InterviewUC&C20 Sept 2024 · 12 min read

Hive Project Management Review: Boosting Productivity

Hive’s productivity gains matter for buyers weighing Asana and Trello: cloud project management, workflow automation, time tracking, AI and Teams. Published on

Rebekah Carter

First launched in 2016, the Hive Project Management platform has quickly become one of the most popular tools around for workplace productivity. Trusted by major brands like Google, EA, and Starbucks, Hive gives businesses an all-in-one solution for project planning, workflow automation, time tracking, and more. It even features some intuitive AI capabilities.

Still, Hive is far from the only solution that claims to streamline project management. I’ve already used plenty of tools with similar capabilities, such as Asana and Trello.

So, how do you decide if Hive is the right pick for you? I’ve spent several hours experimenting with the tool, to bring you this comprehensive review, and help you make the right choice.

Quick Verdict: Pros and Cons

Hive Project Management is a great all-around tool for companies in search of flexible project planning capabilities, in-depth analytics, and automation options. Based on my assessment, it excels in offering fantastic ease of use, and a broad range of features. Although the pricing can be a little high compared to some alternatives.

Pros:

Excellent selection of project views (Kanban, Gnatt, Chart, etc)
Straightforward and easy to use for beginners
Lots of integrations and add-on apps
Built-in proofing and approval workflows
Decent analytical insights for business leaders

Cons:

Can be expensive (particularly with extra features)
Customer support can be a little slow

Hive Project Management: Overview

If you’re not familiar with Hive, it’s an intuitive project management and collaboration tool, based in the cloud. It comes with all the features you’d expect from a project management platform, such as flexible project views, workflow automation, and an integrated time tracking module.

Plus, Hive also includes proofing and approval solutions, forms, resourcing apps, and “Hive Goals”, to help keep your teams on track. The analytical and reporting tools are brilliant for offering insights into team productivity and project progress. Plus, there are a few built-in collaboration options too, such as instant chat and file sharing options. However, you’ll need an integration for conferencing.

On the plus side, Hive does integrate with most of the tools companies already use, such as Slack, Gmail, Dropbox, HubSpot, and Microsoft Teams.

Based on my experience testing the software, Hive is definitely one of the easier platforms to use, particularly thanks to it’s engaging “onboarding” experience. Plus, it comes with access to Hive University, which teaches you exactly how to make the most of the tool.

However, while there is a free version of Hive available, it’s very limited. If you want to access all the functionality this platform can offer, you’re going to need to spend a lot more. Fortunately, Hive’s AI assistant is included in all of the paid plans, which isn’t true for some other project management apps.

Hive Project Management Pricing: Value for Money

As I mentioned above, Hive can be more expensive than some of the other project management tools I’ve tried, but it’s certainly not the most expensive option out there. For instance, paid plans start at $5 per user, per month, similar to ClickUp’s plans, but cheaper than Jira’s plans (starting at $7.16).

The trouble is that the free plan, which would definitely appeal to most smaller companies, is pretty basic. You do get up to 10 workspace members, unlimited tasks, and unlimited collaborative notes, but only 200mb of storage. A lot of other features like project board customization and sourcing solutions are missing too. Here’s a quick rundown of the pricing options:

Free: 200MB of storage, unlimited tasks and collaborative notes, most project views, email in Hive, native chat messaging, and up to 10 workspace members. You also get a few basic AI features, like a (limited) AI content generator.
Starter: $5 per month per user: All the features of Free, plus unlimited storage, Gantt views, cloud storage integrations, in-app calendars, Zoom and Slack connectors, and the full AI assistant for project management.
Teams: $12 per month per user: Everything in the Starter plan, plus flexible add-ons, portfolios, shareable forms, time tracking, unlimited workflows, custom fields, labels, and statuses, and team sharing tools.
Enterprise: Custom pricing: All the Teams plan features, plus unlimited onboarding, enhanced security and permission options, enterprise Api control, and a dedicated customer success manager.

