10 Best Mavenlink Alternative Shortlist
Here's my pick of the 10 best software from the 10 tools reviewed.
- 10. Basecamp
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With so many different Mavenlink alternatives available, figuring out which is right for you is tough. You know you want to find the best alternative so you can manage your projects and collaborate with your team more effectively but need to figure out which tool is best. I've got you! In this post I'll help make your choice easy, sharing my personal experiences using dozens of different Mavenlink alternatives with a variety of teams and projects, with my picks of the best Mavenlink alternatives.
What Are Mavenlink Alternatives?
Mavenlink alternatives are project management and team collaboration software options. They offer functionalities akin to Mavenlink, but vary in features, user interfaces, and pricing models. These tools assist in managing projects, tracking tasks, and facilitating team communication and resource management.
The benefits and uses of Mavenlink alternatives include customizable options to meet specific project and team requirements, a range of features suited for various project types, and often more cost-effective solutions. They enhance team collaboration, are scalable to fit business growth, and typically offer diverse integration capabilities with other business tools.
Mavenlink
Mavenlink is a well-rounded project management tool that bridges the core planning, execution, project accounting, and analysis systems in a single operating environment. It has modules for project management, accounting, resource management, business intelligence, and team collaboration. On top of this, it offers a system of dashboards, live time and expense tracking features, a great documenting system. And all of these best-in-class features are delivered through straightforward and minimalistic design.
Mavenlink ticks off all the boxes when it comes to RM features. The resource management module offers real-time utilization and margins at the project and even the task level. Some key features include resource forecasting, capacity management, skills management, scenario planning, and role-based planning.
Drilling down into its other features, the BI suite module supplies built-in reports, custom reporting, trend analysis, data visualization, as well as data integration with other systems. The software also provides more accounting tools than many others, with project costing, project and task budget management, real-time utilization and margin tracking, invoicing, rate cards, and robust integrations into back-end financial systems. It also has some good contextual collaboration features to communicate in both provide and public discussions around tasks, projects, and many other project objects.
I could go on and on about Mavenlink’s features because there really are too many to list—it’s a comprehensive RM suite, that, despite requiring time to truly master, has been recognized as being easy to use and learn. What’s more, the company leverages its professional services expertise as part of their offering, making available their Mavenlink BI Consultants who can build reports specifically for your business. As well, they provide some great training resources that can help mitigate the risks and costs of implementation.
Mavenlink takes a unique approach to integrations. As part of their “API-first strategy”, they’ve built a solution that doesn’t require a third party in order to integrate with any apps. They provide an integration platform (called M-Bridge) that’s designed to simplify integration between Mavenlink and other business apps like CRM, HCM, and financial software. On top of the M-Bridge platform, Mavelink provides several pre-built integrations with these tools: Expensify, G Suite, Xero, Salesforce, Netsuite, Jira, Hubspot, Slack, Concur, Dynamics 365, Qualtrics, Quickbooks, and Sage Intacct.
Mavenlink costs from $19/user/month and offers a 10-day free trial.
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monday.com
Visit WebsiteThis is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.4.7 -
Jira Software
Visit WebsiteThis is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.4.2 -
Wrike
Visit WebsiteThis is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.4.2
10 Best Mavenlink Alternatives Compared
I’ve filtered through multiple project management tools and chose the top Mavenlink alternatives that come close to the app’s capabilities. For each one of them, I’m going through some pros and cons, trial information, and cost, as well as providing expert feedback on each.
Best Mavenlink alternative for ease of use & a shorter learning curve
Why monday.com is a great Mavenlink alternative
monday.com‘s biggest asset is its user interface. Whether you’re switching from another tool or just getting new users onboarded, the fast learning curve lets both employees and external collaborators adapt in a matter of minutes. Compared to monday.com, Mavenlink’s interface isn’t as inviting, colorful, or customizable, making it a poor choice for day-to-day use.
Why Ravetree is a great Mavenlink alternative
Ravetree is a comprehensive professional services software streamlining project management, finance, and team collaboration. The software provides a centralized platform for project management, allowing teams to stay organized and focused on project deliverables in a timely and efficient manner. Unlike Mavenlink, Ravetree has a customer portal feature where your clients can interact with your project. They can log in to see project progress, review files that are pending their approval, and even submit request forms for you to review.
Ravetree allows you to add an unlimited number of clients at no additional cost.
Why Parallax is a great Mavenlink alternative
Parallax is a cloud-based project management tool with easy-to-use dashboards; the ability to track time and budgets; dedicated tools for collaboration between teams; file-sharing capabilities; and more. Several key differences make Parallax stand out from the competition. Mavenlink does not offer the same project visibility and reporting capabilities as Parallax. While the platform does provide users with some basic reporting capabilities, it lacks the depth and breadth of features offered by Parallax for tracking project performance. This can make it difficult for managers to get a full picture of their projects at any given time or effectively monitor progress against budgets and timelines. While both platforms have an intuitive user interface that is designed for usability from the ground up, Parallax offers industry-specific integrations that enable users to integrate data from third-party apps like Salesforce or QuickBooks into their workflow–something which could be critical if your business relies heavily on these applications for its operations.
Why Wrike is a great Mavenlink alternative
While Mavenlink doesn’t offer a free plan, Wrike’s free forever plan is not so bad to work with. Both tools have just the right features for enterprise-level companies but Wrike also has a free subscription for smaller agile teams who want to make use of functionalities like Kanban boards, desktop and mobile apps, task and subtask management—all for unlimited users.
