10-second breakdown:
Designed with larger organizations in mind, Clarizen is a flexible project management program that packs in plenty of extra features to make it a very comprehensive platform for big businesses.
Clarizen is used in medium (51-1,000 employees) and enterprise companies (1,000+ employees).
The good:
Easy to get started. Clarizen provides lots of project templates as well as the ability to make your own.
Allows flexibility and customization without users feeling lost or overwhelmed. Users can get started out-of-the-box and add custom changes as they learn the software.
Clarizen has a decent app market with both free and paid options. Mobile apps are also available for both iPhone and Android.
The bad:
Large up-front payment. Besides being fairly expensive it also requires 36 months paid in advance.
Customization can be complicated but experience in html programming can help.
How it works:
Clarizen can handle any project management functions with aplomb. Whenever you make a new project you can start fresh or pick from one of many pre-made templates for common business tasks like meetings or planning an event. It’s very simple to perform all of the usual project management tasks such as the ability to add tasks and milestones, customizable Gantt charts, and some useful reports that show you the status of tasks – if they’re on track or starting to fall behind.
One neat function Clarizen offers is the ability to add new tasks, deadlines, due dates and more through email. They also offer a few unique functions for large businesses like the ability to link timesheet and expenses to specific tasks.
Clarizen comes packed with a lot of communication features like setting up meetings, uploading documents and a built-in private message system. One uncommon feature they added in is the ability to annotate PDFs and images right from within the browser. You can highlight a piece of the document, add comments and your collaborators will be able to see it right away.
There’s a dedicated social area for chatting about anything you like, and it could be broadcast among the entire company or just a team of your choice. All of the comments across tasks, projects, the social space and more support @ signs and hashtags similar to social media, and you can search through all of the comments for specific tags at a later date.
One downside is Clarizen’s interface. It’s functional but not as user-friendly or visually pleasing as some of the competition. Yes, it’ll get the job done but you might take a little longer to find a certain feature as there aren’t as many tooltips. Keep the reading glasses nearby – the fonts are generally small with lots of white space.
The pricing page is a little hidden, but once you find it Clarizen makes it easy to understand what the costs are and what you’ll be getting. There’s even a handy ‘total cost’ calculator you can use that takes into account the plan you want, the number of users, and the amount of time you anticipate using the program. The downside is pricing is more expensive than many competitors and intended for larger audiences only, you can only access the best rates if you pay for 3 years in advance.
The most budget friendly option happens to be the most popular as well, Clarizen’s ‘Enterprise Edition.’ It’s as cheap as $45 per user per month if you pay for 36 months in advance. All three of the plans come with everything Clarizen has to offer, with the exception of Salesforce. That means you get an unlimited number of projects, access to the mobile app, APIs, customization options and more in all three packages. Enterprise Edition limits you to 150 custom fields, 100 custom actions – custom pop-ups that run actions or create flows, a limited number of outgoing automated emails, 50 scheduled reports a day and you’re limited to 500MB storage per paid user.
Next step up is the ‘Unlimited Edition.’ It includes all of the bells and whistles Enterprise Edition did but increases all of your limits. You get up to 4,000 custom fields, triple the custom actions, up to 120 scheduled reports a day, five times the number of automated emails and unlimited storage per paid user. Unlimited Edition costs $60 per user per month.
Last on our list is the ‘Salesforce Edition.’ This one is identical to the Unlimited Edition above with the storage and number of services but comes bundled with advanced Salesforce and Gainsight integrations. The Salesforce Edition is priced at $100 per user per month if billed out for three years.
Clarizen doesn’t offer a fully free option to test the program out, but all three packages do have a free 30-day trial.
All of the prices quoted above are for full-fledged users, but Clarizen offers different user types that cost less than ‘Full’ status. If for instance you only need to give your management Full permissions, you could demote everyone else to ‘Team Member.’ They will still be able to function and do their jobs, but you’ll be saving money per license because they don’t have access to modules like time tracking and reporting. If you decide to look a little deeper at Clarizen, take a peek at their cost calculator, it accounts for the different user types.
Clarizen offers a comprehensive package that is easy to navigate, especially considering how many extra features they pack in. It’s not meant for smaller audiences, but if you run a medium to large business and are in the market for a comprehensive project management platform Clarizen is worth a closer look!
For complete rankings of all project management software, go here.
http://authority.org/project-management-software/clarizen/ http://authorityorg.tumblr.com/post/149691671022
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