14 Best Avaza Alternatives for Professional Services

Looking for Avaza alternatives? Keep reading to learn more about the best currently available software. 

Avaza is a project management solution that provides a fair range of features to support agency workflows. However, as your agency grows, you might be interested in finding a different, or more robust tool. We’ll provide a variety of solutions that focus on various features and offer unique benefits.

Avaza is described as a work management software that supports productive teams. Some key features include project and task management, resource management, sending and converting estimates into projects, online timesheets, and client invoicing.

Avaza has highly-rated user reviews overall, with a 4.7-star rating on Capterra and a 4.5-star rating on G2. Despite this, some downsides can make Avaza a less-than-ideal solution for your agency:

Regarding the tool’s benefits, reviewers underline that the collaboration features are useful and that drag-and-drop features simplify day-to-day operations. Additionally, some users mention that the customer support team is very helpful, but the onboarding process is somewhat hands-off, which is something to consider.

Productive is a professional services automation software tailored to businesses of all shapes and sizes, including digital agencies, marketing agencies, consultancies, and development companies.

While Avaza can provide essential solutions for project management, Productive aims to be your agency’s single source of truth. 

Read the full story: Saffron Got Clarity on All Aspects of Businesss

Standout features include project and task management, capacity planning with utilization forecasting, robust budgeting, and insights into key agency metrics such as revenue and profitability. Some additional capabilities (useful for marketing agency project management but also other workflows) include:

To better illustrate Productive’s benefits, let’s explore these features in more detail.

Productive’s Project Management feature helps you manage the big and small picture of your projects. To get oversight into your overall progress, you can switch between six main project views, including Kanban, Gantt, Calendar, and more. Use project templates to kick off new engagements more quickly.

Furthermore, you can invite your clients onto projects free of charge, so that they can create, view, and comment on tasks to simplify the approval and feedback process.

When it comes to handling tasks, Productive offers simple task dependencies, to-dos, and milestones to organize your collaboration. A Capterra review for Avaza states that: “Alerts tailored to each activity would be quite useful”.

Productive lets you customize your notifications to your preferences, including according to their type (docs, tasks, platform, etc.) and on which platform you want to receive them (mobile, in-app, email, Slack). 

 Productive’s Time Tracking offers the following key features:

Productive’s Budgeting includes three main capabilities: project budget management, Billing, and Purchase Orders. Productive approaches project management from a budgeting-first lens, so you will be defining your budgets, your services, your cost rates and expenses, and tracking time directly from each.

Your invoices will also be generated from your budgets, either by pulling information on your billed hours for hourly engagements or uninvoiced amounts for fixed-price engagements. With Purchase Orders, you can further refine your financial oversight by tracking external expenses.

A Capterra review of Avaza states:

With Productive, you can split up complex projects into separate phases and simplify your money management. You can also set up recurring budgets by specifying your intervals and date of occurrence.

Productive’s Resource Planning lets you create responsive and easy-to-edit resource plans. Book your employees and balance their workloads with color-coded heatmaps, which help ensure optimal utilization. Filter your resourcing by people or projects and create specific categories to simplify resource planning across multiple projects.

Get insights into your team utilization and forecast it across time. You can use these insights to impact your hiring efforts and sales strategies.

Standout features include:

According to the 2022 Global Agency Landscape Report, very few agencies track key performance indicators, such as forecasted revenue (43%), project gross margin (33%), or project budget burn rate (28%). With Productive’s Reporting, you can choose from more than 50 agency-focused templates and build insights on project financials, employee time, sales performance, and more. You can also build dashboards and share them across teams, or schedule reports to be sent with email.

Additional features: Sales, Docs, Automations. 

Integrations include: Xero, QuickBooks, HubSpot, Breathe, Zapier, Slack, Jira, and more.

Productive offers a 14-day free trial, so you can decide if it’s the right Avaza alternative for your agency.

Quickbase is a low-code development platform that lets agencies create a custom workspace for their needs.

Key features:

Quickbase can be a good Avaza alternative for a more flexible solution. This has its downsides, as implementation usually takes a longer time than with integrated and structured solutions. This level of freedom can also be daunting and requires more oversight from implementation stakeholders.

QuickBase is also a popular Airtable competitor, so you can check out our article to learn more about similar tools.

Trello is a project and task management tool with an intuitive interface suitable for smaller to mid-sized agencies.

Key features:

One of Trello’s biggest strengths is its user-friendliness. This makes it a suitable Avaza alternative for creative teams and design agencies, especially those with teams inexperienced with similar technology. However, if you’re looking for more comprehensive agency management, considering a different alternative might be more beneficial, such as Trello vs Wrike.

