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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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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 …
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Popular Features

View all 18 features
  • Team Collaboration (13)
    6.4
    64%
  • Task Management (12)
    5.9
    59%
  • Mobile Access (10)
    1.4
    14%
  • Scheduling (11)
    1.0
    10%

Reviewer Pros & Cons

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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

3.7
Avg 7.5

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 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 and Ratings

(34)

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

(1-2 of 2)
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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.
  • Ability to store and manage tasks in a central location
Project Management (12)
24.166666666666664%
2.4
Task Management
50%
5.0
Resource Management
10%
1.0
Gantt Charts
30%
3.0
Scheduling
10%
1.0
Team Collaboration
60%
6.0
Support for Agile Methodology
N/A
N/A
Document Management
30%
3.0
Email integration
40%
4.0
Mobile Access
10%
1.0
Timesheet Tracking
20%
2.0
Change request and Case Management
10%
1.0
Budget and Expense Management
20%
2.0
Professional Services Automation (4)
2.5%
0.3
Quotes/estimates
N/A
N/A
Invoicing
N/A
N/A
Project & financial reporting
10%
1.0
Integration with accounting software
N/A
N/A
  • Con: A lot of time is spent on avoidable admin tasks due to lack of certain features
  • Pro: We can provide clients with access to task lists to reduce comms
Unfortunately, I find that every single one of these alternatives is a better tool. ActiveCollab is a legacy tool my organisation had in place when I joined because their team had been much smaller and had less need for collaborative views and workload management within a tool until recently. We are having discussions internally about what we need from a tool now, and will be migrating to a different platform in the near future.
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.
  • Tracking time
  • Categorizing time
  • Assigning tasks
  • View status of tasks
Project Management (12)
22.5%
2.3
Task Management
90%
9.0
Resource Management
N/A
N/A
Gantt Charts
N/A
N/A
Scheduling
N/A
N/A
Team Collaboration
80%
8.0
Support for Agile Methodology
70%
7.0
Document Management
N/A
N/A
Email integration
N/A
N/A
Mobile Access
30%
3.0
Timesheet Tracking
N/A
N/A
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
  • Able to see what tasks each team member is working on
  • Able to get an idea of where our time is going
  • Able to estimate upcoming projects better on how long they will take
  • Able to see what tasks were worked on in a specific period of time (over the past 6 months, etc.)
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