9 Best WorkflowMax Alternatives for Agencies

Margarita Aranza

January 15, 2023

WorkflowMax retired on June 26th, 2024. So, what are your best WorkflowMax alternatives?

The new WorkflowMax by Bluerock is not the exact same software, and there are already some less-than-positive reviews coming in. To help you make the right choice, we’ll explore the best WorkflowMax alternatives with their key features, benefits, and downsides.

How to Find the Best WorkflowMax Alternative

From a bunch of alternative solutions, we recommend finding a true end-to-end tool. Centralizing your operations on a single platform can bring numerous benefits, from streamlined workflows to more reliable data. Additionally, consider the interface and customer support team.

Some key capabilities should include:

  • Sales pipeline management
  • Project management and time tracking
  • Task management and workflow automations
  • Budgeting and invoicing
  • Resource planning and time off management
  • Profitability and financial forecasting
  • Integrations with popular tools, such as Xero, Google Calendar, HubSpot, etc.

All of this and more is offered by:

1. Productive – The Best Workflowmax Alternative for All-in-One Agency Management

Productive is an end-to-end agency management software that helps your agency stay profitable by gathering all data in one place.

What makes it an excellent choice for a WFM alternative?

Features that include:

  • Team collaboration and complex project management
  • Capacity planning, resource forecasting, performance monitoring
  • Budgeting control with revenue and profitability insights
  • On-platform invoicing or using the native Xero integration
  • Deals and sales team performance management

Let’s explore these features in more detail:

Budgeting and Reporting – Make Data-driven Decisions

In Productive, some terms will be different, but you’ll find all the capabilities you need to manage your workflows.

So, you can quote or estimate the services (tasks in WorkflowMax) in your budget (jobs in WorkflowMax). Productive also allows businesses to forecast budget/job overruns, and view future profit margins.


Get in-depth insights into key agency metrics

With our powerful Reporting feature, you can use real-time data to make well-informed and data-driven decisions. Productive has over 50 built-in report templates that focus on agencies, as well as customized reporting options.

Get various information on your WIP budgets/jobs, such as revenue, costs, profit, hours worked, current progress, and more. For report sharing, build custom dashboards or schedule automating sending to Slack or email.

Sales Pipeline—Handle Contacts and Get Performance Insights

Productive’s lightweight CRM system allows businesses to align their sales management within a project management solution.

You can set up your funnel with custom stages, build quotes/estimates, export them from Productive to send to potential clients, manage all kinds of insights (such as potential revenue and performance per sales rep), convert won deals into projects, and more.

Time Tracking – Deliver Your Jobs on Time

With Productive’s Time Tracking, you can track time daily or weekly in your time sheets. Tasks also have a built-in timer, so you don’t have to go to your time sheets as you work.

People track time as either billable or non-billable, against services that automatically get displayed in profitability reports.


TRACK TIME AS BILLABLE OR NON-BILLABLE FOR PROFITABILITY INSIGHTS


To fully streamline the process, you can use automatic time tracking your time entries will be automatically created by matching your resource bookings.

With the Google Calendar integration, you can also convert calendar events into time entries and link them to jobs.

Resource Management – Monitor Your Team’s Availability

Proper resource planning is the key to achieving optimal utilization rates and increasing profitability.

From scheduling to time off management, Productive provides a complete overview of your team’s availability with a real-time resource plan.


MANAGE YOUR RESOURCE ALLOCATION and balance team workloads

For full control over your resource scheduling, you can also use:

  • Tentative bookings to schedule unconfirmed engagements without impacting your confirmed capacity (you can easily turn them into confirmed bookings)
  • Placeholders to schedule for future staff and see how adding more capacity affects your project requirements

With scheduling on deals, you can create both confirmed and tentative bookings to manage your sales team’s capacity.

Billing – Keep Track of Your Cash Flow

You can automatically track invoiced amounts by using tracked time on billable hours or services with our Billing feature. Productive lets you decide if you want to invoice an entire project or just a part of it—depending on what the actual costs were at the end of the project.

