eStudio Reviewer's Comments
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Studio 6, a browser-based project management program, excels at communication and collaboration. While it is excellent in communications, eStudio is a little more difficult to use than our higher-ranked products, and includes fewer features.
Ease of Use:
While eStudio’s design is straight forward, it will take you some time to get used to where the various functions and tools are located and how to use the, eStudio does include tutorials and help options to smooth this process.
Clicking on links sometimes brought up a javascript error. It often took several clicks to actually get where we wanted to. Also, when run in secure mode the program slows down some.
Feature Set:
eStudio’s workspace area is where you can upload documents for review or approval. The files are then stored there (as a secondary backup location). However, giving multiple users access to this one location can be a nightmare, since each user has complete access to everyone else’s documents. This also leads to situations where team members could be working on obsolete versions of a document. We think that this area should have access limited to the system administrators.
Ease of Installation:
Since the program resides on the eStudio servers, installation was a snap. Setting up your new account, however, is very time-consuming, though providing as much information as possible up-front makes things easier later on.
Help/Support:
eStudio’s help selection is excellent: several forms of documentation, tutorials, Flash demos and a walk-through all help you master the program. The program also offers email and toll-free phone support.
Project Management:
eStudio comes with a task manager that allows you to build tasks, add notes to each task and assign specific resources to each task. Several different options for displaying goals, timelines and priority are also offered.
We were disappointed by eStudio’s Gantt chart: it was very basic and rudimentary. While the chart was customizable, the graphical representation was unimaginative.
Resource Management:
Assigning resources to several tasks and adding notes to the tasks is very easy. The setup for budgeting resource time is somewhat awkward, however.
Collaboration:
eStudio excels in this section. The program has a collaboration tab that offers five different methods of communication: Live Chat, Discussions, Presentations, Quick Notes and Web links. These five options essentially cover every form of communication that a project manager or team member might want or need.
Summary:
eStudio is only $50 a month (with unlimited users)—fairly inexpensive for a browser-based program management suite. However, the program simply doesn’t have the streamlined features inherent to our higher-ranked products.
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