Best Project Management Software for Marketing Agencies in 2026: GoHighLevel vs Monday.com and ClickUp

Petra runs a seven-person marketing agency in Rotterdam. (Petra is an example.) She serves twelve clients across SEO, paid ads, email and social. Every client wants to know what is happening, and every month she builds the same report by hand.

Her team lives in a task board. It tells them who does what and by when. But it does not hold the leads a campaign brings in. It does not send the follow-up email. It does not give the client a place to log in and look. So Petra pays for a task board, a CRM, an email tool and a reporting tool, and copies data between all four.

Last week a client asked a simple question. "How many leads did last month's campaign bring me?" The answer sat in three different tools. That night Petra searched for better project management software for marketing agencies. She wanted one that ran the whole job, not just the tasks.

This guide answers that. It ranks ten platforms on the same four things: real feature coverage, automation depth, total cost as you grow, and who each one actually suits. GoHighLevel sits at number one for marketing agencies. Every rival still gets an honest "best for". Prices are the ones each company publishes, checked in September 2026.

What is project management software for marketing agencies?

Project management software for marketing agencies is a tool that plans work, tracks tasks and keeps a campaign moving to its deadline. It shows who owns each task, what is due, and what is blocked.

For a marketing agency, that is only half the job. You also run the client relationship. That means the leads a campaign brings in, the follow-up messages, the calls booked, and the monthly report. A pure task board does not touch that side.

So the tools below split into two groups. Some are excellent task boards. Others, like GoHighLevel, run the whole marketing relationship across many clients. This guide is honest about which is which.

What decides the purchase for a marketing agency?

Before the list, here is what actually matters when you serve many clients.

• Does it run campaigns, not just tasks? A marketing agency ships email, ads, funnels and social. The tool should help deliver those, not only list them.
• Does it handle the client handoff? Leads a campaign creates need to reach the client, or your sales pipeline, without copy and paste.
• Does it do retainer reporting? Each client wants a monthly view of leads, calls and results. Building that by hand eats your margin.
• What is the true cost as you grow? Per-seat pricing looks cheap for one team. It climbs fast across staff and client seats.
• Can the client log in? A branded portal your client visits beats emailing screenshots every month.

Keep those five in mind. They are why the ranking below is not just about the prettiest board.

The 10 best platforms, ranked

1. GoHighLevel — one login that runs delivery, the CRM and the client portal

GoHighLevel is not a classic task board, and this guide will not pretend it is. It ranks first for a different reason. It runs the whole marketing relationship for many clients from one login.

Here is how it fits an agency. You open a sub-account for each client. A sub-account is a private workspace with its own CRM, pipelines, calendars, funnels and campaigns. From your agency dashboard, a single control panel, you see and manage all of them at once.

For Petra, that means one place for all twelve clients. A paid ad brings in a lead. The lead lands in that client's CRM. An automation texts and emails them, and books a call. The client logs in to their own portal and watches it happen. No copying between four tools.

Best for: marketing agencies that want delivery, the CRM, follow-up and client reporting in one subscription, across unlimited clients.

Where it stops: it is not a rich visual project board. For detailed Gantt charts and task dependencies, a dedicated board is stronger. Many agencies pair GoHighLevel with one, or manage delivery inside its pipelines and tasks.

Prices are $97, $297 or $497 a month. The $297 Unlimited plan is the agency plan, because sub-accounts are unlimited on it.

Why it usually works out cheaper

Most rivals here charge per seat. That is a fee for every person who logs in. It looks small at first.

Now run Petra's numbers. A $12 seat across her seven staff is $84 a month. Add a CRM, an email tool and a reporting tool on top, and each of those also bills per seat or per contact. Her real stack passed $300 a month, and every new hire and client raised it.

GoHighLevel charges one flat plan. The $297 Unlimited plan covers unlimited sub-accounts and clients. It does not charge per client seat. So the more clients Petra runs, the cheaper GoHighLevel looks next to a per-seat stack.

