ActiveCollab Evaluate – The Good and Unhealthy for 2023

When you personal or handle a small enterprise, you need undertaking administration software program that doesn’t punish you for wanting the entire options you want. ActiveCollab retains your month-to-month invoice low, even for those who’re a small workforce that desires superior instruments like built-in time monitoring, consumer administration, and activity dependencies. Let’s dive into how nicely their prime options carry out and the place ActiveCollab may stand to enhance. 

ActiveCollab In comparison with the Greatest Venture Administration Software program

We’ve written so much about undertaking administration right here on Loopy Egg, together with our full submit reviewing the highest choices for undertaking administration software program. From that article, we’ve pulled our three favorites—our Golden Eggs—that are strong, versatile options to ActiveCollab and different PM platforms.  

Monday.com provides a variety of undertaking administration options, together with stuff you gained’t discover elsewhere, like a sturdy, built-in CRM. Get began by establishing your free Monday account.  

ClickUp enables you to set targets, chat together with your workforce internally, plan like an skilled, and way more for much less cash than you would possibly assume. You possibly can even begin utilizing ClickUp immediately on its free-forever plan.

Smartsheet’s flexibility and energy are its strongest belongings, and we guess you’ll love its functionality to automate duties and generate customized studies. Strive Smartsheet out on its beneficiant 30-day trial.

ActiveCollab: The Good and the Unhealthy

Shopping for software program is tough, which is why we use this submit to interrupt down the important thing virtues and flaws of ActiveCollab as a undertaking administration resolution. Our purpose is that, by the top of this submit, you’ll have all of the info and particulars you want so your buying resolution is straightforward and stress-free. 

What ActiveCollab Is Good At 

ActiveCollab delivers 20 normal options on each plan, so there isn’t any scarcity of advantages to be gleaned from this software program. Under, we break down the very best options you’ll get from the software program and what present customers really feel are the core parts that stand out.  

Simplified administration: When you handle each day scrum conferences or sprints, ActiveCollab does a wonderful job serving to you manage and handle occasions, duties, and different undertaking objects suddenly. With listing, column, Gantt, and calendar views, you’ll be able to visualize all these parts in whichever approach you want greatest. You possibly can simply use any PM methodology.

Plus, you’ll be able to duplicate total activity lists, full all open duties with one click on (as a substitute of one after the other), and even copy duties to a very completely different undertaking, all of which allow you to template widespread endeavors and streamline undertaking setup and completion at scale. 

Constructed-in time monitoring: Customers love that you simply don’t need to safe completely different software program to calculate billable time for initiatives and observe time spent. ActiveCollab’s stopwatch function enables you to observe time with ease—precisely. Particular person duties and whole initiatives are monitored, then neatly summarized in easy-to-read studies. 

As soon as ActiveCollab has a really feel for the way a lot time your workforce members spend on initiatives and duties, you’ll be able to evaluate the estimated time to completion versus precise time spent. Even higher, time administration via ActiveCollab additionally folds in payroll calculation for all of your workforce members with billable hours. You possibly can simply invoice by the hour and let ActiveCollab do the mathematics. Calculate time as a workforce or individually via private timesheets.

Profitability forecasting: Understanding how a lot a undertaking will influence your backside line is without doubt one of the differentiators between respectable and nice undertaking administration. ActiveCollab has options that allow you to predict the result and profitability of your initiatives and show the value of latest alternatives to executives, shoppers, or different stakeholders. 

This picks up the place the earlier function left off. With the power to forecast billable hours spent on the duties that make up a undertaking, ActiveCollab combines that data with undertaking bills to develop an preliminary profitability evaluation. Higher nonetheless, it retains updating that evaluation in real-time, so that you’re alerted if delays or new duties are consuming an excessive amount of into your revenue margin. 

Consumer work: All ActiveCollab plans mean you can invite a limiteless variety of shoppers to your interface, permitting you to convey them backstage at key factors in your course of. Plus, their visitor accounts can obtain notifications from inside the platform, so you’ll be able to talk with shoppers clearly whereas eliminating unwieldy e-mail chains and confusion concerning undertaking particulars. 

Past simply giving and receiving faster, clearer suggestions from shoppers, the built-in time monitoring and revenue forecasting you get from ActiveCollab additionally lets shoppers into your visibility on undertaking well being and expectations, for those who so select. Moreover, by including the Get Paid options to your ActiveCollab plan (extra particulars on that in a bit), you’ll be able to even invoice shoppers and get funds from them from proper inside this platform.

Workforce collaboration: ActiveCollab provides a number of options to maintain your workforce working collectively like a dream. Actual-time notifications occur when duties get accomplished so the following individual within the chain is notified that it’s time to start out. In the meantime, feedback and discussions can occur inside duties permitting workforce members to add attachments like drafts, mockups, and proofs.

That’s not all, although, as ActiveCollab additionally has built-in workforce chat that may occur independently of duties and initiatives. Create customized teams of workforce members so these concerned with specifics can brainstorm and remedy issues amongst themselves. Then, flip a easy brainstorming session into an actual actionable activity with the press of a button.  

