Asana alternatives for agencies: four tools rated on client access, time tracking and pipeline

Where Asana falls short for agency work

Asana's pricing page, as of October 2026, lists Personal (free), Starter at $10.99 per user per month billed yearly ($13.49 monthly), Advanced at $24.99 ($30.49 monthly), and Enterprise on request. Three details matter for an agency.

The free plan is now two people. Asana's pricing page shows Personal at a maximum of 2 users. Many guides still quote 10 or 15; those figures describe the plan before it was cut, and the vendor page is the one to trust. An agency cannot trial Asana with the whole team for free any more.

Seats come in blocks. Up to 5 users you add one seat at a time. From 6 to 30 you add 5 at a time. A team of 8 pays for 10, which turns $10.99 into about $13.74 a head on Starter.

Clients are fine, hours and deals are not. Starter and above include unlimited free guests, so clients can see and comment on work without a licence. That part is good. But estimated-versus-actual time is an Advanced feature, timesheets and budgets are a paid add-on with no public price, and there is no CRM. An agency on Asana Starter usually runs Harvest or Toggl for hours and HubSpot or a spreadsheet for deals. That is three tools and three bills for one client relationship.

If those gaps do not bother you, stay on Asana. If they do, the alternatives below each close some of them.

The three things an agency tool has to do

We run a small software agency, and the same three questions come up every week. They are the scoring criteria here.

1. Client-facing pages. Can a client see their project, the latest update and the files, and approve a deliverable, without a paid seat and without seeing other clients?
2. Time tracking. Is there a native timer and timesheet, can time be marked billable, and does it reach an invoice without an export?
3. A pipeline. Does the tool know which deal a project came from, who the contacts are and what the client is worth, or does that live elsewhere?

Each tool gets 0 (missing), 1 (partial or paid add-on) or 2 (built in) per criterion.

Asana alternatives for agencies compared (October 2026)

Atrix is our product, so treat its row as the vendor's own score and check it in the trial. The limits are below.

What a real agency month costs: 8 staff and 4 client contacts

A typical small agency: eight people on staff, four client contacts who need to look in once a week. Monthly cost, billed yearly where the vendor offers it, October 2026.

Two things stand out. ClickUp and Teamwork Basics are the cheapest per-seat options, and both still leave you without a pipeline. And Atrix at 8 seats sits in the gap between its two plans, so after 31 December it costs more than Teamwork Basics or ClickUp; it only comes out ahead once you count the CRM and time tool you would otherwise buy. Run your own numbers in the stack cost calculator.

Teamwork: the agency specialist, strongest on billing

Teamwork was built for client services, and it shows. Client users are free and unlimited (Teamwork's licence documentation limits each one to five active projects). Basics, at $9.99 per user per month billed yearly with a 3-seat minimum, tracks billable time. Accelerate, at $24.99 with a 5-seat minimum, adds time budgets, retainers and invoices generated from logged time. The free plan covers 5 users and 5 projects.

Teamwork's AI agents (Scout and Flo on Basics, Remi for resourcing on Accelerate) are included on paid plans for an introductory period; Teamwork says usage-based AI credits start in November 2026, so budget for that.

What it lacks: a sales pipeline. Deals still live in a CRM, and the handover from "won" to "project" is a manual step or a Zapier zap. Choose Teamwork if you bill hourly against retainers and your sales process is simple.

ClickUp: the most features per seat

ClickUp Core is $9 per user per month billed yearly (shown against a regular $12) and includes native time tracking. Business, at $17, adds timesheets. Timesheet approvals arrive on Enterprise. View-only guests are unlimited on paid plans, which covers clients who only need to look; guests who edit are capped by plan.

ClickUp has CRM templates rather than a CRM product: a list with deal stages works, but it has no contact records linked across projects in the way a real CRM does. AI runs on pooled credits (1,000 per user per month on Core, extra at $10 per 10,000). Choose ClickUp if the team likes configuring its own workflows and you are happy to keep sales elsewhere.

Basecamp: flat price, clients inside the project

Basecamp prices by headcount band, not per seat: Free (1 project, 3 users), Freelancer $29 a month (5 users), Pro $79 (10), Pro Plus $99 (15), Pro Unlimited $199 a month billed yearly ($329 monthly). Every person counts toward the cap, clients and contractors included, except on Pro Unlimited.