You can also use our native integration with Xero to export and copy your invoices from Productive and finish the process there.


Productive’s Purchase Orders provide improved cost and expense management

Project Management – Keep Everything In One Place, From Start to Finish

In comparison to WorkflowMax, Productive takes a proactive approach to supporting collaboration and project workflows.

Projects, Tasks and Docs are the core of the Project Management feature. You can assign people to work on tasks, give deadlines and check off the little things with TODOs. Project collaboration is possible through opening individual tasks, adding multiple subscribers to keep everyone informed, plus by using a range of project types.



SWITCH BETWEEN MULTIPLE PROJECT DASHBOARDS, INCLUDING GANTT, KANBAN, AND WORKLOAD

Additional Features Include:

  • Productive AI for summarizing, translation, and content creation within Docs.
  • Automations for creating personalized workflows with custom rules and triggers.
  • Permission Builder for controlling who can see and do what across the platform.

Integrations

Productive has a bunch of active integrations (with new ones being actively developed) like with Xero and Quickbooks accounting software, Jira, Slack, Google Calendar, Exact, and BambooHR —to name a few. 

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.

Before you decide on the best plan for your agency, you can opt for a 14-day free trial.

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2. Asana – A Popular Option for Projects and Tasks 

Asana is a widely popular work management tool that offers features for companies and teams of all sizes. With Asana, you can create custom workflows, set up task dependencies, and monitor your team’s workload in real-time. Asana offers a range of integrations, e.g. with Xero, Figma, and Google Drive.


SOurce: Asana

Asana offers fully transparent overview project work and an intuitive user interface. However, a reason why agency professionals might want to consider Asana competitors is that it isn’t possible to manage all agency business processes in the tool. For example, it lacks features for sales, budget management, and billing.

3. Scoro – A Fair Substitute With Comprehensive Features

Scoro is a work management tool that’s suitable for businesses of all sizes. It offers a range of features that can help you manage your projects, clients, and team members, including time tracking, invoicing, and reporting.

With Scoro, you can create customizable project templates, set up task dependencies, and monitor your team’s workload in real-time. You can also integrate with tools like Xero and HubSpot.


Source: Scoro

Scoro boasts a 4.5/5 review by users on G2, and is described by users as “a solid PM tool that suits our needs”. 

Scoro is praised for managing teamwork and daily schedules, and it offers a variety of agency work-related features. However, some customers have criticized its overly advanced features, which can be a challenge to learn and implement.

You can check some of our top alternatives to Scoro or compare Scoro vs Accelo to learn more.

4. Apptivo – A Good Option for Collaboration

Apptivo is a business management software designed for small and medium-sized companies. Its features include task management, CRM, and invoicing. With Apptivo, you can create customizable project templates, set up task dependencies, and monitor your team’s workload in real-time.


source: apptivo

Here’s a review a user left on G2:

Excellent customer service and able to reach out to them at any time of the day. All their staff are well trained and they go beyond to help our issues.

While Apptivo users are generally happy, leaving an average rating of 4.3/5 on G2 and 4.4/5 on Capterra, this tool may present a challenge for some agency professionals if you’re seeking an all-in-one agency management solution, as their website claims to be a fit for Travel and Hospitality, Retail and Wholesale, Real Estate and Manufacturing.

5. ProWorkflow – A Good All-Rounder Pick

ProWorkflow is a project management tool that’s suitable for businesses of different sizes. ProWorkflow is a common choice for agency professionals looking for a WorkflowMax alternative. Its features include task management, time tracking, and invoicing.

With ProWorkflow, you can create custom workflows, set up task dependencies, handle time tracking and task management, and monitor your team’s workload in real-time.


source: proworkflow

A user review left about ProWorkflow on Capterra states that “ProWorkflow is very easy to use to manage tasks and to track time.”

Though some users have expressed frustration with its in-app search capabilities, such as looking for employee data, agency professionals might find it a fair alternative to WorkflowMax because it covers a range of agency-related features.

ProWorkflow can also be a great Mavenlink alternative, so head over to that article to learn more.

