ActiveCollab Reviews

Pros
Before I decided to go with ActiveCollab a few years ago, I researched and tried all the project management softwares I could find. I ended up going with ActiveCollab for a number of reasons. One, their interface is simple, practical, and easy on the eye. I found other project management softwares trying to hard and it essentially complicated simple things. Also, I loved how my projects can be displayed and searched. I know this sounds trivial, but when you manage hundreds of projects (websites), I need an interface that works for me. Their interface works perfectly for someone with my needs. I constantly have to go back and forth on so many notes for projects and ActiveCollab has made it user-friendly for me to do this. Second, ActiveCollab had awesome customer service when I had any issues or questions. This was a big plus because I then knew I was in good hands. Third, they had some add-ons other softwares didn't have so it was nice to have features I wanted to use all in one place, like time tracking and invoicing. Fourth, it was reasonably priced.

Cons
While I went with ActiveCollab, I am still frustrated with some of their features: One, I use notes A LOT. Their notes interface design looks like something from the 90's. Two, while they have the invoicing option available, it's sub-par. There are a lot of things they can improve with their invoicing. I wish I could use it, but it's just very limited. An example of a limitation is that you can't even enter or send an invoice without "inviting" the client to join ActiveCollab. I tried testing an invoice by putting an email manually because they claimed you could, but nothing gets sent, unless I "invite" someone into my account. This is silly. Another issue I have with the invoicing is that it shows "Active Collab" as the sender and you do NOT have the option to change this. Kinda stupid. Three, you only have a measly 3 ways to categorize or filter projects: Client, Category, and Label. This can be very limiting depending on what you're doing.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10

Pros
Diversity of features. It covers calendar integration, task management, expense and time tracking, client estimates and invoicing is integrated, discussions with clients are threaded and neatly organized at all times, file uploads that act as a mini-Dropbox for yourself and your clients, notes, facebook-style timeline of the activity within each project... And I haven't even touched on the level of customization, multitude of extensions (Zapier included), scalability (with self-hosted options!), and the iOS app that works with either cloud or self-hosted versions (our clients LOVE the app). We love ActiveCollab because of it's diversity. That's the one reason that in our opinion, it's simply irreplaceable. Having to replace it would be like adding tripling the administrative work on our plates. It replaces the need for multiple separate services that do each of those things separately. Who wants that when you can have one single login to one single system that can rule them all? ;) SIMPLY. IRREPLACEABLE.

Cons
The iOS and Android apps needs some work. They don't do as much as the desktop version, so they feel limited. They don't really take advantage of features like gestures or multi-touch, which every smartphone has. We'd really like to be able to upload more than just pictures from the camera roll; some kind of file picking, or option to upload to ActiveCollab from another app (share sheets) would go a LONG way. Optimization for tablet-size screens would be sweet too, along with the simple ability to make text in the app bigger or smaller, so it's easier to read. The calendar allows for syndication via subscription links, but stopping there feels premature. It would help a lot to be able to integrate to Calendar apps (via CalDAV), since the calendar isn't available on the mobile app either. It would be really nice so that we can add or edit events from our native calendar apps of choice. Support is fantastic, and extremely knowledgeable. We run a self-hosted installation, which is more economical for us, but we don't have pros running our server environment. That task falls on us, teaching ourselves as we go, and it feels like support will drop clues about what an issue is, instead of going the distance and going in themselves to help fix the problem. Granted, that's more of a problem with /us/, since we're business administrators and not experts in server management. But support will not abandon you. They've always got your back, no matter how tough the problem!

Rating breakdown

Pros
I own and operate a company that specializes in creative strategy and marketing/PR services and this is a good fit for us. I spent many months and went through quite a few trials researching a software that had as many features combined that we were looking for. We settled on ActiveCollab and we're very happy with them. It's a great option without the price tag and disorganization the later versions that Basecamp brings. I like the customization features as well as the billable categories for tracking and reports. We work with contractors in our business and we like the ability to assign tasks and hide back office items from the client. Their customer service has been very responsive and helpful throughout our set up and we're overall very happy with the product and functionality for our needs. Overall good UX / UI.

