UPDATE 11/18: activeCollab is no longer offered as a free project management collaboration download.
From the design, development, and product strategy company Webreakstuff comes a new contender in online project management and collaboration known as Goplan. In its newly released form, how does it stack-up against Basecamp & ActiveCollab?
Basic project packages compared
| Service | Price (per month) |
|---|---|
| Basecamp (Basic) | $24 |
| Goplan (Startup) | $20 |
| activeCollab | $199+ |
All three services [at the basic level] provide support for unlimited users and a number of additional features provided to improve productivity.
| Features | Basecamp | Goplan | activeCollab |
|---|---|---|---|
| # Projects | 15 | 30 | unlimited |
| Ad-Free | yes | yes | yes |
| Notes | yes | yes | yes |
| Blog | no | yes | no |
| Bug Tracking | no | yes | no |
| Task Management | yes | yes | yes |
| Security | no | 256/SSL | n/a |
| Calendar | yes | yes | yes |
| Real-time Chat | yes | yes | no |
| Permissions | yes | yes | yes |
| Storage | 400MB | 500MB | unlimited |
Registration & setup
Goplan - Simple registration requirements for quick & easy project creation.
In order to leverage any one of these services for team projects, the usual registration hoops are required. Goplan and Basecamp both provide very simple registration interfaces while activeCollab requires a little more work. It is important to note that Basecamp & Goplan are paid-for hosted solutions. In comparison, activeCollab is a self-hosted solution requiring actual server setup and database creation.
Although the challenge of the activeCollab installation is on the same level of preparing WordPress, anyone hesitant to meddle with their own servers may want to discontinue the idea of utilizing activeCollab (PHP5 required).
Creating projects
Registration requirements varied from service-to-service, each addressed the task of creating your first project with even more variance.
Basecamp, Goplan, and activeCollab - varying requirements for creating your first project.
Noticeable differences between each three:
- Basecamp: Requires a Project Name and provides the additional option of adding an existing or creating a new company. By default, all of the default features offered by Basecamp are accessibly - Messages, To-do’s, Milestones, Writeboards, Chat, and File [management].
- Goplan: Goplan addresses the task a little differently requiring a Project Name, Alias (goplan.org/alias), Description, and Timezone. Afterwards, specific features can be enabled or disabled - Notes, Task Management, Calendar, Public weblog (perfect for startups wishing to create a following), Tickets, File Management, and Chat. The option of adding Project users / members is available immediately after a project is created.
- ActiveCollab: Very basic in comparison to the previous two. Requiring little else other than a Project Name, standard features are enabled by default - Messages, Tasks, Milestones, Files, Tags, Forms (polling users are project status), and People (managing users and permissions). The option of adding Project users / members is available immediately after a project is created by visiting People after a project is created.
Goplan’s option of enabling or disabling specific features is a fantastic option which allows project administrators to create less overwhelming interfaces for clients. Sometimes, less is more as I have noticed while using Basecamp. Very often, clients are only interested in the basics of Messages or Milestones. By eliminating some of the features during the initial setup, the end resulting interface can be a little easier to navigate (re-enable disabled Goplan features is available by visiting Project Settings).
Adding companies & users
Project Management solutions often serve double-time as an online Rolodex for clients & companies. Basecamp, Goplan, and activeCollab each provide the functionality to serve as contact managers. Each application treats contacts differently. Basecamp functions on the premise that every contact belongs to a specific "company" (global), Goplan operates on the idea of users / members on a per project basis (individual), and activeCollab somewhere in the middle.
Adding clients or team members should not require you to leave your current project.
Of the three services, the most logical and sensible method of maintaining a usable contact database is that foundn in Basecamp. Although the other two offer basic contact management on a per project basis, none allow contacts to be accessed from multiple projects without jumping through navigation hoops. For example, while activeCollab, administrators would need to leave the Project Dashboard and enter the Administrative Panel > Clients > Add Clients. Compare this to Basecamp or Goplan which allow for adding clients or members from within the Project Dashboard.
