Top 6 Float Alternatives: Features & Benefits Compared

If you’re looking for the best Float alternative, you’re at the right place.

Float is a resource management tool with a range of features for agency capacity planning, from simple budgeting and scheduling to forecasting. However, it doesn’t do everything perfectly, including some less-than-intuitive features and limited capabilities for comprehensive support.

If you want to upgrade your software solution, this article will compare six Float alternatives with their benefits, downsides, and user reviews. Keep reading to find the best tool for your business.

Float is a time tracking and scheduling tool for agencies. Its key features include resource planning, time off management, time tracking, and essential task management and budgeting features.

Float has overall good customer ratings, with a 4.6-star rating on Capterra and 4.2-star rating on G2. When it comes to the biggest downsides of the tool, reviews state the following:

For the benefits, multiple users state that Float is easy to implement and use, even for beginners to project management software. It has a clean and simple user interface that makes resource planning simple.

Productive is an all-in-one solution designed for agencies of all shapes and sizes. Its biggest benefit is providing comprehensive support within a single platform, including project management, resource planning, financial management, and forecasting capabilities.

This makes Productive a great tool to consider for agencies that have outgrown Float.

Read more on how an award-winning video production agency supports operations with Productive.

Let’s explore what makes Productive a great Float alternative for digital agency project management, starting with:

Productive offers various resourcing features that help you transition smoothly from Float. You can manage employee information, including cost rates and availability with holiday calendars and allocated time off.

A Capterra review for Float states that there’s:

With Productive, you can create bookings in various ways: by using billable hours percentages, defining the exact amount of hours per day, or inputting total hours and letting Productive distribute hours automatically.

Popular features include:

Time tracking in Productive is as streamlined as possible to encourage employees to consistently and accurately track their time. For managers, the feature offers timesheet locking, bulk editing, and easy approvals.

Some great aspects of the feature include:

Learn more about the best time tracking software for professional services.

Project and task management in Productive support agencies in getting a top-down and granular view into their project schedules.

This includes the ability to switch between multiple project views, including Kanban, Gantt, Calendar, and more. When creating your project boards, you can also save them as templates to get an easier future project kick-off.

Task management includes hierarchies with milestones, dependencies, subtasks, and to-dos. Notifications can be managed individually, so you can decide which project activities you want to receive notifications for and where (email or in platform).

You can also invite clients to the projects to simplify your feedback loops and communication. Use the Permission Builder to control who can see and do what and protect your sensitive data.

Productive’s Budgeting offers real-time insights into budgets, profit margins, and invoicing. It supports various budget types, including fixed price, hourly, and retainer. Complex projects can also be split into multiple phases for simplified money management.

Productive enhances decision-making and prevents budget overruns through automated alerts and real-time profitability tracking.

Additional features include:

Productive’s Reporting pulls data from various platform sources in order to help you get real-time insights into your business performance. You can create your reports from scratch, or use one of the 50+ agency-focused templates. With custom fields, you can also add business-specific parameters.

To share your reports, you can set up custom dashboards or subscribe to certain reports with Pulse.

Additional features include: Sales, Docs, AI, Automations. 

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

You can check out Productive with a 14-day free trial before you decide to subscribe to a paid plan.

Learn more about Productive’s features and top competitors.

Runn is a resource management solution with integrated scheduling, forecasting, and time management features. 

Key features:

As a scheduling and timesheet-focused tool, Runn is a natural alternative to Float. Users frequently praise the customer support team for being friendly and quick to answer queries. However, as a more focused product, you’ll find that Runn lacks some crucial functionalities for improved management.

For example, a Capterra users reports: “Sometimes I wish there were more reporting options”. Unlike more robust alternatives (such as Productive), Runn has limited report customization and doesn’t offer the creation of custom dashboards or automatic scheduling of reports with Pulse. 

Teamdeck is a streamlined solution for time management and resourcing, often praised for its simple resource calendar and visual interface.

Key features:

Customer reviews usually praise Teamdeck for its user interface: 

Source: Capterra

However, there are some notable downsides, mainly the limited reporting and budget management features. For example, insights for fixed-price budgets need to be entered by manually entering budgeting and employee cost rate amounts. In comparison, software like Productive supports budgets of all types and performs these calculations automatically.

Learn more on how to find the best budget management system for your agency.

Asana is a project management software solution for various agencies, including creative teams and software development teams.

Key features:

Asana is a great alternative for teams looking for a user-friendly solution with a project and task management component. However, Asana offers limited features for resource management. There are workload charts for visualizing resource capacity and balancing allocation, but the attendance tracking and financial forecasting features are lacking. Overall, it’s a good pick for agencies primarily focused on project management features. Otherwise, you might want to check some Asana alternatives.

Learn more: Overview of Top Asana Competitors

Resource Guru is a resource management tool that helps project managers get a clear view of team availability, time off, and workloads. 

Key features:

Positive reviews for Resource Guru state that: “Resource Guru only really does one function, but it does that function very well” (Source: Capterra). If you’re looking for capacity planning and resource scheduling software, Resource Guru can be a great option.

The main downside of the Resource Guru is the limited feature set for other agency operations. If you’re interested in advanced collaboration features and expense management, you should consider more comprehensive Resource Guru competitors.

Kantata, previously Mavenlink, is a professional services automation software designed to support efficient business operations and agency growth.

Key features:

Kantata is a comprehensive tool for advanced resource management. It offers a robust financial and reporting functionality that can support complex workflows. As the biggest downside of Kantata, users report that it can be challenging to use at times and that it has a steep learning curve. This makes it a good business management solution for agencies with the time and resources to invest in getting the most out of it.

If you want to learn more, check out Mavenlink alternatives or our review of the best alternative to Accelo for more options.

We’ve covered a variety of solutions with different strengths and weaknesses.

Although your best choice is usually dependent on the tool’s features, consider three additional criteria: user-friendliness, customer service, and scalability.

Both user-friendliness and responsive customer service are important for company-wide adoption and return on investment. Scalability is key to ensuring that your tool can grow with your business. Keep track of the vendor’s roadmap and social presence to gauge their commitment to updating and upgrading the software.

Finally, consider the benefits of an all-in-one solution for reducing your tech stack, standardizing workflows, and getting more reliable data.

To learn more, book a demo with Productive today.