6. Basecamp – A Free Tool for Small Businesses

Basecamp is a well-known project management tool that’s been around for over 20 years. It offers a range of features that can help you manage your projects, clients, and team members, including task management, collaboration tools, and project tracking. Basecamp has all of your basic project management needs covered.


source: Basecamp

Basecamp is within your top choices if you’re seeking a WorkflowMax alternative. However, some users question its flexibility to meet specific needs of different teams and projects.

The bottom line: you should evaluate whether Basecamp would be the right tool for end-to-end agency management. While it seems to nail team collaboration, certain critical features for running an agency end-to-end aren’t offered as part of the tool.

7. Avaza – A Solid Option for Various Industries

Avaza is a project management tool that’s designed for businesses of all sizes. It offers a range of features that can help you manage your projects, clients, and team members, including time tracking, invoicing, and reporting. With Avaza, you can create customizable project templates, set up task dependencies, and monitor your team’s workload in real-time.


source: avaza

Avaza users seem happy with features overall, leaving an average rating of 4.6/5 on Capterra. The tool claims to be adaptable for a range of different industries, including: consulting companies, IT and software services, legal companies and digital marketing agencies. Avaza’s main benefits revolve around streamlining collaboration and the platform offers many integrations, with tools such as Xero, QuickBooks, Stripe and Jira.

It may be a challenge for certain types of teams to decide on Avaza, as some opinions state that Avaza is somewhat pricey compared to competitors, and the tool doesn’t offer a free plan. For more info, check out our guide on Avaza alternatives.

8. Projectworks – A Good All-Rounder Choice

Projectworks is a PSA software for time tracking, leave management, revenue forecasting, and invoicing. It caters to industries such as Management Consulting, Engineering Services, Software Services, and Architecture. Projectworks’ integrations include Xero, QuickBooks, HubSpot, and Jira.


SOURCE: PROJECTWORKS

Users state that they enjoy using Projectworks to understand their business capacity and gross margin performance per client and project. As for the downsides, some Capterra and G2 users state that the reporting feature can be limited. Certain reviews state that the invoice templating could be more flexible.

I still find myself getting data from Projectwork and putting them on a spreadsheet to get more pieces of insight that would be good for the team to present.

Source: Capterra

9. WorkGuru – An Option for Various Industries

WorkGuru is a job management software with a wide range of features for supporting business management in industries of all shapes. This includes Equipment Repairs, Steel Manufacturing, Construction, Boat Builders, Architecture, and Engineering.

Key features of WorkGuru include CRM, quoting, timesheets and invoicing, and project and staff scheduling. Integrations include Xero, QuickBooks, Google Drive, and GuruPay.


SOURCE: WORKGURU

WorkGuru offers a single price tag, which means that there’s not a lot of customization on this front. Additionally, the tool is on the higher end of the pricing range compared to other WFM alternatives.

If you’re coming from an agency environment, consider that WorkGuru caters to a large variety of industries, so you might not be able to get use out of all its features.

Why Consider WFM Alternatives? WorkflowMax by Bluerock Reviews

Reviews are already in for BlueRock’s tool and ratings are currently at a low 2 stars.
 


Check out user reviews for WorkflowMax by BlueRock

The most frequent criticisms include: 

  • The tool is a step back feature-wise, specifically regarding timesheets, invoicing, and reporting
  • There are bugs, performance issues, and usability problems which can render the platform unusable at times
  • Customer support is slow to respond and difficult to reach, causing issues with migration

So, Which Should You Tool to Switch To?

Even with WorkflowMax shutting down, your options certainly aren’t limited. The key is to know what your agency needs and which of these tools would work best for you and your team. 

If you’re looking for a tool that’s easy to use and good for time tracking and projects, you should check out the free plans that Asana and Avaza offer. Once you try out their features, you can asses if you want to upgrade to paid plans.
 
If you want a powerful end-to-end agency management tool, check out Productive. It’s a scalable, one-stop-shop for agencies of all shapes and sizes.

Book a demo for Productive today.

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Margarita Aranza

Marketing Assistant

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