Active Admin Alternative: how does Avo compare to Active Admin?

Avo lets you build beautiful and performant admin panels with every feature you need to develop your product efficiently. Active Admin is one of the most used admin libraries but it comes with it's shortcomings.

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Avo vs. Active Admin: a comparison

Active Admin and Avo are admin panel frameworks built on top of Ruby on Rails designed to let you build applications faster. But they are definitely not the same in features and user experience. Here's a quick comparison to help you decide which one is best suited for your next project.

		Active Admin
Manage resources through an auto-generated admin panel Generate admin panels from the resources your application has without the need to write repetitive CRUD related code.
Build and customize your admin panel using a DSL You can configure how your admin panel works and looks using a DSL.
You own your data Your admin panel is built around your application's data. No need for hosting your applications data on a third party's cloud.
Customization is easy and straightforward You can make your admin panel adapt to your needs without fighting with configuration or DSL hell.
A field for every need Abundant data input and presentation fields are provided out of the box by the framework.
The library is well documented The library has extensive and up-to-date documentation that's easily searchable for its past and present features.
A pleasant UI without extra work A good visual experience is achieved without the need to do any extra work, even if your team doesn't have a dedicated designer or budget for admin design work.
Constantly improved and updated Work towards improvements and bugfixes is constantly done.
Data visualization features Minimal work is needed to add data visualization features like charts, cards and dashboards.	Avo Pro
No library specific third-party code needed for basic features The library provides everything you need to build an admin panel without the need to install library specific third-party dependencies.
Security as a priority The library receives periodic security audits to ensure the code is secure and vulnerabilities are taken care of.
Migrating out is straightforward The ability to gradually migrate out of the admin library in order to replace some parts of it with your own code.
Mobile ready Access your business from anywhere using mobile devices without having a degraded experience or carrying your laptop to some uncomfortable places.

Avo in action

See for yourself what you can do with Avo and how it can help you become way more productive.

Join us in the process of building a booking app in 1 hour using nothing but Rails and Avo.

Our customers love Avo

A (HUGE!) side benefit we've seen in implementing Avo has been surfacing of platform issues - missing associations, opportunities for delegators and collaborators, etc. Our underlying models and interactions have become much more robust as we've implemented Avo as we can quickly identify relationships and optimizations without doing full-fledged, user-facing feature work.

David Lormor

CTO, greenhats GmbH

I needed something snappy and reliable that would help me focus on the truly unique aspects of my application rather than the boilerplate.

Avo gave me exactly what I was looking for in the moment, and somehow anticipated the features I'd need later on down the line.

Caleb Harrison

Ruby and Crystal Developer

Data security has always been an important consideration for us, so Avo gives us peace of mind integrating with our in-house authentication system.

Santhana Karthikeyan

Developer, Cybrilla & Fintech Primitives

You'll need to invest time in the docs, but this will leave you implementing features you haven't thought of because they are both straightforward to implement and beneficial to the user.

The Avo team has their finger on the pulse and has built a modern reactive solution with great support and regular updates. There is much value in here..

David Teren

Rails developer

Avo is legit. I like the licensing scheme. Open-source community or paid for power users. Very accessible. I love the quick release cycle. Very active! Docs and videos are helpful and very easy to read. Adrian and his group have done a superb job getting the word out in the Rails community. I look forward to seeing its success in the future. Excellent product!!!

Graham Schmidt

Software Engineer

Avo has allowed us to develop and release apps rapidly even with very few developers working on them. We can focus our efforts on domain logic and custom design where it really matters. Every other Rails CMS is difficult to style or scale or add custom fields, but Avo has been a dream throughout. It's been a game-changer for us.

Iain Beeston

CTO, Thrivve Partners

Avo vs. Active Admin: which one is better for me?

Yes, we're biased. We build Avo everyday with the goal to be the best admin framework for Ruby on Rails.

But we don't want to trick you into making the wrong decision. So, here's an honest answer:

Active Admin and Avo are both admin frameworks that strive for the same thing: help you build better admin panels, faster by cutting repetitive tasks like creating the same index table or edit form for every resource — boring right?

