Project Management to Get The Year Off to a Good Start
If you’re like me, you probably made some New Year’s resolutions to get better organized this year. Pixelita Designs is busier than it’s ever been right now and my Christmas present to myself this year was to purchase the Small Biz version of Ilija Studen’s Active Collab, a Basecamp-type project management tool. I tried out ActiveCollab back when it was open source, as a substitute for PHPCollab, the PM tool I’d been using pretty much since I started doing web design for a living. PHPCollab is an awesome PM system with Gantt charts and a pre-populated web design project template with helpful milestone presets, but it’s overkill for most of our web design projects and not nearly as intuitive as AC is. Plus, development seems to have stalled out, with a new version 2.5 being promised for nearly a year now. And my clients found PHPCollab a bit cumbersome to navigate, whereas they all love AC and use it consistently. But to be fair, there are several other PM systems out there, such as old timers BaseCamp and PHPCollab, and some relative newcomers, like 5PM and CollabTRAK, which I’m going to briefly review for you below.
What I look for in a good project management system is ease of use, both for me and for my clients. After all, the key word is “collab” which means we both are going to be using it. So it has to work for both of us. It has to be elaborate enough so that I can configure it to suit my projects and work habits and easy enough to move around in so that my clients will feel comfortable using it. It has to eliminate entirely the need for emails. In other words, it must be self-contained. Although I’ve only ever had personal experience with PHPCollab and Active Collab and dabbled briefly in Basecamp (the 30-day trial), I’m going to review the features of each popular PM system so you can have a handy overview of them all.
If you are a web designer or other creative, please drop me a comment and let me know what you use and why you like it.
Popular Project Management Systems
- 5PM Project Management
- This is a fairly new web-based project management system. It has a highly customizable user interface, seems to be very intuitive and also has a wide variety of monthly plans to suit every budget. Definitely worth a look.
- ActiveCollab
- ActiveCollab started out as an open source project management system, but the developers revised their business model when they added some great new features to AC. Features I personally don’t mind paying for. ActiveCollab is self-hosted, so you need to install it and run it on your own server, unlike Basecamp or 5PM. There are several themes available to change the appearance of AC, and you can pay a one-time license fee of $199US to have the “Powered by ActiveCollab” link removed. Other than that, there is no self-branding. One thing I like about ActiveCollab is that it’s a one-time fee to purchase a license ($199 for the Small Biz license; $399 for the Corporate license), and you can upgrade from Small Biz to Corporate at any time. Small Biz offers all the features you’d expect in a project management system, including File Uploads, Notifications, Milestones, Checklists and Tasks. You can also save any of your project’s milestones, checklists or tasks to reuse in a similar project later on. The Corporate version adds a few more kick-ass features such as localization (multi-language support), Time Tracking, Calendaring, Pages and Status Updates.
- Basecamp
- Basecamp, by 37 Signals, is the most popular of the project management systems out there right now. It too is web-based, so there’s no script to install. It is fully brandable; you can upload your own logo and configure the color palette to suit. It allows templating of To-Do Lists (but not milestones). Like most of the other project management systems out there, it’s pay by the month with several packages available depending on the size of your organization and your pocketbook. Helpfully, it offers a time tracking feature for those creatives who are billing by the hour for their services. (Active Collab has this feature too, but only in the Corporate package.)
- CollabTRAK
- This Web 2.0 award winning web-based project management application seems to be a happy marriage between BaseCamp and OliveApp in that it allows clients to initiate projects and allows them to pay for services securely online. The free version does have enough features to get you and your clients up and running (such as sharing files, designer initiated projects, receiving payments via PayPal and live chat), but springing for the Pro version ($9.99/month or $79/year), allows you to add the capability of full branding, an additional 290MB of storage space, client initiation of projects, SSL, and time tracking.
- OliveApp
- Olive App is another web-based client/project management tool. Not as robust as most of the other project management systems out there, it’s more client-driven. The client initiates the project, the designer is notified of the pending project, assigns it a monetary value (via “credits”), collects payment of those credits from the client, and the project, and collaboration on it, commence. It’s fully brandable, you can change the interface colors and even upload your own logo to replace the OliveApp logo and color palette. It also has several monthly plans. It’s fairly affordable and is simple to set up and maintain. If you have a small client base and don’t need full blown project management tools, this might be the right solution for you.
