ActiveCollab Reviews

Great dashboard, different types of reports, milestone preview, calendars, time tracking tool are just a few of the features that make this software irreplaceable tool when it comes to project management.

Lack of integration with Git or another version of control system.

We tried many alternatives, but the simplicity and the ability to self host won us over. Task lists, Kanban Style boards, Time tracking, Notifying and Assigning all work well.

I feel the file sharing (or at least referencing a file you have already uploaded) could be simpler. Apart from that we're really happy.

La facilità d'uso e l'intuitività delle principali funzionalità

A volte servirebbe più complessità per gestire meglio i la visibilità delle informazioni condivise (o meno) col cliente

While I will say I don't like much about this software, the budget and description location/transparency works well for the task workflow. It is fairly easy to include all necessary information in an individual task, but detail tracking and dependencies are where this ease of use falls off.

The relationship between tasks and subtasks is a pain point and lacks clarity/definition. Sometimes there would be dropoff when trying to upload attachments, and they would not actually post to the task. ActiveCollab doesn't have a great reporting structure (compared to Jira) for our specific needs, and that ended up being a hindrance to workflow. For as complicated as the reporting section looked, I felt it was lacking. While it isn't a functionality issue, I also dislike the visual design of the software - it feels antiquated and can be draining for such a frequently used tool. Time logging was difficult compared to the software we moved to later.

-Easy to see everything assigned to me -Ability to star projects to keep them at the top -Multiple timers all reside under a convenient clock icon at the top -Ability to add reminders -Labels

-Can only sort tasks by name, project, or due date. I wish you could sort by more than one thing at a time (i.e. By project AND due date) -Sometimes buggy, but a simple refresh usually fixes the problem

Web used Active Collab during several years in our servers. The database structure is very simple and allow us to create dashboards with user data.

Lack of features like kanban and of user interface improvements during updates

I really appreciate the simplicity and the power behind the features it delivers. On the surface, it offers just a list of tasks me and my team manage throughout our design and development process, but under the hood it offers task dependencies, estimates, time tracking and many other cool things that make it deceptively powerful.

Probably the speed of the app on some larger projects. It's lightning fast for everything small to medium, but on larger projects it can take a while to load everything.

ActiveCollab is quite feature rich. We were able to consolidate multiple pieces of software into one.

Some of the menus are hard to find and I'd really like to see a comprehensive calendar approach to tasks, vs just per project.

I have tried multiple task management software for our company, But anyhow I was not satisfied with other product because of no option to manage workload or time and invoice calculation or somehow workflow is difficult for non technical user to use. Activ Collab has the most simple UI and Design. Only 1 or 2 days training will be sufficient for any users to understand it. Workload segment is really simple and most important functionality it have. And the support team is really great. Most importantly - it have self hosted options which is utmost priority for us for data security and privacy and also we can reduce cost for our users.

Android app needs improvement. It doesn't comes anywhere near to desktop web version.

Complexity – time counting, project & task management, reports and invoicing in one place.

Workload feature doesn't adapt to time spent on task already – in consequence, it's a bit confusing to know exactly how much time you should spend on your work in the following days because it's basing on an estimated time only. Also, it's not possible to create a team in which team members have can view time entries for the project of other team members which makes collaboration witch hour-rate system difficult – I have to send a screen of time spent on a project to my client (who is a team member in ActiveCollab) every month.

My team and I do really like the simplicity of the software. It helps us focus on doing the tasks rather than figuring out how to use the software correctly to assign tasks.

- Unmaintained mobile apps, both iOS and Android versions. - No function to duplicate tasks list. - Zipping attachments from a task to be downloaded, takes forever. - Bulk actions on tasks seem to need an improvement on UX so that it's more user friendly to use. Currently, we need to scroll up and down to choose the actions. - On the Reports page for Tasks, every time we choose a Custom Report, the columns and "sort by" are always reset. - As admin, I can't see the full list of other user's Activities. I can only see the last 5 or something. I might be able to give some more feedback. Do let me know if it helps improve your product :)

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...

Read more

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...

Read more

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...

Read more

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...

Read more

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...

Read more

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...

Read more

Great tool for managing complex projects with multiple stakeholders Pretty robust feature set Simple to access and easy to invite collaborators in & out of my company

Upgrades have been a bit buggy and while the team are responsive, they don't always believe that they've broken something

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....

Read more

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?

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.

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.

Being able to: - upload images and files into task discussion threads to facilitate easy review of work - easily add and archive users - run reports at the task, project, client, and user levels

- No integration with Microsoft Teams. - Limited ability to manage user groups or fine-tune user permissions. Most needed feature: - The ability to mark notifications "unread" or "priority".

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....

Read more

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.

This software includes all of the features of the leading brands and more in most cases. I compared ActiveCollab to every system out there and tried demos and trials of each as well. It combines robust options with ease of use, and is more affordable than most other options. We can use kan-ban, calendar or list views, and can organize almost everything to our own preference. They also are continuously upgrading the system and adding features. I also like that they have a roadmap on their website so you know what they will be working on next. Top quality product and service.

We used to be able to change the colors and design options but now we are limited to one set of colors and 4 or 5 different background images. I know it is probably only the designers who care, but as a design company, it drives me crazy. It's not ugly, per se, and it is definitely not hard to read or use, but it is not how I would like it to look, so, it's my least favorite thing about it.

Active collab is intuitive, easy to use and easy to navigate. There are MANY other project management tools out there and I've used a number of them. Active Collab is the best in my opinion in light of the integrations and ease of use.

There are a number of more in-depth features that are sometimes hard to find in ActiveCollab. Nothing a simple support ticket can't solve though.

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.

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.

Active Collab is efficient, friendly, and structured just right for our team's work. The reporting, activity stream, project, task, and subtask organization are all well-calibrated for daily use to organize work and to report on projects.

I wish AC integrated with Jira. Our development unit uses Jira, but the complexity means it's a no-go for our unit's daily use. The lack of integration means that sometimes members of our team have to ping-pong between both products, or fail to understand what's happening there. A preview of a Jira ticket in AC would be totally sufficient.

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...

Read more

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.

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.

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...

Read more