However, Avo and Active Admin are tools created in different eras and while Active Admin is very popular Avo proves to better serve the current state of Rails apps.

We truly respect what Active Admin did to push admin libraries in the Rails ecosystem forward and we thank them for their efforts in doing so.

Nonetheless, we built Avo with the goal of improving what our predecessors did and we think we're doing a good job so far.

Having said this, let us start by telling you why Active Admin, and admin frameworks in general can be a drag in the long run:

Admin library experiences usually start great but end up being frustrating

It's not only an Active Admin issue, it also happens to other alternatives like Rails Admin: you gain a lot of initial momentum that gets diluted as your use case slightly deviates from the defaults or customization needs arise.

At that point, it feels like you're fighting against the library instead of working with it.

The issues arise mostly because you end up writing more library-specific code than Rails and as you enjoyed the initial productivity gains, you didn't realize that migrating out of the library gets more difficult with time because of the way they're designed.

This situation is specially bad with Active Admin, it brings an opinionated way to do things and that can become a burden where your use cases deviates from the documented way of doing stuff or when you need heavy customization.

We know the feeling and that's why Avo comes with a lot of ways to customize the admin experience and even ways to progressively eject from Avo when you feel the need for it.

Plus, we're also working on features that can help our user further customize their experience and maximize their productivity.

Active Admin limitations

An article index view for the Active Admin library. It shows a navigation bar on the top and a table showing a list of articles with a filter sidebar.

With almost 13 years since its initial release, Active Admin is one of the most popular admin libraries for Rails.

When you first start using it, it feels like you have super-powers: you are more productive and you can get features going way faster than you thought you could.

But, it has it's limitations. Those show up as soon as you need to customize your UI, include fields that don't come by default with the library or something that deviates from the happy path.

You're suddenly cornered by the library and it starts to feel like you have to pay for your initial wins.

So let's walk through some of the issues Active Admin has:

A very outdated UI: Active Admins UI is one of its weak points. It was a perfectly fine when it came out, products looked like that because of browsers and CSS limitations. But nowadays users expect better experiences, even for admin panels or parts of an application that doesn't get touched by customers. Beyond any subjective appreciations, it's not mobile ready and the design choices difficult the user experience because some cognitive load is required to understand what does what.
Sub-par documentation: don't get us wrong. Active Admin is well documented if you consider resources like Stack Overflow or blogs. However, because of the librarie's age, some of those resources are outdated and naturally hard to find. Their official documentation is also lacking because there are a lot of undocumented use cases so, even though you will probably end up finding what you need, you will probably waste some time in the process.
Limited field options: Active Admin comes with a very limited set of form fields. Even though they can help you get started you will definitely be reaching out for more fields sooner than later. With Active Admin your best option is installing an outdated dependency to handle those needs for you which is not very desirable. You can create custom fields if you want but even creating those is not as straightforward as it should be.
A DSL for everything: DSLs are a part Rails and Ruby in general. However, they do carry a cognitive load and can become a nightmare if abused. Active Admin uses a DSL for configuration, customization and even for defining views. There's nothing wrong with defining views using a DSL, it's just that you're probably used to define views using HTML partials or even libraries like ViewComponent. This means that you will probably need to learn how the specific DSL works and being ok with the fact that migrating out of it is not an easy task.
Customization is hard: the initial development gains can be easily outset by the time you waste customizing Active Admin to fit your needs. Making Active Admin work according to your needs can be difficult and it's one of its most obvious disadvantages.
Modest development and improvements: Active Admin receives regular updates and maintainance. However, they're not frequently adding new features and new issues are not being solved as quickly as possible. The library is stable but could use some more frequent releases. Generally speaking, it's a stable library so new releases are not expected.
Dependent on outdated third party code for core features: as it usually happens with admin libraries, Active Admin depends on third-party code to offer features that come out of the box. Relying on dependencies is not necessarily bad but can become an issue with time, especially if the third-party code is not properly maintained or abandoned altogether.

