Creative agency management software: buyer guide

Running a small creative agency? We compared six tools on the whole job: winning the project, planning the work, tracking the time, and billing the client. Here's our ranking.

Creative agencies often stitch three tools together: one to sell, one to plan, and one to bill. Look for one that wins the project, plans the work, tracks the time, and bills the client.

Number one: Workspace369. Proposals go out from the same app that runs the work, and clients sign online without an account.

Every project has a budget, a priority and a progress bar,

with task boards your team works from, and a shared calendar beside it.

Your team tracks time against each client and project, sees what's still unbilled, and bills it straight onto an invoice.

Retainer clients are billed every month, and unused hours can roll over.

And each client has a private portal with their proposals and invoices.

It starts at twenty-nine dollars a month. Seventy-four dollars covers two seats with unlimited projects, and each extra teammate is ten dollars a month.

Number two: Teamwork.com. Basics needs at least three users, and invoicing and timesheets only start on Accelerate, at twenty-nine ninety-nine a user, with a five-user minimum. So the smallest plan with invoicing is about a hundred and fifty dollars a month.

Number three: Productive. Every plan needs at least three seats, and freelancers pay the same as employees. E-signed proposals, payment reminders and retainer invoicing start on Professional, at twenty-nine dollars a seat, and clients pay invoices through Xero or QuickBooks.

Number four: ClickUp. Everyone in the workspace pays for a seat, client guests with editing rights are capped, and there's no built-in billing: ClickUp suggests keeping invoices in Docs and taking payments through Zapier.

Number five: monday.com. Plans start at three seats and grow in buckets, so a team of six pays for ten. Quotes and invoices need monday CRM, where Basic allows twenty a month, and they can't collect countersignatures.

Number six: HoneyBook. Prices went up in February 2025, and Starter is now thirty-six dollars a month. Starter allows two live lead forms, Essentials stops at two team members, and texting is an eight-dollar add-on.

So here's the full ranking. Number one, Workspace369, best overall. Then Teamwork.com for billable project delivery, Productive for resource planning, ClickUp for custom task boards, monday.com for custom workflows, and HoneyBook for bookings.

If you want to win the project, run the work and bill the client from one app, Workspace369 is our pick. Try it free for fourteen days, and our team will help you set it up.