Project Open is a task/time/billing management tool. The marketing web site is very trendy and in comparison the look of the actual tool is very disappointing. Fortunately it’s about more than looks. The tool is fairly intuitive if at times you are overwhelmed by options. It is however more oriented towards project tracking and report generation than it is to helping those actually involved in the project. Not for me.
A couple of days ago I received an email from this company saying that they thought that their solution would meet my requirements. I’m afraid that it doesn’t.
Easy Projects .NET is primarily a task and billing tool that seems to be oriented towards marketing agencies that wish to manage multiple client projects. The opening page gives a project summary and along the top are the options Notifications, Message Board, Workflow History and Project Activities.
The workflow history and project activities sections are mainly reports, though you do have the possibility to add new activities to the latter. Strangely there is no calender associated with these. The message board is just that, there is no forum/discussion functionality. Notifications is simply an administration feature that allows you to choose when and how you would like to be notified of changes. That’s it! Considering the limited numbered of options the interface is overly complicated and I keep wondering whether I’ve missed something… One thing that drove me crazy was the opening of new windows at nearly every turn. I had 5 open at one stage!!
This one is not for me.
SantexQ is a hosted task/time/billing management tool. It doesn’t respond to my needs so I didn’t bother testing it.
ProjectOffice.net is in beta so I didn’t bother testing it out. It seems to be mainly orientated towards task/time management.
Proworkflow is available as a hosted or self-hosted solution. It is the most professional offering that I’ve seen to date. It is orientated to a business managing multiple client projects and focuses mainly on task/time/budget management. There is no forum, blog or document management area. It is not at all orientated towards online collaboration. It is nicely done though and the company offers customisation services.
I didn’t test Smooth Projects but simply watched their demo. It looks to be a task/time/client management tool for one business working on projects for multiple clients. Some interactive features but not really a collaborative work environment.
Copper is offered as a hosted or self-hosted solution. It appears to be be oriented towards agencies working on multiple client accounts. It is focused on task/time/client management. It is not very interactive and has no blog or forum feature. It is more of a tracking tool. If you’re looking for these features then it seems to be well done with a simple, intuitive interface.
