Mavenlink vs Polaris PSA

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Our analysts compared Mavenlink vs Polaris PSA based on data from our 400+ point analysis of PSA Software, user reviews and our own crowdsourced data from our free software selection platform.

Mavenlink Software Tool

Product Basics

Mavenlink merged with Kimble PSA in 2021 to become the Kantata Professional Services Cloud. For more information, visit our Kantata review.

It enables services businesses to manage and execute projects at each stage of the lifecycle. By uniting project and resource management, team collaboration, accounting, and business intelligence, it enables organizations to streamline planning and delivery.

Includes the option to purchase expert services that cater to companies in the professional services space. When choosing the primary package, businesses work with a team comprised of a manager, a business consultant, a BI consultant, a technical consultant and a training expert.
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Polaris PSA streamlines professional services workflows for project-based businesses. Its core strength lies in automating administrative tasks like time tracking, invoicing, and project reporting, freeing up valuable time for client work. While ideal for agencies of all sizes, it particularly caters to those juggling multiple projects and juggling complex client billing structures. Users praise its intuitive interface, powerful reporting tools, and seamless integrations with popular accounting software. Compared to similar offerings, Polaris PSA stands out for its focus on scalability and customization, allowing businesses to tailor the platform to their specific needs. Pricing follows a tiered model based on the number of users and project complexity, ensuring cost-effectiveness for growing companies.

Pros
  • Intuitive interface
  • Comprehensive features
  • Strong integrations
  • Robust reporting
  • Reliable support
Cons
  • Steeper learning curve
  • Occasional bugs
  • Limited customization
  • Higher pricing
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$45/User, Monthly
Get a free price quote
Tailored to your specific needs
$49/User, Monthly
Get a free price quote
Tailored to your specific needs
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Windows
Mac
Linux
Android
Chromebook
Windows
Mac
Linux
Android
Chromebook
Cloud
On-Premise
Mobile
Cloud
On-Premise
Mobile

Product Assistance

Documentation
In Person
Live Online
Videos
Webinars
Documentation
In Person
Live Online
Videos
Webinars
Email
Phone
Chat
FAQ
Forum
Knowledge Base
24/7 Live Support
Email
Phone
Chat
FAQ
Forum
Knowledge Base
24/7 Live Support