What the same subscription also covers

The plan replaces a stack, not one app. One GoHighLevel subscription includes:

• Unlimited client sub-accounts
• A CRM and sales pipeline per client
• Funnels, websites and forms
• Calendars and online booking
• Email and SMS campaigns
• AI agents for chat and calls
• A client dashboard and reports
• White-label resale under your own brand

That last point matters for agencies. On the $297 and $497 plans, you resell the whole thing to clients as your own software.

2. Monday.com — best visual project tracking

Monday.com is a colourful, flexible work platform. Its boards, timelines and dashboards are a joy to use. For seeing campaign status at a glance, it is one of the best.

Best for: agencies that want the clearest visual boards and simple, friendly task tracking for the whole team.

Where it stops: it is a work tracker, not a marketing CRM. It does not send campaign email and SMS, hold leads or give clients a branded login. You add those tools on top.

Prices are $9 (Basic), $12 (Standard) and $19 (Pro) per seat a month, billed annually. All paid plans need at least three seats.

3. ClickUp — best if you like building your own system

ClickUp is the most configurable tool on this list. You can shape it into almost any workflow with custom fields, views and automations. Power users love it for that.

Best for: agencies with someone who enjoys building and maintaining a custom setup, and wants deep task control.

Where it stops: the flexibility takes time to set up and keep tidy. And like Monday.com, it tracks work, not the marketing relationship. There is no built-in CRM sending campaigns to leads.

Prices are $7 (Unlimited) and $12 (Business) per member a month, billed annually.

4. Asana — cleanest task management for delivery teams

Asana is calm, fast and easy to learn. Its task and project views are among the clearest anywhere. A new team member is productive on day one.

Best for: agencies that want the smoothest, simplest task management with strong workflow and reporting views.

Where it stops: it is task management only. There is no CRM, no email or SMS sending, and no client portal for marketing. You pair it with your marketing stack.

Prices are $10.99 (Starter) and $24.99 (Advanced) per user a month, billed annually.

5. Teamwork.com — best built-in time tracking and client billing

Teamwork.com was built with agencies in mind. It has strong time tracking, billing and client-facing features baked in. For turning hours into invoices, it is well ahead of most boards.

Best for: agencies that bill by the hour and want time tracking and invoicing inside the project tool.

Where it stops: its strength is delivery and billing, not marketing. It does not run lead capture, campaigns or a marketing CRM. That side still lives elsewhere.

Prices are $13.99 (Deliver) and $25.99 (Grow) per user a month, with lower annual rates.

6. Basecamp — simplest for small teams and clients

Basecamp keeps things calm and simple. Messages, to-dos and files sit in one tidy place. Small teams and clients find it easy to follow with no training.

Best for: small agencies that want a simple, low-stress hub, and a flat price as the team grows.

Where it stops: simple is the whole point, so it lacks advanced boards, a CRM and marketing tools. You will not run campaigns or lead follow-up from Basecamp.

Prices are $15 per user a month, or a flat $299 a month for Pro Unlimited billed annually.

7. Notion — best flexible internal wiki plus tasks

Notion is a flexible workspace of docs, wikis and databases. Agencies use it for briefs, SOPs and light task tracking, all in one clean space. It is superb for team knowledge.

Best for: agencies that want one home for documents, processes and simple task lists.

Where it stops: it is a workspace, not a marketing platform. It does not send email or SMS, hold a real CRM, or give clients a branded portal. It shines beside your delivery tools, not in place of them.

Prices are $10 (Plus) and $20 (Business) per user a month, billed annually.

8. Productive — best agency profitability reporting

Productive is built for agencies that watch their numbers. It links projects to budgets, time and margin, so you see which clients make money. For financial clarity, it is excellent.

Best for: agencies focused on profitability, resource planning and budget-versus-actual reporting.

