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Project Management & Collaboration

Productive

EU-Made Report an error

Panel rating · 6 judges · How to read the stars

Category median

Sovereignty: 1 of 4 dimensions proven

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

by Productive International d.o.o. · productive.io

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

The Bootstrapper

Weighted verdict

Pays with their own card. Optimizes for price/value at 3 seats and at 30, a usable free tier, and a price page that answers instead of qualifying. Rejects hidden seat minimums and "contact sales".

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

Scored by The Bootstrapper

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 Bootstrapper

Task dependencies come in Blocking, Waiting on and Linked flavors with no count limit, subtask dependencies and Gantt visualization, while capacity-and-availability reporting with a workload field plus over/under-capacity and overtime-by-person views makes team planning first-class. Comments are rich — pinning, quoting, attachments, "Hidden from client" — with permission sets and teams behind them. We found no public information on guest or client accounts as such, so client involvement rests on comment visibility control alone. 5 6 7 11

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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 Bootstrapper

The Reports collection alone holds 22 articles: a prebuilt report library, data source selection, multi-level grouping, pivots, drilldown tables, OR and AND filters, and saved reports with custom categories, plus Pulse automation that ships reports to Slack. Budgets, payroll, intercompany hours and utilization (capacity and availability, over/under capacity, overtime by person) are all covered, and a table data export is documented. We found no public information on whether every metric the reports show is reachable through the API, which is what keeps this short of the top. 7 8 11

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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 Bootstrapper

The native catalogue is broad — QuickBooks, Xero, NetSuite, Sage, Slack, Teams, Jira, HubSpot, Salesforce and seven HR systems — plus Zapier, and the Open API with webhooks and event subscriptions is documented at a public developer site. Import paths are real: a Harvest importer, CSV import, and personalized migration support; on exit "you get a full copy of your database". An App Marketplace and admin-controlled AI connectors push toward the top, though we found no public information on a plugin SDK or MCP surface. 4 9 10 11 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 Bootstrapper

There is a genuine self-serve path: a free 14-day trial cancellable anytime, a phased admin checklist, an Academy course with videos and practical tasks, a setup-aware assistant, and CSV/Harvest importers with personalized migration via in-app chat. But first value runs through cost rates, holiday calendars, permission sets and time-tracking policies — calls a newcomer cannot judge in hour one — and we found no public information on whether the trial asks for card details. Day one rather than hour one is what this evidence supports. 9 11 12 13

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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 Bootstrapper

The captured privacy policy names "The Productive Company, Inc., a Delaware-based company" as the entity providing the services, discloses Standard Contractual Clauses for transfers to the United States, and names US-incorporated subprocessors (Stripe, Hyperdoc's Recall, Workable in Boston); the security page puts the servers on Amazon AWS hosted in the EU. Ownership is unverified and we found no public information fixing EU residency contractually. EU-hosted racks under a Delaware provider with US-reachable subprocessors is compliance paperwork around the edges, not European 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 Bootstrapper

Docs run deep (the Reports collection alone lists 22 articles), there is an Academy with certificates, a community, chat and email support with a four-minute average chat reply and an advertised 2m 56s response time, a public status page, a published 99.9% uptime service level, and a consented, session-recorded Account Access scheme for hands-on help. We found no public information on a changelog or on whether support quality varies by plan. Close to the top of the scale; those two gaps are what hold it. 1 2 4 7 13 14

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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 Bootstrapper

Essential at "€9.50 /month" and Professional at "€23 /month" per user are published with a worked 10-user total and a free 14-day trial — but both figures are billed yearly, the month-to-month alternative appears only as "save up to 17%", and the top tier reads "Ultimate Let's talk". We found no public information on tax treatment or seat minimums. As a buyer with a card, that is an annual-only headline and a contact-sales ceiling: usable, but the month-to-month number and the top tier both need a conversation. 2 9

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European sovereignty — proven facts

1 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 — uncited Report an error
Data residency Not determined ⚠ unverified — uncited Report an error
Subprocessors US CLOUD Act reach ⚠ unverified 0/2 pts 4 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 (14)

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

  1. 1 Vendor homepage productive.io Checked 17 Sep 2026 Details →
  2. 2 Vendor pricing page productive.io Checked 17 Sep 2026 +1 earlier capture: 11 Sep 2026 Details →
  3. 3 Privacy policy productive.io Checked 17 Sep 2026 Details →
  4. 4 Security page productive.io Checked 17 Sep 2026 Details →
  5. 5 Collaboration depth — found from sitemap help.productive.io Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  6. 6 Collaboration depth — found from sitemap help.productive.io Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  7. 7 Reporting — found from sitemap help.productive.io Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  8. 8 Reporting — found from sitemap help.productive.io Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  9. 9 Integrations — found from sitemap productive.io Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  10. 10 Integrations — found from sitemap help.productive.io Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  11. 11 Onboarding effort — found from sitemap help.productive.io Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  12. 12 Onboarding effort — found from sitemap help.productive.io Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  13. 13 Support & documentation — found from sitemap productive.io Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  14. 14 Support & documentation — found from sitemap help.productive.io Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →