There are many tools available for SMBs and giant companies to use for effective collaboration. Tools are designed in a manner so as to make it easy for people in a workplace to effectively collaborate on a project and deliver the client to the best of their abilities. But what about freelancers?

They too need collaboration tools to get an exact picture from the client as to what he is expecting from the project. There had been no such tool to serve this purpose till Design Approve one of a top collaboration tool for small business came into the picture. This tool specifically aims to help freelance designers get an appropriate feedback from the customers as to how the project should shape.

 Editions and Pricing

The tool allows its users to take a trial for free and has monthly and annual billing options.

• Monthly: $9/mo. Allows unlimited uploads, unlimited projects, and unlimited clients.
• Annual: $90/year. Allow unlimited uploads, projects and clients. Users get two month’s service free of charge with this plan.

Capabilities and Supporting Set of Features

Dashboard
Design Approve has an adamant dashboard concept with a glimpse of all the ongoing projects so that you don’t have to scramble with a menu to know what is going on. It has separate panes to segregate the projects into categories like latest projects, latest comments, client by activity and latest proofs.

 

Feedback Form
The feedback form is the form that client uses to send feedback to the freelancer with the option to provide details about the project.

 

 

Add Client
This feature helps the user to add his client’s information so that he can receive feedback from him. It helps in managing different clients and their projects.

 

 

 

All Clients
The feature lets you view the list of all the clients added by you along with their details.

 

 

Add New Project
This feature allows you to add a new project by providing the details of the project and associated client. You can select the client’s name from the drop down list if the client is already in the contact list. It also lets you upload files along with the project.

 

 

 

View Project
This feature allows you to view the progress of your projects with the option of adding a new version, approving changes made and deleting the version and project. You can also update the projects and view the comments on it. The option of archiving the project is also available.

 

 

Add Comments
Your clients can add comments to the images uploaded by you and can also mark how they feel about the project changes. Clients can also upload a file.

 

 

View Comments
Comments list lets you view all the comments made by the client on your project. It is a useful feature to tracks the changes client has suggested.

 

Mobile Accessibility

The tool has no dedicates Android or IOS apps, but can be accessed via mobile web browsing.

Integrations

The tool does not integrate with any other tools

Support

To provide support to its users, Design Approve has a self-help catalog explaining all its features in detail.

Pros and Cons of Design Approve

Pros

• Displays status as seen if the client saw the updates.
• Project segregation and functionality is excellent.

Cons

• While updating a file version, the previous version gets deleted. It does not let the client view the progress and earlier versions.
• If the tool had an integration with Google photos or other file storing tools, from which images could be imported, could ease the process.

Read Also: Collaboration tools product review – Helpmonks

Differentiator

What mostly differentiates the tool is its core functionality aiming to serve freelance designers and helps in keeping tabs on the progress of the projects.

For more details, please visit Design Approve website.