Every business needs the right tools to function effectively and efficiently. Just as a construction builder needs an excavator to make foundations, a hammer to drive nails, and a crane to lift heavy materials, a business needs the right software to lay necessary foundations, drive growth, and simplify the big tasks.

In the world of digital marketing, the success of an agency is largely dependent in part on software use. Software applications are useful in starting, managing, and completing business projects.

But as an agency, what software should you incorporate into your business operations? The market is so big that it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the selection process.

This guide discusses 15 agency client management software that many agencies use. You’ll also learn about some factors to consider when choosing agency management software. 

Table of Content:

• What is Agency Management Software?
• Which Software to Pick?
• Top 15 Agency Management Software
• Conclusion

What is Agency Management Software?

In simple language, agency management software refers to apps, tools, and platforms that help creative agencies manage their operations effectively and efficiently. This broad term could specifically refer to apps for planning projects, allocating resources to teams, and communicating with clients. Included in digital agency software are also tools for automating routine and repetitive tasks.

Depending on the type of digital agency, some may require more management tools than others. For example, digital marketing agencies require a relatively large number of software applications to help clients get the desired results.

Which Agency Management Software to Pick?

When considering what agency management software to use, the idea of “the best agency software” often comes to mind. There is no doubt lots of agency software with impressive features are out there. However, what qualifies as the best for one agency might not be for another agency. This can make decision-making a daunting task.

But it doesn't have to be this way; with the right guidance, agencies can make the right selections. First, let’s see the three main categories of digital agency software under which any agency software can be found.

1. Agency Management Software

These tools help manage internal operations, such as project management, team collaboration, and accounting.

Here are capabilities to consider before committing to any solution;

• Task Automation: Because you'll be handling a lot of repetitive tasks and workflows, project management software must feature automation capabilities. This will help streamline agency operations.
• Project Management & Collaboration: Features to manage what team members get to handle what task is critical. There should be an option for reassigning tasks and tracking the progress of each team member, too.
• Time Tracking: The option for tracking employee work hours across projects is a must for productivity.

2. Agency Client Management Software

As the name suggests, the solutions under this category are for managing everything related to your clients. Agency client management software helps manage contact information, interactions, feedback, and other data required to maintain strong business-client relationships.

Here are capabilities to consider before committing to any solution;

• Client Portal: Is the software a dedicated, secure platform where clients can access project updates, reports, and communication? Or does a solution have these features as part of its offerings? Regardless, a client portal is important for especially businesses in the client-facing industry.
• Contact & Account Management: Features to manage client contact information, accounts, and data are crucial. Proper management helps in marketing, sales, and customer support efforts. This may also help with compliance with safety and security, if any.
• Client Feedback & Survey Tools: Tools to collect feedback and conduct surveys will help an agency improve its services and client relationships.

Read More: 10 Best Client Management Software in 2024

3. Digital Marketing Software for Agencies

This classification contains tools your agency uses for the actual creative process. This includes solutions for search engine optimization (SEO), social media management, PPC advertising, content creation, and campaign analysis. Digital marketing software helps drive client results, improve online presence, and boost growth efforts.

With the classifications out the way, here is a four-item checklist to consider before determining tools to buy in any of the above categories.

• Involve your agency team in software adoption conversation. As a manager or if you are in the position to decide what tools to adopt or temporarily use, pulling your team members into the conversation can help with a better understanding of needs. During a meeting, the next items are important to consider.
• Discuss what processes or workflows your agency struggles to handle.
• Discuss areas where operations can be smoother. This is different from the second item on the list. This consideration is for areas in which you already excel, not areas where you currently struggle.
• Talk about operations and tasks on which you can save time, money, or both.
• Discuss automation opportunities for worthy tasks.

Here are capabilities to consider before committing to any solution;

• Keyword Research: A tool for SEO efforts must have features for researching keywords and tracking SERP rankings.
• Content Creation: Tools for creating, editing, and optimizing digital content, including reels, long videos, and blog posts.
• Sales & Campaign Analytics: Sales solutions must have the capability to create different marketing campaigns. There should be a way to track and measure campaign performance, including metrics and ROI.