Client interaction
All three services provide the basic tools which promote developer & client interaction. Whether through forum style messages, focused to-do lists, milestones (coerced motivation to hit deadlines), or live messaging, none of these services leave any room for excuses.
Goplan AJAX chat room provides log preview and room management but no file uploading like 37signals Basecamp Campfire.
One advantage of utilizing Basecamp or Goplan over activeCollab is the added benefit of live "chat" rooms. Basecamp relies on the powerful Campfire which not only provides a secure web based chat room, but also provides an archived view and file uploading integration associated with your Basecamp file manager. Goplan, while fairly new, provides similar functionality with their own web based chat room.
File management
Basecamp & Goplan rely on Amazon’s S3 (Scalable Storage Service) for their back-end with file upload limits governed by your current subscription. For the basic plans compared in this write-up, Basecamp offers 400MB and Goplan 500MB. Because activeCollab is a self-hosted alternative, file uploads are only limited by your server space.
Note that Basecamp does allow users to point their Basecamp file manager to a personal server which would essentially remove any limitation from uploads.
- Basecamp: Files served by Amazon S3. Option to redirect uploads to a personal server removing the subscription governed file upload limitation. Support for updating (revisions) of uploaded files.
- Goplan: Files served by Amazon S3. Subscription limited file uploads. No support for redirecting uploads to a personal server. No option to upload revisions [at this time].
- ActiveCollab: Self-hosted translating into file upload limitations governed by your personal server space.
Subscription Costs
With the exception of activeCollab, Basecamp and Goplan require subscriptions billed monthly. Basecamp bills subscriptions on all major credit cards - Visa, Mastercard, American Express, etc - while Goplan bills accounts through PayPal Subscriptions.
Conclusion
For individuals looking to manage projects without spending a small amount on monthly subscription costs, the less polished activeCollab application does provides the basics for managing and interacting with clients.
On the flip-side, anyone who is willing to part with a small amount through a monthly subscription recouped in an hour or less of work, definitely give Basecamp or Goplan a try. With Goplan’s recent public launch with features sure to give Basecamp a solid run, users now have more options. Which service will work for you? Give each of them a solid run-through and decide for yourself. Will you side with the proverbial favorite from 37signals - Basecamp? Or, will your business be better served by Webreakstuff’s Goplan?
On a personal note concerning the three services, I’ve moved all currently open [and plan for future] projects to be managed by Webreakstuff’s Goplan. Was this helpful? [Digg it]
115 Comments
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Goplan looks like a great new service, but it costs too much for what it offers (as does Basecamp). ActiveCollab has a great price, but the PHP5 requirement means that I can’t use it anyways.
Nice write up though - it would’ve come in real handy for me about a month ago.
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Man, I was just looking at GoPlan earlier today. I’ve finally decided that I need a proper Project Manager app instead of flying by the seat of my pants.
I just wish you would’ve said which one is the clear winner….I’m still torn between GoPlan and Basecamp!!!
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Post updated to reflect my stance on the three. Although I firmly believe that activeCollab offers a great application in a self-hosted installation, the PHP5 requirement may give a few users a headache. Concerning the decision to move from Basecamp to Goplan, I always cheer for the young guys. I immediately fell for the friendly interface and colors. although there are a number of areas that could use additional improvements, I’m confident that the devs are listening to feedback and expect to see changes roll out in due time. For the price and feature set, Goplan has the edge over Basecamp.
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Goplan lookss great. I just made an account and moved over the crap I usually keep on my Basecamp.
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Very cool, I’m going to give it a try.
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Looks great, I’ve just set up an account. I’ll give this a try in my ongoing search for the perfect task and project management tool.
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This is a great comparison! I’ve been wondering what other project management tools are available, besides basecamp. I had an idea like activeCollab before, and it’s cool to know someone had the same idea and made it.
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I like Goplan and appreciate the rec’d. However, the tool is not really appropriate for professional firms in my opinion.
First, you can not rebrand the tool or edit the color scheme, etc. This is minor in terms of functionality, but I like being able to customize the appearance of Basecamp. I can edit the color scheme as well upload my company logo in Basecamp and can’t in Goplan.
Also, you are not given the option to use a “white label” domain name, so you have to include the Goplan domain in the information you provide to clients. I prefer to give clients the impression that the tool is something unique to my firm.
Also, Basecamp does not impose limitations on the number of people that can be actively involved in a project. Goplan does.
On the positive side, I LOVE the issue tracking functionality of Goplan. I wish that I could email issues directly into the system instead of having to login and manually create a new “ticket” It would be nice to be able to forward emails to a Goplan email address and have them converted directly to trouble tickets.
Finally, all three of these products lack the ability to prioritze tasks, which I think is silly. I realize you can re-order tasks in Basecamp, but this is not really the same.
Thank for the reviews though.
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Re-branding (subtle) is something that immediately crossed my mind. Something that I have made sure to include via feedback - along with my feelings on increasing the font-size in the Notes and textareas (something that a client requested I pass along).
Concerning the domain issue, I [personally] prefer Goplan’s schema with aliases for each project. http://goplan.org/yes is a) shorter, and b) much easier to type and remember than http://something.clientsection.com/. Although, my feelings may only be motivated by the fact that I have created a number of different aliases "reserving" them for later.
Although Goplan’s Free and Personal accounts impose limitations of 4 & 8 respectively, the rest of the tiers have no limits.
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Excellent article. My project list is not quite big enough yet to pay for a project manager service. So, activeCollab was the best solution for me. I have been using it for about 3 weeks now and it does all I need for now.
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I use activecollab for one reason only: It’s open source and open source stuff is good stuff. Having said that the others are great but the features just don’t sway me.
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I am also on the hunt for a good task/planner tool. I have tried the others but will give GoPlan a go! Thanks Derek.
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Thanks for the comparisson. I’ve been trying out ActiveCollab for a while, it’s nice to have access to the backend for hacking.
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Correction: BaseCamp does support SSL and Remote FTP Storage.
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At the basic subscription tier ($20-$30), Basecamp does not support SSL. No where in the review did it say that Basecamp did not support remote FTP - "Note that Basecamp does allow users to point their Basecamp file manager to a personal server which would essentially remove any limitation from uploads.".
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Would you trust your company data into the hands of a company named “We Break Stuff?”
c’mon
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It’s a title that turns heads. With clients from "Techcrunch, Edgeio, Vodafone, Samsung, Google, the Gnome Foundation, ACS, Microsoft, Sequoia Capital among others.", I don’t think there really is much to worry about.
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I would like to see someone add Central Desktop to your comparison list to see how it stacks up in your mind. http://www.centraldesktop.com
We switched from Basecamp a few months ago and are very happy. We found BC a bit too limiting.
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Hey Mark, how does audio conferencing work?
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I’ve been working on something like this myself for quite a while, and offer a hosted solution with all of these features and no fees at all at http://www.clockingit.com
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Dude, you got TechCrunched!!!!!! Congrats!
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Hey Derek, you might want to throw ClockingIT up there later. It looks liek it does every thing that BaseCamp and GoPlan does…only it not as pretty (sorry guys). According to the site, the app is hosted on their personal server, but it’s free to use. Sweet!
(I am not connected in anyway to the developers of ClockingIT. I just thought it was cool.)
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active collab is going commercial. the details arent fully on the table but check the blog on their site.
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Excellent review, thanks! I’ve been a staunch Basecamp user for a while now, and I’ve dabbled with activeCollab. GoPlan is looking pretty good, though. I’m not opposed to jumping ship, and your review has convinced me that it’s worth investing the time to dig in further.
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I’ve not been very happy with the calendar views in basecamp - and initially, goplan calendar seems to be what I am looking for finally. I look forward to trying goplan out the next few weeks.
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Milestones just don’t provide the functionality of a standard calendar. They’re great for setting deadlines and goals, but not so much for basic events. In Goplan, I like the ability of quickly creating events similar to Google Calendar making the feature more realistic and usable.
