whats-best.ai

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 Integrator

Weighted verdict

Lives in the API docs before the product tour. Optimizes for webhooks, import/export and a tool that plays well in a stack. Rejects closed ecosystems and CSV-only exits.

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

Scored by The Integrator

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 Integrator

Dependencies with automated updating, subtasks and recurring tasks come in at the mid self-serve plan, and the workload view (their words, a variation of the Gantt view) shows individual availability, days off and capacity, with Client and Client+ roles for guest access and Member+ variants for permissions. Cross-project surfaces like the Assignments Dashboard pull opened versus completed tasks and estimates versus tracked time into one place. The catch is that workload management, capacity planning and utilization are listed on the top plan, so a small team pays the top price for the deepest planning. 2 4 5 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 Integrator

The report catalogue is long — projects, tasks, time, expenses, budget versus cost, payments, uninvoiced and invoices — with rich filter lists, saved filter presets, dashboards, role-scoped access and CSV export, plus advertised customized project, workflow and profitability reports. I found no public information on scheduled report delivery or API access to the metrics, which is what the top rung asks for. 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 Integrator

The webhook documentation is the best kind: sixteen trigger events, filters by project or task type, an optional secret header, a test button, and named automation services (Zapier, Make, IFTTT), sitting next to a documented API, a Slack app, QuickBooks, Drive and Dropbox, an MCP server for AI connections, calendar import and export via iCal, and real import paths from Trello, Asana, Wrike and spreadsheets. It stops short of ecosystem-grade because webhooks only take data out in a fixed JSON payload, and the captured pages do not show how much of the product the API covers or a complete API-based exit. 2 8 9 10 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 Integrator

The trial runs fourteen days with no credit card, sample projects that do not count against plan limits and can be reset, project templates with relative due dates, and migration from spreadsheets, Asana, Trello or Wrike described as minutes of work — a team reaches a working project with its old data in place. I found no public information on a guided setup wizard, so the first hour leans on the getting-started help book. 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 Integrator

The captured privacy policy puts primary storage in Canada and the USA with an offsite backup in France, we found no public information on a selectable EU region for the cloud product, and the terms and privacy policy themselves serve as the data processing agreement, with Google Drive and Zoom among the named processors. The operating entity is Serbian — outside the EEA — and the pages name ActiveCollab, Inc without confirming jurisdiction or ownership. The self-hosted license is the only path that keeps data on infrastructure you control. 3 4

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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 Integrator

The help center runs deep — step-by-step books on project templates, webhooks and the full report set including role-by-role access — and live chat is listed on every plan rather than held back for top tiers, with community circles and categorized contact routes alongside. I found no public information on a visible changelog or published support SLAs, which is what separates this from the top rung. 2 6 7 9 12

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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 Integrator

Every self-serve tier carries a public dollar figure — the small-team plan at $12.5 per month with three seats included, the middle and top plans at $10 and $15 per user per month, a $3.5 per-user rate above 100 seats, and 50% off for educational institutions and nonprofits — with the billing-period difference stated as saving up to 17% yearly and storage spelled out per period. The captured pages say nothing about tax treatment, and the self-hosted option shows no public license price, only support renewal figures of $699 and then $999 for a year. 1 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.

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 →