What’s It All About? A Developer Critiques ActiveCollab!
ActiveCollab is a project management and collaboration tool, which you can host and run on your own web server. In many ways, it is similar to Basecamp. However, there are several key things which make it stand out from the 37 Signals software. I’ll cover these shortly. ActiveCollab provides the following features.
- Milestones
- Discussions
- Files (Upload different versions of the same file to the site. Share files…etc.)
- Calendar (What is due when)
- Pages (Facilitates collaborative writing)
- Tickets
- Time (How long have you spent on the project)
- People (Who is on this project)
Furthermore, the ActiveCollab platform can be expanded to add and create any number of new features with “modules.”
Getting it Running
The installation of ActiveCollab is quick and easy. If you have installed any web application like WordPress or phpBB, you will be able to do this. Just enter the server details and it does all the monkey work for you.
Usability
The key to project management software is that it is easy to use and learn. You will be exposing your clients to this software and the software should facilitate the project management. It shouldn’t act as a barrier. In short, if a client has to ask questions about the project management software and how it works the software is failing.
ActiveCollab does carry a small learning curve when it comes to the administration side. Setting up users and permissions will probably require a quick look at the documentation. The same goes for assigning people to milestones.
From the client side it is all much simpler. The navigation is simple and clear. Dare I say that once a project is set up and milestones created, the software is pretty much idiot proof.
The Good
What this software has going in its favor is how clean, concise and simple the application is. It has a good range of features, which certainly made my project management easier. The potential to create your own modules is also pretty exciting. Instead of hoping that the developers create it for you, you can make it yourself. This greatly increases the usefulness and lifespan of the tool.
The Not So Good
There are a couple of small faults. First, the great potential in the modules is somewhat lost when you find that there are almost no user contributed modules on the ActiveCollab website. It seems that such a great selling point is lost by the lack of publicly available extensions.
I also found that page load times were a little slow. JavaScript is used nicely throughout the site. I found that when adding multiple milestones the short delays really sucked the fun out of it. It would be nice if such tasks could be AJAX-ified to speed it all up. Or, perhaps if the program allowed the user to add several milestones at a time, the delay wouldn’t be so noticeable.
My final criticism has to be that nothing new is being brought to the party. The features are well implemented and developed. The program is quality built. But, there is no real unique feature which makes you HAVE to get this product over something else like Basecamp.
Conclusion
I like ActiveCollab. It’s clean, it’s easy to use, and it makes project management easier. You can expand the platform to add new features. I also like that you are paying for it “up front.” You do not have to incur a monthly charge. This said, ActiveCollab isn’t perfect. Adding milestones can be slow and the software doesn’t introduce any new ground breaking features.
If you want to be free from the shackles of Basecamp’s monthly fee, then you should certainly consider this product. If you are looking for a project management tool, ActiveCollab should definitely be on your list!
Check out ActiveCollab’s website here.
http://www.activecollab.com/
Developer Rating: 4.5 out of 5!
I’ve heard good and bad things about ActiveCollab. In fact, I think their ‘unique’ feature is being open source. It might be good for those who like Basecamp’s concept, but miss somethng in Basecamp.
I think both applications are good for really small teams and small projects. When projects and teams grow, they look for other services and find solutions with more project management features, including us, Wrike. I liked your review, and I think it would be great, if you reviewed Wrike too. We do have unique features by the way. We’ve got stuff like email integration and multiple project veiws.
You should also checkout freelancerKit it does all the same things.
I found this review interesting to ready today, and going back to the time when it was originally written…. I agree wholeheartedly with the comment about the Modules feature being a great lost potential because of the lack of user created free or commercial modules at the time — thankfully a lot has changed in the ActiveCollab community even in just the last year and there are now many new modules being released to provide a variety of new features. It’s worth revisiting — check out the other ActiveCollab Modules available. I also believe since the commercial release of ActiveCollab that the overall value has improved, and there have been features released that Basecamp released after ActiveCollab and/or Basecamp still doesn’t have like Tickets.
The ability to extend the features beyond what the originators of the product think is needed is the great value of ActiveCollab vs Basecamp — we all know that Basecamp is very opinionated about what they feel is needed or should be included…. and there’s value in that too. But I feel that you have the better of those two worlds with the ability to be flexible and tailor the product if it doesn’t quite fit your needs. We recently created our own ActiveCollab Module called Tabinator which adds new views to the Dashboard by creating additional useful Tab types from Custom To Do Filters, to Urls and even the standard This Week, Next Week tabs.
Jason you had a very positive review of ActiveCollab back when this review was posted… I’d love to see how you are feeling now in light of the changes, do you still feel as positive after this amount of time has passed, does an increase in available modules help improve your feelings on the potential? As an ActiveCollab user in our own business, and a developer of modules as well… I’m very curious.