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Active Collab has become an essential project management tool for two teams within our organization, as it offers a seamless transition …
Starting at $8 per member/per month
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What is ActiveCollab?
Active Collab is a project management solution built around features such as task management, collaboration, time tracking, and invoicing.
Recent Reviews
Popular Features
- Team Collaboration (13)6.565%
- Task Management (12)5.959%
- Mobile Access (10)1.515%
- Scheduling (11)1.010%
Reviewer Pros & Cons
Pricing
ActiveCollab Project Management
$8
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 billingOptional
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://activecollab.com/pricing
Offerings
- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Features
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- Competitors
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- FAQs
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
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.
ActiveCollab centralizes people management. Instead of inviting users one by one, creating a team invites them all at once.
ActiveCollab is about people working together. This video describes how to get started with a team invite.
An overview of ActiveCollab's new and enhanced features.
ActiveCollab Workload is a visual resource management tool built for agencies and creative professionals
ActiveCollab's Project Management Features
ActiveCollab Integrations
ActiveCollab Competitors
ActiveCollab Technical Details
| Deployment Types | On-premise, Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based |
|---|---|
| Operating Systems | Windows, Linux, Mac |
| Mobile Application | Apple iOS, Android |
| Supported Countries | All Countries |
| Supported Languages | Brazilian 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.
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).
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(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!
- Business Problems Solved
- Pros
- Cons
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
(1-5 of 5)Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
November 07, 2019
Strong project management tool that provides a great set of features
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.
91.81818181818181%
9.2
73.33333333333333%
7.3
- It was a cost-effective way to bring in a good project management tool.
- It has helped us track billable hours and catch projects that are going over budget.
- Has greatly improved communication.
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.
December 05, 2018
ActiveCollab - Powerful, Simple & Reliable!
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
- 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!
47.5%
4.8
N/A
N/A
- 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!).
- JIRA Software and Trello
I have used multiple project management platforms such as ActiveCollab, JIRA, Trello, etc. Trello has great visualization with their (Kanban Board) board system and support drag and drop functionality for managing tasks. ActiveCollab, however, does not have the fancy visualization, but is very powerful when it comes to ticketing, task management, task delegation, time tracking, etc.
May 28, 2018
ActiveCollab a boon for T&M projects
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.
77.27272727272728%
7.7
76.66666666666667%
7.7
- For T& M teams, it is very good tools not only to manage teams but billing & invoicing.
- we are able to generate invoices easily which earlier was a lot of headache & took lot of effort & time to do.
- Whenever we encounter any issue in using any feature of AC, we get lot of support from their support desk.
- Their customer service has been very responsive and helpful throughout.
- Task management is USP of AC. It supports active tracking of our daily tasks & serves reminder if we miss on the targets defined, this helping us keeping on track & meeting the customer SLA's.
Since we moved from fixed capacity project to T&M we need some tool who support our billing & invoicing.
HP ALM did not provide good support for invoicing so we moved out from HP ALM to ActiveCollab.
The features like Timer, reminders are not available in other project management tools like JIRA, Rally & ALM making AC the first choice since we have strict SLA's & AC helps in meeting that.
HP ALM did not provide good support for invoicing so we moved out from HP ALM to ActiveCollab.
The features like Timer, reminders are not available in other project management tools like JIRA, Rally & ALM making AC the first choice since we have strict SLA's & AC helps in meeting that.
January 11, 2018
Excellent solution for project management
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.
96.66666666666666%
9.7
100%
10.0
- We began to finish projects on time, which undoubtedly will influence the return of customers
ActiveCollab has all the functions that are in these services, unlike them. Not everywhere there is a diagram of gantt. And somewhere the interface is very rewarded and in general looks obsolete.
September 02, 2016
Easy, Straightforward Web-Based Project Management Tool for Small to Mid-size Agencies
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.
79.28571428571429%
7.9
50%
5.0
- Active Collab has helped us to move to a completely digital project management system, moving away from physical time sheets and assignments many years ago. Since then, the platform has grown very quickly and very adeptly, and that is why we continue to use it.
- The Active Collab platform helps us with quick, easy access to our project management system, even for off-site users, vendors and clients.
- Time tracking and profit analysis has been great to help us price new agency services and change requests.
We chose Active Collab overall because we liked its easy to use user interface, project management suite and agency/vendor/client interaction capabilities. We also chose it primarily because it was offered as a web-based platform that offered very clean and easy mobile access for our off-site users as well as clients and third-party vendors. Mavenlink and Basecamp, at the time, were more suited to specifically be used for project management on a more granular scale for project managers, not necessarily the whole team, including vendors and clients collaboration.