Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Five Stars VS Task Session

Compare Five Stars VS Task Session and see what are their differences

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Five Stars logo Five Stars

Discover millions of rewards from thousands of local businesses.

Task Session logo Task Session

Task Session is a powerful, user-friendly project management and CRM app designed to streamline workflow, track progress, and boost team collaboration. Manage tasks, deadlines, and communication with ease.
  • Five Stars Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-10-27
  • Task Session kanban board
    kanban board //
    2026-08-27

Task Session | Self-Hosted CRM & Project Management Platform

Task Session is an all-in-one CRM and project management platform built for agencies, freelancers, consultants, and growing teams that want more control over their tools, data, and costs.

Instead of paying for separate CRM, project management, team communication, time tracking, and invoicing tools, Task Session brings everything together in one platform.

The software is self-hosted, so it runs on your own server and gives you full control over your business data. It can also be fully white-labeled with your own company name and branding.

Key Features

CRM & Sales Pipelines: Manage contacts, leads, deals, companies, and sales pipelines.

Projects & Tasks: Create projects, assign tasks, set deadlines, and track progress.

Client Portal: Give clients their own portal to communicate, review work, access files, and stay updated.

Time Tracking & Attendance: Track working hours, attendance, and team activity.

Invoices & Billing: Create, send, and manage invoices directly from the platform.

Team Chat & Discussions: Keep internal communication connected to your projects and tasks.

Email Integration: Connect Gmail, Outlook, or SMTP and track email opens and clicks.

Files, Notes & Documents: Keep important files, notes, and business information organized in one place.

Dashboards & Reporting: Get a clear overview of projects, sales activity, invoices, and team performance.

Task Session is suitable for marketing and SEO agencies, law firms, consultants, software teams, designers, accountants, real estate businesses, and other service-based companies.

There are no per-user charges, so teams can add users without increasing their monthly software costs.

Your server. Your data. Your branding. One platform for managing your business.

Task Session

$ Details
$59 / Annually (Self-Hosted, Unlimited Users, 1 Website)
Platforms
Web
Release Date
2024 January
Startup details
Country
United States
State
TX
City
Houston
Founder(s)
Alex Miller
Employees
10 - 19

Five Stars features and specs

  • Customer Engagement
    Five Stars offers personalized communication tools that help businesses engage with customers through targeted promotions and messages, fostering better customer relationships.
  • Loyalty Programs
    The platform allows businesses to set up and manage customized loyalty programs, which can incentivize repeat business and enhance customer retention.
  • Ease of Use
    Five Stars is designed with an intuitive, user-friendly interface, making it accessible for businesses of all sizes to set up and manage their customer loyalty and marketing efforts.
  • Analytics and Reporting
    The platform provides detailed analytics and reporting features, enabling businesses to track customer behavior, measure the effectiveness of campaigns, and make data-driven decisions.
  • Integration Capabilities
    Five Stars integrates with a variety of POS systems and other business tools, which helps streamline operations and maintain a seamless workflow.

Possible disadvantages of Five Stars

  • Cost
    Five Stars can be expensive for small businesses, especially when compared to other loyalty and marketing solutions available in the market.
  • Learning Curve
    Despite its user-friendly interface, some businesses may still face a learning curve when initially setting up and configuring the platform’s various features.
  • Customer Support
    There have been reports of slow or unresponsive customer support, which can be a drawback when businesses require timely assistance.
  • Limited Customization
    Some users have noted that the platform’s customization options are somewhat limited, restricting the ability to fully tailor the program to specific business needs.
  • Dependence on Customer Participation
    The effectiveness of Five Stars is largely dependent on customer participation and engagement, which can vary greatly and affect the return on investment for the business.

Task Session features and specs

  • CRM
    Track contacts, leads and clients in one place with visual sales pipelines
  • Project Management
    Create projects, assign work to your team and follow progress in real time
  • Task Management
    Tasks with due dates, sub-tasks, attachments, assignees and calendar view
  • Time Tracking
    Track work hours, billable time and team productivity in real time
  • Invoicing & Payments
    Create and send invoices, track payments and automate overdue reminders
  • Client Portal
    A dedicated portal where clients see project status, files, invoices and deadlines
  • Team Chat
    Real-time chat and discussions inside tasks and projects
  • File Management
    Store, share and organise project and client documents in one place
  • Email Integration
    Connect Gmail, Outlook or SMTP to send, receive and track emails
  • Attendance Management
    Log employee attendance and working hours in real time
  • Reports & Dashboard
    Dashboards for payments, receivables, projects, staff and clients
  • Self-Hosted
    Install on your own server with full control over your data

Analysis of Five Stars

Overall verdict

  • Five Stars is generally considered a good platform for businesses looking to enhance their customer loyalty programs and marketing efforts. It is particularly praised for its comprehensive features that cater to both small and medium-sized enterprises.

