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Project Management & Collaboration

ActiveCollab

UK / wider Europe Report an error

Panel rating · 6 judges · How to read the stars

Category median

Sovereignty: 2 of 4 dimensions proven

0–5 in half steps. 5 means the rubric's top anchor is met on the evidence.

by A51 d.o.o. · activecollab.com

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Read this page as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.

The Enterprise Architect

Weighted verdict

Buys for two hundred seats and answers for it later. Optimizes for SSO/SCIM, permissions, audit trails, certifications and a clean exit. Rejects anything that cannot survive procurement.

Same scores as the panel view — this lens weights them the way this judge cares.

Scored by The Enterprise Architect

Collaboration depth

How this is scored

How much real multi-person project work the tool carries: shared planning, assignments, dependencies, workload, comments, guest access.

0 — A personal task list; a second user has no defined place in it.

3 — Tasks can be shared and assigned, but planning stays per-person — no shared timeline, workload or dependency view.

5 — Solid shared projects with assignments, comments and at least one team-level planning view; gaps appear in cross-project or capacity planning.

8 — Team-level planning is first-class: cross-project views, workload/capacity, dependencies, guest or client access with sane permissions.

10 — Handles the full span from two freelancers to a structured department in one model — planning, capacity, permissions and client involvement all without workarounds.

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The Enterprise Architect

Task dependencies with automated updating, subtasks, three task views and a workload view tied to each assignee's availability make team-level planning first-class, and five roles including distinct client tiers give client access real permissions rather than a bolt-on guest seat. The Assignment Dashboard aggregates opened and completed tasks, estimates versus tracked time and cost versus budget across selected projects, which is the cross-project span I buy for. One procurement note: workload management, capacity planning and utilization are documented on the top Pro+ tier, so a 200-seat deployment has to land there to get the full planning model. 2 4 5 6 7 10

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Reporting

How this is scored

Whether the tool can answer questions about the work: progress, time, budgets, utilization — and export the answer.

0 — No reporting beyond looking at the board.

3 — Fixed per-project status views only; nothing aggregates across projects and nothing exports cleanly.

5 — Useful standard reports (progress, tracked time) with basic filters and CSV export, but limited customization and no budget/utilization depth.

8 — Configurable cross-project reporting incl. time, budgets and utilization, with dashboards and reliable exports.

10 — Reporting is a product in itself: custom report builder, scheduled delivery, API access to every metric the UI shows.

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The Enterprise Architect

Ten documented report types — time, estimated versus tracked time, expenses, budget versus cost, uninvoiced, payments and invoices among them — with role-scoped access, rich filter sets, saved presets and CSV export answer cross-project questions on time, budgets and profitability. We found no public information on a custom report builder, scheduled report delivery, or API access to every metric the interface shows, which is what would push this into top-tier territory. 6 7 10

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Integrations

How this is scored

How well the tool connects to the rest of the stack: native integrations, calendar/comms hooks, API and webhooks, import/export paths.

0 — A closed box — no API, no integrations, CSV out if anything.

3 — A handful of marquee integrations, no public API or an API that covers a fraction of the product.

5 — The common set (calendar, Slack/Teams, file storage) plus a documented public API; automation platforms partially covered.

8 — Broad native catalogue, well-documented API and webhooks, first-class automation-platform support and real import paths from competitors.

10 — Ecosystem-grade: everything in 8 plus the tool is itself extensible (apps/plugins, AI/MCP surfaces) and exit via API export is complete.

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The Enterprise Architect

A documented API plus webhooks with selectable events, project and task-type filters, a test button and an optional secret header, alongside Zapier, Make and IFTTT paths, Slack, QuickBooks and imports from Asana, Trello and Wrike, connect the stack credibly, and an MCP server adds an AI surface. The native catalogue is moderate rather than broad, webhook payloads are fixed-format and outbound-only, and we found no public information on the completeness of API-based export for a clean exit or on SAML single sign-on and SCIM provisioning — the first thing I look for at two hundred seats. 2 8 9 12

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Onboarding effort

How this is scored

Time and friction from signup to first real value for a small team, without paid services.

0 — No self-serve path — onboarding starts with a sales call and an implementation project.

3 — Self-serve exists but the first project requires configuration a newcomer cannot judge yet (workflows, custom fields, permissions) before anything works.

5 — A team gets a first project running within a day; trial requires payment details or key steps live behind docs.

8 — Signup to working project inside an hour: guided setup, sensible defaults, templates, trial without payment details.

10 — Minutes to value even for non-tool-people, importers pull existing work in, and the tool teaches its own advanced features as the team grows into them.

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The Enterprise Architect

The trial requires no credit card, sample projects that don't count against plan limits give newcomers something real to explore, and importers pull existing work in from Asana, Trello, Wrike or spreadsheets in minutes. Project templates with relative due dates and two creation paths cut the first-project cost further; assisted and professional onboarding exist as paid options but the self-serve path stands alone, so I see roughly top-of-class friction here. 1 2 10 11

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European sovereignty

How this is scored

Where the company and the data actually sit: legal entity, ownership control, data residency, and subprocessor exposure to non-EU jurisdictions.