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Solid rundown of these three services. I think it’s interesting the amount of copycat programs out there. Many people say it’s a crowded space but that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for true innovation. This small business SAAS space is ripe for the picking with truly innovative AND integration applications. More at my blog http://foroobar.wordpress.com/2007/03/20/saas-heats-up-goplan-and-highrise-launch/
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There’s a lot to be said for the subtle but incredible value of Basecamp’s user interface. It’s not the kind of thing that makes a feature list, but its head and shoulders above GoPlan (and ActiveCollab is not even in the running)
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Quick question Derek, which plan on Goplan are you using?
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We’ll stick with Basecamp and hope that the company remembers that this once was its flagship product and addresses some known issues.
For example, comments on writeboards cannot trigger email alerts unlike everything else in Basecamp — messages, file uploads, todos, etc. That’s not just a user interface inconsistency, it’s dangerous. We’ve had to train clients to not post comments on writeboards because we won’t receive alerts. We’ve had some embarassing situations in which we reminded a client to comment on some copy in a writeboard only to find that it had done so several days ago.
Basecamp also needs a simple expense tracker so when you outsource a component of a project you can track that cost. It already has a time tracker. An expense tracker would work identically except you would enter dollars instead of time. 37 Signals has told me it has no plans to add such a tool. Are we the only company that needs to track expenses related to a project? That’s not a rhetorical question. Please post and let me know as we need to find a solution for tracking project expenses. Thank you.
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The same comment always arises with simple software “it’s too expensive for what it is”, I find it a little strange - we used to be a 2 person company using Basecamp and paying about $NZ30 a month for the privilege and it was worth every penny - it’s the complex software that we can’t even use that I have a problem paying for
It’s a weird psychological battle, that it makes life so easy, it must be easy to make and therefore it can’t be valuable. Some of these tools are worth at least twice what you pay monthly and some.
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I tested out GoPlan and didn’t find much difference between GoPlan and Basecamp as far as functionalities but Basecamp’s interface was much more polished and easier to use. Frankly, I don’t see much of a reason to switch between Basecamp and GoPlan for basic project management. How much do you really gain? I never tried activeCollab since it’s not hosted.
For people who manage a lot of projects (like myself), I found Basecamp lacking in many features. After trying out a bunch of other products, I think Central Desktop (http://www.centraldesktop.com) and TeamWork Live (http://www.teamworklive.com) to be the best. They each have different strengths: Central Desktop has integrated online spreadsheet and web conferencing (costs extra) while TeamWork Live has a much friendlier interface (Basecamp-like), more integrated features, and a superior messaging system (Gmail-like). It was TeamWork Live’s ease of use and feature integration that won me over since I didn’t have a need for conferencing or online spreadsheets. In Basecamp, messages are separate from to-dos which is separate from write-boards. It becomes awkward to use when I want to create a to-do, add additional information about it, and discuss the to-do with a co-worker (this is a very common scenario for me). What would be done in 3 separate areas in Basecamp and Central Desktop can be done from one in TeamWork Live. It works really well in practice.
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Ive been a user of Basecamp for a few months now i like and has help keep us organized but i find its hard to convince clients to use it.
Do any of them offer to option to email in messages? or replies?
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I can speak for Goplan & activeCollab - which does not offer the option to email in replies. Not sure about the other services which have been mentioned in the comments.
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I’m baffled that there is not more talk about the consequences of online data storage. Mission critical and maybe sometimes inaccessible. For my small company i would really like to be in charge of my own data. That’s why we rather not use Google-Calendar, GoPlan, BaseCamp etc.
Also have looked at ClockingIT (looks nice) and a range of others who pop up all over the place. But still, i am not going to put my mission critical data (a) on the intarweb, where a connection could drop on either of both sides, and more important (b) in someone other’s third-party’s hands.
