TrustRadius Insights for ActiveCollab are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.
Pros
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.
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ActiveCollab Reviews
8 Reviews
Marketing
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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.
Pros
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
Cons
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
Likelihood to Recommend
If you have a very tight budget and cannot afford a better tool, I feel having this is better than nothing.
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 be included in discussions and questions about their services.
Pros
Easily add clients as guests and control the amount of access.
Clients can start discussions and respond to existing discussions via email.
Discussions have good formatting options to allow for improved readability.
Cons
Individual comments cannot be linked to. This makes it more difficult to reference a comment or question.
Unnecessary features cannot be turned off. Since we use it primarily for communication, it would be ideal to turn off tasks etc. that are not needed or be able to move discussions as the first screen.
There isn't an easy way to set up different projects under the same client.
Likelihood to Recommend
ActiveCollab is more suited for people looking for project management software since the tasks and project management tools are the primary focus. The time tracking and invoicing components are valuable for this. It is less useful as a communication portal as the project management features actually get in the way and hamper the usability.
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 that need to be addressed before the system can be utilized fluently. We're still working through these challenges, but the system seems to be working as expected.
Pros
Simple project management
Organized task lists
Solid user management tools
Cons
Uninspired design
Very basic text editing features, minimal support for screenshots (you get 1 per task/message update)
Likelihood to Recommend
This is a system built by engineers for engineer-minded people. Nothing fancy, but it does do exactly what you expect it to.
ActiveCollab is used across the whole organization to manage tasks of design, development, and marketing.
Pros
Activity log to see the general picture.
Ability to manage different projects.
Daily email report on things discussed the previous day.
Cons
Subtasks cannot be managed as full tasks, with comments.
No ability to make several assignees.
Likelihood to Recommend
When you manage a project or a task it is convenient to assign it to the appropriate colleague and track its status. ActiveCollab's user interface and design are a bit unusual after using Wrike for several years.
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 helps us run the day to day operations for our company and our clients. Our whole team uses ActiveCollab in order to keep everything moving in the right direction. It helps us keep track of everything we do and where any project as at in its timeline.
Pros
They give you the source code to use on your own server.
It is easy to sort clients and campaigns.
The email notifications work perfectly when tagging and talking to people. They allow you to subscribe to tasks as well to keep in the loop on what is going on.
Cons
They don' do Gantt charts well
Integrations aren't awesome yet
They don't have task dependencies
Likelihood to Recommend
We have a marketing company. If you are an agency of any size and work with clients, it's easy to give your clients full access to whatever you want them to see. We allow our clients to see how their projects/tasks are going, but there is even a hidden from clients button on any task that allows you to give full visibility into any task for any and all clients.
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.
We use Active Collab to manage all projects within our web design/digital marketing business. Having tried many other project management options, we found Active Collab to be the only one that offered all the features that we need at a sensible price point. Using it has enabled all of our team, including freelancers to keep up to date with all projects they are involved in whilst giving myself and my fellow directors an instant view of which stage each job is at.
Pros
The time tracking desktop app is great, giving both a list of assigned tasks and allowing time spent on them to be recorded quickly and easily.
Xero integration means that all time tracked can be used to create invoices within our chosen accounting package with the minimum of fuss.
Project templates ensure that each new project is quick and easy to set up and that all internal processes are included within each project.
Cons
Notification emails would benefit from being able to set up schedules for reminders when tasks are due for completion.
A time tracking app for Linus would be a welcome addition.
Likelihood to Recommend
For me, Active Collab is the ideal project management tool for a busy digital agency.