Cost gateway integration: All undertaking administration software program can have some skill to combine with different key platforms you’re probably to make use of throughout undertaking work. However ActiveCollab continues its excellence concerning consumer work with its distinctive skill to sync with cost processors like PayPal and Stripe. This manner, you’ll be able to settle for simple consumer funds for invoices you create inside the ActiveCollab software program.

What ActiveCollab Is Missing

ActiveCollab is nice at delivering a wide selection of helpful options on any plan, however we’ve observed a number of drawbacks throughout our analysis. Assess the next flaws and see in the event that they current an excessive amount of of an impediment to justify committing to ActiveCollab as your PM software program of selection. 

Cell entry: ActiveCollab provides a cell app model of its software program platform, however it’s sluggish and doesn’t carry out as much as the extent that many customers count on. There’s usually lag when switching between screens, inflicting some customers to simply abandon even attempting to make use of it. By most accounts, the desktop app is way more user-friendly and dependable. 

Want for duplicate duties: A significant limitation we discovered is the lack to assign a couple of workforce member to a activity. That’s simply unrealistic with regards to fashionable undertaking work. In ActiveCollab, in case you have a couple of workforce member that must be connected to a activity, you’re caught making a number of copies of that activity for every one who must work on it. 

Having this limitation with ActiveCollab causes additional busy work for undertaking managers and may result in confusion and diminished visibility due to these redundant undertaking objects. That disproportionately impacts sure undertaking views, like Gantt charts and calendars, which change into extra cluttered the extra duplicate duties you have to make.  

Search: One other side the place ActiveCollab breaks down at scale is the search operate within the software program tends to be glitchy, requiring you to manually seek for duties, attachments, or different objects. That may be ignored or suffered via for smaller endeavors, however once you’re juggling a complete portfolio of initiatives or only one with upwards of fifty particular person duties, all with their very own necessities and workforce discussions, this generally is a large nuisance or simply flat-out untenable.

ActiveCollab Choices and Pricing

ActiveCollab provides streamlined pricing that doesn’t lock a bunch of options away on high-cost plans. And the general value level for any possibility is kind of simple to swallow. 

There are three major types of pricing for this software program. It begins with the Professional plan, priced at $8 per person per thirty days when paying yearly, and $9 per person with month-to-month billing.

The Professional package deal delivers each software program function for undertaking planning, activity administration, collaboration, and time monitoring. You get every thing ActiveCollab has to supply, in need of the options included within the Get Paid add-on (which we’ll cowl momentarily).

That’s a fairly strong value level for limitless customers, consumer accounts, and initiatives, plus 100 GB of shared storage. 

There are two different pricing tiers for smaller groups. ActiveCollab Plus is supposed for groups of three or fewer members and in addition delivers the overwhelming majority of options that the software program provides. All that’s lacking are integrations, expense monitoring, and superior reporting options. You’re additionally restricted to 10 GB of storage. 

Plus will really value you a bit greater than the Professional plan, because it begins at $9.50 per person per thirty days once you decide to a yr upfront. That value goes as much as $11 per person for those who go for month-to-month billing as a substitute.

There’s additionally a free model of the ActiveCollab platform. It’s a restricted model of the software program, with just one GB of storage and no undertaking views exterior of lists and Kanban boards. However you continue to can have as much as three workforce members utilizing it collectively, plus you even have entry to undertaking time monitoring, the Stopwatch function, private timesheets, begin and due dates, activity dependencies, and extra.

ActiveCollab Get Paid

For groups that wish to lean exhausting on ActiveCollab’s skill to simplify and help consumer work, it’s value contemplating including the Get Paid package deal onto the Professional plan. In a single bundle that prices simply $11.75 per person per thirty days on annual billing ($14 per person for month-to-month billing), you get every thing this software program can do, plus instruments for invoicing, billing shoppers, and accepting funds.

This can be a actually distinctive and useful package deal, because it additionally unlocks integration with QuickBooks, the profitability reporting options we talked about earlier on this submit, and a variety of budgeting and workload planning instruments. Get higher at each folks and consumer administration alongside your undertaking administration once you go for ActiveCollab’s Professional+Get Paid bundle.

ActiveCollab in Abstract

Venture administration isn’t thrilling, normally. However the options and advantages provided by ActiveCollab are as understandably mesmerizing to some businesses because the lights on the Vegas Strip. The advantages are plentiful with this software program, however be conscious of its limitations and the intricacies of its pricing construction.

With that in thoughts, ActiveCollab may not be the most suitable choice for you and we perceive that. Maintain your choices open if this software program’s shortcomings are an excessive amount of to bear, and take into account our favored picks for all kinds of customers and use circumstances. Monday.com and ClickUp are fairly priced, highly effective, and well-liked choices well-suited for a lot of groups, whereas Smartsheet delivers severe energy even on its most cost-effective plan. 

And, if you wish to do extra analysis by yourself, dive into the big range of undertaking administration posts we’ve got written right here on Loopy Egg. We propose you begin with our prime listing of the very best undertaking administration software program choices and preserve going till you might be armed with the knowledge you have to make a assured, right resolution to your group.