George Colliermonday.com is a good task board. Where service businesses run into trouble is everything around the tasks: budgets, timesheets, invoices and client updates. Those usually end up in separate tools and spreadsheets, with someone copying between them. So the right alternative depends on whether you need a better task board or one system for the whole job.
For a cheaper or simpler task board, ClickUp and Asana are the main alternatives. If you run client work and want budgets and timesheets alongside tasks, Teamwork.com and Productive are built for agencies and services firms.
If projects need to connect to your quotes, timesheets, invoices and client portal in one place, a custom project system is usually the better fit, especially past about 20 staff.
Why businesses leave monday.com
At the time of writing, monday.com work management is $9 a seat a month for Basic, $12 for Standard and $19 for Pro on annual billing, with a minimum of three seats. Time tracking is only on Pro, so a 25-person team that wants to log time pays about $475 a month, and still needs another tool for budgets and invoicing.
The bigger reason is what monday doesn't hold. A project in a services business has a budget, hours logged against it, invoices going out and a client asking how it's going. When each of those lives in a different tool, nobody can see which projects are making money until the month is over.
1. Custom project software from Not Quite Unicorns
We build and run project management software that holds tasks, budgets, timesheets, invoices and client updates together, connected to Xero or QuickBooks. You can see how each project is tracking against budget while there's still time to do something about it.
- Best for
- 20+ staff where projects drive billing
- Pricing
- A flat monthly price with no seat fees
- Live in
- 30 days
- Not ideal for
- Teams that only need a shared task list
2. ClickUp
ClickUp tries to do everything: tasks, docs, goals, whiteboards, chat and time tracking, with AI built into every plan. It's cheaper than monday.com per seat and there's a free plan. The flip side is that it's easy to build a workspace nobody can find anything in, so it needs someone to own the setup.
- Best for
- Teams that want one cheap tool for tasks and docs
- Pricing
- Free plan, then Core $8 and Business $17 a user a month, billed annually
- Live in
- Days
- Not ideal for
- Teams that want something simple out of the box
3. Asana
Asana is the most polished of the general task tools and the easiest to get a whole team using. It's strong on workflows, approvals and reporting across projects. Like monday.com, it doesn't do budgets or invoicing.
- Best for
- Teams that want a clean, easy task tool
- Pricing
- Free for 2 users, then Starter $10.99 and Advanced $24.99 a user a month, billed annually
- Live in
- Days
- Not ideal for
- Client work that needs budgets and billing
4. Teamwork.com
Teamwork.com is built for agencies and client work. Alongside tasks, it has time tracking, budgets, profitability reports and a way to let clients see their own projects. If monday.com feels like it was made for internal teams, this is the closest swap made for client work.
- Best for
- Agencies managing client projects and budgets
- Pricing
- Free for 5 users, then Basics $9.99 (3 seat minimum) and Accelerate $24.99 (5 seat minimum), billed annually
- Live in
- Days to weeks
- Not ideal for
- Work that isn't organised around client projects
5. Productive
Productive is aimed at agencies that care about margins. It combines projects, time tracking, budgets, resource planning and invoicing, so you can see profit per project and per client. It's more to learn than monday.com, and it pays off most for agencies billing by time.
- Best for
- Agencies billing by time that want profit per project
- Pricing
- From about $9 a user a month, with Professional around $24, billed annually
- Live in
- Weeks
- Not ideal for
- Teams that don't bill by time
| Compared on | Custom | ClickUp | Asana | Teamwork.com | Productive |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Flat monthly | Per user | Per user | Per user, seat minimums | Per user |
| Budgets and billing | Built in, with Xero | No | No | Budgets | Budgets and invoicing |
| Client access | Your own portal | Guests | Guests | Client view | Client access |
| Changes | We release weekly | You configure it | You configure it | You configure it | You configure it |
| Best for | 20+ staff, projects drive billing | Cheap all-in-one | Clean task management | Agencies | Agencies billing by time |
How to choose
Look at where your project managers spend their time. If it's mostly in the task board, pick the one your team likes using: ClickUp if price matters, Asana if simplicity does. If it's in spreadsheets working out budgets, chasing timesheets and building client updates, try Teamwork.com or Productive first. If those still leave you copying data into Xero and a separate portal, that's the point where custom project software pays for itself.
Gold Bubble Partner