| Functionality | 6 <p>Generally, Hive's functionality is strong where it is available, but many of its best features are only available on its most expensive plans. Hive's automation both in-app and across app stand out as incredibly strong. Time-tracking functionality is also very impressive - with quick ways to filter for availability, but, again, this is only available on their more expensive plans. For creative work and real-time collaboration - Hive isn't great. It lacks any real time collaboration tools and the ability to make internal documents.</p> | 7 <p>Zoho projects does offer most of the functionality that most companies will need. This includes strong task management features, four standard project views (list, kaban, gantt and calendar), as well as, strong workflow automation with an extensive selection of trigger and action functions.</p><p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">However, it doesn't allow you to track company goals. The lack of templates when creating internal documents and some of the real-time collaboration features - like whiteboards - leave a lot to be desired. </span></p> |
| Ease of Use | 7 <p>Hive is easy to use - functions are well-labelled and the reasonable amount of customisation means that you never feel overwhelmed. The only exception to this is workflow automations across apps. As such, we expect a<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">n average start-up employee would require around half a day and minimal guidance to proficiently use all key functionalities of the product. </span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Processes are always easy to locate key info and processes are generally intuitive. </span></p> | 7 <p>Zoho projects as a nice balance of easy of use and functionality. We estimate that an average start-up employee would require around half a day + some guidance to proficiently use all key functionalities of the product. </p><p><br></p><p>Key process are generally properly labelled and easy to find. However, some of the less-used functions regarding editing the your personal interface can be harder to find.</p> |
| Look and feel | 6 <p>Hive is more colourful than some of its competitors with similar UIs and the general architecture of its UI is nicely layout. That being said hive is not visually anything special - it just does the job.</p> | 6 <p>Zoho projects' is visually nothing special. The UI lacks colour generally and the collapsible task bar on the side of the interface has a tired look. That being said, there is nothing visually unappealing or confusing - it does the job.</p><p><br></p><p>Loading times are fast, generally ~ 1 second per page.</p> |
| Customisability | 6 <p>Hive has some strong customisation features - unfortunately many of these are only available of its more expensive tiers. Customisations for automated workflows are strongest with conditional logic and plenty of action and trigger functions across many apps. Forums are also highly customisable with conditional logic again available, along with many answer types and the ability to turn responses of forms into tasks.</p> | 7 <p>Zoho projects has some decent customisation feature - with some blind spots.</p><p>Some of the beast features include: </p><ul><li>Email templates for automated reminders which support placeholders.</li><li>Automations in general are very customisable with a large array of trigger and action functions available to use with conditional logic.</li><li>Custom reports allow for head to head comparison on specific metrics. Most useful of these are the time taken vs. time estimate and the actual cost vs. projected costs.</li></ul><p><br></p><p>However, Zoho projects does not offer templates for custom documents or many task views - with only four available.</p> |
| Ease of Setup | 9 <p>Offers a self-serve free trial and allows purchase without needing to talk to sales. Getting started and setting up a few tasks and subtasks should take 20-30 minutes, because it has a very rich library of templates. Full setup should take less than a day.</p> | 7 <p>Offers a self-serve free trial and allows purchase without needing to talk to sales. Getting started and setting up a few tasks and subtasks should take 20-30 minutes, because it has a library of templates, but other tools offer a greater selection of pre-made templates. Full setup should take less than a day.</p> |
| Customer Support | 9 <p>Hive has great customer support personalised help is available both via email and on a live chat in app and responses are fast (<1 hour).</p><p><br></p><p>Self-serve materials also have great depth and quality. In particular, succinct video tutorials make discovering the platform a breeze.</p> | 10 <p>Excellent customer service. The in-app live chat are personable and very helpful. Replies are very fast - usually less than a minute. </p><p><br></p><p>Self-serve materials via their help website are also of excellent depth and quality - covering nearly all functions you may have trouble with.</p> |
| Integratability | 8 <p>Hive has integrations with most third parties of interest. Most notably, the across-app automations are available with such a large varied of third parties that Hive seamlessly integrates within your project management ecosystem.</p><p><br></p><p>Hive also has an API which allows teams to build custom integrations if needed.</p> | 8 <p>Zoho projects integrates with most software that a companies could need. Amongst these are: Github, Zapier, email (outlook and gmail), Slack and Zendesk.</p><p><br></p><p>Zoho projects also has an API allowing for custom integrations where necessary.</p> |
| Ease of Migration | 6 <p>All reports can be exported to a pdf file. There is a large selection of self-serve analytics with great depth and quality (much of this is behind their most expensive tiers) but there are no custom reports.</p> | 6 <p>Exports of key data are available self-serve, e.g. timesheets, task based reports, issues and projects (all project-level data).</p><p>These can be export to external XLSX<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: rgb(248, 248, 248);"> or CSV formats.</span></p> |
