If you’re an agency trying to decide between ActiveCollab and Bonsai, you’re really asking one question: Which will actually help me run my business project management more efficiently & profitably?
The TL;DR of it is this: Both are super sleek, powerful tools, but ActiveCollab delivers more of what agencies need for a better price.
To find out what more actually is, and how much of a price difference exists between the two tools, you’ll need to keep reading (or simply scan the table below).
What makes ActiveCollab the best Bonsai alternative in 2025?
Aside from the price and limited features on lower plans, what makes ActiveCollab the best Bonsai alternative is its all-encompassing agency feature set, which makes it a complete business management tool.
Unlike Bonsai, which offers all the basics a freelancer would want in a tool, ActiveCollab gives you more advanced project management options, such as workload management, and a more complete platform to launch and deliver client projects effortlessly and maintain quality client relationships.
It combines classic project management with tools for team collaboration, client communication, time tracking, and accurate client billing, as well as workload management, resource planning, and productivity and profitability reporting.
Before we jump into a granular comparison of the two tools, here’s a snapshot of the key decision-makers that will influence whether you choose ActiveCollab or Bonsai.
Key decision-makers | ActiveCollab | Bonsai |
Setup & onboarding | Plug-and-play project management solution with intuitive design & agency-centred menu | Easy to use, particularly for solo business owners |
End-to-end client project management | All-encompassing agency feature set including quotes, project management, collaboration, agency management & billing | A lighter all-in-one tool with a focus on client management features, including CRM, proposals & contracts |
Project & task management | Robust task management features for complex projects and built-in time tracking | Basic features to track project progress without subtask options |
Profitability & productivity reports | Project budgeting, reporting, and analytics for agency-specific insights with customization options | Basic reporting for time and financial reports, but lacks customization options |
Workload & capacity planning | Built for in-depth workload management and forecasting for the entire agency portfolio | Multiple reports available, but with limited and basic insights and standardized dashboards |
Team & client collaboration | Client portfolio management software with a centralized hub for internal and external collaboration | Mostly client-focused project management features |
Ideal users | Agencies, consultancies, and service businesses of any size that want to automate processes | Freelancers, solopreneurs, and micro teams |
Value for money | More features across all plans | Essentials are locked into high-tier plans |
ActiveCollab grows agencies, Bonsai focuses on freelancers & small teams
ActiveCollab is designed from top to bottom for scaling service businesses like digital marketing agencies and creative teams.
Bonsai, on the other hand, remains true to project management for self-employed professionals; freelancers, solopreneurs, and micro team managers who want to professionalize their client processes. Whether you want to generate custom contracts, track project expenses, or create professional invoices directly from project timesheet modules, Bonsai will help small businesses save time on daily business operations.
This difference in audience is evident both in price and feature set.
Even though ActiveCollab will end up being the most cost-effective option for workflow management for a team of any size, it becomes even more affordable as your team grows and you want to take care of more business functions, such as capacity planning.
When you look at the feature set, at first glance, Bonsai seems to have it all: client management, project management, and finance management all wrapped up into one.
But when you compare it with what ActiveCollab brings to the table, you’ll find it’s more aligned with a scaling agency’s project management needs, particularly when it comes to capacity planning and team performance.
ActiveCollab prioritizes workload management, financial management, and role-based capacity planning. It has a dedicated Workload feature that shows exactly what each member is working on across all projects, which works via a drag-and-drop interface, letting you monitor and manage competing project priorities.
This makes it easy to understand which team members are being stretched, and also forecast capacity needs into the future. And because you can plan capacity based on job roles or specific skill sets, agency leads have access to insights that will make long-term strategic planning for hiring and resource allocation.
In a nutshell:
While Bonsai’s project management software priorities focus on client-facing processes like proposals, contracts, and billing, ActiveCollab is committed to gathering financial, profitability, and operational insights that help you scale.
ActiveCollab delivers reporting at half the cost of Bonsai
A big part of scaling relies heavily on tracking key agency metrics and understanding project profitability and financial performance. This is another area where ActiveCollab comes out on top, especially for marketing agencies and creative agencies, namely with its detailed reports and dashboards features.
Here, again, you’ll find you get more of the project tracking data you need for a fraction of the price you’ll pay with Bonsai.
To run a profitable service business, you need to know which projects are making money and which ones are draining your resources and eating into your profit margins.
With ActiveCollab's project management software, you can set and track project budgets, measure cost against revenue, and see real-time dashboards instantly. For client projects and account managers, this means you always have a live picture of the financial health of your campaign.
When it comes to understanding your team’s productivity, ActiveCollab reports can take care of this, too. You can generate customized reports on tasks, time, individuals, budget, and capacity.
The platform even lets you share your team’s time logs on their projects, so you provide full transparency, and the client understands exactly how the time they are paying for is being spent.
Bonsai also provides a variety of project management reports, but they remain locked behind paywalls. For example, to get time tracking, project, and task profitability and utilization reports, you’ll need to pay twice as much as you would with ActiveCollab.
In a nutshell:
While both Bonsai and ActiveCollab offer advanced reporting, with ActiveCollab, you’ll get access to these essential features at half the cost.
All ActiveCollab plans include core PM features, and Bonsai locks them in high-tier plans
Before you sign up for Bonsai, make sure you take a close look at the list of project management features you get with each plan, because you might be in for a surprise.
There’s nothing worse than subscribing to a platform before you realize the plan you’re on doesn’t include fairly basic features you assumed were a given.
This is the case with Bonsai’s project management feature set. You don’t get things like Gantt or Task View, task estimates, or task dependencies unless you’re on a higher plan.
