ActiveCollab Reviews & Product Details

ActiveCollab is the work management platform for agencies and service businesses — from the first task to the paid invoice, in one place. Plan projects in List, Kanban or Gantt view, track time on every task with a built-in stopwatch, manage workload and capacity, and turn tracked time into estimates, invoices and profitability reports. Budgets, expenses, billable rates and online payments (Stripe, PayPal) are built in — no bolt-ons. Bring clients inside: client seats are unlimited and free on every plan, with their own view of progress, files and approvals, so feedback stops living in email threads. Connect the tools you use — Google Drive, Dropbox, Slack, Zapier, QuickBooks — and let your AI assistant work in your workspace through the built-in MCP server. Available in the cloud or self-hosted on your own server. 14-day free trial, no credit card required.

Seller

Active Collab

Discussions

ActiveCollab Community

Languages Supported

Czech, German, English, French, Croatian, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Lithuanian, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovenian, Spanish, Serbian, Swedish, Turkish, Chinese (Simplified)

Solution Type

All-in-One

Overview by

Miriam Kljajic

Pricing

Pricing provided by ActiveCollab.

Plus

$15.00

3 Users Per Month

Pro

$11.00

1 User Per Month

View More Pricing Information

Top-Rated Alternatives

View All Alternatives

User Insights

Average based on 97 real user reviews.

Implementation Time

<1 month

Perceived Cost

$$$$$

Typical contract price

$0k - $0k

Per Month

ActiveCollab Reviews FAQs

Generated using AI

Last updated: Nov 04, 2026

What is ActiveCollab, and what problem is it built to solve?

ActiveCollab is project management software for agencies, consultancies, and other service businesses that do client work. It brings projects, tasks, time tracking, workload planning, budgets, estimates, and invoicing into one workspace, with clients able to join for free on every plan; it runs in the cloud or as a self-hosted edition.

What languages does ActiveCollab support?

ActiveCollab supports 20 languages, including Chinese (Simplified), Croatian, Czech, Dutch, English, and others.

What company sizes and industries is ActiveCollab the best fit for?

ActiveCollab is used across small and mid-sized organizations, with positive experiences clustering in these company-size and industry segments:

Small businesses: Teams with 50 or fewer employees are a prominent group.
Mid-market: Organizations with 51–1,000 employees are also well represented.
Marketing and advertising: A leading industry segment, often using the product to coordinate client work.
Software and design: Computer software, design, and graphic design teams also feature prominently.

What customer support options does ActiveCollab provide, and how do users find the overall support experience?

ActiveCollab provides direct support and self-service help, and users describe the experience as mixed. Support includes live chat and video calls at no extra cost, along with email help and self-service resources. Users appreciate prompt, helpful responses, while others have encountered delays or inconsistent assistance.

What is the experience like for teams switching to ActiveCollab from another tool?

Teams have moved to ActiveCollab for a simpler, more affordable way to manage projects, tasks, and client collaboration in one place. It has served as an alternative to tools such as Jira, Trello, Basecamp, and Wrike, with users valuing its easier workflows, broader project-management functionality, and self-hosting option. The transition has felt straightforward for teams seeking a more intuitive setup, though ActiveCollab’s fit depends on whether its task and planning workflows match their needs.

What features or capabilities could make ActiveCollab even more useful?

More flexible reporting and project views would make ActiveCollab easier to adapt to different teams and management needs. Users would benefit from improvements in areas like:

Reporting and dashboards: Add more detailed, customizable reports and clearer visual summaries of project progress.
Task assignment: Allow tasks to be assigned to multiple people and give subtasks more independent scheduling options.
Mobile experience: Make mobile workflows faster and more consistent with the desktop experience.
Search and organization: Improve filtering, sorting, and file organization so teams can find project information more easily.

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Verified User in Information Technology and Services

Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

11/7/2017

"Great project management solution"

4/5

What do you like best about ActiveCollab?

Ability to customize the interface to adapt to the company needs. We needed the ability to have events with target dates (and assign the targets to specific people) and also be able to associate instructors/presenters with those events. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about ActiveCollab?

The workaround for creating an instructor/presenter record is a bit kludgy. We would like an option to be able to create a dedicated section for instructors versus lumping them into notes. it works but we can see where it could work better. Would also like to be able to create an annual calendar of just events. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Jennifer D.

Marketing Manager

Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

1/23/2018

"Simple and easy to use"

4/5

What do you like best about ActiveCollab?

It's easy and helps keep all your projects in one place. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about ActiveCollab?

You can't assign dates to sub tasks. Just assign a person responsible. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Darius R.

Freelance IT Professional

Information Technology and Services

Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

3/19/2017

"Powerful collaborative project management, amazing UX, stellar support"

5/5

What do you like best about ActiveCollab?

We migrated to Active Collab abount 2 months ago after attempting to work with Basecamp, Trello, and NutCache.

The combination of project management, team+client collaboration, time tracking, expense tracking, and project templates, API, and accounting add-on integrations made this hard to beat.

The UX is also the best that we've come across. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about ActiveCollab?

We haven't found anything significant that we would improve about it so far.