- PHPCollab
- PHPCollab was my first and longest relationship with a project management system. I was and still am in awe of its features and power. Of all of the project management programs out there, this most definitely is the most powerful, offering the most features. And since it’s open source, it’s completely free. Self-hosted, PHPCollab requires PHP4 and MySQL. It offers the full spectrum of project management including milestones, checklists, file uploads, versioning, peer review. As with the other systems, you add Projects, Clients/Client Companies, and Users. PHPCollab is not as intuitive as Basecamp or Active Collab about adding users to clients or projects, and there are several steps you must go through to make sure that the client user is assigned to the project so that’s a bit annoying. It offers the ability to generate Gantt charts, something I haven’t seen used in awhile and something the others don’t offer. It also has an integrated calendar where all your deadlines appear. If you want to hang back and wait for the devs to release the much promised 2.5, it might be worth it, especially in these budget-conscious times.
- Project Pier
- ProjectPier is an open-source project management system. (It’s actually a fork of the old, open-source version of ActiveCollab.) Self-hosted, it requires MySQL and PHP5 to operate. Being open-source, it requires none of your hard-earned money. (But if you like the project, consider donating to encourage continued development and improvement.) ProjectPier is extremely customizable if you are proficient with CSS (and if you are a web designer, you most certainly are!). So you can fully brand ProjectPier or take advantage of its many premade themes. ProjectPier is also localized, available in a wide variety of languages.
Hi, Thank you so much for doing the Project Management Systems comparison. Saved me some work! Can you tell me why OmniProject is not on your list? Also, I wondered how you developed this list above of project management systems to check. Thank you again!
Hi, Nancy. I Googled a bit for project management tools and OmniProject didn’t appear. I was familiar with some of the others mentioned (e.g. OliveApp and 5PM) via contact with fellow web designers. I found CollabTRAK via Twitter. :)
If you are familiar with OmniProject, why don’t you take a moment to share its features so that I can possibly do a Part II later on? ;)
We built and use Intervals for managing projects at our web design & development agency. Check it out, there is several years of practical knowledge and experience in one app.
Thank you, John. Hopefully I can collect enough suggestions to make a follow-up post with new-found Project Management apps like yours.
Great roundup here of group collaboration packages. If you would like integration with Evernote and Google Docs, you can look into http://www.pelotonics.com Thanks for the list!
Hi Joni,
Please add DeskAway to your next post. I am using DeskAway for almost a year & will say that is an excellent tool to collaborate. You can upload/share documents & also assign tasks to team members with deadlines. Also it has the social collaboration features wherein you can upload your photo & update your profile & share it with other team members. You can try out all these features on a free (which never expires).
http://www.deskaway.com
Thanks Troy and Suruchi. I’ll definitely be investigating your suggestion with a view toward a Part II post soon. :)
I’m really thinking of switching from 5pm to active collab because I think the interface is more intuitive, it’s got more features. 5pm plans are insane. For my needs I am on the $24/mth plan which is $288 a year. That’s almost $100 more than active collab.
That was my reasoning, too, Damian, with BaseCamp. Why pay monthly when you can make a one-time payment and receive support on top of that. At that rate, over a period of a couple of years, even the pricier Corporate Plan at $399 made more sense. I love AC.
You should also decide, if you are going to manage many different projects, or overlapping projects or just one small (big) project. I think that the systems you enumerated are meant for different kinds of projects. For example, basecamp will do a good job, if you need to collaborate on just one project. If you need to manage multiple projects, you might want to check out Wrike.com. It’s integrated with email, so if your clients prefer to contribute to your work via email they can do that and you’ll be using it entirely on the web. The real beauty of it is that you can manage a multi-role & multi project environment in on place.
My project management tool is Planzone for 6 month and I am very impressed by this online software. I use it mostly to share content and plannings with my customers.
You should have a look on it ( I have no stocks, I swear :)
http://www.planzone.com
A good overview of various systems, thanks.
@Nancy: Well I was familiar with a few of them since I belong to an active web designer list and I hear requests for recommendations all the time. Basecamp seems to be the most popular, but my familiarity lies with PHPCollab and Active Collab. So those reviews were easy to prepare. I just googled for some of the others, tried some of their demos and lent my opinion (which as you know, EVERYONE is entitled to!) :)
Great article! Lots of programs I’ve never heard/worked with. For my money (and team and clientelle) nothing beats wordpress. Just finished an in-depth review of basecamp in case you care to check it out.
Never heard about “OliveApp” before, but just by looking at their homepage, it seems very similar to the rest of the application.
We need something fresh in this industry, something that will really make the life of the Project Manager easier, like the ideal project tool. Hope someone, somewhere, is listening.