Agency software decisions get made on the wrong number. Everyone compares per-seat prices for the internal team, picks the cheapest, and then discovers what happens when 25 clients need access.
The guest billing models differ so sharply that they reverse the ranking entirely. Trello, the cheapest tool in this category by seat price, becomes the most expensive agency tool here. Asana, the most expensive by seat price, becomes the cheapest. That is not a rounding difference — it is roughly three times the annual bill.
Quick verdict
The number that actually decides it
Here is the same agency — ten staff, 25 client contacts who need to comment, upload, and approve — priced on each tool at the tier that supports client collaboration.
| Tool | How guests are billed | Seats you pay for | Monthly |
|---|---|---|---|
| Asana Starter | Free outside your email domain | 10 | $110 |
| ClickUp Business | 10 guest seats + 5 per extra member | 10 (55 guests allowed) | $120 |
| monday.com Standard | 3 free, then 4 guests per seat | 10 + ~7 | $204 |
| Trello Premium | Multi-board guests billed as members | 35 | $350 |
Three things in that table are worth stating plainly.
Trello’s rule is the sharp one. A single-board guest is free and unlimited. The moment that person is invited to a second board — a new campaign, a second brand, a retainer plus a project — they become a multi-board guest and bill at the full member rate. Agencies cross that line constantly, and it converts the cheapest tool in the category into the most expensive.
ClickUp’s guest allowance scales with your team, which mostly saves you. Business gives ten guest seats for your first paid member plus five for each additional one, so ten staff carry 55 guest seats. On Unlimited at $7 the allowance is five plus two per member — 23 seats for the same team, which is not enough for this example. An agency on ClickUp is on Business at $12 in practice, not $7.
Asana’s rule has a trapdoor. Guests are free only if their email is outside your domain, and it requires an Organization tied to a company domain. Give a long-term contractor an address on your domain and you have just converted a free guest into a billable seat.
One more distinction worth keeping straight: monday.com allows unlimited free viewers on every plan, but viewers are strictly read-only. If your clients only watch, monday.com is free for all of them. If they approve, comment, or upload, they are guests and they cost.
Asana: the cheapest agency tool, counter-intuitively
Asana
A structured work management platform built around projects, tasks, timelines, and reporting for teams that want a clear process.
- Best for
- Agencies whose cost is driven by the number of client logins rather than hours
- Pricing
- Free for up to 2 users; paid plans from $10.99/user/mo billed annually ($13.49 monthly)
For an agency carrying dozens of client contacts, the free-external-guest rule is worth more than every other consideration on this page combined. Twenty-five clients cost nothing. Fifty cost nothing.
The rest of the fit is good without being remarkable. Dependencies and timeline from Starter handle campaign sequencing. Approvals exist, though on Advanced. Automation rules are uncapped, which suits the repetitive intake-and-handoff shape of agency work. And it stays fast as the workspace grows, which matters when you are carrying years of archived client projects.
Two costs. The five-seat blocks above five users apply to your staff, so eleven employees pay for fifteen. And time tracking sits on Advanced at $24.99 — more than double Starter — although it can be bought as an add-on to Starter, which is the cheaper route if hours are your only gap.
Pros
- Unlimited free guests outside your email domain — the decisive agency advantage
- Dependencies, timeline, and uncapped automation rules from $10.99
- Stays responsive with years of archived client work
- Enforced single ownership, which suits accountable client deliverables
Cons
- Requires an Organization, and same-domain contractors become billable
- Five-seat blocks above five users apply to internal staff
- Native time tracking sits on Advanced at $24.99 unless you buy the Starter add-on
- No profitability or retainer tracking
ClickUp: the answer when the problem is margin
ClickUp
An all-in-one workspace combining tasks, docs, dashboards, goals, and automation, aimed at teams that want to consolidate tools.
- Best for
- Agencies that lose money on scope creep and need hours against budget in the same tool
- Pricing
- Free plan; paid plans from $7/user/mo billed annually ($10 monthly)
If your agency’s problem is not client access but knowing which accounts are actually profitable, ClickUp is the better pick — and the gap is large.
Native time tracking is included from $7, against Asana’s $24.99 tier. That single difference is usually worth more than the seat price, because the alternative is a separate time tracking subscription plus a monthly reconciliation nobody enjoys. Custom fields on tasks can carry rates, and Business dashboards at $12 will aggregate logged time by client, which is the closest thing to a profitability view available in this category without leaving it.
