ActiveCollab

Being able to:
- upload images and files into task discussion threads to facilitate easy review of work
- easily add and archive users
- run reports at the task, project, client, and user levels

- No integration with Microsoft Teams.
- Limited ability to manage user groups or fine-tune user permissions.
Most needed feature:
- The ability to mark notifications "unread" or "priority".

While I will say I don't like much about this software, the budget and description location/transparency works well for the task workflow. It is fairly easy to include all necessary information in an individual task, but detail tracking and dependencies are where this ease of use falls off.

The relationship between tasks and subtasks is a pain point and lacks clarity/definition. Sometimes there would be dropoff when trying to upload attachments, and they would not actually post to the task. ActiveCollab doesn't have a great reporting structure (compared to Jira) for our specific needs, and that ended up being a hindrance to workflow. For as complicated as the reporting section looked, I felt it was lacking. While it isn't a functionality issue, I also dislike the visual design of the software - it feels antiquated and can be draining for such a frequently used tool. Time logging was difficult compared to the software we moved to later.

There are actually two PM tools that I absolutely love - Nifty and Ora, however, as much as I love them, they're a bit too "technical" for the layman to use. If you're not heavily invested in software development, they can be overwhelming, but ActiveCollab offers a really clean UI and superb UX that make onboarding new, casual users a breeze.

The features offered in ActiveCollab are on par with the industry and mean that you can grow into the product as a team without worrying about boundaries for the most part. I only say "the most part" because I'm on a lower tier plan that doesn't include things like Invoicing (something I use a different product for anyway).

While I guess it can be seen as a "smart" business decision, I think gating things like Invoicing behind a pay wall doesn't feel great as an end user. It's just the psychological aspect of it all, right?
If you said I had to pay $7.50/month for a plan and then an additional $3/month for Invoicing, I would be less inclined versus just being asked to pay $10/month for everything.

I think the pigeon-holing of Invoicing being behind a plan that is also a price per member can also be a crux because the functionality doesn't really change between a 2 person operation and a 200 person operation, but the two would pay a crazy amount of difference ($6 vs. $600) just for Invoicing.