Cons
We're finding the reports options are a little bit limited, however it hasn't been a huge issue. We're getting most of the data we need. We really wish we could assign tasks to multiple people, but that seems to be a common theme among these software options. I don't understand why as we have many tasks that are worked on by multiple people. This carries over into the time tracking app. If you aren't assigned a task, it won't show up in the time tracking app for you to track against. However the work around is you can add a time report in the desktop version after the fact to any task regardless of who it assigned to. The budget feature per project is nice, however, we wish we could break it down further by task list. Their great customer service has passed this along to the management and dev team for consideration so fingers crossed it will be coming in an update at some point.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

Pros
The platform makes communicating with team members a breeze. We have a multitude of projects and tasks within the three departments - A/C helps keep everything organized and on track. LOVE the landing screen "My Work". The calendar view is awesome for our morning meetings. It is great that we can filter by person or project on the calendar. It's a robust feature that other platforms did not have. Really enjoy the notifications when I mention a team member. The robust area within a project including Tasks List, Discussions, Files, notes, Time, Expenses, Activity is great. Not only does it encourage collaboration it fully supports remote work. On the task list, we can drag/drop tasks. Filter by assignees, tasks lists, due dates, or completed tasks. You can also review the overall project progress. A/C has some great reporting features. I like how we can star projects. Simple features like that are NOT overlooked in the A/C platform. Time tracking, invoicing, and estimates functions look great. We haven't used them yet but we will eventually. I appreciate the pricing. The customer support is quick and responsive. Our team has embraced the platform and I feel we will continue to use it for years to come. I would recommend the platform to others.

Cons
Disclaimer: We use it a bit outside of its intended purpose. Our group is Marketing, Web Development, and IT. Although there are a ton of project-based objectives within the departments there are some marketing functions that are not project based. This is the biggest thing I've got it's not a deal breaker. Maybe extend the software to include flexible user accounts or setup different types of project areas. That isn't necessarily project oriented. Minors: Recurring tasks are a bit of a pain to setup the first time Multiple different calendars confuse people sometimes and they end up creating a calendar for themselves. Maybe we could setup tasks requiring a sign-off? Maybe this is already a feature and I don't know how to do it yet?

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
Solid options for organization and streamlining processes that even clients can be taught to use. As a creative agency selling our time it's important to communicate quickly and efficiently with our clients. A big part of that happens at the beginning of every project when they fill out a creative brief. We've used ActiveCollab to set up standard brief templates so AC asks all the questions and they go down the list and fill it out. The time tracker works great and is a painless way to keep track of time. Email notifications are great, especially being able to respond to comments VIA email really speeds things up. Support staff is great. Always available and helpful.

Cons
The invoicing functionality is great but is missing major sorting and display capabilities. For example, if I wanted to show each time entry with its note about what that entry was for organized by project, I cannot do that. My wife has also complained about the App not having a lot of functionality, but I have not used it much personally. I also think the 'Notes' 'Files' and 'Discussions' tabs are kind of random. Haven't found a good place for those in our workflows and they're confusing for clients. I realize it's a big thing to ask, but I'd also like to see some way of incorporating something like Slack into Active Collab, so we can move away from Skype completely.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

Pros
It's amazing how flexible AC can be depending on a project's needs. It can serve as a simple reminder list with great speed and simplicity but also get fully blown up for projects involving production teams and clients at once. Compared to its competition it never feels like its dictating you to use it in a certain way, it just hands you a great bunch of options and lets you use them without interference. I use other products like dropbox and dropbox paper too and it all goes together really nicely. One thing to note is a personal and genuinely helpful customer service, there have been issues and bugs here and there (not many) and in 90% of the cases they were solved within short time. I think AC is great for freelancers and small project groups working remotely I switched from Basecamp and it was one of a relief.