Avo solves most of Active Admin's issues

The demo page for the Avo Articles page. It showcases a neat grid view for a list of articles.

Avo gives you the same initial productivity gains you get from libraries like Active Admin.

Except you get to keep them as your project advances because customization — which is usually the culprit of most headaches with admin frameworks — is a first class citizen with Avo.

You can actually be more productive with Avo from day one because it gives you a great variety of features that can help you save time as soon as you start building your product using it.

Before building Avo, we probably built admin panels in the hundreds. We know exactly what are the pain points that arise with time and we work hard every day to make Avo a solution to those pain points.

So, let's take a look at what makes Avo a good Active Admin alternative:

A wealth of fields: Avo comes with more than 30 fields out of the box. They allow you to meet the needs of most Rails apps without resorting to customization. You're covered if you need: text, WYSIWYG editors, password, money, number, boolean, progress, datetime, select, taglist, key value pair, file upload, and many more.
Built with modern Rails tooling: Avo is built using Hotwire, StimulusJS, ViewComponent and Tailwind as a styling library. These technology choices are not casual, using the tools that most Rails developers use and love is what makes Avo valuable: you can customize it using what you already know. This is what makes Avo — and Rails — powerful: embracing the happy path instead of deviating from it.
Excellent documentation: We work hard to make our documentation clear and easily consumable. You don't need to resort to third-party documentation like blogs or Stack Overflow to solve your issues as our documentation is thorough and user centric.
Constant improvements: You can rest assured knowing that Avo is constantly improving. Our release cycle is tight and frequent, and we are always listening to user feedback to improve what isn't working as expected or to add new features required by real users or paying customers.
No need for third party admin-specific dependencies: You won't be needing extensions to get basic features like a WYSIWYG editor or a map view, those come for free with Avo. The fact that we get to work on Avo full time allows us to build more features for you without depending on code that might or not be maintained in the medium term.

Avo's UI is what makes us stand out

Screenshot of Avo's demo application showing the cities index. It showcases a list of cities with name, population, capital status and some admin actions. On top of them, there'sa Mapbox instance showing their pinned locations

Admin panel UI's should be an after thought right? After all, who cares what an admin panel looks like.

Even if that's what you personally think about admin panels, truth is that users expect more and more from their interactions with software nowadays.

Long gone are the days where barely decent user experiences were enough for most users since better alternatives were just not available.

That's why Avo was built from day one with great care for details and user experience in mind.

Avo is not a mere database browser or a slightly better Rails scaffold generator.

It's an integral tool built with the goal of increasing dev productivity while also being a pleasant experience for end users.

With Avo there's no need to pay for a designer to make your admin panel look good, we sweat on the little details so you don't have to.

Can I be more productive with Avo than with Active Admin?

Yes you can, absolutely.

At first, you can be more productive with Avo since you get more features right from the start. You will find that having more than 30 fields is a huge productivity boost for almost any Rails project you start.

As time goes by you will also find that Avo helps you develop faster because of the plethora of customization features and escape hatches we offer.

Avo doesn't take over every aspect of your admin panel if you don't want to. You can customize it using the tools you already know and avoid fighting against its DSL or documentation.

Having said this, there are some use cases where you can be as productive with Avo or with Active Admin and those are mostly when you don't need a lot of features for your admin panel or maybe you have a very content-centric website which generally don't require that much customization in the long term.

For almost every other use case, you're probably better off using Avo than Active Admin.

The elephant in the room: why is Avo a paid product?

You're probably wondering why would anyone pay for an admin framework like Avo if there are other alternatives like Administrate, Rails Admin or even Active Admin itself right?

Well, first of all: Avo is a paid product but it has a generous Community tier that has like 70% of the features that the paid alternatives have.

You can absolutely start building your product with it and switch to our paid plans whenever you feel they can improve your development flow.

Nevertheless, Avo being a paid product is actually what allows us to improve it and make it better for paying users and free users alike.

Actually, the amount of money you can save from the productivity gains that Avo gives you is just a fraction of what you pay for any of our licenses.

