Most of what is called agency management software is a task list with a nice board. That is a real need, and for some agencies it is the whole need. But the tools on this page mostly stop at delivery, and the money side of an agency lives somewhere else. This comparison is built around that gap: client records, scope, quoting, time, invoicing, profitability and retainer support, with published prices and honest limits.
NoxOrigin makes one of the products compared on this page. NoxOrigin is described here from our own shipped product and our own published pricing. Every other product is described only from that vendor’s public website, read on 4 October 2026. We have not run a trial of Zoho Projects, ClickUp, monday.com or Asana, so we make no claim about how any of them feels to use, and we quote no review scores, ratings or customer counts. Where a vendor page did not give us a price, this page says “check vendor pricing” rather than estimating one.
Plan names, prices, the currency and billing period each price was shown in, seat and user allowances, automation and workflow limits, trial lengths, and the feature summaries quoted in the entries. Every one came from a vendor page in the sources list with the URL shown. One entry carries no price at all, and two carry a price we could only read for some of their tiers.
The judgement calls: what each product is genuinely good at, where it falls short, who should skip it, and which buyer situation maps to which tool. That is interpretation by a vendor selling one of the entries, and it is opinion. It is also where a reader is most entitled to disagree with us, particularly the claim that most tools here stop short of the money.
Two exclusions worth stating. Zoho One is a legitimate agency candidate, but the pricing page presented two different per-user figures in a layout we could not map to named plans, so we did not guess and we have written a separate comparison for it instead. Pipedrive returned an access block on 4 October 2026. And one broader caveat: every price below except NoxOrigin’s is published in US dollars, so an Indian buyer’s actual rupee cost depends on their billing entity and payment terms. We do not convert any of them.
A cell marked “not verified” means the vendor page we read did not state it. It does not mean the product lacks it. Several of these products can be connected to invoicing tools we did not examine, and a capable agency may already have solved the money side separately.
| Dimension | Zoho Projects | ClickUp | monday.com | Asana | NoxOrigin |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Published price | Check vendor pricing. No figure was readable on the page. | Free Forever at no charge. Unlimited US$7 per user per month yearly or US$10 monthly. Business US$12 yearly or US$19 monthly. Enterprise via sales. | Free for up to 2 seats. Basic US$9, Standard US$12 and Pro US$19 per seat per month, shown in bundles of 10 seats. Enterprise via sales. | Personal US$0 for 2 users. Starter US$10.99 and Advanced US$24.99 per user per month billed annually. Enterprise via sales. | INR 800 per month for 3 users, INR 1,600 for 10, INR 5,000 for 25. Published in rupees. |
| Currency for an Indian buyer | Not established from the page we read. | USD. Your INR cost depends on your billing entity. | USD. The page states the price is determined by your billing country and excludes tax. | USD. Your INR cost depends on your billing entity. | INR, published on our own pricing page. |
| Client records | Project-centric. Client detail is not a first-class published feature on the pricing page we read. | Work-centric. Customer and pipeline records were not in the published feature lists. | Board-centric. The page does reference organising leads, contacts and deals, but not as a published plan feature we could tie to a tier. | Work-centric. Portfolio and client records were not in the published plan features. | First-class. Companies, contacts, ownership, conversation history and custom fields, with the project attached to the client. |
| Projects and scope | Strongest of the four work tools on published structure. Enterprise adds user hierarchy and business rules; Ultimate adds multi-user and multi-project timesheets. | Deep task and project tooling. Free plan includes unlimited members, which is a genuine advantage for a large delivery team. | Visual board building with over 200 templates and advanced board views and columns on higher tiers. | Projects, goals and custom fields. Starter allows tagging tasks with priorities, budgets and statuses. | Projects, tasks, task lists, priorities, assignments and recurring follow-ups. Honest limit: no change-request record, no milestone record and no deliverable record. |
| Quoting | Zoho Invoice is referenced on the pricing page as a connected product, which is a cross-product dependency rather than a feature of the plan. | Not in the published plan features. | The page references creating and sharing quotes and invoices as part of the platform, without tying it clearly to a named tier. | Not in the published plan features. | Quotes with line items and tax, raised against the client and project, convertible to invoice without re-keying. |