With ActiveCollab, no matter which plan you sign up for, you’ll get the complete suite of project management features. This includes all project views, task dependencies, customized task labels, and task list batch edits. Unlike Bonsai, ActiveCollab also includes subtasks, which are hugely beneficial for managing smaller elements of a larger campaign task within a project.
Even things like employee time tracking software, billable or unbillable tasks, editing time entries, and using timesheets are all things you get with ActiveCollab on every plan. With Bonsai, the only thing you get with the Basic plan is time tracking. Everything else is spread across the high-tier plans.
So one of the biggest issues you might come across with Bonsai is the need to keep upgrading for features that are indispensable to an agency’s operations.
In a nutshell:
While Bonsai pushes you to upgrade for essentials, ActiveCollab delivers an entire suite of fundamental client project management tools for creative agencies, across every plan, straight off the bat.
ActiveCollab supports all collaboration, but Bonsai’s emphasis remains on clients
The final core difference we come to, which is super important for agency teams, and specifically larger teams of 10-50 people or more, is the key features of team collaboration.
ActiveCollab is a project management solution that takes a holistic approach to collaboration, and this is reflected in the tools and multiple options it provides for communications and mobile project management.
To deliver client projects, it assumes you’ll need to collaborate with your internal team as well as your external collaborators and clients. So it has paid particular attention to take care of both.
When it comes to client collaboration, ActiveCollab gives you two options: the Client Role (free) and the Client+ Role (paid). You can add an unlimited number of clients to your projects, select the type of client profile you'd like them to have, and moderate the permissions they have to perform actions within the platform.
It gives you the freedom and flexibility to pick and choose the depth of collaboration on a client-by-client basis. With some, you might give them access to view tasks and create notes on project tasks, with others, you might give them the freedom to create and manage tasks. No matter which level of access you assign, you always have the option to hide tasks and manage visibility control on projects.
On the internal collaboration side of things, ActiveCollab simply offers more native options for high-performing teams. You have task comments and mentions, file sharing, notifications, discussions (which can include both internal and external collaborators), and in-app chat for daily conversations.
Aside from direct task feedback and the email-based messaging feature, Bonsai's project management software does not offer an internal communication hub. To get chat-like interaction going, you’d need to turn to third-party apps like Slack or Pumble.
In a nutshell:
While Bonsai’s collaboration tools lean almost entirely towards client communication, ActiveCollab, as a project management tool brings robust project management with internal teamwork features and flexible client access.
ActiveCollab vs Bonsai – Which is easier to use & scale with?
Ease of use is one thing ActiveCollab and Bonsai have in common. If you glance at online user reviews, you’ll find that both tools are praised for their usability and easy adoption.
However, what makes ActiveCollab a top choice for agencies is its agency-workflow-centred design.
Its interface is clean and comes with a handy side navigation menu that lets you move from projects to workloads, calendars, and time sheets instantly, without needing to click multiple times to get to a task or perform an action
Similarly, onboarding is a no-brainer. The moment you jump into the platform, you can create a project, invite team members and clients, set capacities, and start building out campaign timelines intuitively.
Bonsai is a project management solution that's also fairly straightforward. However, setting up payments and connecting proposals, contracts, and invoices can feel a little overwhelming and fragmented.
When it comes to scaling, both tools can handle an increasing number of projects and clients. However, with financial management features, ActiveCollab is explicitly designed to scale with your business. Once your team grows past 100 users, the price per seat drops to a tiny $3.50, so it becomes a cost-effective option for enterprise teams, as well as small and mid-sized businesses.
With Bonsai, as your team grows, you should keep in mind the price of your subscription, too. Bonsai does not offer any built-in volume discounts. As you scale with Bonsai, the cost scales linearly.
So while ease of use is a given with both platforms, scalability is more affordable with ActiveCollab.
It’s built to grow with an agency in both capabilities and cost-effectiveness. On the other hand, Bonsai is built to serve a small operation comfortably, but may prove to be expensive or functionality-limiting as your business expands.
When you compare ActiveCollab & Bonsai on price, which is the better value?
First of all, neither vendor offers a free plan – both offer strictly paid plan options. The solution that gives you better value for the price will depend on your needs, and also your team size.
The bottom line is this:
ActiveCollab, with its abundance of project data, billable and non-billable hour tracking, and multiple billing rates, provides better value for money for businesses that need to cover all the agency workflow basics and those that are keen on scaling.
Bonsai’s pricing is higher per user, but if you’re a micro team that wants basic project management and more client management features, you’ll get that with this tool.
To make the right decision, you need to clarify what you consider to be valuable to your agency's operation. This is your typical feature vs. price trade-off comparison.
If you’re an agency that values branded client proposals, accounting tools, and integrations, you might find Bonsai is worth its high-end price.
However, if you’re an agency that needs an all-in-one tool that lets you take care of the entire client project lifecycle, which also includes team collaboration, resource management, and daily project workflows, ActiveCollab is where your value lies.
ActiveCollab: Get everything an agency needs to run the show for half as much
If you compare the two tools side by side, ActiveCollab tends to be a better value for agencies, particularly for handling complex projects.
You pay roughly half as much per user and get all the crucial features you need to run client projects profitably.
Agencies depend on software tools that promote collaboration, clarity, and cost efficiency. ActiveCollab is built around these core principles. It delivers project insights and provides transparency into every project for your team and clients. It collects the data and gives you the reports to make data-driven decisions, whether that be pricing or hiring. And it does it all for a super reasonable price.
There are few (if any) agency project management tools that will give you everything you need in one place, out of the box, without relying on integrations and third-party apps.
So if you need more structured project oversight and are keen to grow your service business, ActiveCollab is the vehicle that will get you there.
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