Just my 2 cents
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I can suggest you to use Wrike for this purpose. It’s so easy for a client (or your colleague) to add wrike@wrike.com to the recipients of any e-mail. Wrike captures the task and allows you to work on it together with the recipients, add other people to collaborate and keep track the progress. Wrike is a kind of project collaboration tools that don’t require changes in your behavior.
Other features of Wrike are similar to the mentioned software, but it also supports emergent structures of your plans and it’s free.
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One online solution that no one has mentioned that I am giving serious consideration to is Copper Project, http://www.copperproject.com/ It is mainly used by creative organizations. (I presently use activeCollab and find it to be very sluggish.)
They offer a hosted option at three different levels of feature sets AND will sell you the software outright at each of those levels as well. So, those of you wary of having mission critical information hosted somewhere else can do it in-house.
One feature that is very sweet is the timeline within projects. It’s flash based and allows you to slide the start dates and end dates realtime. Anyhow, seems to stack up well against all of these.
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Please also remember that Basecamp has a nice API that makes things unlimited.
This is why we used it in our coding collaboration tool (springloops). For example we easily turned Basecamp To-Do lists to bug tracker with commenting and approving. Everything is possible.
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I personally did not like Goplan (I tried it with the intention of leaving basecamp). I ended up going with OnStage intead.
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Bryan, thanks for the suggestion. I signed up for a trial of OnStage and so far it seems pretty good.
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I also looked for the proper tool to manage my projects. I’ve not tried Activecollab and your post saved me time on this thanks. I didn’t fall with Basecamp. Too much communication, too little project management. I’ve settled with Wrike. http://www.wrike.com/ It has several advantages and the main I guess would be the option to manage your tasks from your inbox. Wrike costs less than Basecamp too.
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we have been using go-plan for the last few months, and we get excited about it on a weekly basis, the file transfer is uber fast, and the simpleness is just beautiful
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I have tried BaseCamp (too much and too busy for my clients) and sidejobtrack (not enough functionality). I was looking for something with a mixture of functions, ease of use, and a realistic cost. I found what I was looking for with CollabTRAK. It’s really cool and made especially for web designers (which I am). Anyone else use them to manage projects?
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If you need more powerful online project management you could try a product like @task (http://www.attask.com). It is more expensive than GoPlan or Basecamp (it is priced by # of users that need to login), but has extensive functionality around project scheduling and notifications.
I believe you can bring it in house too.
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Give DeskAway.com a shot. Its project management + contacts + calendar + blog + search… Everything a small creative firm would require to run its business online.
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Not bad. Seems good and powerful. Just too much for what I need at this point. But maybe when I have 1,000 clients of my own!
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I have tested out just about every PM tool there is over the past few years. We first started with dotproject and used it for about 6 months, though it was free, it just wasn’t up to par. We then tried MS Project and Project Server - but had so many vpn issues with many sub contractors. We then found “groove” and “team direction” which turned out to a good combo for us in the beginning - but then things changed after our company grew and mostly because of the microsoft buyout (which really screwed up groove ). But we were going to move from Groove anyway as we work with many companies overseas with slow internet connections and Groove’s peer-to-peer system just wasn’t cutting it - now with a groove/sharepoint combo not as much of an issue.
But anyway, after Groove, we looked into remotely hosted solutions. We tried basecamp for a couple of months and though it was as simple as eating pie, it didn’t have under the hood what we needed to handle multiple projects and keep good communication with clients (especially clients who weren’t willing to leave the standard communication method called “email”).
After that I think we did a trial of just about everything out there (though not the active collab nor goplan mentioned in this article). A few of those that we started to like and did spend quite a bit of time with were EasyProjects and attask. Though the latest v5 of EasyProjects is quite good, to get the benefit you really have to host on your own windows box (the hosted solution doesn’t offer much) and though attask was attractive as it combined crm and pm, it was way too complicated to even get my associates to start using (I tried hard though).