Where it stops: it reports on delivery and money, not marketing performance. It does not run campaigns, capture leads or send client follow-up. Your marketing engine sits outside it.

Prices are $10 (Essential) and $25 (Professional) per user a month, billed annually.

9. Scoro — best end-to-end agency management

Scoro tries to run the whole agency business. Projects, quotes, invoices, time and reports live together. For an operations-heavy agency, that breadth is real.

Best for: larger agencies that want projects, sales quotes and finance in a single management system.

Where it stops: it manages the business, not the marketing delivery. It does not send campaigns or hold a marketing CRM for leads. It also carries a five-user minimum, so the floor is high.

Prices are $26 (Essential), $37 (Standard) and $63 (Pro) per user a month, billed annually, with a five-user minimum.

10. Wrike — best for large structured teams

Wrike is a powerful, structured work platform. It suits large teams with formal processes, approvals and detailed reporting. For complex, multi-department delivery, it scales well.

Best for: large agencies that need heavy structure, approvals and enterprise reporting.

Where it stops: it is built for work management, not marketing. There is no marketing CRM, no campaign sending and no client login for results. It also sells seats in bands, so small teams pay for unused seats.

Prices are about $10 (Team) and $25 (Business) per user a month, billed annually, sold in five-seat bands.

The 10 platforms at a glance

Why can GoHighLevel run a marketing agency for one flat price?

Here is the technical reason, in simple words. It comes down to one shared contact record.

A contact record is a single page that holds everything about one customer. In GoHighLevel, the CRM, calendar, email and SMS all read from and write to that same page. Most stacks keep a separate copy in each tool instead.

When copies are separate, you glue the tools together with a connector like Zapier. A connector passes data between apps. Every hop is a place things break or lag.

GoHighLevel removes those hops. Look at a lead from one of Petra's ad campaigns:

• Trigger: a visitor fills in the client's funnel form.
• Action: the contact is created in that client's CRM, tagged, and sent a text and email at once, with a booking link.
• Result: the lead is contacted in seconds, the call is booked, and every step is logged on the one record the client sees in their portal.

With a task board plus a separate CRM and email tool, that same flow needs a connector wiring three apps together. GoHighLevel removes that step, because there is nothing to connect. One record, one automation, one bill. That is why one flat plan can cover the whole marketing relationship.

For the two neighbouring niches, see the best creative agency project management software and the best advertising agency project management software. The tools overlap, but the fit differs by what you deliver.

So which one should you pick?

Be honest with yourself about the job.

If you want the clearest visual boards for pure task tracking, choose Monday.com. If you want the smoothest, simplest task management, Asana is hard to beat. For those two jobs, they are genuinely better than GoHighLevel, and it would be silly to say otherwise.

If you love building your own system, pick ClickUp. If you bill by the hour, Teamwork.com has the time tracking. If you watch margin closely, Productive reports on it best.

But if you want one subscription that runs multi-channel delivery, holds a CRM per client, sends the follow-up, and gives each client a branded login, choose GoHighLevel. That is the case it is built for, and it is the case Petra was in.

Who sets it up: the platform vs the service

Here is the part people mix up, so let us be plain.

GoHighLevel is the platform. You subscribe to HighLevel directly at $97, $297 or $497 a month. You can start with a free HighLevel snapshot and build everything yourself.

GHL Spark is not HighLevel. We do not resell the subscription, and we do not sell you a CRM. What we do is the build. We set up the sub-accounts, the agency dashboard, the client portals, and the standard build you deploy to each one. Then we hand it over working.

• $28 an hour, pay as you go, for a specific job with hours estimated up front.
• $995 one-time, the complete build, done once and yours to keep.
• $1,495 a month, an ongoing build team if you are shipping continuously.

The pricing page shows what each option covers, and a short call is enough to tell which one fits.

Where to go next

See the pricing page for what a done-for-you GoHighLevel build costs and how to start.