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To compare the two applications we have chosen five battlefields. They are: Look and Feel, Functionality, Customization and Interoperability, Browser and Language Support, and Price. For each category we will point out strengths and weaknesses of both applications and then we will choose winner. In the end of the article we will sum it all up and pick the overall winner.

Look and Feel

These two applications are very intuitive and easy to use. The layout is about the same, main menu at the top, extra tools on the right side of the page and central section for content.

Clarizen’s design is highly professional. We really liked all icons and especially colour circles (green, orange, red) that highlight various states of tasks and projects. EPMLive has also very professional design with states highlighted by colours.

Both applications include Home Page, containing summary about all projects, overview of assigned tasks, charts with overall progress of projects and closest upcoming events. All these views help tremendously to recognize quickly the state of the project and complete all tasks on schedule.

What we liked slightly better about Clarizen is the layout of the overview page with summary about projects or uncompleted tasks, which is alittle bit easier to follow, than EPMLive’s project homepage.

Winner: Clarizen
 

Functionality

Both applications are very comprehensive and cover all core functionalities for project management:  milestones, tasks, Gantt charts, discussions, messages, comments, calendar, document management system including versioning systems.

Clarizen has basic version of the application and then three subsystems: Time Tracking subsystem, Expenses subsystem and Issue Management subsystem which are connected together and integrated with other relevant functionalities. EPMLive offers different plans, which include more tools, like: Resource management, Cost and Financial management and What-IF modelling.

Both systems offer options to create various reports by exporting data.

Winner: Both

Customization and interoperability

EPMLive integrates especially with Miscrosoft’s applications – Outlook, Office, Access, and offers offline use by downloading the data into the MS Share Point workspace and automatic synchronization with EPMLive. Workflow and Governance tools give an option to design workflows according to the business process across the organization.

What we really liked about Clarizen is its integration with various other applications, including SalesForce, Intacct, ZendDesk, Calendar (Outlook or similar) and GoogleDocs. Besides the integration it also offers wide range of very powerful customization tools to define own business rules, workflow rules and actions that would suit the organization.

Winner: Clarizen (here both applications are very close)

Browser, language and general support  

Both application support all main web browsers, and are available in a good choice of language mutations like English, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, French, German etc. However, in both cases, it was not easy to find the information about the language or mobile devices support on the website.

Winner: Both

Price

Clarizen offers three basic editions: Professional edition ($24.95/user/month), Enterprise edition ($39.95/user/month) and Unlimited edition ($44.95/user/month). Editions differ by support, and especially by customization, where the cheapest version includes only 3 custom fields, business rules and custom actions. The three subsystems mentioned in the functionality section, are included in each edition.

EPMLive also offers three pricing plans: ProjectEngine (free plan) for 1 project; WorkEngine ($20/months/user) and PortfolioEngine ($30/months/user) both include unlimited number of projects and 30 GB of storage. They differ by features and by support. Here is also option to go for Plus or Unlimited plan, which include unlimited users, limitations are on number of projects and storage size, which can be extended for a $25/months for 1GB.

Winner: Depends on the situation. EPMLive has lower price for user/month, but Clarizen includes unlimited storage.

Summary

Both are very professional project management and collaboration applications, with extensive set of tools. They would be a good choice for middle sized/bigger companies with large number of projects or more complex projects. Clarizen is exclusively Cloud application, and integrates with other applications, as mentioned above, while EPMLive integrates mainly with MS products and workspace could be downloaded into MS SharePoint and used offline – that would be one big difference between these two products. Both are absolutely easy to use, we’ve found Clarizen slightly more convenient and user friendly. Which one is better would be very much on your preference, since both products offer free 30 day trial, we would suggest you to try both and see which one would suits you better.

Overall Winner:  Both Clarizen and EPMLive are great. We would go for Clarizen, but this battle is really tight.