Even if you build on top of existing Rails admin frameworks, Avo saves you a lot of time to let you focus on adding value to your product instead of writing yet another select component or search feature.

But don't take our word on it, give Avo a try by checking our demo application or installing it for your next project and see for yourself how it can positively affect your development flow.

Why choose Avo over Active Admin?

Some of the most common reasons why Rails developers choose Avo to build admin solutions over Active Admin.

It lets you focus on the right thing

Avo lets you focus on building your admin solutions instead of getting in the way when customization inevitably becomes necessary. You can use the tools you already know to improve on what Avo gives you out of the box to quickly build your admin panels for the long run.

Delightful user experience

Avo comes with a great user interface out of the box. It's visually pleasant and gets out of your way. It's mobile friendly, easily customizable and includes goodies like charts, customizable cards, friendly navigation, branding and menu editing abilities, among other niceties.

Everything you need is built-in

Avo gives you a lot of features from the get go without depending on unmaintained third-party code. It comes with more than 30 type of fields to help you build quickly without the need to install outdated code. Plus, adding more fields is very straight-forward.

Excellent documentation

Documentation is no second class citizen. We're constantly improving Avo while at the time documenting everything to save you time and let you build instead of wasting time Googling or deep diving our repository to find answers to your questions.

Build your next admin experience with Avo

Become more productive, reduce development costs using Avo and the tools you already know for your next project.

Start building with Avo today

Avo dashboard showcasing data visualizations through area charts, scatterplot, bar chart, pie charts, custom cards, and others.

Questions and answers

Still having trouble deciding between Avo and Active Admin? Don't worry, we've prepared this FAQ section to help you make a better decision.

Why should I choose Avo over Active Admin?

Avo and Active Admin can help you build applications faster by allowing you to build admin panels using a DSL that avert you from writing the same CRUD code over and over again. However, Avo is a modern Active Admin alterantive that offer you more features out the box while ensuring you a better admin experience for every new Rails project you want to start.

Will Avo make me more productive than Active Admin?

Short answer is a resounding yes. When starting out, you could argue that the same dev speed could be achieved but Active Admin will slow you over time because of customization difficulty.

However, Avo can actually speed you up from the get go: it offers many features that Active Admin doesn't or doesn't to the extent Avo does: more than 30 type of fields, data viz features like dashboard, charts widgets and metrics, ease of customization using familiar tools like Stimulus, Tailwind and ViewComponent, WYSIWYG editor, simple file uploads, a great user interface and experience, mobile responsiveness, and much more.

Isn't the DSL one of Active Admin's weaknesses? Why is Avo using a DSL too?

Yes, both Avo and Active Admin use a DSL for configuration. However, Avo uses the DSL as a means to and end while Active Admin centers almost every configuration around a DSL. This means that customizing a controller action, generating a dashboard or a form is all donde on the same file with Active Admin.

Avo offers more granular customization options like separate action, controller, view files so you don't need to use a DSL for every bit of configuration.

My experience with library frameworks is not positive, what makes Avo better than the alternatives?

We know the issues that can arise from using an admin framework like Active Admin over time. The initial productivity gains get diluted by wasting time to customize your admin panel to your needs.

That's why Avo provides multiple escape hatches that allow you to use your own code for parts of your admin panel that you wish to customize. You can customize fields, views, components, scripts, generate custom resource tools to complement existing Avo views, among other options. You can start using these hatches as soon as you need them and still use the parts of Avo that fit your needs.

Why is Avo a subscription?

Avo is an ever-green product that is constantly adding features and improvements with every release. We have a very generous community tier that can help you get very far building an admin panel, especially if you're starting out. However, Avo being a paid product means that it's going to be maintained and that new features will be added as needed.

If you're on a tight budget or just starting out with a project, dont't hesitate to try our free Community tier and see how Avo makes you more productive and easily justifies its price by the amount of time you can save by using it.

Can I test Avo before I commit it to my codebase?

Of course, besides checking our documentation, you can access the demo application to see if Avo is the right fit for you. Plus, if you have an existing Rails application with a custom made admin panel or you're using another library, you can always progressively integrate Avo into your app.