Runn is an all-in-one resource management solution, a full-suite platform that enables users to align their projects and tasks with their workforce’s availability and capacity. The real-time resource management platform makes for a good alternative to Mavenlink for resource management, as it’s equally effective in facilitating resource planning, scheduling, and allocation while incorporating other business process solutions like financial forecasting and expense tracking.
The platform is equipped with a feature known as the People Planner, which enables project and resource managers to monitor resource utilization for individual team members. It also allows them to make necessary modifications or changes to the planned resource allocation. The tool gives managers a clear view of their team’s current workload at a glance. They can then leverage this information when reallocating to fill in potential resource gaps. Managers can also utilize the available data and insights to generate and maintain up-to-date resource availability forecasts.
The various features and tools that Runn provides help product managers and teams efficiently produce higher-quality deliverables. They also help ensure that employee capacity is maximized but not overworked, especially when meeting their project milestones.
In addition to project and resource management, Runn also delivers meaningful insights into the project team’s capacity, utilization, and performance through its robust workload management solution. Project managers can easily access each team member’s billable hours, while also managing multiple projects effectively via the software’s capacity view option, skills management, staff insights, and individual utilization reports.
Runn’s main benefits are in resource capacity management, along with its project scheduling and forecasting capabilities, making it one of the best alternatives to Mavenlink when it comes to optimizing resource management.
Runn pricing starts at $10 per user/month with a 14-day free trial. A freemium plan is also available for small teams.
Best Mavenlink alternative for creating organization-wide resource pools
Why Hub Planner is a great Mavenlink alternative
Hub Planner is a project management tool that offers many of the same features as its competitor, Mavenlink, now known as Kantata. While, Hub Planner and Mavenlink both allow users to track resources, like meeting rooms and equipment, and allocate them to projects as needed, Hub Planner goes one step further by allowing users to set up 'resource pools' so that resources can be easily shared between different teams or divisions within an organization. It summarizes how much each resource is being used over time, which can help organizations avoid over-utilizing or under-utilizing their resources.
Why Scoro is a great Mavenlink alternative
Scoro really focuses on setting and tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) and then linking them to relevant items within each project outline. This way, every action item is tied to the bigger picture of the goals of your company. You can add and track things like hours worked, new leads, outstanding invoices, and revenue.
Why Accelo is a great Mavenlink alternative
Accelo is project management for professional service operations and other client-facing companies. Along with the basics (task management, milestones, collaboration), they also have a client and contact database built right into the system. The client activity feed is also helpful so that you can keep tabs on action items or issues as they happen.
Why Asana is a great Mavenlink alternative
Besides being completely free (for up to 15 users), Asana is great for its ease-of-use in the project management software space. They focus on a level of user friendliness that even the least tech-savvy of your team can get behind. Asana is well laid out, cleanly organized, and does away with unnecessary UI clutter.
Basecamp
Why Basecamp is a great Mavenlink alternative
Basecamp is a great Mavenlink alternative for large teams because it does not charge a per-user rate. Instead, Basecamp offers their platform for a $99/month flat fee. This gets you unlimited projects, unlimited users, 500GB storage space, unlimited clients, project templates, and priority customer support.
10 Best Mavenlink Alternatives Summary
| Tools | Price | |
|---|---|---|
| monday.com | From $8/user/month (billed annually, min 3 seats) | Website |
| Ravetree | From $29/user/month | Website |
| Parallax | Pricing upon request | Website |
| Wrike | From $9.80/user/month | Website |
| Runn | From $10 /person managed/month | Website |
| Hub Planner | From $7/user/month (billed annually) | Website |
| Scoro | From $26/user/month (billed annually). | Website |
| Accelo | From $30/user/month | Website |
| Asana | From $13.49/user/month | Website |
| Basecamp | From $99/month flat (unlimited users) | Website |
Compare Software Specs Side by Side
Use our comparison chart to review and evaluate software specs side-by-side.
Compare SoftwareWhy Might You Need A Mavenlink Alternative?
The design is too clunky for new users or external collaborators
Mavenlink’s cluttered interface makes for a slow learning curve that’s not suitable for a workspace where new team members or collaborators come and go. Mavenlink is definitely a tool where previous experience with project management software would be an asset.
You need stronger team collaboration capabilities
Besides leaving comments and proofing, there’s really not much you can do in Mavenlink from a collaborative perspective. Collaboration features you might miss and find with other solutions include chat, integrated email, and message boards.
It’s getting too expensive to pay for the tool
Mavenlink’s plethora of features justify its cost but the tool is on the more expensive side, which a large enterprise can comfortably cover. If you’re managing a small team or a startup, you’ll find just enough functionality with other apps at a cheaper cost. Additionally, Mavenlink doesn’t offer a free plan, unlike some of their competitors.
Key Features For A Viable Mavenlink Alternative
Time tracking
Mavenlink provides a complete time tracking suite with multiple ways of tracking time, building timesheets, and generating performance reports. Although time tracking isn’t a mandatory feature for project management software, a viable alternative should keep up with these capabilities.
Invoicing and billing
These are two features your next project management solution will need if you also plan to invoice your customers from within the app. All Mavenlink plans come with invoicing and online payment solutions, so I will be looking for software alternatives that check these boxes as well (be it out-of-the-box or through add-ons).
Resource scheduling
Resource shaping, hard and soft resource allocation, and real-time availability forecasting are just a couple of the advanced resource planning features to keep an eye on when looking at other project management tools. These options are only available with upper-tier Mavenlink plans so you’ll want to consider a cheaper solution with similar alternatives for resource management.
Advanced reporting capabilities
Reporting in Mavenlink is nothing short of incredible, fit for even the most complex projects. Any other tool you’re considering should have a reporting suite that covers tasks, projects, portfolios, time tracking, and budgeting, along with other resource types.
