Top 6 Float Alternatives: Features & Benefits Compared

A screenshot of a float alternative software showing a team's project management schedule. The interface displays a timeline from June 8 to July 4, with various tasks assigned to team members like design, development, and rebranding, marked with different colors for distinct project phases.

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.

Why Look for Float Alternatives?

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.

A screenshot of a float alternative software interface displaying the weekly schedule of team members. The calendar shows appointments and project tasks for January 22 to 28, 2023, such as personal leave, client revisions, and strategy proposals. Key tasks are color-coded, with details like job titles and locations, e.g., "Marketing Manager in London" and "Producer in New York."


source: float

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:

  • No free or trial version
  • Difficulties with integrating Float with accounting or time tracking tools
  • Lack of comprehensive task management capabilities
  • No advanced automation or AI features

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.

List of 6 Top Alternatives to Float

1. Productive – A Great Alternative for All-in-One Agency Management

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.

The main challenge for us was consolidating everything we needed into one tool, we were using six different tools at the time, and Productive really delivered on that note.

Alex Streltsov,
General Manager at Prolex Media

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:

Resource Planning

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:

Not a ton of flexibility in spreading hours across projects / people.

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.

A screenshot of a float alternative software showing a timeline view of project management and personal scheduling for multiple team members. It includes various tasks such as website development, rebranding projects, and vacations, marked with color-coded bars indicating the duration and specifics of each task.


Handle your scheduling in real time with Productive’s capacity chart template
 

Popular features include:

  • Placeholders for adding external staff or to account for future hiring
  • Tentative bookings for unconfirmed projects
  • Financial forecasting for key metrics such as profit margins, budget burn, and revenue

Time Tracking

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.

A screenshot of a float alternative software tracking time for marketing tasks. It displays time spent on social media posts, customer success interview questions, and creative briefs, with time stamps indicating hours dedicated to each task.


TRACK tIME AND MANAGE BILLABLE AND NOn-billable hours

Some great aspects of the feature include:

  • An integrated timer with a desktop widget (so you can start/stop the timer)
  • Recent or favorite services for easy manual creation
  • Time tracking from tasks
  • Automatic time tracking that syncs resourcing bookings with time entries
  • Integration with Google Calendar

Project Management

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.

A screenshot of a float alternative software featuring a task management dashboard for social media posts. It displays options like 'List view', 'Board view', 'Calendar view', and 'Table view'. The screen includes tasks categorized under 'Not Started' and 'Done', with labels indicating task priorities and responsible team members.


Plan projects and track project progress with customizable layouts

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.

Budgeting

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:

  • Invoicing: Creative invoices within the platform or connect Productive with Xero, QuickBooks, or Exact
  • Purchase Orders: Manage external expenses and track payments in Productive

Budgeting

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.

A screenshot of a float alternative software displaying new budget insights. The interface shows a bar graph categorized by company with financial data on revenue and margin for projects like 'ABC Company', 'Cupcake Project', and 'Website Redesign'. The graph includes options to group data and a checkbox to show only totals.


Support informed decision-making with reliable analytics

Additional features include: Sales, Docs, AI, Automations

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

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

Choose the Best Float Alternative

Unlock your agency’s potential with an all-in-one tool that supports resourcing and daily operations.

Book a demo

Learn more about Productive’s features and top competitors.

2. Runn – A Specialized Tool for Resourcing

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

Key features:

The interface of a Float alternative software, depicting an overview of team workload in chart format.


SOurce: RUNN

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. 

3. Teamdeck – A User-Friendly Alternative

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

Key features:

  • Resource scheduling
  • Time tracking
  • Reporting
  • Leave management
The interface of a Float alternative software, depicting a project board in calendar format.


Source: teamdeck

Customer reviews usually praise Teamdeck for its user interface: 

As a designer and studio owner I value the simplicity, UX and of course the design of the application.

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.

4. Asana – A Good Option for Task Management

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

Key features:

  • Project planning
  • Task management
  • Time tracking
  • Simple workload management


source: asana

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

5. Resource Guru – A Simple Resource Scheduling Software Solution

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

Key features:

A screenshot of a float alternative software displaying a colorful team schedule calendar. The interface lists individual tasks for employees such as designing marketing websites, writing spring newsletters, and developing landing pages, scheduled over the end of May and beginning of June with detailed time allocations.


source: resource guru

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.

6. Kantata – A Solid PSA Option

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

Key features:

  • Resource management
  • Financial and invoicing features
  • Project management tool
  • Business intelligence
A screenshot of a float alternative software displaying workload and task progress for team members from August 4 to August 10. The image shows status bars for a front-end developer and a technical consultant with completion percentages for tasks like Business Process Overview and Build Integration Scenarios.


source: kantata

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.

Choosing the Best Float Alternative

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.

Connect With Agency Peers

Access agency-related Slack channels, exchange business insights, and join in on members-only live sessions.

Lucija Bakić

Content Specialist

Related articles