Product Insights

  • Gain Pipeline Insights: Connect your CRM of choice with Mavenlink to get a complete view of your pipeline and estimate the forecasted gap between demand and capacity. This facilitates better project planning. 
  • Leverage Project Data: More than 60 reports provide a complete, data-rich view of your projects. They remove data silos, enhance the strategic decision-making process and offer a tailored overview. Reports include project status, margin projections and utilization metrics. 
  • Access Cloud Apps: Mavenlink integrates with leading cloud-based apps, giving you capabilities such as single sign-on (SSO), user authentication and document collaboration. As the most popular project management application for G Suite, Mavenlink connects with all Google apps for a seamless, collaborative workspace. 
  • View Resource Capacity and Demand: Forecasting tools, availability charts, utilization metrics and profitability reports equip managers with the insight necessary to drive successful projects. Run what-if analysis, fill in staffing gaps and identify resource areas where action is needed. These tools allow you to consistently hit targets and maximize profits. 
  • React to Project Resource Changes: Gain a comprehensive view across project details like resource schedules and a visual dashboard that highlights which projects need attention in order to succeed. The activity feed facilitates collaboration between resource and project managers, so there’s always alignment between project and resource needs. 
  • Allow and Restrict Access: Nested permissions ensure you can share project information with the collaborators who need to see it — and no one else. Role-based settings determine what team members, clients and contractors can see. 
  • Speed Up Review and Approval: The software removes versioning issues by allowing direct file sharing. The interface also has a split-screen view so changes are accurate. Users can add feedback quickly, even on video and audio files. 
  • Ensure Accurate Billing: Rate cards allow you to standardize rates or create custom options. This capability helps set client expectations, accelerates billing and provides accurate numbers for forecasting. You can also differentiate between your bill rates and the cost rate for an employee or contractor. 
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  • Enhanced Project Visibility and Control: Gain real-time insights into project status, resource allocation, budgets, and timelines. Identify potential risks and bottlenecks early on, allowing for proactive adjustments and course corrections to ensure projects stay on track and within budget.
  • Improved Resource Utilization and Optimization: Effectively match the right people with the right projects based on skills, availability, and workload. Streamline time tracking and approval processes to ensure accurate billing and payroll. Optimize resource allocation to maximize productivity and efficiency.
  • Streamlined Financial Management and Reporting: Automate invoicing, billing, and revenue recognition processes, reducing errors and accelerating cash flow. Generate comprehensive financial reports and analytics to track project profitability, identify trends, and make informed business decisions.
  • Boosted Collaboration and Teamwork: Foster seamless communication and collaboration among project teams, clients, and stakeholders through centralized project information, shared workspaces, and real-time updates. Break down silos and enhance knowledge sharing to improve decision-making and project outcomes.
  • Enhanced Customer Satisfaction and Retention: Deliver projects on time and within budget, while maintaining high levels of quality and customer satisfaction. Establish a single source of truth for project information, fostering transparency and trust with clients. Strengthen client relationships and increase the likelihood of repeat business.
  • Data-Driven Insights for Strategic Decision-Making: Leverage the power of real-time data and analytics to uncover actionable insights, identify areas for improvement, and make informed strategic decisions. Improve project outcomes, optimize resource utilization, and drive overall business growth.
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  • Project Collaboration: Mavenlink centralizes task management and project communication for a unified workspace that team members can take mobile. The system collects messages in a single feed for quick access while also providing private messages. Create tasks, milestones and other details; then assign them to different members. Statuses can be updated collaboratively, and the drag-and-drop interface makes it easy to rearrange items. 
  • Project Plans: The software uses Gantt charts to build visual layouts of project details, including task dependencies and the critical path. You can combine items like tasks, issues, milestones and other details into a fully-fledged work breakdown structure. 
  • Portfolio Management: Project cards let managers sort active projects and view critical details to see the overall portfolio’s health, along with the status of each project. A global project list offers greater detail, with fields for budget, burn rate, completion percentage and the next phase. Project leaders can also view a visual schedule that includes project in progress as well as those on the roadmap. 
  • Resource Management: This feature allows you to more effectively manage project resources. Tools like the scenario builder and profit margin modeler enable estimation. A resource matching engine and live-view resource pool let managers plan roles and workloads accurately. There are also separate views for project managers and resource managers, giving each the right data while allowing them to remain synced on overall needs. 
  • Templates: Create templates based on past successful projects. After cloning the current project, you can customize the details to fit the current project. Project plan template elements include checklists, schedules, tasks, dependencies, budgets and resource assignments. 
  • Project Accounting: Track time and expense information with tools like timesheets, universal time entry and expense reports. Generate customized invoices using different inputs or combine multiple projects into a single invoice. The system automatically calculates sales tax and supports weighted milestones. Mavenlink also supports multiple currencies. 
  • Business Intelligence: This feature provides deep insight into key project metrics such as project status, time and expenses, profit margins, actual vs. scheduled fees, and many more. You can filter based on certain criteria like specific projects or clients and then drill down for granular examination. Use more than 35 interactive, pre-built reports from experts or use the ad hoc reporting engine for customization. That option lets you modify existing reports or create your own, with access to more than 300 metrics. 
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  • Live Intelligence: Harvest live information through its SmartBeats interface that provides a 360 degree view of how actions impact business. Visualize and filter data within MissionControl and display recommendations relevant to a user’s role. 
  • Project Management: Reference historical metrics to create pipelines and budgets for new clients. Oversee beats in each stage or improve collaboration with instant updates and feedback. Push notifications to manage project statuses and expenses. 
  • Financial Forecasting: Track resource costs, billing rates and finance benchmarks using SmartBudget. Simulate prices, revenue and other factors to strategically bid on accounts. 
  • Client Management: Organize customers, vendors, funding institutions or sales partners under the client entity. Share workload reports and presentations to define project metrics. Deliver account support in the consolidated view to assess project recommendations, billing and client profiles. 
  • Governance:  Achieve compliance by setting validation rules for forms and attachments. Simplify complex workflows by creating checklists and forming breakdown structures to monitor process adherence. Adapt to users in different time zones, currencies and languages. 
  • Time and Expense Tracking: Create customized or pre-populated timesheets for faster submission. Track time and expenses from a desktop or mobile device with built-in GPS tracking and geofencing capabilities. Enable automatic approvals, upload receipts or manage availability and budgets. 
  • Resource Allocation: Configure dimensional reports to determine availability and pinpoint underutilized resources. Reduce training time and create positions based on skills needed or assign placeholders to account for pending projects. Leverage the recommendation engine Smartmatch to analyze talent and recommend applicants based on skill rating to expedite hiring efforts. 
  • Billing and Invoicing: Create rate structures to accommodate versatile contracts and eliminate invoice discrepancies. Offer flexible billing plans specific to the user level, role or other combinations. Manage invoices, track delinquencies and monitor financial health in real-time. 
  • Integrations: Connect platforms like Slack, Microsoft Teams and Quickbooks for seamless workflows. Increase revenue and engagement with the use of its open APIs. 
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Product Ranking