| Time tracking | Yes, on the higher tiers. Ultimate explicitly lists multi-user and multi-project timesheets, and a Lite User add-on can view modules and add timelogs and timesheets. | Advanced time tracking is listed on a paid tier. The exact tier was not clear in the page structure we read. | Time tracking is referenced on paid tiers. Not tied to a named tier in the page we read. | Not in the published plan features we read. | Time captured against the work, feeding project economics rather than a standalone timesheet product. |
| Invoicing and GST | Via connected Zoho Books and Invoice, referenced on the pricing page. GST compliance itself was not verified. | No GST invoicing or Indian tax handling appears in the published plan features. | Not verified from the page we read. | Not in the published plan features we read. | GST-compliant invoices with tax breakup, plus UPI payment capture, payment promises and receivables. Statutory filing stays with an accounting package. |
| Profitability by client | Not verified from the page we read. | Not in the published plan features. | Resource and capacity planning appears on a higher tier, which is resource utilisation rather than client profitability. | Portfolio features exist on higher tiers; not verified in detail. | Quoted, billed, collected and outstanding value by client and project, with a path from any number back to the records behind it. |
| Retainer support | Add-ons exist for read-only users, lite users and resources, which suits a retainer team with mixed access needs. | Strong on guests. The page states unlimited free guest seats on paid plans, and guests with permission control from Unlimited upward. | Unlimited free viewers and scoped guest access, with private boards and docs visible only to invited members. | Unlimited free guest seats, stated on the page, so client reviewers do not consume a paid seat. | Client and project context readable by delivery staff, with pipeline and money actions gated separately. Retainers are not a distinct billing type. |
| Best case for it | A delivery firm that wants Zoho governance, hierarchy and a free tier for five users. | A large delivery team that wants unlimited members free and deep task tooling. | A studio that wants to build visual client-facing boards quickly. | A team that values guest seats and a mature, conventional work tool. | An agency whose problem is the client-to-cash chain rather than task depth. |
Check vendor pricing We reached and read Zoho Projects’ pricing page on 4 October 2026. The plan structure was clear, including a free plan for up to five users and a 15-day free trial that needs no credit card, but the price figures are loaded dynamically and were not present in the page we could read. This page therefore quotes no Zoho Projects price. Check vendor pricing directly.
Governance for a delivery organisation. The published structure is more disciplined than most: Enterprise adds 10 read-only users, custom profiles, roles and fields, user hierarchy, three business calendars and 50,000 workflow action executions a month. Ultimate adds 15 GB of storage per user with a 150 GB organisational minimum, 100 read-only users, 100 resources, multi-user and multi-project timesheets and 500,000 workflow actions. A Lite User add-on that can view modules and log time is a genuinely thoughtful shape for a mixed delivery team.
The client is not the centre of the model. This is a project-management product, and the published features are organised around tasks, phases, bugs and resources rather than around a customer relationship with money attached. Quoting and invoicing arrive through connected Zoho Books and Invoice, which the page references, so the agency-to-cash chain crosses products. We could not read a price, which is the most basic input to a decision, and downgrading costs you features even though Zoho states your data is not lost.
Skip it if your bottleneck is getting paid rather than running projects, because the commercial record is not what this product is built around. Also skip it if you will not buy before you have a number, since we could not get one and that is an unreasonable position to be in when alternatives on this page publish theirs.
Source-verified price Free Forever at no charge with unlimited members, Unlimited at US$7 per user per month billed yearly or US$10 billed monthly, Business at US$12 yearly or US$19 monthly, and Enterprise through a sales conversation. An AI tier is listed at US$9 per user per month. Prices are in US dollars, so your INR cost depends on your billing entity and payment terms and we do not convert it.
Two things, and the first is decisive for many agencies. A free tier with unlimited members at no charge is not beaten by anything on this page, including our own paid plans, and for a fifteen-person delivery team that is a real budget line. The second is depth: this is a dedicated work-management product with far more task and project surface than NoxOrigin offers.