Cons
I personally don't like the free limitations of users. I know there's a business model behind it but I hate to delete other clients/team members just to make room for someone else.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
Lots of detailed helpful features which don't complicate the interface but are great when you start using them. Customer support has pointed some out when I put in what we thought was a feature request... but it already existed and I'd missed it. Actively developed and continually updated without annoyingly changing things unnecessarily or 'fixing' anything that isn't broken.

Cons
Using Elastic Search as the only available search feature is limiting, as it's difficult to host and especially so in a shared hosting environment. Without Elastic Search, there's not even a simple text search available for project/task/comment description. There's a couple glitches that pop up from time to time but customer support has been responsive about them and some of our suggestions have been included as feature requests.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
In such a complex world, where the time and control factor in operations makes a difference, it is vital to have a platform that allows access to many tasks that, otherwise, would involve and coordinate many people, this type of tools allows us to save costs and reduce involuntary human errors, in everything that refers to the necessary coordination between all the members of the project. The calendar allows to have all the tasks, meetings, and filter the tasks by projects, and if that were not enough, all this can be complemented with the participation of the members remotely, so that it is possible to follow the general state of the proyects. In case of any problem, the support team is attentive to clarify your doubts, there are still elements that we have not had the opportunity to explore, but that, surely, according to our needs we will be using them to solve the growing demands of our organizations.

Cons
As with many platforms, the versions that are used in tables or smart devices show some limitations, in relation to those that are handled by PC, it would be very important to preserve and maximize the benefits when you have other devices and not limit the functions that, After all, knowledge or traditional devices for solving problems are not always available.

Rating breakdown

Pros
ActiveCollab is very easy to use. With just a few clicks, you can have a new project created right away. Time tracking, invoicing, payment processing and many other features add an already large depth of features.

Cons
Support is quite bad, at least for the self-hosted release of the application. There is no ticketing support system, and instead you have to chat with staff through the activecollab.com site to be able to get issues logged. You never get professional assistance through chat. They copy and paste your chat into their internal support system. You're then at their mercy to reply back via email. If and when they do write you back to your email address, be prepared for long followups to your replies. When features are broken in ActiveCollab, if a fix is not on their roadmap to get the problem resolved, it will take a long time, if ever, to get the problem fixed. Elastic Search is not a great feature for self-hosted AC builds. However, search has always been horrible with AC since it's early days.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 6/10

Pros
Activecollab are great, we were previously using 3 different Basecamp accounts for our sister companies. Basecamp was becoming a nightmare, it's ugly and the support is bad. We frequently have projects running over as an example, usually as we are waiting on information so we need to manually update every task deadline (Slow and painful) Activecollab allows selecting the project and bulk updating the deadline on the tasks, or in a list view one by one which is quick and easy. We opted for the self hosted version and use an amazon AWS Elastic Search Service for searching. this is so much cheaper than what Basecamp was costing and so much more user friendly. Anyone big plus factor is, we were able to customise the software a bit (Against their guidelines) to give it some branding for our company by including an additional CSS file, we have to add this after every update but it's worth it.

Cons
Lack of built in customisation Email sending is limited in regards to daily reports etc Requires Elastic Search which is on another server/service, whilst not a huge deal it would have been nice to have a local native search and a high performance option using Elastic Search.

Rating breakdown

Pros
Covers almost everything you need for team workflow and managing (digital) project, nice UX, rich features, moderate price

Cons
Lacks a dashboard/cockpit, reports should be more flexible and easier to use, design of estimates and documents should be more flexible, billing options should be more flexible

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
Timelines.

Cons
Not reactive interface. Terrible iOS app.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

Pros
We've been using ActiveCollab since version 1. We needed more features and flexibility than other project management systems provided and we also were looking for an invoicing system. ActiveCollab provided all of that in one package and we could buy a license to run on our own server instead of paying monthly fees. This pricing model was very attractive for us along with the extra features to make the system fit our project management workflow, made ActiveCollab an easy choice.