Then we discovered Central Desktop and it was definitely the best thing we had discovered up to that point. We used it for about 8 months, it had a lot of great things going for it. I wasn’t completely satisified though (will explain more later) and kept looking out for other products and would keep checking back on previous services we tried earlier (like basecamp) to see if any major improvements had been made. Then we stumbled across TeamWorkLive which had just recently been launched. I was very impressed by the project initially, but it was lacking some features I really wanted. I decided to give the trial a whirl and when I started requesting some features, I was blown away at how fast they were implemented and how responsive the team was. I would request a feature and literally within days there it was - almost like I had hired these guys to build the thing for me. It was fantastic. At the time TWL wasn’t quite up to par as Central Desktop, but there were two reasons why I decided to migrate from Central Desktop to Teamwork Live (it was a daunting task having to manually move 25 active projects with many tasks and files). 1) I found it difficult to communicate with clients about tasks using Central Desktop’s system. though CD organized and tracked tasks very well, the comments system just didn’t cut it to really communicate with a client. TEamworklive had a great messaging feature that was in addition to comments and would leave alerts on my dashboard when clients sent a message (sooo much better). With Central I couldn’t keep track of all the comments and questions I had to respond too, I had comments from clients all over the place left unanswered. 2) Price.. Teamworklive offers unlimited workspaces and much more storage space for a much lower price.
so we made the switch to Teamworklive. I think it is one of the best business decisions we have made. We’ve been with TWL for about a year now and watched it grow from a good tool to the best tool. I mean that. It really is the best project management tool out there right now. I should write another few paragraphs about how great they are and all the features, but instead I’ll just suggest that you visit their website http://www.teamworklive.com and check things out for yourself (I have no affiliation with them whatsoever other than being a very happy client).
I will mention a few cons though, as you will not find these on their website (of course). 1) there is not support for mobile access - the site is very ajax heavy and simply does not work with a mobile product. With that being said, they do have a great new feature that allows us to work with it using our treos. You can forward an email message (or create a new) that will automatically insert into a workspace a task, file, etc and from that email you can assign to a person, due date, etc. Its REALLY cool. That feature has made me stop moaning about the site not working with mobile access. 2) Task cannot be broken down into sub tasks.. However, they have created a very good way of organizing tasks by milestones and a nice ajax interface for dragging into a desired order. But sometimes I still would like to break down a task further - in those instances we just have the task breakdowns in the task itself and cross them out (using the wysiwyg strike out tag) as we go along. 3) Tasks do not have statuses (like “on hold” “in progress” “25% complete” etc). I have submitted this as a feature request and hopefully it will be integrated soon.
The first two cons I mentioned really are resolved for me and I’m hoping it isn’t too much longer before we see the 3rd one resolved also.
Again, Teamworklive IMO is by far the best PM tool. And most of clients have taken to it immediately (this was not the case at all with the other tools - though Central Desktop was accepted fairly well). But even for those clients that don’t use Teamwork live and choose use email, it is so easy to push their emails to the teamwork live system and then continue to work seamlessly through email all the while keeping the tasks in teamworklive - it’s just GREAT, trust me.
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There is also a new one called 5pm - http://www.5pmweb.com
I didn’t dig through all the features yet, but I like their customizable interface. Having everything within a click or two is very nice. And it works very fast in my Firefox…
Also it will be interesting to see how they will improve their Timeline. It’s made in Flash, so there is a lot of potential there.
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Active collab is no longer free
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Project Pier [http://projectpier.org] is the opensource fork of Active Collab. It is based on the GPL’d version 7.1. It needs a lot of work and could defiantly use some developers. Please help if you are a developer so we can make an opensource product as good or better than all the others out there.
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Have a look at ActionThis which goes one step further than these other applications and has an emphasis on execution - making sure things get done.
In addition to being web-based, ActionThis also has client software for Microsoft Outlook, ensuring users can create and manage ActionThis tasks alongside their email messages. The result: better performance and seamless access for users, with minimal training needed. Have a look at http://www.actionthis.com for more information.
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I try never to deal with companies that hide their pricing. Where’s the pricing on that 5pm site? Yeah you can try it free but what if they charge $500/month after.
