Adobe Workfront, despite being a fairly established solution, now remains the market leader in collaborative work management solutions, especially for project managers.

Yet, Workfront is not a perfect solution and certainly not the most affordable available in the market at the moment. 

Nowadays, there is a wide variety of collaborative work management and project management solutions available in the market that can act as alternatives to Workfront. 

So, if you are looking for a professional work management solution but don’t want to stick with Workfront, this article is for you.

In this post, we’ll have a more in-depth look at Aproove as a Workfront alternative: the similarities between Aproove and Workfront, the key differences, the pros and cons of Aproove, and other information to help you make a better-informed decision on which work management solution is the better one for your business.

Aproove vs. Workfront: Key Comparison

Considering an alternative work management solution to Adobe Workfront? Compare the key differences between the all-in-one work management software Aproove and Workfront.

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Both Aproove and Adobe Workfront are considered two of the most popular and powerful enterprise project management solutions available in the market today.

Both Aproove and Workfront offer relatively similar core project management features: task management, activity tracking, collaboration/communication tools, scheduling, online proofing, and so on.

A key highlight of Workfront as a work management solution is its versatile, all-in-one capabilities: managing projects, scheduling, task assignment, resource management, document processing, generating various reports, analytics, and so on. 

However, Workfront is not the most affordable solution available, and it’s also not the easiest to set up and use. 

With that being said, Aproove offers a comparable set of features with a more affordable price and more intuitive user interface, making it an ideal candidate for the best Workfront alternative available in the market. 

Aproove is one of the most viable Workfront alternatives in 2022, especially with its more robust online proofing capabilities to ensure optimal and streamlined review/approval processes. ‘

Aproove also allows businesses to get proof of their employees’ work without alienating team members. This way, businesses using Aproove can help facilitate a sustainable employer-employee relationship in order to improve transparency, accountability, and overall productivity. 

Aproove vs. WorkFront: Features Comparison

In this section, we’ll compare the key features offered by Workfront, and Aproove as Workfront’s alternative.

WorkFront: Key Features

What are the default features of WorkFront?

WorkFront offers three core capabilities: 

• Intuitive project templates: allowing users to easily create, run, and manage different types of projects with various requirements
• Custom forms: users can create and attach custom forms to any of the project/work types based on predefined conditions. Ultimately, custom forms can help facilitate workflow automation.
• Approval workflows: facilitating highly customizable review and approval processes

However, here is a list of the other core features offered by WorkFront that may be valuable for a wide variety of businesses of all sizes:

• Gantt chart: WorkFront offers an intuitive, easy-to-read Gantt chart generator that you can use as both a visual planning and analytics tool. 
• Demand management: by leveraging custom forms (discussed above) and automated request queues, you can easily generate a project with automated task prioritization for your whole team. This eliminates the need to send multiple emails, especially during the early stages of the project. 
• Financial reporting: allowing businesses to break down financial information by resource hours, contracted revenue, and budget spending. WorkFront offers other reports that illustrate the financial value of your project.
• Resource management: WorkFront leverages AI and machine learning technology to help you automate managing your resources based on team members’ skill levels, experience, and availability.
• Collaboration features: WorkFront offers versatile communication and collaboration features via threaded real-time conversations, status updates, and forums to help your team communicate and collaborate effectively.
• Intuitive task list: WorkFront offers an intuitive, consolidated task list that can automatically sort and display tasks based on priorities, complete with real-time updates of the project.
• Online proofing: allowing you to track version updates and feedback to streamline review and approval processes. WorkFront will double-check approvals to stakeholders to ensure proper approvals and will automatically send approvals to the right stakeholders to minimize mistakes.
• Analytics and reporting: automatically send reports to stakeholders and communicate important tasks/timelines with interactive calendar views. 

Aproove: Key Features

Aproove, as a WorkFront alternative, offers a more robust set of features that can be categorized into five core groups:

1. Work management: features to help businesses streamline, optimize, and automate workflows to improve efficiency and productivity
2. Compliance: ensuring the business stays compliant with relevant regulations, especially important for businesses in heavily regulated industries like medical (with HIPAA) and businesses affected by GDPR.
3. Reporting: generate accurate analytics, KPIs, and business reports on demand to help businesses make better-informed decisions and improve their efficiencies.
4. Online proofing: streamlining the approval process with intuitive online proofing features.
5. Infrastructure: providing a strong foundation of success for the business in effectively achieving its objectives while ensuring security, reliability, and data integrity.

Work management features:

• Digital Asset Management (DAM): built-in Digital Asset Management features to upload, store, share, distribute, and search digital assets without leaving the Aproove app.
• Annotation Flow Management (AFM): a unique Aproove function, offering a powerful virtual meeting room where teams can collaborate in private before providing comments/feedback during an online proofing/approval process.
• Individual and team to-do list: in Aproove’s intuitive to-do list, any tasks assigned to a user automatically appear in each user’s individual to-do list, so it’s easier for them to keep track of their work progress. On the other hand, you can also assign another to-do list to a team or department to allow autonomous actions. 
• Automated timesheet entry: you can configure Aproove so that timesheets automatically appear after tasks are completed. Depending on the task, you can also allow users to manually enter time data.
• Business workflow builder: Aproove offers a unique business workflow builder allowing admins to create decision-based and looped workflows, including with event triggers and API calls. 
• Intuitive trigger and actions: easily set up event-based triggers to automate functions in the workflow and/or project.
• Project creation wizard: intuitive project creation wizard allows users to easily create and manage review steps, assign roles, set rules and policies, set deadlines, and so on. You can save each project as a template for future use.
• Guest users: you can easily invite guest users (i.e., client reviewers) for free without adding to your license count anytime during the project.
• Advanced search function: advanced search filters and the ability to share your search filters with other users and groups. Apply annotation notes directly from the search results. 
• Alerts and notifications: smart alerts, notifications, and deadline reminders.