Cons
The mobile app isn't the best. For those who heavily rely on using their project management system on mobile, this might be something to consider. I'm not a fan of the themes in the theme option, but if using the self hosted version, then you could potentially adjust styling to fit your business better.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

Pros
It has the sophistication we need and remains very easy to use. I have tried nearly every other project management software out there, and this one makes the most sense to me. It allows us to effectively collaborate with clients, and it gives us complete control over what can be seen and accessed. We use it for time tracking as well. It connects with a number of other services including Quickbooks. They really seem to listen to their users. I have asked for things and have seen them implemented. Overall, it is a great solution for us, and I do recommend it to anyone looking to better manage their projects.

Cons
I did like a little more flexibility in the license levels. It would be nice to pay by the user when we need extra users rather than have to bump up to a level that many more users than we currently need.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
While some project management systems try to force their own project management paradigms, ActiveCollab allows you the freedom to decide how you will manage your projects. Kanban? Click a button. Gannt? Click a button. You can easily manage milestones, tasks, files, discussions, time-tracking et al. however needed and have every feature you'll need or want available. Their support and development has been amazing. Quick replies, quick changes to the core product for quality-of-life requests.

Cons
Rich text could use some work as adding formatted content will sometimes yield awful results. Needs a better way to sort/view items in "My Work" based on tags and deadlines e.g., view all tasks due that week or all view all time based on job types. A responsive design and more fluid UI would also be a welcome change.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
- Simple, clean UI - Easy to learn - Clear structure (teams, projects, categorized task lists) that works well for us - Ability to sort things in the My Work list, so I can arrange my priorities for the week and then easily reorder things as tasks are completed. - Integrates well with Dropbox - Powerful customizable reports (ex. can easily see what got done in the past week on project A, or can get a clear portrait of what employee B did for the last month) Also, when you're in the middle of writing something (ex. a comment or a note) and get interrupted, it *retains* what you wrote (even if you didn't submit it and no one else can see it). This has saved me so much effort, since it's hard to juggle doing things with documenting them.

Cons
- The Asana importer didn't work for me. This resulted in a huge amount of effort migrating projects and tasks by hand. - AC emails you every time you're added to a project, and you need to be part of a project to see what's going on in it - we use this for workplace transparency, so there are a lot of projects and the notifications are irritating - Can't easily transform a task into a project - The My Work interface doesn't automatically refresh when there's an update on one of my projects, so I can be in AC all day and still miss some notifications (unless I enable email notifications, which I dislike).

Rating breakdown

Pros
1. Nice and easy-to-use interface. No issues with using it for several hours a day. 2. Several nice feeds: global (across all projects), project-wide and personal. 3. Ability to estimate and then track time for a given task. 4. We are an agency and our clients are REALLY NOT eager to use various task-trackers that different agencies push onto them. Thankfully, you can respond to any ActiveCollab comment via email so our clients do not even need to open ActiveCollab to collaborate with us. Meanwhile, we have all messages and comment in a nice and clean order, all inside our comfy ActiveCollab interface.

Cons
At some point we decided to move to a self-hosted version of ActiveCollab. By that point we've been using ActiveCollab for a while and our database (including all the files) was about 150GB. Unfortunately, it took about 6 weeks (from 16/10/2017 to 30/11/2017) for the guys over at ActiveCollab to provide us with a link to download our data.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10

Pros
I love the fact that it's linked to my email account, so if there is a new post I know about it quickly! It's also great that I can reply to threads directly from my email, that feature is so helpful. I like that the threads within ActiveCollab are easy to keep track of, so no more wading through emails trying to find a reference to something! The interface is quick and easy to use, and it's great being able to tag co-workers in threads to grab their attention.

