Top 11 HoneyBook Alternatives in 2025
HoneyBook is a great option for freelancers and small businesses.
However, if you want more advanced collaboration and business insights, you’ll need to consider these HoneyBook alternatives.
List of the Best HoneyBook Alternatives
- Productive — best for financial management in growing businesses
- Bonsai — good option for users that want a tool similar to HoneyBook
- ClickUp — versatile work management tool for various industries
- Copilot — client portal software for messaging and file-sharing
- Tave — workflow automation for photographers
- Zoho CRM — more advanced customer relationship management
- Dubsado — another integrated solution for freelancers
- Trello — affordable solution for visual workflow management
- Plutio — solid comprehensive option for centralized operations
- Monday.com – good customizable project management tool
- Hive – another affordable option for projects and resources
1. Productive – Best for Growing Businesses
Productive is a software solution designed specifically for the needs of professional services companies.
It offers comprehensive features for managing end-to-end business operations, including project management tools, budgeting, and resourcing.
While it might be too robust for freelancers, Productive is one of the best HoneyBook alternatives for businesses that want more control over their profitability and finances.
With growth comes a bigger need for one source of truth, and that’s what it gives us, and that’s really important.
So, if your business is growing and you’re noticing gaps in your processes, it might be the right time to switch to an all-in-one solution.
Some of Productive’s key features include project and task management, time tracking, budgeting and billing, resource planning, and reporting.
Let’s explore these features in more detail.
Try Productive as your HoneyBook alternative
Project Management
While HoneyBook has some essential features for project and task management, Productive offers more advanced features for team collaboration and workflows.
For project management, project managers and their teams can choose between multiple customizable workspaces. This includes: Gantt, Kanban, List, Calendar, Workload view, and others.
Within each view, teams can manage their tasks, assign team members, and add various details through custom fields.
You can also use Productive’s Automation feature to get more efficient workflows.
For example, if you want to notify a team member of a task update in Slack, you can set up an automation to streamline this action and other repetitive tasks.
With the Client Portal, you can invite clients to your project workspaces.
You can collaborate on tasks to streamline client communication, and provide them with access to budgeting and time tracking information.
Time Tracking
Productive’s Time Tracking offers several time tracking methods: an integrated timer, manual entry, automatic time tracking.
You can also track time directly from tasks to associate it with a specific project, or use a widget to run your timer from the desktop.
Project managers can get more control over their timesheets by setting them to be locked after a certain period of time. They can also view each entry, approve or reject them individually or in bulk.
Productive also offers a Google Calendar integration for associating events with specific projects.
Budgeting
With Productive’s Budgeting, you can get in-depth insights into your agency’s financial performance.
You’ll set up your employee cost rates, billable rates, and set up your rate cards.
Rate card data is used to build budgets of various types: fixed-price, hourly, retainer, and hybrid.
You can visualize and monitor your budget burn according to billable rates and hours billed.
Productive also includes integrated Billing. Your budgeting data is used to create client invoices, which you can send from the platform.
You can also create an automatic email sequence for late payments.
Productive also offers built-in QuickBooks and Xero integrations to finalize your invoicing process.
Resource Planning
With Resource Planning, agencies can get more control over their business resources, including employees and financials.
You can schedule employees according to their working hours, holidays, and scheduled time off.
When you’re allocating their time, you’ll also be able to see their current capacity, or how many of their hours have already been allocated.
You can also visualize and forecast your utilization.
Resource Planning also enables advanced financial perfomance insights with Forecasting. Productive uses your resource scheduling data to predict your budget burn, revenue, and profit margins up until the end of the project.
You also also create schedules for uncomfirmed projects (tentative bookings) and to-be-hired team members (placeholders).
Reporting
Finally, Productive’s Reporting uses all your project activities and data to help you make informed decisions.
You can get advanced insights on time tracking, resourcing, budgeting, and much more by using Productive’s customizable templates or creating reports from scratch.
Productive’s reports include various customization option, such as different visualizations, custom fields and formulas, grouping and filtering options.
For sharing your reports, you can create custom dashboards or schedule your reporting to Slack or email with Productive’s Pulse.
Additional features: Sales CRM, Docs, Productive AI, Revenue Recognition, Purchase Orders
Integrations
Productive offers various integrations with HR, accounting, and collaboration tools.