–There is also a new one called 5pm -
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Mike, 5pm plans and prices are clearly listed on the plans page:
http://www.5pmweb.com/plans.php
It’s just one click from the homepage (Sign Up link).
Also note that the trial registration doesn’t require any credit card information. You pay just when you are ready to upgrade to a paid account.
We are very straightforward with our policies, but if you have a question - please just email us directly at support (at) 5pmweb.com. We usually reply instantly.
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I have spent three years researching almost every pm tool that is out there. We used Groove for about a year until Microsoft bought it out and mucked things up. During that next year, we tried about every pm tool on the face of the planet. Basecamp really is a joke as far as capability .. the one thing I did like about basecamp was the ability to be able to connect to a separate ftp server for your files. I can’t even begin to list all the others we tried out. The biggest disappointment we came accross is that so many tools did not provide a rich text editor for tasks. We are a web development company and need a rich text editor to fully describe our tasks with formatting. we then discovered Central Desktop and fell in love - used them for about a year. As cool as their application was, we found it was limiting in actually communicating with our clients about the projects. So again, the search was on…
Our final discovery was about a year ago. We found TeamWorkLive. Teamworklive is the superior solution over any others we have found. I can’t say enough good things about this application. If you look at both centraldesktop and teamworklive, it will probably be hard to determine which is best. Take it from someone who has spent a considerable amount of time with both products - teamworklive is the better of the two. I say this knowing that centraldesktop has made many improvements since we left them. I did setup a trial account a few months ago again with central desktop just to see where they have progressed too. they have made some nice changes, but so has teamwork live in the same amount of time. Teamworklive is the most effective tool for managing projects and is so much better than central desktop for communicating with clients during the process.
David
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After my last post, I read a previous poster’s comments about Actionthis and took a look. Nice concept with the outlook integration. But VERY disappointing to see the low storage of 50 mb.
Teamworklive has similar functionality alongside all of its other tools. In teamworklive you can easily create and respond to tasks from within outlook (however, the interface is not as slick as actionthis within outlook - instead you just work with standard email and insert bracketed commands in the subject line).
But another huge advantage of teamworklive is their generous storage limits - We are on the company 1 plan ($69/mo) and get 10 GB of storage for the whole team. That amount of storage alone is worth the price. Again, I can’t say enough good things about teamworklive. They are definitely worth your time to investigate.
David
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I think you already went over the board trying to promote them and said more than enough…
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Lucie,
I should have made the motivation behind my comments more clear. I have absolutely nothing to gain by saying what I have about teamworklive.. I am associated in no other way with teamworklive other than being a happy customer. My purpose wasn’t so much to promote their product for their gain, but rather to help visitors reading this thread. I know when I was doing my research I was looking for people’s opinions to help me find the best project management tool available. I want to do the same for others. I have taken some time out of my schedule to make a post to help others. Please don’t interpret that post(s) as cheap promotion for some imagined (by you) gain. Cut me some slack - please.
David
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I setup a trial and took a quick look at 5pm. It has a long way to go IMO. From what I have seen, there is no milestone or subtask creation.. Tasks do not have a rich text editor (a major pet peeve of mine). One thing I do like about their tasks though is that you can have mulitple assignees (something that teamworklive says will be implemented eventually). And they do have progress status on tasks (something sadly missing from teamworklive right now).
Right now there is no email integration, which is something teamworklive does very well right now. It has some good ideas, but in its current state is missing too much. I hope they continue and improve.
Though teamworklive is my favorite and chosen tool, it is still not perfect. But it is getting closer and closer w/out every upgrade. I will spend some more time with 5pm and post my thoughts.
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David, I’m looking for a project management tool. So I went and checked Team Work first, since you promote it here a lot…
I must say it looks very unimpressive. Another Basecamp clone. Generic. Sorry, but I’m not sure why you are so exited about it.
5pm on another side looks very fresh and has an unique approach to the interface. It’s like comparing two tools from different generations, 5pm being from the space age.