Cons
There isn't much to be honest, but I suppose I would like it if the software took me directly to recent activity, as when there are a lot of projects sometimes I find it hard to navigate my way to the thread I'm looking for. But that's a minor quibble! Other than that, I really enjoy using the software.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
Our entire team is happy to finally use only one piece of software for teamwork. Starting with the project manager, up to the developer and the support all use the same software. Due to the interface (API) the software can be integrated wonderfully into our existing system infrastructure.

Cons
We use the self-hosted version of the program. One requirement for the search is the use of ElasticSearch. Unfortunately this is not possible at the moment, so that we cannot use the search.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
I started using ActiveCollab back when it was open source and contributed to the code. Since then it has matured a lot. It is a great over-all solution for project management, communication, time management, and even invoicing. The interface is well-thought-out and has few glitches.

Cons
The reporting functionality leaves a bit to be desired, but gets the job done. As others have mentioned, the search functionality is not great and setting up Elastic Search for the self-hosted version is a bit involved. Also, the mobile apps are not great.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

Pros
The ability to view information a variety of ways enables each project to be completed according to need. The flexibility of reports The fantastic customer service you can tell they put the customer first and genuinley care about you getting the most from the software The best thing about ActiveCollab however, is the ability to handle general admin tasks along side projects, something very few project managers allow for

Cons
The UI the software really needs a little colour, I know this is a little thing but I also know it is important to some people. Although the android app works well, I have a personal preference for seeing my task lists on a homescreen widget not having to access through an icon

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
The robust features that are at our disposal should we scale up or change the way we work. Discussions, notes, tasks, lists. Third-party app integration if needed. I like that we have room to grow. I also very much like the reports. As the business owner, it's key to see how efficiently my team is performing, and how to keep our workflow profitable.

Cons
Day-to-day, the timer app is buggy. It's frustrating when I can't scroll through our long list of active jobs, or when the status doesn't appear in my toolbar for easy reference. We've also had issues with days going by with time records not being logged, having to take screencaps and re-enter by hand (if we're lucky enough to no re-start the app). A better timer app would be very welcomed.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
ActiveCollab is far less expensive than BaseCamp and more visually appealing than the likes of Zoho or Trello. This makes it ideal for freelancers (myself included), but it could work for larger teams just as well. It's available everywhere I need it: the web, my Mac, and my phone. The overall workflow is insanely simple, yet powerful, allowing you to create new clients, projects, tasks and sub-tasks with ease. Every time you find yourself thinking "hmm...I wonder if ActiveCollab does this..." whatever you try works just as you expected it to. That's a sign of really good UI/UX thinking. Their customer support is fantastic, as well. All the people I've talked to have been real, friendly humans never bots or clueless outsourced drones.

Cons
The Mac app is still being worked on, and it has a few startup bugs, but works fantastically, otherwise.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
MOST: The desktop version. Structurally and organizationally sound. Streamlines workflow and allows multiple leads to see the workload and run reports on their various departments. Really helps with tracking estimated time for the individual and their part in the project. Communication is up and the stress of the communication is way way down. Creatives have more freedom and administrators and managers feel like they have the control they need. Love the Command+K shortcut we found today. We're still learning how to customize it to our team. It has made dealing with 60 national brands much easier and has put an end to the grade school feeling of walking up to the gigantic whiteboard to move color blocks around.

Cons
Notifications - We believe if a Project is set up and has multiple tasks that run linearly, we should be able to connect them and have a notification sent to the next person when the person before them has completed their task - An automated "passing of the baton" type of thing.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
Enables us to work efficiently on multiple tasks, with multiple users across multiple projects and multiple geographies. It's not too complicated for non-technical users and not too simple when dealing with technical issues with developers. Also can be used many different types of projects.

Cons
We would like more elaborate options for "operational analytics". The reports are ok, but we still have to do too much manual manipulation of data to get what we want. We would also welcome SMS/Text alerts and integration with services such Ghost inspector (e.g. automatic ticket generation).

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10