Best freelancer and agency software alternatives for 2026

How do you know when it's time to switch business software?

You're paying for 4-5 tools that don't talk to each other. Calendly for scheduling, PandaDoc for proposals, Trello for projects, Toggl for time, FreshBooks for invoices. Five logins, five subscriptions, and every new client means entering the same name and email five times. You're paying $100-200/month before you've done any actual work.

You're copying data between apps constantly. Client signs a proposal, so you manually create their project in Trello. You track time in Toggl, then copy those hours into FreshBooks. A client changes their email, so you update it in 4 different places. If you forget one, invoices bounce.

You're spending more time on admin than client work. Monday morning starts with checking 5 different inboxes, updating 3 different dashboards, and trying to remember which client conversation happened in which app. By the time you're organized, half the day is gone.

Your project management is just a checklist. HoneyBook and Dubsado give you flat task lists. No Gantt charts to see timelines. No dependencies to ensure editing doesn't start before culling. No way to see what your whole team is working on. So you bolt on Asana or Trello, which means another subscription and another place for data to live.

Clients keep emailing asking for updates. "What's the status?" "Where's my invoice?" "When will the gallery be ready?" They're emailing because there's no client portal where they can check themselves. Every status request interrupts your deep work.

You can't add team members properly. You hired a second shooter or a VA, but your tool either charges per seat, gives them access to everything (including your revenue), or has no team features at all. You end up using workarounds or sharing logins.

You hit pricing tier limits. Your "affordable" tool now wants $60/month because you have more than 3 team members, or more than 500 clients, or want to send more than 20 invoices. The tool that worked at 5 clients doesn't scale to 50.

Your clients see someone else's branding. Every invoice says "Powered by HoneyBook." Every contract shows Dubsado's logo. Your client portal lives on bonsai.com, not yourbrand.com. When you're charging premium rates, that third-party branding undercuts the professional image you're building.

Scope creep keeps happening. Three weeks into a project, the client mentions a feature that was "definitely in the proposal." The proposal is in Google Docs, the project is in Trello, and the Slack thread says something different. Nobody can find one definitive record of what was agreed because that record doesn't exist.

The tool hasn't been updated in years. 17hats still looks like 2015. The mobile app crashes. Features you need have been "coming soon" for three years. You're paying for software that's being maintained, not improved.

If you recognize more than two of these, you've outgrown your current setup. The longer you wait, the more data you have to migrate later.

How do you migrate client data without losing anything?

Most tools let you export clients, projects, and invoices as CSV files. Export your data from your current tool, then import it into the new platform. Client names, emails, project history, and invoice records transfer cleanly. Plutio's importer maps common fields automatically.

The smart approach: run both tools in parallel for 2-4 weeks. Finish active projects in your old tool while starting new projects in the new one. This avoids disrupting ongoing client work and gives you time to set up templates and workflows before going all-in.

Most freelancers complete their migration in an afternoon. The setup time is a one-time cost that pays back in hours saved every week.

How much does freelancer software actually cost when you add everything up?

A $15/month tool that requires Trello ($12/month), Calendly ($12/month), and DocuSign ($15/month) actually costs $54/month and the time to maintain integrations between them, and the real cost climbs higher. Every hour spent copying data between apps is an hour you're not billing for.

Plutio starts at $19/month with proposals, contracts, projects, invoicing, time tracking, and client portals included. Compare that to HoneyBook at $29/month with basic projects, or 17hats at $60/month with an interface that hasn't been updated in years.

Beyond subscription costs, there's the time spent logging into multiple apps, the data that doesn't sync properly, and the mental overhead of remembering which tool does what. Consolidation pays for itself in the first month.

What should AND CO users do before the March 2026 shutdown?

AND CO (also called Fiverr Workspace) is shutting down March 1, 2026. All users must export their data and switch platforms before the deadline or lose access to their client history, contracts, and invoices.

Plutio offers a direct migration path. Export your AND CO clients, projects, and invoices as CSV files and import them directly into Plutio. Most users complete the switch in an afternoon. The invoicing and contract workflows feel familiar, but Plutio adds project management depth and client portal features that AND CO never offered.

Export your AND CO data now. Start a Plutio trial to set up your workspace before the deadline so you're not scrambling in February.