Nothing in the published plan features covers CRM, customer records, quoting, invoicing, GST or collections. Every one of those lives in another product you own and integrate, and the link between a finished task and an issued invoice is a person remembering to copy a name and an amount. Guest rules are also worth reading carefully: the page states that guests on the free plan must be given full access with no permissions, which is a real constraint for a client-reviewer workflow. Automation is capped at 5,000 a month on Business and 250,000 on Enterprise.
Skip it if the commercial chain is the problem, because you will end up running two systems and one reconciliation step between them. And if you are on the free plan, read the guest rule before you invite a client in. If you are an internal team with no client billing at all, do not skip it, because a free unlimited-member work tool is the correct buy.
Source-verified price Free for up to two seats, then per-seat monthly pricing presented in bundles of ten seats: Basic at US$9, Standard at US$12 and Pro at US$19 per seat, with reduced totals shown for annual billing on each. Enterprise is sold through a sales conversation with no published price. The page states that prices do not include tax and that the price is determined by the user’s billing country, so the INR you pay is not fixed by this page.
Building a board that a client can look at. Over 200 templates across industries, a real-time engine that turns documents into actions, advanced board views and advanced columns with dynamic dependencies and automated calculations, and unlimited free viewers with scoped guest access and private boards. For a studio or creative agency whose client wants to see progress, the client-facing surface is the reason to pick it.
The two-seat free plan is the tightest starting point on this page, so there is no free way to run an agency on it. Billing is seat-based in blocks of ten, which sets a floor on your spend that a five-person agency pays for whether it uses the seats or not. The platform references organising leads, contacts and deals and creating quotes and invoices, but those were not presented as tier-specific published features, so we will not tell you which plan you need for them. Multi-level permissions, the row that matters when clients can see the work, sit on Enterprise.
Skip it if you are under ten people, because the seat blocks set a minimum outlay that does not shrink with your team. Skip it if you need fine-grained permissions and are not going to buy Enterprise, since that is where multi-level permissions sit. And skip it if your requirement is client-level profitability, because capacity planning is a different number from money earned per client.
Source-verified price Personal at US$0 free forever for two users, Starter at US$10.99 per user per month billed annually, Advanced at US$24.99 per user per month, and Enterprise through a sales conversation. The page states no user seat limits on Starter and unlimited free guest seats.
The most conventional and best-documented work product on this page, with a clear three-step ladder and unlimited free guest seats. That last point is underrated for agencies: a client who logs in to review work does not consume a paid seat, and Asana says so on its own pricing page. Custom fields for tagging tasks with priorities, budgets and statuses, and 100 or more free integrations, make it a comfortable fit for a team that already lives in other tools.
The free tier is two users, so an agency cannot start here, and Starter at US$10.99 and Advanced at US$24.99 are both USD figures that will move in rupees. Nothing in the published plan features we read covers CRM, quoting, invoicing or GST, so the commercial chain is another system entirely. And it is a work product: there is no client record that the project, the invoice and the payment all hang from.
Skip it if the money side is the problem. Skip it if you are price sensitive and a smaller team, because the per-user ladder starts above several alternatives here. And skip it if you have never run a work tool before and want something with a free tier to learn on, because two users will not carry an agency.
Our own product, our own numbers Our published plans are Starter at INR 800 per month for three users, one workspace, 10 active projects and 1,000 contacts; Growth at INR 1,600 for ten users, 50 active projects and 10,000 contacts, adding Razorpay payment links and multiple sales processes, with a 30-day trial; and Agency at INR 5,000 for twenty-five users, 250 active projects and three workspaces, adding full project economics. Annual totals and add-on rates for extra users and workspaces are published too.
Keeping the client and the money on one record. The client carries the opportunity, the project, the quote, the GST invoice, the payment and the outstanding balance, so quoted, billed, collected and outstanding value by client and project is a view rather than a report you build and maintain. That is the answer to the question an agency owner actually asks, and it is the question none of the other four entries on this page is built to answer. Project economics and Razorpay payment links come with the Agency and Growth plans respectively.
