Our team of specialists has reviewed Copper Project. We actually connected to a demo version of the product, test drove it and wrote down our comments. The review was written objectively and isn't advertising-driven.
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Copper Project is the brainchild of Element Software. This online project management software has been around since 2001. It is widely used in 50+ countries across an impressive range of industries. Copper Project is well-known in the industry and giving the product a test drive helps you understand why.
The system doesn't pretend to offer each and every project management and collaboration feature. However, what they offer are key features that work and do what they have to do. You can use Copper Project for advanced project management with costs, multiple resources and clients involved. Files can be attached to projects, which is great for providing extra info. Folders can be created as well, to organize those files.
There are quite a few reports available. The visual-type users will appreciate the Timeline (a Gantt chart basically) and the Calendar, which shows all tasks' start and end dates. What stands out here is the "Availability" link, which show the number of unallocated work hours for each day.
Project Analysis and Work Analysis offer several possibilities, including being saved, emailed recurrently and exported to CSV. Project Analysis reports let you know how the projects are doing while Work Analysis reports provide you with resource-oriented info (e.g timesheets). Although Copper Project doesn't have dozens of reports like some of the other guys, their reports are intuitive and well-built. The "Email this report" feature is simply amazing, as you can create a report once and receive it automatically in accordance with your needs.
Interface-wise, two aspects caught our eye. First, an icon before the connected user's name can be clicked to provide useful status information such as "Hours Logged Today" and "Recent Items" (which are items created). The second thing we liked is the contextual description when moving our mouse over an item. For instance, if you wonder what are to dos, you'll find the answer without having to search the help files. The search box, which remains permanently at the upper right, enables one to search for virtually anything, be it projects, tasks, files or users. This is very handy and we got addicted to it very quickly.
For a project management software of that quality, pricing is reasonable. No matter which package you choose, projects are unlimited. Depending on the number of users/storage space, and level of support you need, pricing range is $29-$199 per month. You can also subscribe yearly and get a rebate. If you'd rather not use Copper Project online, you can also install their source code on your server.
We were impressed with the "Backup" tab in the "Admin" section. Basically, this section empowers you to export your MySQL Copper database at anytime and even restore an existing database. This is rather uncommon. Usually, you have to contact tech support for that and wait for a couple of hours or even days. You mess up your data, you can restore your latest database backup, without any support required.
Copper Project is a reasonably-priced, robust and reliable project management system. They've been around since 2001 and help large, well-known organizations manage their projects. No bells and whistles, no design prowesses, just project management and collaboration that work well and get projects delivered. If you're looking for a solid PM tool that doesn't break the bank, you might want to consider Copper Project.