#4

among all
PSA Software

#15

among all
PSA Software

Find out who the leaders are

Analyst Rating Summary

81
88
54
58
100
100
44
89
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Dashboard and Reporting
Resource Management
Time and Expense Management
Project Collaboration
Project Financials
Dashboard and Reporting
Project Financials
Resource Management
Time and Expense Management
Platform Capabilities

Analyst Ratings for Functional Requirements Customize This Data Customize This Data

Mavenlink
Polaris PSA
+ Add Product + Add Product
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Dashboard And Reporting Mobile Capabilities Platform Capabilities Project Collaboration Project Financials Project Management Resource Management Time And Expense Management 54 100 44 85 90 86 83 100 92 58 100 89 93 87 100 85 100 100 0 25 50 75 100
20%
0%
80%
27%
0%
73%
100%
0%
0%
100%
0%
0%
40%
0%
60%
80%
0%
20%
87%
0%
13%
93%
0%
7%
80%
0%
20%
80%
0%
20%
86%
0%
14%
100%
0%
0%
83%
0%
17%
83%
0%
17%
100%
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0%
100%
0%
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89%
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11%
100%
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0%

Analyst Ratings for Technical Requirements Customize This Data Customize This Data

55%
0%
45%
70%
0%
30%

User Sentiment Summary

Great User Sentiment 2530 reviews
Excellent User Sentiment 202 reviews
84%
of users recommend this product

Mavenlink has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 84% when considering 2530 user reviews from 7 recognized software review sites.

92%
of users recommend this product

Polaris PSA has a 'excellent' User Satisfaction Rating of 92% when considering 202 user reviews from 2 recognized software review sites.

5.0 (18)
n/a
4.1 (672)
n/a
4.18 (554)
n/a
4.2 (561)
n/a
4.2 (574)
4.6 (198)
4.5 (71)
n/a
4.2 (80)
5.0 (4)

Awards

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SelectHub research analysts have evaluated Polaris PSA and concluded it earns best-in-class honors for Time and Expense Management. Polaris PSA stands above the rest by achieving an ‘Excellent’ rating as a User Favorite.