0 — Non-European vendor, data on US infrastructure under US law, no DPA worth the name.

3 — DPA and GDPR language present, but hosting defaults to the US or ownership sits outside Europe — compliance paperwork over substance.

5 — EU data residency is available and contractually fixed, but the vendor or its controlling owner is non-European, or core subprocessors put data within CLOUD Act reach.

8 — European company under European control with EU-resident data and a public DPA; remaining exposure is limited to identifiable subprocessors (e.g. a US hyperscaler's EU region) and is documented.

10 — European company, European control, EU-only data residency on European infrastructure, subprocessor list free of extraterritorial reach — verifiable, not asserted.

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The Enterprise Architect

Primary storage is in Canada and the USA with only an offsite backup in France, the vendor states its Terms of Service and Privacy Policy serve as the data processing agreement, and the operating facility sits in Serbia, outside the EEA, with Google Drive, Zoom, Stripe and Intercom among the named processors. The self-hosted license is the only documented route to keeping data on our own servers — without it, this would not survive a European procurement review, and even with it I am carrying the integration burden myself. 3 4 6

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Support & documentation

How this is scored

Whether a stuck user gets unstuck: docs quality, support channels and their availability per plan, and the health of the learning surface.

0 — No docs beyond marketing pages; support is a contact form that may answer.

3 — Docs exist but are thin or stale; support on entry plans is effectively email-only with slow turnaround.

5 — Searchable help center covering the core product; chat or email support on all plans with reasonable response times.

8 — Deep, current docs incl. onboarding guides and templates; fast chat support not gated to top tiers; visible changelog.

10 — Docs, academy, community and support so good they are a reason to buy; SLAs published, support quality independent of plan.

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The Enterprise Architect

The help center covers core product, mobile, integrations and self-hosted with current step-by-step books on reports, webhooks and getting started, and live chat ships on all plans rather than being gated to the top tiers. A dedicated customer success agent appears only above 20 seats on Pro and Pro+, and we found no public information on published response-time SLAs or a visible changelog, so this is strong but not a reason to buy on its own. 2 7 9 12 13

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Pricing transparency

How this is scored

Can a buyer determine the real, payable cost of the tool for their team before talking to anyone?

0 — No public pricing at all — every number sits behind "contact sales".

3 — Some tiers are public, but a deciding factor (seat minimums, mandatory add-ons, billing-period surcharge, tax treatment) only surfaces at checkout or in fine print.

5 — Self-serve tiers are publicly priced and the billing-period difference is stated, but the headline number still needs qualifying — e.g. annual-only headline, taxes excluded without saying so, or an opaque enterprise tier doing real work.

8 — Every self-serve tier is fully priced with billing periods and tax treatment plain on the page; only genuinely custom enterprise work lacks a number.

10 — Every tier including enterprise has a public price or published price formula, and the headline number is the number on the invoice.

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The Enterprise Architect

All three cloud tiers are priced exactly — $12.5 per month with 3 seats included on Plus, $10 per user/month on Pro, $15 per user/month on Pro+, and a published 100+ seat price of $3.5 per user/month that directly matters at my scale. The billing-period difference appears only as "save up to 17%", we found no public information on tax treatment, and the captured pages show self-hosted support renewals at $699 and $999 while we found no public information on the self-hosted license price itself. 2 13

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European sovereignty — proven facts

2 of 4 dimensions proven

Built only from facts shown on the vendor's own pages. A dimension we could not prove is left open, not scored as zero.

Ownership Not determined ⚠ unverified — uncited Report an error
Data residency US by default ⚠ unverified 0/3 pts 3 Report an error
Subprocessors US CLOUD Act reach ⚠ unverified 0/2 pts 3 Report an error

Where this could be wrong

What we left out

A claim that does not survive our checks costs us the claim, not the page. This is what was taken off this one.

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Sources (13)

The pages every claim on this page was read from — each one checked, dated, and kept verifiable.

  1. 1 Vendor homepage activecollab.com Checked 15 Sep 2026 Details →
  2. 2 Vendor pricing page activecollab.com Checked 15 Sep 2026 +1 earlier capture: 11 Sep 2026 Details →
  3. 3 Privacy policy activecollab.com Checked 15 Sep 2026 Details →
  4. 4 Collaboration depth — found from sitemap activecollab.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  5. 5 Collaboration depth — found from sitemap activecollab.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  6. 6 Reporting — found from sitemap activecollab.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  7. 7 Reporting — found from sitemap activecollab.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  8. 8 Integrations — found from sitemap activecollab.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  9. 9 Integrations — found from sitemap activecollab.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  10. 10 Onboarding effort — found from sitemap activecollab.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  11. 11 Onboarding effort — found from sitemap activecollab.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  12. 12 Support & documentation — found from sitemap activecollab.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  13. 13 Support & documentation — found from sitemap activecollab.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →