Collab is being used in my organization as project management tool after our customer decided to move to agile scrum framework from waterfall. Earlier these teams were using HP ALM.

Since project moved from fixed capacity to T&M, Active Collab was very helpful since its billing & invoice features allows you generate the invoices easily.

Here cost can be easily assigned to each team member, Team members can start the timer after they start their work, then allows you to export the time records of team members making it easy to complete the billing.

It tells us precisely how much budget you've spent, who is working on what with how much capacity available and how deadlines and responsibilities overlap across multiple projects.

Thus AC served as excellent tool providing a great snapshot of team work at any given point to customer.

  • Its billing & invoice feature worked pretty well for T&M teams. ActiveCollab version 5, the current version, allows you to directly track time to tasks using the Timer app and later create invoices based on those time entries. Their statuses will change through phases, as you are pending payment, or after they are set as paid.
  • Here cost can be easily assigned to each team member, Team members can start the timer after they start their work, then allows you to export the time records of team members making it easy to complete the billing.
  • File sharing feature is very useful for distributed teams as we can we can easily share files, screenshots.
  • Also ActiveCollab ability to connect to Google docs, attach images and link to web pages make it unique from other project management tools.
  • AC easily allows you to track your daily tasks & serves reminder if miss on the targets defined by giving daily / weekly reminders regarding tasks and any that have gone over due dates.
  • ActiveCollab is quite easy to use. With just a few clicks, you can create a new project.
  • The dashboard and options are easy to see and it is well laid out.
  • Here user have an opportunity to select the number of emails they receive from ActiveCollab and for some email providers, such as Gmail grouping is enabled. So rather than getting multiple mails, it send you a summary of all the daily notifications in one mail.
  • It allows users to upload several files at once on task comments, and if you are set with the owner role, or have the member role but are a project leader, you have a Batch Edit option available on project level. This allows you to edit multiple tasks at once and change all the details on them, such as assignee, due dates, labels, importance, and more.
  • It does not provide support to scaled agile frameworks like SAfe which is there for Rally & AgileCraft.
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.

Иван Шайхисламов | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
I use this service for project management. It helps to correctly process the workflow so that all tasks are completed on time and the project has been handed over to the client. For this, I use the chart of the gantt, calendar and other functions of my service.
  • Daily notifications to the mail about upcoming tasks and expired, if any.
  • Preparation of financial reports and tasks for specific projects. You can form for individual tasks, employees and other criteria.
  • The availability of the gantt chart greatly simplifies the process of building the project, as it is an effective tool that helps to see the order of tasks to be performed.
  • I would like to supplement the mobile application with the functionality that the service has in the desktop version, for more efficient work.
  • Sorting projects and tasks is not always convenient, I would like to customize it for myself.
ActiveCollab is great for planning and running projects, as well as for accounting for project costs and the company as a whole. Built-in tools perfectly solve these tasks. Also, the service is very convenient both for team work and for work itself. Control of the performance of specific tasks and subtasks is convenient.
Jorden Beatty | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Active Collab as our primary project management system and workflow tool. The agency as a whole uses the platform as a way to manage our projects both onsite and off, and even on mobile, as needed. It serves its purpose as a project management platform with a plethora of add-ons, plugins and key features that help us get the most from our project management needs.
  • 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.
  • As a web-based platform, sometimes things go down on their end and we lose access to our project management tool to the ire of all.
  • Project searching can be hit or miss, and filtered search often leaves out projects that should have shown.
  • Email alerts are often not as helpful as they seem.
Active Collab is great for small teams who want a web-based project management platform to help them on their day-to-day workflow tasks, billing, estimations, vendor assignments and even client communications. It is also great for agencies with users who are sometimes remotely working. Active Collab starts to show shortcomings when you have an immense amount of projects in the system (1000+), and, being a web-based platform, can sometimes experience downtime.
Kevin Horler | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Active Collab to manage all projects within our web design/digital marketing business. Having tried many other project management options, we found Active Collab to be the only one that offered all the features that we need at a sensible price point. Using it has enabled all of our team, including freelancers to keep up to date with all projects they are involved in whilst giving myself and my fellow directors an instant view of which stage each job is at.
  • The time tracking desktop app is great, giving both a list of assigned tasks and allowing time spent on them to be recorded quickly and easily.
  • Xero integration means that all time tracked can be used to create invoices within our chosen accounting package with the minimum of fuss.
  • Project templates ensure that each new project is quick and easy to set up and that all internal processes are included within each project.
  • Notification emails would benefit from being able to set up schedules for reminders when tasks are due for completion.
  • A time tracking app for Linus would be a welcome addition.
For me, Active Collab is the ideal project management tool for a busy digital agency.
Return to navigation