User Favorite Award
Time and Expense Management Award

Synopsis of User Ratings and Reviews

User-Friendly Interface: Precisely 53% of users stated that Mavenlink has a user-friendly interface with a smooth implementation process.
Variety of Features: Mavenlink has a plethora of features such as real-time analytics, reporting, project status and more. Nearly 57% of users approved the features.
Flexible: Approximately 66% of users said Mavenlink is pliable and customizable to their specific business needs.
Team-Oriented: Mavenlink enables users to properly share and communicate with team members. The solution offers effective communication and collaboration tools according to 100% of reviewers.
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Intuitive Interface: Users consistently praise Polaris PSA's ease of use, even for those without extensive technical backgrounds.
Flexible Customization: The software allows for tailoring to specific workflows and business needs, ensuring a seamless fit within existing processes.
Comprehensive Project Management: Users appreciate the ability to manage all project aspects, from planning and scheduling to resource allocation and budgeting, within a single platform.
Accurate Time Tracking: Polaris excels at capturing billable hours precisely, streamlining timesheet submission and approval processes.
Streamlined Invoicing: Generating accurate invoices based on project data is effortless, leading to faster client billing and improved cash flow.
Robust Reporting: The software provides insightful reports on project performance, resource utilization, profitability, and other key metrics, empowering data-driven decision-making.
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Steep Learning Curve: Of the users who commented on learning Mavenlink, roughly 46% of users said the learning curve is difficult.
Customer Support: Approximately 63% of users say getting in touch with Mavenlink's customer support team is challenging.
Feature Limitations: Of the users who discussed Mavenlink's features, 42% reported that some features have limitations or some extra features are needed.
Mobile App Deficiencies: Mavenlink's mobile app capabilities are limited in comparison to the desktop software as stated by nearly 83% of users.
Limited Integrations: Although Mavenlink can integrate with QuickBooks and Google Docs, it does not integrate with certain CRM software according to 57% of users.
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Learning Curve: Users report a steeper learning curve compared to simpler PSA tools.
Initial Setup Complexity: Setting up Polaris PSA can be complex for smaller teams or those with limited technical expertise.
Limited Workflow Customization: While flexible, some users find it challenging to tailor the software to highly specialized workflows.
Performance Issues: Users have reported occasional lag or glitches, especially on older hardware or with large datasets.
Software Bugs: While uncommon, some users have encountered bugs that require technical support to resolve.
Pricing Concerns: Polaris PSA's pricing can be higher compared to some basic PSA tools, especially for smaller businesses.
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Mavenlink offers a potent project management platform that the majority of users say has an effective interface and a multitude of tools such as time tracking, instant analytics, project status, collaboration, budgeting and adjustable dashboards. Users also find that the system is flexible to their company requirements. However, some users believe the learning curve is difficult and Mavenlink doesn't merge with particular CRM applications. Customer support may also lag in extending exemplar resources. Overall, users believe Mavenlink is the proper tool to streamline their project management needs.

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User reviews for Polaris PSA paint a picture of a powerful, albeit demanding, PSA tool. Many praise its intuitiveness and flexibility, with one user calling it "a breath of fresh air compared to clunky legacy systems." It stands out in its comprehensive project management, effortlessly handling everything from planning to billing within one platform. Another user loved "ditching the patchwork of apps we used before and having everything in Polaris." However, Polaris' learning curve can be steep. "It's not as pick-up-and-play as some simpler tools," admitted a reviewer. The initial setup can also be complex, especially for smaller teams. This complexity, while offering deep customization, led some to feel limited in tailoring it to specific workflows. "We have a unique process, and while Polaris is flexible, it took more work than expected to get it just right," shared one user. Performance isn't always flawless, with occasional lag and bugs reported, particularly on older systems. Despite these hiccups, many appreciate Polaris' robust reporting and data-driven insights, with one user exclaiming, "Finally, we can make informed decisions based on actual data, not just gut feeling!" Ultimately, Polaris PSA shines for its comprehensiveness and power, but demands investment in training and setup. Users often compare it to Asana or Monday.com, finding it more robust but less user-friendly. If you're a growing team seeking a one-stop PSA solution with deep customization and powerful reporting, Polaris is worth a look. Just be prepared to dedicate some time to mastering its intricacies.

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