Integrations include Slack, Google Calendar, and Outlook for scheduling and updates; Xero and QuickBooks for accounting; BambooHR, Breathe, Humaans.io for HRM; Memtime for time tracking; and more.
Pricing
- Plans start with the Essential plan at $9 per user per month, which includes essential features such as budgeting, project & task management, docs, time tracking, expense management, reporting, and time off management.
- The Professional plan includes custom fields, recurring budgets, advanced reports, billable time approvals, and many more for $24 per user per month.
- The Ultimate plan has everything that the Essential plan and Professional plan offer, along with the HubSpot integration, advanced forecasting, advanced custom fields, overhead calculations, and more for $32 per user per month.
You can also check out Productive’s 14-day free trial before committing to a paid plan.
Productive Is the Best HoneyBook Alternative for Growing Businesses
Switch from multiple tools and spreadsheets to an all-in-one platform for managing all key business operations.
2. Bonsai – Best for Freelancers
Bonsai can be a great option for businesses looking for a client management tool, but it lacks advanced collaboration and financial management features.
Key features:
- Client surveys
- Time tracking
- Client portal
- Invoice templates and online payments
Pros: Bonsai provides some some additional features in comparison to HoneyBook, which can make it more suitable for businesses that want to moderately scale up their software’s complexity.
Cons: On the other hand, Bonsai is still not the best option for agency management, as project management and reporting are not its focus. Additionally, users often comment that the Client Portal should offer more client interactions:
They really need to improve the tasks and workflow of project such that the client portal becomes a dashboard for clients to see progress and the over timeline like in Notion. I really am at the end of my rope with asking for this essential update.
Source: Capterra
3. ClickUp – Best for Custom Workflows
ClickUp is a work management software with customizable workflows for client projects, but it doesn’t offer budgeting and advanced analytics features.
Key features:
- Customizable templates for projects
- Document management
- Automated workflows
- Goal managemet
Pros: With ClickUp, you’ll get a good software solution for creating custom workflows for your client projects.
Cons: ClickUp is not the best option for freelancers, but it’s also slightly underfeatured for businesses that want to invest in a software that provides a 360-degree view of operations.
Additionally, there are some issues with ClickUp’s performance.
To find out more, check out our list of the best ClickUp alternatives or our in-depth comparison of ClickUp and Teamwork.
4. Copilot – Best for Client Relationships Management
Copilot is a good HoneyBook alternative for managing your customer management process, but it’s not suitable as an all-in-one business management platform.
Key features:
- Contract management tools
- Messaging app
- File-sharing
- Payment processing
Pros: Users enjoy Copilot’s white labeling and integrations options, as well as its easy-to-set up design and user interface.
Cons: While you can manage your client communications with Copilot, there’s no way to handle client collaboration on project tasks. To get the benefits of a comprehensive solution, you’ll need to implement a professional services project management software system.
5. Tave – Best CRM for Creative Professionals
Táve is a software designed specifically for supporting client management for photographers and studios, but it might not be the best for workflows in other industries.
Key features:
- Custom contracts and questionnaires
- Lead assessment
- Automated workflows
- Lead reporting tools
Pros: Táve can be a great option for photographers that want to get basic contact management. Users often enjoy it for its user-friendly interface and automation options for administrative tasks.
Cons: Like HoneyBook, Táve is best for smaller businesses and creative freelancers that want to get basic client management, but you’ll need to switch to a different business management solution at a certain point.
Overall, Táve served my studio well. As we streamline, grow and have a very niche market now, it’s just not the right fit for us.
Source: Capterra
Learn all about the most popular creative agency management software.
6. Zoho CRM – Best for More Robust CRM
Zoho CRM is a more advanced CRM for agencies that caters to various industries, but you’ll need to integrate it with Zoho’s project management module to cover all client project activities.
Key features:
- Sales performance management
- Sales reporting
- AI-driven insights
- Omnichannel communications
Pros: Zoho CRM can help you align sales and marketing teams with more advanced sales automation and workflow features.
Cons: On the other hand, Zoho CRM can be more complex, and certain parts of the platform have a steeper learning curve or require technical knowledge to configure.
For some streamlined solutions with CRM features, go to our list of the best CRM project management software.
7. Dubsado – Best for Small Business Owners
Like Copilot or Táve, Dubsado is another solution for managing contracts, invoices, and client forms, but doesn’t provide a comprehensive workspace for advanced business needs.