This is the section where a vendor page usually gets vague, so here are the specifics. NoxOrigin is not a project-management specialist and does not compete with ClickUp or Asana on task depth. There is no change-request record, no milestone record, no deliverable record, no contract editor and no e-signature. A retainer is not a distinct billing type; it is recurring work invoiced on a cycle. Delivery-level access is scoped to reading client and project context and working tasks, with pipeline and money actions gated separately, which is a deliberate limit as much as a feature. And it is a young product with a small number of live deployments.
Skip it if what you want is a better task tool, because that is not a fight we should have and we would lose it. Skip it if scope control for agencies is contractual, because without change-request or deliverable records you will be tracking that in a document. Skip it if statutory accounting and GST filing matter, because we deliberately do not replace an accounting package. And skip it if you are one or two people, because none of this is worth paying for at that size.
This is a category where more than one answer is genuinely correct, and the split is usually about whether the agency has a billing problem or a delivery problem.
ClickUp's Free Forever plan with unlimited members is the cheapest correct answer on this page, and it is not close. If nothing in your work is invoiced, the commercial chain NoxOrigin emphasises does not apply to you and you should not pay for it. The one thing to read is the guest rule: guests on the free plan get full access with no permissions. Read the full NoxOrigin versus ClickUp comparison
That is a records problem, not a project-management problem, and it is where NoxOrigin is built for it: the client record carries the quote, the invoice, the payment and the outstanding balance, so ageing and collection stop being a monthly exercise. If instead you already have invoicing handled and only need better delivery, take the free tier. See the full agency management workflow
Zoho Projects is the disciplined option: five free users, custom profiles and roles, user hierarchy, read-only users and multi-project timesheets on the higher tiers. Get a price from Zoho before you compare, because we could not read one. Compare against Zoho One
monday.com, on the strength of over 200 templates, advanced board views and columns, and unlimited free viewers with scoped guest access. Budget for the ten-seat blocks and check whether the permissions you need sit above the tier you can afford. Review client management for agencies
Asana. A clear ladder, unlimited free guest seats so client reviewers do not cost you, and 100 or more free integrations. It is the least disruptive choice, and it does not touch the money side at all. See agency operations software
When the agency has outgrown spreadsheets and cannot see, per client, what was quoted, what was billed, what was collected and what is still outstanding. The opportunity becomes the project, the project produces the quote and the invoice, the payment is recorded against the same client, and profitability is a view of those records. Add multiple workspaces from the Agency plan and the same structure holds across teams. See the client record in detail.
An agency that wants a better project tool should buy a better project tool. ClickUp and Asana have deeper task and project surfaces than we do and we would rather point you at them. We are not an accounting package and do not file GST returns, we are not a contract lifecycle tool, and for an agency whose main risk is scope creep on a retainer we have no change-request or deliverable record to offer you. Use one of the free tiers above if you are not yet sure, and revisit this page when the billing question becomes urgent. Read what running three separate tools actually costs.
A note on the sources. We read all of these on 4 October 2026. Every price here except NoxOrigin’s own is published in US dollars, and one entry has no readable price at all. Vendor pages change without notice, so open the links below and confirm the number yourself before you commit to anything.
Because an agency that cannot see what it has billed and collected per client cannot answer whether it is profitable, and profitability is the only question that separates an agency from a group of freelancers. Every product on this page that does not carry quoting and invoicing somewhere in its ecosystem forces that answer into a second tool, and the handoff between the two is where the errors live. That is the argument NoxOrigin makes, and it is also the honest weakness of the work-management tools listed here.
On the pages we read, ClickUp has a Free Forever plan with unlimited members at no charge and a $9 per user per month AI tier listed separately. Zoho Projects has a free plan for up to five users. monday.com's free plan is limited to up to two seats, and Asana's free plan is also two users. For an agency of four to six people, ClickUp's free plan is the cheapest starting point, and NoxOrigin's Starter plan is INR 800 per month for three users. We do not claim any of these is sufficient for running an agency, only that it is the cheapest place to start.
