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.
Why Look For Avaza Alternatives?
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:
- Certain features could be improved, like simpler reporting and non-disruptive notifications
- Workflow automation would be useful for comprehensive project management capabilities
- Reviewers state that the user experience could be more intuitive for parts of the platform
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.
Our List of the Top 14 Alternatives to Avaza
1. Productive – The Best Avaza Alternative for All-in-One Agency Management
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.
The main benefit we get from Productive is planning, clarity, everyone working towards one system. It facilitates reporting, hugely. It’s very easy to use. Also, I think one of the biggest things for me is the fact that it’s constantly improving.
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:
- Collaborative documentation
- Built-in docs
- Workflow automations
To better illustrate Productive’s benefits, let’s explore these features in more detail.
Project Management
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).
Time Tracking
Productive’s Time Tracking offers the following key features:
- Various ways to create time entries: manual, integrated timer, automatic through resource scheduling
- Project managers can mark time as billable and non-billable, approve them and request extra information
- Productive also includes leave management: create agency-specific categories and approve or reject employee leave through the platform
- Additional features: desktop timer widget, bulk editing, timesheet locking, employee reminders
Budgeting
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.
Without a doubt, in the billing area there has been considerable change. I can say that the hours we dedicate have been reduced in a 15-20%.
A Capterra review of Avaza states:
We’d love it if large projects could be broken up into stages.
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.
Resource Planning
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:
- Placeholders: Include external staff in your planning and account for future hiring scenarios.
- Tentative bookings: Plan out different scenarios without impacting your employees’ total scheduled hours.
- Forecasting: Switch to the Profitability view to forecast your budget burn, revenue, and profit margins according to your resource scheduling. Any changes made are immediately reflected in your data.
Reporting
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.
Pricing
- Plans start with the Essential plan at $9 per user per month, which includes essential features such as budgeting, project & task management, docs, time tracking, expense management, reporting, and time off management.
- The Professional plan includes custom fields, recurring budgets, advanced reports, billable time approvals, and many more for $24 per user per month.
- The Ultimate plan has everything that the Essential plan and Professional plan offer, along with the HubSpot integration, advanced forecasting, advanced custom fields, overhead calculations, and more for $32 per user per month.
Productive offers a 14-day free trial, so you can decide if it’s the right Avaza alternative for your agency.
Choose the Best Avaza Alternative
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2. Quickbase – A Customizable Alternative to Avaza
Quickbase is a low-code development platform that lets agencies create a custom workspace for their needs.
Key features:
- Customizable applications
- Third-party integrations
- Workflow automations
- Permissions
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.
3. Trello – A Simplified Platform for Team Collaboration
Trello is a project and task management tool with an intuitive interface suitable for smaller to mid-sized agencies.
Key features:
- Workspace templates
- Various boards
- Automations
- Powerups & integrations
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.
4. ClickUp – A Versatile Project Management Option
ClickUp is a project management tool for various industries, including professional services, real estate, construction, and others.
Key features:
- Workflow automation
- Collaborative documentation
- Time tracking
- Real-time reporting
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.
5. Kantata (Mavenlink) – A Good Avaza Alternative With Automations
Kantata, previously known as Mavenlink, is a project management platform that supports collaboration on client engagements.
Key features:
- Project templates
- Resource management
- Project accounting
- Workflow automation
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.
6. Scoro – An All-Around Good Option for Team Management
Scoro software is a work management tool that supports profitability and team productivity in professional services organizations.
Key features:
- Time tracking
- Capacity planning
- Project budgeting
- Agency analytics
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.
7. Wrike – A Project & Resource Management Alternative
Wrike is a cloud-based tool for project collaboration with powerful features that support professional services businesses.
Key features:
- Billable hours tracking
- Customizable tasks
- Workload charts
- Report visualizations
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.
8. Proofhub – A Good Option for Collaboration Between Teams
Proofhub is a collaboration and file-sharing platform for marketing, sales, creative, and development teams.
Key features:
- Team collaboration
- Task management
- Gantt chart
- Document management
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.
9. Netsuite – An Extensive ERP Software Solution
Netsuite is a business process management software that offers customizable applications for complex projects.
Key features:
- Accounting features
- Project planning
- Resource scheduling
- CRM
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.
10. Microsoft Project – An Alternative With On-Premise Hosting
Microsoft Project is a task management software for professional service companies.
Key features:
- Employee scheduling
- Interactive dashboards
- Automated workflows
- Project insights
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.
11. Teamwork – A Good Option With Essential Management Features
Teamwork is a PSA software solution created to help agencies deliver work on time and on budget.
Key features:
- Project planning
- Workload management
- Budgeting and invoicing
- Collaborative documentation
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.
12. Monday.com – A Work Management Tool for Project Teams
Monday.com is a work management platform that supports efficiency for teams of all sizes across a variety of industries.
Key features:
- Portfolio management
- Customizable dashboards
- Automations
- Workforce management
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.
13. Celoxis – A Decent Professional Services Firms Software
Celoxis is a project management tool with accounting and resource planning capabilities.
Key features:
- Resource management
- Project accounting
- Dynamic reporting
- Client collaboration
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.
14. Smartsheet – A Good Option for Excel-Savy Users
Smartsheet is a project management tool that helps centralize project information across teams.
Key features:
- Project management
- Resource planning
- Client access controls
- Reporting
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.
Takeaway: Finding the Top Avaza Alternative
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.
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