Key features:
- Payment options
- Built-in scheduler
- Workflow automation
- Invoice management
Pros: Users find Dubsado easy to use overall: “I really liked that the interface was beautiful and nicely laid out. I could set up invoices, descriptions payments and contracts easily” (Source: G2).
Cons: Users have some issues with specific features in Dubsado, one that has been specifically underlined is the functionality of linking emails to Dubsado:
Sometimes there is a lag between my actual email inbox versus the Dubsado inbox. The client information could be cleaned up, for example, I would love if it could recognize that I have already entered the same clients and maybe update information as needed.
Source: Capterra
8. Trello – Best for Visual Work Management
Trello is known for its user-friendly, Kanban-inspired interface, but isn’t suitable for more complex workflow management or collaboration.
Key features:
- Official and community based templates
- Visual dashboards
- Various integrations and power-ups
Pros: Trello can be suitable for various business needs due to its template library which is supported both by the community and official vendor.
Cons: Trello is a popular tool for user-friendly workflow management, but it won’t be suitable for agencies with more advanced management needs.
When we started out, we decided to go with Trello, and it was a solid tool. Back then it didn’t have many advanced features, but it worked for us for a while. Once we got things rolling at the company, we realized that not having the ability to track time or build budgets was an issue for us.
Check out our Trello vs Jira vs Asana comparison to learn more.
9. Plutio – Best for Centralized Management
Plutio offers a wide range of features in a single platform, but according to user reviews, its reporting and accounting features lack some depth.
Key features:
- Proposal and contract creation
- Client portal
- Invoicing
- Project budget management
Pros: Users usually praise Plutio’s customer support team and range of useful functionalities for agencies.
Cons: One persistent downside mentioned throughout multiple customer reviews includes bugs, especially those that appear when new features are released.
Learn more about Plutio in our list of the best alternatives to Plutio.
10. Monday.com – Best for Flexible Workflows
Monday.com, also known as Monday Work OS, is a flexible work management software for various industries, but it can require a lot of initial customization and setting up.
Key features:
- Multiple workspaces
- No-code workflow automations
- Time tracking and time estimates
- Workload view for resourcing
Pros: Monday.com is a versatile tool that allows teams to build customized workflows and processes from scratch.
Cons: Monday can be time-consuming to set up, especially for teams looking for an out-of-the-box solution. Additionally, it lacks built-in financial management or advanced project accounting features.
We also have a detailed comparison of some of the most popular project management tools: Monday vs Asana vs Trello vs ClickUp.
11. Hive – Best for Teams on a Budget
Hive is a project management tool that offers an array of features designed for team collaboration and project tracking, but doesn’t offer some essential business management features.
Key features:
- Project management with Gantt charts
- Time tracking
- Workflow automation
- Messaging and file-sharing
Pros: Hive is generally well-reviewed by users, and is often praised for its simple collaboration features and reasonable pricing.
Cons: Hive’s project and task management features aren’t fully developed for more complex needs, or in comparison to some of Hive’s alternatives.
The features I needed to simplify task and project management weren’t as fully developed as I needed.
Source: Capterra
What Is HoneyBook?
HoneyBook is a clientflow management software with end-to-end features for small businesses and freelancers: including contract templates, event scheduling, forms, online payments, and invoices.
HoneyBook has a 4.5 star rating on G2 and a 4.8 star rating on Capterra. When it comes to its downsides, user report the following:
- Limited integrations with 3rd-party apps
- Slow customer support response times
- Reporting is not as robust as other CRMs
- Customization is limited for some features (ex. invoices)
Overall, HoneyBook can be a great integration solution for end-to-end workflows, but growing businesses might want to consider more advanced software options.
Choosing the Best HoneyBook Alternative
To summarize our comparison, here are some of the options you have:
- If you’re looking to switch to a similar tool, consider Copilot or Dubsado
- For simple task management, Trello is a great option
- For customizable workflows, consider ClickUp or Monday.com
- For specialized needs, there are Tave and Zoho CRM
- Productive is the best pick if you’re interested in advanced financial insights and project management
With Productive, you’ll have an all-in-one platform to manage everything from project management to financial insights, resource planning, and client collaboration.
This makes it one of the best HoneyBook alternatives for growing businesses. Book a demo with Productive today.
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