Because the pricing figures on that page are loaded dynamically and were not present in the page we could read on 4 October 2026. We could read the plan structure clearly, including the free tier for up to five users, the Enterprise and Ultimate tiers with their user and read-only allowances, and the Lite User add-on, but we could not read a single price without guessing. Guessing would defeat the purpose of this page, so it says check vendor pricing.
Not in the sense this page means by it, and we want to be precise rather than dismissive. monday.com's page describes workload and capacity balancing in its top tier, which is resource planning rather than client profitability. Neither product's published features describe quoted-versus-billed-versus-collected value by client, which is the report we mean. Both will track tasks and both can be connected to invoicing tools, and the connection is work you own.
Both are defensible and they are different products. Zoho Projects is a project-management product with a free tier for five users, read-only user allowances, custom profiles and roles on Enterprise, and multi-user timesheets on Ultimate. Zoho One is a broader suite on a different licensing model, where the vendor states a business may have to commit to licences for all employees on payroll. We did not read Zoho One's prices reliably enough to put them in a table, so we have written a dedicated comparison separately rather than guess here.
NoxOrigin is built for the commercial chain of an agency: the client record carries the opportunity, the project, the quote, the GST invoice, the payment and the outstanding balance, and profitability is a view of those records rather than a report you assemble. Our published plans are Starter at INR 800 per month for three users, Growth at INR 1,600 for ten users and Agency at INR 5,000 for twenty-five users across three workspaces. It is the wrong buy if what you need is deep task-system depth, and we say so plainly: there is no change-request record, no milestone record, no deliverable record, no contract editor and no e-signature, and we are not a project-management specialist.
Last verified: 4 October 2026. NoxOrigin prices below are from our own pricing page. We did not convert any vendor currency and did not add tax to any vendor figure.
Reached and read. Confirms a free plan for up to five users, a 15-day free trial with no credit card required, and paid tiers including Enterprise with 10 read-only users, custom profiles, roles and fields and 50,000 workflow action executions a month, and Ultimate with 15 GB storage per user, 100 read-only users, 100 resources, multi-user and multi-project timesheets and 500,000 workflow actions a month. A Lite User add-on and a Resources add-on are also listed. Zoho states that downgrading loses feature access but not data, and that a downgrade to the free plan leaves two projects with limited features. No price was exposed in the page version we could read.
Open the sourceFree Forever at no charge with unlimited members, Unlimited at US$7 per user per month billed yearly or US$10 billed monthly, Business at US$12 yearly or US$19 monthly, and Enterprise sold through a sales conversation. The page also states that guests on the free plan must be given full access with no permissions while paid plans add guest permission control, that Business includes 5,000 automations per month, that Enterprise includes unlimited custom roles, enterprise permissions and governance and 250,000 automations per month, and lists an AI tier at US$9 per user per month.
Open the sourceFree plan for up to two seats, then per-seat monthly pricing shown in bundles of ten seats: Basic at US$9 per seat, Standard at US$12 and Pro at US$19, with reduced totals shown for annual billing. Enterprise is sold through a sales conversation with no published price. The page states that prices do not include tax and that the price is determined by the user's billing country, and lists unlimited free viewers, guest access, resource and capacity planning on higher tiers, and multi-level permissions on Enterprise.
Open the sourcePersonal at US$0 free forever for 2 users, Starter at US$10.99 per user per month billed annually, and Advanced at US$24.99 per user per month, with Enterprise sold through a sales conversation. The page states no user seat limits on Starter, unlimited free guest seats, custom fields for tagging tasks with priorities, budgets and statuses, and 100 or more free integrations.
Open the sourceStarter INR 800 per month for three users and one workspace with 10 active projects, Growth INR 1,600 for ten users and 50 active projects, Agency INR 5,000 for twenty-five users and 250 active projects across three workspaces, with annual totals and add-on rates for extra users and workspaces.
Open the source