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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.

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Learn from top reviewers

A lot to be improved but better than nothing

Rating: 1 out of 10
June 29, 2023
Vetted ReviewVerified 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...
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Verified user
Manager
ActiveCollab1 year of experience

Works great for our sprint/scrum tasks, just be aware of limitations and avoid the mobile app

Rating: 8 out of 10
November 29, 2022
IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User
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 we...
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Verified user
Employee
ActiveCollab4 years of experience

Great option for small businesses

Rating: 6 out of 10
November 20, 2019
IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User
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...
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Nancy Ross
Director - Marketing
Director
ROMI Lab
ActiveCollab4 years of experience

Strong project management tool that provides a great set of features

Rating: 10 out of 10
November 7, 2019
IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User
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 a...
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Mike Muller
Administrator - Corporate
Executive Vice President
Stevens Advertising
ActiveCollab3 years of experience

ActiveCollab or Actively looking for another solution?

Rating: 6 out of 10
September 25, 2019
IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User
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 t...
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Joshua VanMeter
Director - Marketing
Digital Marketing Director
Max Effect Marketing
ActiveCollab1 year of experience
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Pricing

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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 billing
    Optional
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://activecollab.com/pricing

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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Features

Project Management

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

3.6
Avg 7.6

Professional Services Automation

Features that support professional services organizations

5.7
Avg 7.4
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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 the dashboard with an overview of projects.Screenshot of multiple task views currently 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.
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 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).
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Comparisons

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Reviews From Top Reviewers

View all reviews
(1-5 of 5)

ActiveCollab - Powerful, Simple & Reliable!

Rating: 8 out of 10
Incentivized
December 05, 2018
AZ
Ali Zakeri
Data Analyst | SEO Specialist
Xivic, Inc. (Information Technology and Services, 51-200 employees)
Vetted Review
Verified User
ActiveCollab
3 years of experience
View profile
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
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.
Pros
  • 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.
Cons
  • 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!
Likelihood to Recommend
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.
ActiveCollab Feature Ratings
Project Management (12)
47.5%
4.8
Task Management
90%
9.0
Resource Management
60%
6.0
Gantt Charts
80%
8.0
Scheduling
90%
9.0
Team Collaboration
90%
9.0
Support for Agile Methodology
N/A
N/A
Document Management
N/A
N/A
Email integration
60%
6.0
Mobile Access
20%
2.0
Timesheet Tracking
80%
8.0
Change request and Case Management
N/A
N/A
Budget and Expense Management
N/A
N/A
Professional Services Automation (4)
N/A
N/A
Quotes/estimates
N/A
N/A
Invoicing
N/A
N/A
Project & financial reporting
N/A
N/A
Integration with accounting software
N/A
N/A
Return on Investment
  • 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!).
Alternatives Considered
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.
Other Software Used

Strong project management tool that provides a great set of features

Rating: 10 out of 10
Incentivized
November 07, 2019
MM
Mike Muller
Executive Vice President
Stevens Advertising (Marketing and Advertising, 11-50 employees)
Vetted Review
Verified User
ActiveCollab
3 years of experience
View profile
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
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.
Pros
  • Simple interface.
  • Flexible setup of tags and categories.
  • Handles agile and waterfall type workflows well.
Cons
  • 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.
Likelihood to Recommend
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.
ActiveCollab Feature Ratings
Project Management (11)
91.81818181818181%
9.2
Task Management
100%
10.0
Resource Management
70%
7.0
Gantt Charts
90%
9.0
Scheduling
70%
7.0
Team Collaboration
100%
10.0
Support for Agile Methodology
90%
9.0
Document Management
100%
10.0
Email integration
100%
10.0
Mobile Access
100%
10.0
Timesheet Tracking
100%
10.0
Change request and Case Management
90%
9.0
Professional Services Automation (3)
73.33333333333333%
7.3
Quotes/estimates
70%
7.0
Invoicing
70%
7.0
Integration with accounting software
80%
8.0
Return on Investment
  • 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.
Alternatives Considered
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.
Support Rating
9
The support team is responsive to requests and their annual support fees are reasonable. Honestly, we don't have to contact them much. Updates happen automatically and the platform is very solid and does not require a lot of support. Documentation is good and the platform is easy to learn.
Other Software Used

Easy, Straightforward Web-Based Project Management Tool for Small to Mid-size Agencies

Rating: 7 out of 10
Incentivized
September 02, 2016
JB
Jorden Beatty
Digital Marketing Director
LGD Communications (Marketing and Advertising, 11-50 employees)
Vetted Review
Verified User
ActiveCollab
3 years of experience
View profile
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
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.
Pros
  • 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.
Cons
  • 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.
Likelihood to Recommend
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.
ActiveCollab Feature Ratings
Project Management (14)
79.28571428571429%
7.9
Task Management
100%
10.0
Resource Management
80%
8.0
Gantt Charts
50%
5.0
Scheduling
70%
7.0
Workflow Automation
70%
7.0
Team Collaboration
100%
10.0
Support for Agile Methodology
80%
8.0
Support for Waterfall Methodology
70%
7.0
Document Management
50%
5.0
Email integration
80%
8.0
Mobile Access
100%
10.0
Timesheet Tracking
100%
10.0
Change request and Case Management
60%
6.0
Budget and Expense Management
100%
10.0
Professional Services Automation (4)
50%
5.0
Quotes/estimates
100%
10.0
Invoicing
N/A
N/A
Project & financial reporting
100%
10.0
Integration with accounting software
N/A
N/A
Return on Investment
  • 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.
Alternatives Considered
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.
Other Software Used

Excellent solution for project management

Rating: 10 out of 10
January 11, 2018
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
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.
Pros
  • 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.
Cons
  • 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.
Likelihood to Recommend
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.
ActiveCollab Feature Ratings
Project Management (9)
96.66666666666666%
9.7
Task Management
100%
10.0
Resource Management
100%
10.0
Gantt Charts
90%
9.0
Scheduling
100%
10.0
Team Collaboration
100%
10.0
Mobile Access
80%
8.0
Timesheet Tracking
100%
10.0
Change request and Case Management
100%
10.0
Budget and Expense Management
100%
10.0
Professional Services Automation (3)
100%
10.0
Quotes/estimates
100%
10.0
Invoicing
100%
10.0
Project & financial reporting
100%
10.0
Return on Investment
  • We began to finish projects on time, which undoubtedly will influence the return of customers
Alternatives Considered
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.

ActiveCollab a boon for T&M projects

Rating: 7 out of 10
Incentivized
May 28, 2018
Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Pros
  • 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.
Cons
  • It does not provide support to scaled agile frameworks like SAfe which is there for Rally & AgileCraft.
Likelihood to Recommend
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.

ActiveCollab Feature Ratings
Project Management (11)
77.27272727272728%
7.7
Task Management
90%
9.0
Resource Management
90%
9.0
Scheduling
60%
6.0
Team Collaboration
60%
6.0
Support for Agile Methodology
60%
6.0
Document Management
90%
9.0
Email integration
80%
8.0
Mobile Access
80%
8.0
Timesheet Tracking
90%
9.0
Change request and Case Management
70%
7.0
Budget and Expense Management
80%
8.0
Professional Services Automation (3)
76.66666666666667%
7.7
Quotes/estimates
70%
7.0
Invoicing
90%
9.0
Project & financial reporting
70%
7.0
Return on Investment
  • 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.
Alternatives Considered
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.
Other Software Used
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