Guest capacity on Business is generous enough for most agencies, as the table shows. The permanent costs are the ones ClickUp always carries: around three weeks of setup, a named owner maintaining the structure, and persistent complaints about speed in large workspaces — the last of which is a genuine consideration for an agency that never deletes a client project.
monday.com: when clients only need to watch
monday.com
A visual work platform built on colour-coded boards, with strong dashboards and automation for teams that manage work by status at a glance.
- Best for
- Agencies whose clients want a status board rather than a place to work
- Pricing
- Free for up to 2 seats; paid plans from $9/seat/mo billed annually with a 3-seat minimum
There is one agency shape where monday.com is clearly the right answer: many clients, none of whom edit anything.
Unlimited free viewers on every plan means you can give fifty stakeholders a live status board at no cost, and the boards are legible enough that clients actually read them without a walkthrough. For agencies whose main client friction is “where are we with this,” that solves the problem outright.
It gets expensive the moment clients participate. Editing guests bill at four per seat after the first three, which is how the example above reaches $204. Time tracking requires Pro at $19, and Standard’s 250 automation actions a month will not survive agency intake workflows.
Trello: read the guest rule before you commit
Trello
A Kanban board tool built around cards and lists, designed to be usable within minutes rather than configured.
- Best for
- Very small agencies where each client touches exactly one board
- Pricing
- Free plan (10 boards per Workspace); paid plans from $5/user/mo billed annually ($6 monthly)
Trello works well for a two or three person studio where each client has one board and stays on it. Single-board guests are free without limit, the boards need no explanation, and Standard is $5.
The multi-board rule is what makes it unsuitable at scale, and it is easy to trip without noticing — a client added to a second board this quarter quietly becomes a billable member. Combined with no dependencies at any tier and reporting that requires third-party Power-Ups, Trello runs out for agency use earlier than for almost any other audience. Trello alternatives covers the move.
Notion: for the deliverable, not the operation
Notion
A connected workspace for documents, wikis, and databases, used for project tracking by teams that write as much as they task-manage.
- Best for
- Content, research, and strategy agencies whose output is documents
- Pricing
- Free plan; Plus $10/member/mo and Business $20/member/mo billed annually
If what you hand clients is writing — strategy decks, research, editorial — Notion holds the work and the deliverable in the same place, and client-facing pages can be shared publicly without a seat.
It is not an agency operations tool. No time tracking, no dependencies worth the name, no reporting, and measurable slowdown past roughly 5,000 records. Most agencies that use Notion well pair it with something else rather than running on it.
When to leave this category entirely
Worth saying directly, because it is the honest answer for a good number of agencies: none of the tools on this page track profitability.
They track tasks and, in ClickUp’s case, hours. None of them connect logged hours to billable rates, retainer balances, budget burn, and invoicing in one loop. Agencies do that reconciliation in a spreadsheet, and the spreadsheet is where the margin leaks.
Purpose-built alternatives exist and are worth evaluating past roughly fifteen people or when retainers become the main revenue model. Teamwork is built explicitly around agency billing and includes free client users. Productive and Scoro connect project delivery to profitability directly. Accelo and Kantata cover the same ground for professional services more broadly.
We have no commercial relationship with any of them and do not rate them here. They cost more per seat than everything above, and for an agency losing several points of margin to untracked scope, that is not the relevant comparison.
Which should you pick
Many client logins, clients who participate. Asana at $10.99. Free external guests make it the cheapest option at scale despite the highest seat price.
Margin is the problem, not access. ClickUp Business at $12, for time tracking against budget in the same tool as the work.
Clients only watch. monday.com at $12, with unlimited free viewers.
Two or three people, one board per client. Trello Standard at $5 — and check the multi-board rule before you grow.
Retainers are most of your revenue. Look outside this category at Teamwork or Productive. The seat price will be higher and the reconciliation will stop leaking.
If you are a solo operator rather than an agency, best project management software for freelancers is the closer fit — the client-seat maths above does not apply when you are the only seat. If most of your team is distributed, remote teams covers the async side. And ClickUp vs Asana works through the two front-runners here in detail.
Compare Asana plansPricing and guest rules verified in September 2026 against the official pages for Asana, ClickUp, monday.com, Trello, and Notion. Guest billing was checked against Asana’s guest FAQ, ClickUp’s user role limits, monday.com’s guest pricing documentation, and Atlassian’s multi-board guest documentation. Prices are USD at annual billing and may change.