Why this product is good

  • Five Stars is a customer loyalty and marketing platform that helps businesses engage with their customers through reward programs, promotions, and personalized marketing strategies. It is well-regarded for its user-friendly interface and ability to help increase customer retention and repeat visits. The platform integrates easily with many POS systems and offers detailed analytics to help businesses make data-driven decisions.

Recommended for

  • Small and medium-sized businesses looking to improve customer retention
  • Retail stores aiming to create effective loyalty programs
  • Restaurants wanting to engage customers through targeted promotions
  • Businesses seeking detailed customer analytics and insights

Five Stars videos

Five stars Loyalty System Review for Restaurants | REAL ENTREPRENEUR REVIEW

More videos:

Task Session videos

Task Session CRM Full Demo | All in One Business Suite

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Five Stars and Task Session)
Loyalty Marketing
100 100%
0% 0
ERP
0 0%
100% 100
Customer Loyalty Program
100 100%
0% 0
CRM
0 0%
100% 100

Questions & Answers

As answered by people managing Five Stars and Task Session.

What makes your product unique?

Task Session's answer:

Task Session puts both halves of client work in one place: the CRM where leads and clients live, and the workspace where the work actually gets delivered.

Most small teams pay for a CRM and a project tool separately, then spend the week copying data between them. Here a lead becomes a client, the client becomes a project, the project produces timesheets, and those timesheets turn into an invoice - without re-entering anything.

It is also self-hosted, so the whole system runs on your own server and your client data, contracts and invoices never leave it.

How would you describe the primary audience of your product?

Task Session's answer:

Small agencies, studios and freelancers who work directly with clients - digital and marketing agencies, design and development shops, consultants and service businesses, typically between 2 and 50 people.

The usual profile is a team that has outgrown spreadsheets, WhatsApp groups and a shared inbox, but does not want an enterprise suite or five separate subscriptions. They need client records, project delivery, billable hours and invoicing in one place, and they care about hosting it themselves so the client data stays on their own server.

What's the story behind your product?

Task Session's answer:

Task Session came out of the mess of running agency work across too many tools.

Leads sat in one CRM, projects in a second app, hours in a third, invoices in a spreadsheet, and client files were scattered across email. Every status update meant checking four places, and every invoice meant reconstructing the month from memory. The tools were fine on their own - the gaps between them were the problem.

So we built the workflow we actually wanted: contact to project to timesheet to invoice, in one system, running on our own server. We used it day to day for our own clients first, and it worked well enough that we packaged it up for other agencies and freelancers dealing with the same pile of disconnected apps.

Why should a person choose your product over its competitors?

Task Session's answer:

Three reasons: scope, ownership and cost.

Scope: CRM, projects, tasks, time tracking, attendance, invoicing, a client portal, chat and file management ship together. A small agency does not have to stitch four or five subscriptions into one workflow and then keep them in sync.

Ownership: Task Session is self-hosted, so your client list, project history and invoices sit on infrastructure you control. That matters when you are holding other people's data.

Cost: it is not a per-seat monthly bill that grows every time you hire, so adding a designer or an assistant does not add another recurring line item across three tools.

The trade-off is honest. If you want a hosted enterprise suite with a large app marketplace, a bigger platform will suit you better. Task Session is for teams that want the whole client workflow in one place, on their own server.

Which are the primary technologies used for building your product?

Task Session's answer:

Task Session is a self-hosted web application built with PHP on the Laravel framework, with MySQL for data storage. The interface is standard HTML, CSS and JavaScript, responsive across desktop and mobile browsers.

The stack is deliberate: it runs on ordinary LAMP-style shared or VPS hosting, with no containers, managed services or special infrastructure required. Most agencies already have hosting that runs PHP and MySQL, so installing Task Session on their own server is straightforward.

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Five Stars and Task Session

Five Stars Reviews

16 Best Customer Loyalty Software of 2024: Compared
Local businesses have long struggled to compete with massive conglomerates like Walmart and Target. However, Five Stars has placed a focus on helping these smaller competitors thrive with a powerful marketing program that allows you to create a unique rewards program, build and manage a customer database, and automate customer connections.
Source: thecxlead.com
Increase Retention and Repeat Sales with an Online Loyalty Program
Five Stars is a program that has some nice features, including a free Customer Touchscreen so you can sign customers up for your program without a hassle. The software works on computers and mobile devices. It also offers options to send emails and text messages to people in the program. The software makes it easy to track customer purchases and buying behavior so you can...

Task Session Reviews

We have no reviews of Task Session yet.
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Belly - Belly Official Pledgemusic Campaign Poster. December 8, 2017 December 8, 2017.

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