ClickUp is a project management tool for various industries, including professional services, real estate, construction, and others.

Key features:

In comparison to Avaza, ClickUp offers additional collaboration features, such as documentation, but lacks some of the more advanced financial features, such as an integrated invoicing module. When considering the tool, take into account that it’s not a specialized tool for agencies, so it might be less suited to professional services processes. For that, you might want to check out some alternatives to ClickUp instead.

Kantata, previously known as Mavenlink, is a project management platform that supports collaboration on client engagements.

Key features:

Kantata can be a good Avaza alternative for advanced project management, as it offers a suite of essential features to support project and task managers. As for the downsides, users report that the onboarding phase can be lengthy and that customer service could better support this process. Consider this if you’re on a time or budget limit.

Scoro software is a work management tool that supports profitability and team productivity in professional services organizations.

Key features:

Scoro can be a good alternative to Accelo, as it offers a range of business management features for strategic growth and daily initiatives. However, deciding between Scoro or Accelo depends on your specific needs and preferences. As the main downside, users sometimes find Scoro difficult to use. Consider also that the price range might be higher than comparable solutions on the market.

Wrike is a cloud-based tool for project collaboration with powerful features that support professional services businesses.

Key features:

Users report that they enjoy Wrike’s collaboration and communication features. Some frequently mentioned downsides include the fact that the reporting capabilities can be limited. Additionally, if you want to focus on your budgeting, take into account that Wrike offers it only as part of its enterprise plan.  

You can check our comparison between Wrike vs Asana to learn more.

Proofhub is a collaboration and file-sharing platform for marketing, sales, creative, and development teams.

Key features:

For agencies that are interested in more collaboration capabilities, Proofhub can be a good Avaza alternative, especially as creative agency project management software. However, Proofhub’s pricing model is relatively limited and has higher prices than some more comprehensive alternatives on this list. Consider this if you’re looking for a single platform to support all agency operations.

Netsuite is a business process management software that offers customizable applications for complex projects.

Key features:

Netsuite is a robust solution for business management, and it can be a suitable alternative for agencies interested in advanced financial control and revenue management. However, Netsuite’s flexibility makes it a difficult tool to implement, especially if your agency lacks technical knowledge. Additionally, the license can be expensive for SMEs.

We also have an in-depth exploration of Netsuite vs QuickBooks, so head over there to learn how they square up.

Microsoft Project is a task management software for professional service companies.

Key features:

Microsoft Project offers on-premise installation, which can make it a good Avaza alternative for agencies with sensitive data. Otherwise, agency professionals who are already using many tools from the Microsoft suite might find this a handy addition. As a downside, users mention that this tool can feel outdated and clunky in comparison to the latest solutions.

Teamwork is a PSA software solution created to help agencies deliver work on time and on budget.

Key features:

Teamwork is a solid choice for comprehensive project management. However, consider that some more advanced financial features and reporting might be less developed compared to similar tools, such as forecasting and utilization insights so be sure to review some other Teamwork alternatives before deciding which tool to commit to.

Monday.com is a work management platform that supports efficiency for teams of all sizes across a variety of industries.

Key features:

Similarly to ClickUp, Monday.com can be a good solution for workflow management, but it can lack some advanced agency management features. This includes advanced agency support, such as profitability and revenue forecasting and utilization insights.

Celoxis is a project management tool with accounting and resource planning capabilities.

Key features:

Celoxis offers a variety of project management capabilities that can help streamline delivery and collaboration. However, users do mention some notable downsides, such as issues with certain features like notifications and difficulties with implementation. Celoxis also doesn’t offer pricing plans on the website, which can prolong the research phase.

Smartsheet is a project management tool that helps centralize project information across teams.

Key features:

Even though Smartsheet is one of the most well-known collaboration tools, its similarity to spreadsheet-based tools might not be everyone’s preference. User reviews comment that the tool “feels like a user-friendly, robust and easily customizable version of Excel” (Source: Capterra). Consider this if you’re looking for a software solution with a modernized interface. 

Finding the best software solution for your agency needs is key to successful project delivery. When considering options, it’s important to take into account factors such as pricing, features, and user reviews. By doing so, you can make an informed decision that aligns with your specific needs.

Although your best option may vary considerably depending on your agency size and type, consider the benefits of an integrated solution. An all-in-one tool can serve as your single source of truth, standardizing data and centralizing workflows.

If you’re interested in learning more about the benefits of agency management software, book a demo with Productive.