Compliance features:

• Conflict management features : the ability to sign conflict resolution managers at different stages of the project and in different groups to prevent bottlenecks and delays.
• SAML 2.0 Single Sign-On (SSO) : true enterprise-level SSO using secure SAML 2.0 on dedicated cloud infrastructure
• E-signature: Aproove is fully compliant with FDA regulations on electronic signatures and records, 21 CFR part 11 compliant 
• Content and color accuracy: at the moment, Aproove is the only cloud-based work management solution that uses genuine Microsoft and Adobe Libraries to ensure 100% color and content accuracy. Full Pantone and ICC color support. 
• 2FA: the ability to apply a 2-factor authentication at a granular step level or individual decision level.
• Reference documents: securely store reference or master files for comparison against any proof. Can automatically associate reference files to proofs to ensure approval accuracy. 

Analytics and reporting features:

• Intuitive project dashboard: centralized business overview dashboard along with individual dashboards for each project. 
• KPI and business reports: generate KPI and business reports on demand. You can also add the custom report generator for more generic and custom reporting. 

Online proofing features:

• Smart review: a unique feature to approve, allowing reviewers to make decisions on individual proofs, including on multi-page documents. You never need to separate multi-page documents.
• Version comparison: compare different proof versions in multiple ways (side-by-side, pixel, ghost comparison, etc.) Automatic version management with optional Smart Review technology, allowing automatic analysis of revised proofs and identification of changed version proofs, even in multi-page documents.
• Annotations and markup tools: multi-functional markup, annotation, and text extraction tools that are easy to use. 
• Smart comments and @mentions: threaded comments for in-proof collaboration, with @mention capability to streamline the proofing and approval process while minimizing conflicts and bottlenecks.
• Support 180+ file types: support for every major filetype 
• Tags: you can add tags manually or automatically to streamline the management and organization of projects, proofs, sections, and notes. 
• Video proofing: upload video content and allow detailed video markup.

Infrastructure features:

• Secure cloud: versatile and secure cloud-based infrastructure
• API, webhooks, and integrations: a wide variety of built-in integrations and webhook-capable API support, allowing connection to various technologies and solutions. 
• Cloud storage integration: integration with popular cloud storage solutions, including Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, and OneDrive.
• Enterprise-grade security: secure and scalable infrastructure in the Microsoft Azure environment.
• Zapier support: over 1,300 solutions to connect via Zapier.

Workfront vs. Aproove: Cost Comparison

WorkFront doesn’t list prices on its official website, and you’ll need to contact Adobe to get quotes. The total WorkFront costs can vary depending on your organization’s setup and configuration, but you can expect to spend at least $30/user/month for the most affordable WorkFront Team plan.

Aproove, on the other hand, offers much more transparent, straightforward pricing schemes without sacrificing versatility and scalability.

Aproove offers two main configurable plans:

1. Aproove Classic (starts from $750/month)

Designed for small and medium-sized businesses. Aproove calculates costs based on the number of Super Users and Standard Users you’re going to include in the plan.

• Super User: a super user can create new projects and can be assigned any role with full admin rights. Licenses for Super Users are $15/user.
• Standard User: cannot create new projects and has no admin rights. Standard users must be invited by a Super User before they can join a project. Licenses for Standard Users are $15/user.
• Guest User: unregistered collaborator invited into the project using @mention or an invite link. You can add unlimited guest users for FREE, and they won’t take up any of the Standard or Super Users seats.

In Aproove Classic, you’ll get:

• 100 GB storage ($5 per 5GB increment storage)
• 1 Stanard and 1 Super User included
• Three custom project kick-off forums
• Asset Browser DAM (minimum 120 GB storage required)
• Fully Hosted and Managed Microsoft Azure Infrastructure
• Multi-Language Support
• Task Management Functions
• Unlimited Free Guest Users
• Unlimited Proofs

2. Aproove Enterprise (Starting from $28,500/year)

In Aproove WM Enterprise plan, you’ll get:

• Full access to all features 
• Full configuration control via the Administration interface
• Fully managed and private cloud inside Microsoft Azure
• 1 Web Server (AWM Application and Database)
• 1 Login Portal (local user or SAML SSO)
• 1 Processing Agent 
• Full telephone and email support

Is Aproove a Good Workfront Alternative?

Both Aproove and Adobe WorkFront are very capable, industry-leading work management and online proofing solutions, two of the best available in the market at the moment. 

However, Aproove offers the following benefits over WorkFront as a work management solution: 

1. More intuitive interface and layout: one of the biggest downsides of WorkFront is its rather obsolete and non-intuitive interface that can be quite difficult to pick up. Aproove, on the other hand, offers an intuitive, easy-to-use interface, ideal even for first-timers.
2. Better search functionality: in WorkFront, at times, it can be challenging to find a task without knowing which project it is associated with. Aproove, on the other hand, has more intuitive and robust search functionality, so it’s very easy to find files and version changes.
3. Better Gantt chart: Aproove offers better Gantt charts that are easier to view, manage, and modify. Task progression is much more intuitive with Aproove.
4. Easier setup: Setting up Aproove is more straightforward than Workfront, without sacrificing customizability and granular configurations. 
5. More transparent pricing: pricing is more transparent and straightforward with Aproove, so you can more effectively control your spending to ensure your project stays on budget.