The Best Mavenlink Alternative Shortlist
Have a quick glance at the tools I review in this article:
- 7. Basecamp
Our one-on-one guidance will help you find the perfect fit.
Below you’ll find an overview of the top Mavenlink competitors on the market, with screenshots, feature overview, and pricing.
Mavenlink is a complete workflow and project management app with features ranging from advanced task management, robust reporting, time tracking, and invoicing functionality. Finding a competitive alternative can be a feat.
Regardless of company size, whether you’re looking for a simpler interface or lower pricing, I’ve got 10 of the best Mavenlink competitors compared for teams of all sizes.
About Mavenlink
Based in the United States, Mavenlink is a professional services automation software that businesses can use to optimize resources and boost operational performance.
Unlike other project management software, Mavenlink is a purpose-built cloud software with features explicitly catered towards professional services teams. Thanks to real-time updates and resource tracking, team managers can handle projects, planning, timesheets, and analytics inside a single dashboard.
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.
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.
monday.com
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.
Productive
Best Mavenlink alternative for agencies and professional services
Why Productive is a great Mavenlink alternative
Productive is a project management software best suited to agencies and other service-based teams. Its main differentiator from Mavenlink is its ability to measure and monitor the profitability of projects, which makes it a good option for agencies and other professional service providers. The software tracks team member time, manages budgets, and allows for intelligent resource allocation. It also has a sales pipeline builder to help teams track clients through their sales funnel and into their project management system.
Parallax
Best Mavenlink alternative for better reporting & analytics
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.
Hub Planner
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.
Scoro
Best for project management with built-in KPI tracking
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.
Asana
Asana is colorful, free to use, and easy to learn.
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.
nTask Manager
Best for customer support services
Why nTask is a great Mavenlink alternative
nTask has a great customer service rating…for a reason! They offer 24/7 real time support (chat and phone), free coaching, a product tour, and free onboarding. The team at nTask understands that not every team is a project management software guru and some might just be starting their journey with apps. Therefore, nTask is the best Mavenlink alternative if you need a little bit more hand-holding with your account.
Notion
Best for a low per-month price (unlimited users)
Why Notion is a great Mavenlink alternative
Notion is used by teams at Pixar, loom, headspace, and Curology for simple, low cost project and task management. Unlike most PM tools, it offers a low per-month price rather than a per user/month subscription. With this, you get unlimited guests on your account, all of which can collaborate on boards and tasks. They also have a robust template gallery that gets updated often.
Rocketlane
Best for customer collaboration and onboarding
Why Rocketlane is a great Mavenlink alternative
Many teams need to collaborate with external contractors, customers, or stakeholders as often as (or more often then) their own team members. Rocketlane is designed as a project management tool for these types of situations. They prioritize guest account access, robust permissions settings, and customer onboarding in order to get users who are external to your primary team up and running as quickly as possible.
Need expert help selecting the right tool?
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10 Best Mavenlink Alternatives Summary
| Tool | Free Option | Price | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | monday.com Best Mavenlink alternative for ease of use & a shorter learning curve | 14-day free trial + free plan available | From $8/user/month (billed annually, min 3 seats) | Visit Website |
| 2 | Productive Best Mavenlink alternative for agencies and professional services | 14-day free trial | From $9/user/month (billed annually) | Visit Website |
| 3 | Parallax Best Mavenlink alternative for better reporting & analytics | Free demo | Pricing upon request | Visit Website |
| 4 | Hub Planner Best Mavenlink alternative for creating organization-wide resource pools | 30-day free trial | From $7/user/month (billed annually) | Visit Website |
| 5 | Scoro Best for project management with built-in KPI tracking | 14-day free trial | From $28/user/month | Visit Website |
| 6 | Asana Asana is colorful, free to use, and easy to learn. | Free plan available | From $10.99/user/month | Visit Website |
| 7 | 30-day free trial | From $15/user/month (billed annually) | Visit Website | |
| 8 | nTask Manager Best for customer support services | 7-day free trial | From $2.99/user/month | Visit Website |
| 9 |  Notion Best for a low per-month price (unlimited users) | Free for 1 admin + 5 guests | From $10/user/month | Visit Website |
| 10 | Rocketlane Best for customer collaboration and onboarding | 14-day free trial | From $19/user/month | Visit Website |
Why 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.