The integration could be tighter more extensive with platforms like Xero, but its more than other providers are doing, and the API makes up for it. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering ActiveCollab:

Give it a try. Its worth the time and investigation. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is ActiveCollab solving and how is that benefiting you?

This is allowing us to manage software, mobile, and web application development projects with team of developers which very mixed experience. The ability to create templates has been invaluable. Permission management, and client or client+ users has been really helpful. Tracking time and expenses, project goals, tasks, and deadlines has been invaluable.

The platform is really well thought and UX is WAY better than everything else we've tried.

The mobile app could use some work but its on its way. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Verified User in Higher Education

Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)

7/12/2017

"ActiveCollab for file storage and file sharing"

4/5

What do you like best about ActiveCollab?

I use ActiveCollab as a member of the research group for the management of my ongoing projects. It is a very convenient tool, that allows me showing the other member of the group my progress, intermediate results, final manuscripts. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about ActiveCollab?

Overall I am happy with this tool. It could be a bit complicated for the first time, there is why we had an introductory lecture on ActiveCollab. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Somaroy G.

General Manager

Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

8/9/2016

"Awesome Project tracking system with minimal investment"

4/5

What do you like best about ActiveCollab?

ActiveCollab 5 has improved User interface and looks great and very intuitive. The provides great flexibility to include Project team members from various geo locations as well as providing to 3rd party consultants working on the projects.

ActiveCollab also offers on-premise installation option apart from the hosted SaaS model which makes it very flexible catering to companies with varied data security and clod hosting policies.

Sharing project files and assigning tasks to 3rd party consultants through single point. Overall the collaboration component has become a lot easier. Team task Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about ActiveCollab?

The system does not have the flexibility to integrate with any thrid-party file storage like a Google Drive, Dropbox or Amazon S3 which makes it cost effective easier to manage, especially when we are using a self-hosted version.

All the files related to a specific project are not presented in a very easy to sort manner where we can navigate through files without having to dig through the tasks related to the files.

Theme/branding customization options are harder Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is ActiveCollab solving and how is that benefiting you?

Managing teams of software developers and consultants across multiple geographic locations to deliver support services to customers. The project members are not always full time employees of the same company but would need access to specific projects and files and information. All the project submissions including the code files as well as documentation are submitted, exchanged and collaborated through activecollab. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Verified User in Graphic Design

Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

3/15/2017

"Active Collab for Team and Project Management"

4/5

What do you like best about ActiveCollab?

I like the ease of use with email response into a thread. I also like how you can set up private threads and public with clients. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about ActiveCollab?

When loading files, sometimes it gets hung-up and it takes longer than necessary. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering ActiveCollab:

If you hit a snag with utilizing their software, always reach out to customer service. They are quick to help you solve a problem. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is ActiveCollab solving and how is that benefiting you?

I use active collab while managing creative projects between different creative team members and the client. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Verified User in Non-Profit Organization Management

Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

2/20/2017

"Everything you need from a PM tool"

5/5

What do you like best about ActiveCollab?

Very robust tool with lots of features that are very easy to use, unlike many other PM tools we've previously used. Extremely simple, yet it has lots of great options that streamline our projects perfectly. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about ActiveCollab?

Not actually a dislike, but we've heard they're working on custom project templates. Can't wait to see how that's going to look. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Sahar M.

Founder and Design Director

Design

Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

1/28/2017

"Great Experience!"

4/5

What do you like best about ActiveCollab?

Active collar is simple enough for start ups with small teams, yet has enough features that can cover all the basics as the company and team grow. It's been a great tool to organize projects and tasks. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about ActiveCollab?

Would have love to have more controls in budgeting projects by phases and idle the out on the computer is important so that you don't forget the timer running! Need check in and check out feature. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Andy M.

Global Head of Marketing

Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

6/14/2016

"Great system, a little cumbersome for self-hosted users"

5/5

What do you like best about ActiveCollab?

I like the interface, especially of ActiveCollab 5, which is massive UI/UX improvement over AC 4. The product works and feels like Basecamp, but drastically expands the functions of Basecamp with invoicing, estimates and modules that allow you to increase your collaboration with Slack. It works well out of the box, minus some of the configuration which is really ridiculous in a lot of ways. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about ActiveCollab?

I dislike the setup. Setting up cron jobs for the self-hosted option is a bit weird, especially when they won't run due to weird anomalies within AC. In addition, the system also has repeated issues with working well with customization; it's all Active Collab branded with little to no ability to customize colors without completely redoing portions of the system. In addition, we've had issues with the baked-in email system, which we never had an issue with in AC4, but now AC5 is creating way more problems than what its worth. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering ActiveCollab:

Make sure that you do the hosted version. I think it probably has to be a lot better than the self-hosted version. You're so on your own with the self-hosted version that you lose the ability to do more with what you've got going on. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is ActiveCollab solving and how is that benefiting you?

We have solved a lot of innermost communications changes and have been more transparent with clients. Clients like the ability to pay online. We've also been able to do more with less and eliminate some roles within the typical agency model especially the traffic coordinator as a lot of it is handled as direct interaction with clients. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.