The Best Value Plan

In my opinion, the Teams plan offers the best value for money overall, because it unlocks a bunch of pretty crucial features. It’s the only plan that gives you unlimited workflows (other than the enterprise plan), and it offers a bunch of add-on features as standard, like shareable forms and teams sharing.

Still, if you want extra add-ons, like timesheets or resourcing tools, you’ll need to either buy those separately, or upgrade to the enterprise plan. If you choose to buy add-ons separately, you’ll pay an extra $5 per month for features like:

Goals
Time sheets
Team resourcing
Automations
SSO and enterprise security
Proofing and approvals
External users

Analytics features cost you an extra $6 per user, per month. As you can see, it’s easy for the cost of Hive Project Management to add up pretty quickly.

Hive Project Management: The Core Features

Now that I’ve covered the pricing for Hive Project Management, let’s take a closer look at the central features of this platform, starting of course, with project management.

Hive Project Management Features

Hive really does make it easy to manage every aspect of your projects in one convenient place. You can consolidate all of your projects, deadlines, tasks, and approvals into a single environment, and create tasks in a range of different ways. Unlike some other project management tools, Hive is extremely flexible with it’s “views”.

You can monitor your tasks with Kanban views, tables, and calendars. Notably though, the Gantt view is only available on paid plans. Still, there are various great ways to organize your tasks too. You can track different projects based on teams or labels, or monitor your own specific to-do list.

It’s also very simple to set up separate “project hierarchies”. For instance, you can create one parent project with a bunch of child projects underneath, all with their own tasks and assignees. My favorite thing about Hive’s project management tools, however, is the “Hive Mind” feature.

This capability leverages AI (and is available on every plan), to help make your team’s workday run more smoothly. HiveMind can create project tasks based on basic suggestions, or set up next-step actions for teams based on emails. It can even reply to emails automatically for you.

Plus, the AI tool can accelerate market research with insights into statistics, facts, and competitive intelligence for brainstorming sessions. It can even create content and images for your campaigns.

Collaboration in Hive

Ultimately, the best way to optimize collaboration in Hive is to connect it with one of the apps you’re already using like Slack, Zoom Workplace, or Microsoft Teams. Linking Hive to these apps makes it easy to launch video calls direct from the Hive interface.

Even without an integration however, you’ll still have plenty of handy collaboration features to explore. Hive has its own unified email inbox capability, and a quick messaging function, with the option to talk to individual employees or groups. You can create Forms in Hive to collect insights from your team members or clients, too.

The Form builder is fantastically intuitive. It makes it extremely easy to collect feedback and design custom documents with a drag-and-drop interface. Plus, you can share forms with anyone, from collaborators, to potential clients, and all of their responses will be logged in Hive.

One of the best features, for collaboration, however, is Hive Notes, which gives you a collaborative document you can edit with teammates in real-time, similar to Zoom Docs. The Notes application can sync with your calendar and meeting tools, too.

Companies can also access features like templates for projects in Hive, to improve consistency, or design custom notification workflows to keep staff members informed about task progress. There’s also a handy “tabs” tool, which allows users to sort through their most important work quickly.

Time Tracking and Resourcing

Time tracking functionality and resourcing in Hive are two features that are only available to users on the “Teams” plan or above, which is a bit of a downside in my opinion.

The basic time tracking features offer access to sub action and active time tracking, and the ability to categorize time by channel. If you want to access features like “timesheets” for HR management, you’ll need either an add-on, or the enterprise plan. Still, the timesheets are very intuitive, and allow for custom holiday settings and resourcing blocks.

Speaking of resourcing, (another add-on or enterprise only feature), Hive Project Management offers a broad range of tools for resource management. You can set working hours for your resources, and add placeholders, create timesheets with approval workflows, and even access resourcing reports.

One thing I found extremely useful was the “capacity finder” which allows business leaders to track available resources based on their current workload and skills.