On top of that, 5pm offers better pricing. Team Work is $69 for 10 users, for example. Comparing to $24 from 5pm.
David, it’s great that Team Work works for you. However I wasn’t impressed at all. Just my humble opinion. Thank you for all the info though.
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There’s also ClockingIT for $0, which has multiple asignees, task progress status, email integration and lots more. It’s also Open Source and possible to run on your own servers.
(Created by me and my wife, so I’m a bit biased.
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Roscoe I think you are referring to Team Work
I’ve just spent the last several days looking at and evaluating PM tools. There is one called Team Work, which I agree is unimpressive, and another called TeamWork Live, which is the tool David is talking about.
I’m incredibly impressed with Teamwork Live. I love that I can email entries to it and that people can respond to emails I send and their responses are automatically logged in the system.
I’m also looking for a time tracker that tracks time vs estimates and I’m not at all happy with Teamwork Live for this. I’m considering now the combination of Teamwork Live for PM with Cashboard for time tracking and managing budgets, invoicing, etc.
I am currently using Basecamp and Freshbooks. I love Freshbooks. Not thrilled at all with Basecamp, especially since pretty much no new features have been added in the 2 years I’ve used it.
My big problems are:
* Basecamp isn’t helping me stay on track; it’s really only been useful for me for the messages, and some clients refuse to log in to use it. I want things like a daily summary by email, ability to use email to add new tasks and such, and ticketing.
* I need to be able to compare time to estimated time and make sure I’m staying on budget. This is what I’m looking at Cashboard to help me with, and is in my view the big shortcoming with Freshbooks.
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Samantha, my name is Sergei and I’m part of the 5pm team. The two-way email integration you mentioned is already being developed. In fact, it’s already in the testing stage. Please check out our overview page to see what features we are working on right now, and which ones we consider for the near future:
http://www.5pmweb.com/overview.php
I see you have a lot of interesting ideas, especially about integration between tools. Could you please contact me through our support email - I’d like the opportunity to discuss with you the features you mentioned directly.
Thank you.
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Roscoe,
Yes, Samantha is right in that there are two tools with the name Teamwork.. That is probably my fault, as I never provided a URL for teamwork live which is the tool I was referring too. The url is http://www.teamworklive.com .. This is the tool I have been raving about..
Samantha,
Yes, teamworklive does have the drawback of really no time tracking. I’ve been asking them for some time now to at least allow me to mark a time entry as billed. But I have really just settled for using a separate time tracking tool. I use Time Logger from responsivesoftware.com . thought about switching to BillQuick which looks awesome, but also pricey for my simple needs. Thanks for mentioning cashboard, gonna take a look at that.
David
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Samantha,
I should have looked at cashboard before my last post.. I was immediately turned off after viewing their pricing plans.. I have over 200 clients and cashboard would cost me $40/mo.. Their features do not compare to TimeLogger which I use.. Timelogger is desktop software with a one-time cost of less than $100.. I like with Timelogger that I can run mulitple timers at once and just pause as I go from one to another. Also Timelogger has excellent filtering capabilities.
The main downside of TimeLogger is they need a good graphic designer
Their 90’s style icons and graphics make the software look old - which is true in a good way - I’ve been using their software since 1997 - it works well.
David
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I looked at 5pm and did a demo just now. There are definitely some things I love about it and if I were doing a different type of project I’d use it over Basecamp hands down. But I need a ticketing system, and the ability to have more control over which aspects of a project a client can view (or at least ability to post private messages to people within my company). And for the content of those messages to be delivered via email rather than an announcement that there is a message with a link to access it. And if I used it for time I’d need a timer widget for Mac/PC and ability to track against estimated time.
Also re: David:
yes I agree that it’s expensive but I need a web-based tool that contractors can log time to in addition to myself. Also it sends invoices to clients and presumably sends automatic reminders (Freshbooks does this anyway). And you can schedule invoices (which I need for support/maintenance contracts). But Freshbooks is the clear winner with regard to reporting. I’d encourage you to check it out too if you are thinking about web-based options.