Clients work inside the same project as your team, and each item is marked either team-only or visible to the client, which is the simplest client model on this list. Basecamp's pricing page lists time tracking on Pro and up (its Freelancer text contradicts its own feature list, so check). There is no invoicing and no pipeline. Basecamp also lists "bring your own AI agents" and MCP connectors for ChatGPT and Claude on every plan. Choose Basecamp if you want calm, fixed costs and your clients mostly read and reply.

Atrix: pipeline, portal and hours on one flat plan

Atrix is the tool we build and run our own agency on, so weigh this section accordingly. It is an all-in-one workspace for teams of 2 to 15.

• Client portal. Each client is a product. You invite client contacts as guests, and a guest sees only the projects they are added to. Guests do not take a seat. A manager chooses, per project, what the portal shows: progress, tasks (none, visible ones or all), updates, files and approvals of deliverables, milestones or documents. Everything is off until you turn it on.
• Time. A timer, timesheets with approvals, and a billable flag on each entry. Invoices and quotes can be built from logged time, behind a permission so not everyone sees the figures.
• Pipeline. Companies, contacts and a five-stage pipeline, with deal values gated by permission. When a deal is won, the client's company and contacts are already on the record the project uses.
• Everything else in the plan. Boards, backlog, timeline, cycles, docs with live co-editing, team chat, a calendar with public booking links, and an AI agent whose Develop run turns a brief into requirements and planned issues.

Limits, plainly: there is no free plan (7-day trial, card required). Builder is $39 a month for 5 seats and Studio $149 for 15, with 20% off yearly; above 15 people, Atrix is not the right tool. There are no story points or resource-capacity planning, and reporting is not a custom report builder. Teamwork's retainer and budget tooling is deeper. The Atrix for agencies page shows how a client is set up, and the CRM feature page lists what the pipeline covers.

How to choose your Asana alternative

1. List your client contacts. If clients need to approve work, rule out any tool that charges them a seat.
2. Decide where hours go. If invoices come from logged time, you need Teamwork Accelerate or Atrix; ClickUp and Basecamp stop at tracking.
3. Count the tools you pay for today. Add up Asana, the time tracker and the CRM. Compare that total, not seat price against seat price.
4. Price your real headcount. Asana's 5-seat blocks and Basecamp's bands both jump at specific sizes. Check where your next hire lands.
5. Run one live client for two weeks. Import one project, invite one friendly client, log real hours. The tool still updated on day ten is the one to buy.

For a deeper side-by-side, see Atrix compared with Asana and the full list of Asana alternatives.

FAQ

What is the best Asana alternative for a small agency?

As of October 2026: Teamwork if you bill hourly against retainers and want free client users; ClickUp Core at $9 per user if you want the most features per seat; Basecamp Pro at $79 a month if you want a flat price for up to 10 people; Atrix if you want the pipeline, client portal and time tracking in one plan for under 15 people.

How many users does Asana's free plan allow?

Asana's pricing page shows Personal at up to 2 users as of October 2026. Older articles quote 10 or 15 users; those describe earlier versions of the plan.

Does Asana have time tracking for agencies?

Partly. Personal and Starter sync with third-party time trackers. Advanced compares estimated and actual time. Timesheets and budgets are a paid add-on on Starter and above, and Asana's page does not list its price.

Can clients use these tools for free?

Asana (Starter and up) and Teamwork give clients free access, ClickUp gives free view-only guests on paid plans, and Atrix guests take no seat. On Basecamp, every client counts toward your plan's user cap unless you are on Pro Unlimited.

Which Asana alternative includes a CRM?

Of the tools here, only Atrix has a CRM built in: companies, contacts and a five-stage pipeline. ClickUp offers CRM templates. Teamwork, Basecamp and Asana need a separate CRM.

Next step

If your agency wants deals, client projects and hours in one place, start with the Atrix for agencies page, then compare plans on pricing. For the wider agency field, read project management for agencies in 2026.

Sources

Checked on each vendor's site in October 2026: Asana pricing, Teamwork pricing, Teamwork client users, ClickUp pricing, Basecamp pricing.