Hive’s time tracking and resourcing tools are excellent for managing teams in a hybrid workplace, and ensuring you make the most of your available assets. It’s a shame that you’ll need to pay extra to unlock these features for your company, however.

Hive Goals, Proofing and Approvals

Hive’s Goals feature is one of the top capabilities that I think helps the platform to compete with companies like Asana. It gives companies a simple and intuitive way to set specific targets for their team, and keep track of employee performance.

You can monitor in real time how much progress you’re making towards each goal. Plus, the Hive Project Management system can pull data from other connected apps like Salesforce, to help you identify which goals are at risk. There are plenty of options to choose from too, such as task-based, numerical, monetary, and custom goals.

Another great feature of Hive that makes managing the workplace a lot simpler, is the “Proofing and Approvals” hub. This basically gives you an all-in-one environment for document and video proofing, project templates, and approval workflows, with external sharing included.

You can bring team and client documents into Hive with a couple of clicks, add feedback and comments in seconds, and easily submit assets for external approval.

The trouble is, like most of Hive’s most advanced tools, certain proofing and approval features are only available as add-ons for the Teams plan, or in the enterprise plan. For instance, “approval workflows and reporting” will both cost you extra.

Analytics and Automation in Hive Project Management

I mentioned above that Hive has some fantastic analytical tools. It can automatically keep track of everything from your completed tasks, to your team’s productivity levels. Plus, it offers intuitive access to visualized reporting data, such as “budget spend” graphs.

You can filter through metrics and KPIs based on your specific needs, and even create custom dashboards for your team members. However, yet again, most of the analytical features that business users might need are locked behind higher priced plans or add-ons.

In fact, you can’t even access custom dashboards and analytical reports without getting a custom quote for your software from the Hive team.

The automation options are a little more accessible. Custom automations and workflows are included as-standard in the Hive Teams plan. There’s also plenty of templates to get you started with repeatable workflows. For instance, you can instantly create custom workflows for content approvals, status updates, and assignee updates.

Since Hive also works with more than 1,000 other apps, you can even connect different workflows across platforms to streamline various tasks. If you’re new to automation, Hive also offers access to consultation sessions with Automation experts.

Hive Project Management Ease of Use and Customer Support

One of the best things about Hive Project Management is how easy it is to use. I mentioned above that I think this is one of the most user-friendly apps, and I stand by it. The user interface is clean and clutter-free. It only takes a couple of minutes to click around and find out how everything works. Plus, Hive gives you a handy onboarding checklist to get you started.

This checklist walks you through everything from connecting integrations, to setting permissions for team members, and designing your first tasks. If you need any extra guidance, the Hive University link is available in the sidebar, and there are plenty of FAQs and guides on the website.

It’s also worth noting that you can access Hive Project Management across a range of devices. There’s a desktop, mobile, and browser app, all with very similar features.

In terms of customer support, Hive thrives at onboarding, but struggles a little in other areas. The knowledgebase and self-help resources are brilliant, but you won’t be able to call the team if you have any specific questions. There’s only a number on the website for the sales team.

The in-app chat option is probably the best option for urgent matters (if you don’t want to wait for an email response), but it can be difficult to find a time when a human is available. On the plus side, Hive does offer access to various partners and professional services providers that you can “hire” for additional help. Plus, if you’re on the enterprise plan, you do get a dedicated success manager.

Hive Project Management: The Verdict

Overall, Hive is a very easy-to-use and intuitive project management platform, perfect for hybrid and remote teams that want to boost productivity and efficiency. It’s packed with useful tools for project management and collaboration. Unfortunately, most of the more advanced features like resourcing, goals, and time tracking solutions are locked behind expensive add-ons or higher plan tiers.

I do think Hive is a great option for a lot of companies in search of a straightforward and intuitive platform, with built-in AI capabilities on all plans. However, it could become a slightly more expensive option for your business, depending on the features you need.

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