Because of advances in technology, it's not uncommon for certain agency software to have features that overlap with ones in other categories. So if a tool for a specific operation has features you can use for other operations/tasks, that's a plus for your agency! 

Top 15 Agency Management Software

Because there are many software apps under each category, we want to help you simplify your research by providing you with 15 examples, grouped according to where each belongs.

We highlight the pros, cons, pricing, and rating, as well as the features of each tool. Do not hesitate to do your own research to explore additional options before making a decision.

Agency Management Software

As mentioned earlier, these are the tools to manage your agency’s internal affairs, from project and task management to accounting and payroll. We go over 5 software applications in this category.

1. Asana for Agency Project Management and Collaboration

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When searching for the best agency management software, Asana always comes up and for a good reason. It serves as a platform to manage projects, deadlines, and communication. It's one of the best software out there for collaboration and productivity.

With it, you can manage tasks and workflows. But do not confuse it with your traditional project management software because it doesn't feature budgeting/expense tracking and other similar features you'd expect from a regular project management solution.

If you want to track client work across various projects, instead of creating and tracking multiple identical tasks scattered across different places, Asana lets you cross-index.

Cross-indexing means assigning a single task to up to 20 projects without duplicating them. Once you cross off a task in one list, other lists will be updated to reflect the made changes.

Also, you can copy tasks to multiple team members. This may be required if you want individual members to comment on a document, fill out a form, or do something similar. Instead of recreating the same task for multiple team members, simply right-click a task and select Duplicate task.

When managing projects for different clients, it's easy to have a messy dashboard interface. Asana provides an organized way of viewing projects, and you can even color code each client's project. For tasks with custom fields, you can use color in those areas, too. For example, you can use red to mean “on hold” and green for “complete.” These are simple but effective features that prove useful when finding information.

Pros

• Responsive and modern design interface
• Free version with decent features
• Timeline view for easily managing dependencies

Cons

• No time tracking functions
• May be difficult to master for new project management software users
• High pricing relative to competition

Things to Know

• Best for: Planning and tracking projects and tasks
• Free trial: 30 days
• Paid plans start at: $14.99/user/month
• G2 customer rating: 4.4 stars

2. Monday.com for Agency Work Management

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If you run a busy agency and would like to improve the workflows of your teams, Monday.com may help. This project management tool comes with features that are fully customizable to meet the unique needs of every agency or business.

This task management software also doubles as a customer relationship (CRM) platform. Its functions go beyond project management and can be used to help sales teams manage leads, see the flow of interactions, and track how everyone is meeting sales targets.

On the project management side of the software is automation. Monday’s automation works based on trigger, condition, and action—all of which can be customized when building automations.

Setting up automation requires no coding experience, and there’s an option for creating automation from premade templates. This is one way to get familiar with the features or get inspiration for automation types that might help streamline your projects.

What display view works for one team member may not work for another person. The different board views feature in Monday provides different ways to see the progress of projects. Monday’s supported board views include the Calendar view and Timeline view.

Pros

• Intuitive and customizable dashboards
• Available free plan to test features
• Modern user interface
• Rule-based automation for completing simple tasks

Cons

• Limited visibility of notes
• The time-tracking feature is challenging to use
• Issues with the mobile app

Things to Know

• Best for: Managing team tasks and workflows
• Free trial: 14 days
• Paid plans start at: $12/seat/month
• G2 customer rating: 4.7 stars

3. Trello for Task Automation

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Another software for agencies to consider may be Trello. Trello is a work management and collaboration tool known for its automation features.

Trello lets you create cards that represent tasks and ideas. In these cards, you can add tasks. You can have as many cards as you want and drag items across card lists to show progress.

Administrative tasks can take up pretty much of your team's time. Here is where Trello comes into play with its automation feature. There are 4 types of automation you can create with Trello. The first level of automation is rule-based in which a defined action triggers a set of actions.

For example, you can set "Urgent" as the Trigger for a label. In the Actions part of the automation, you can set the system to perform 3 actions: “move up to the top of the list,” add a due date for 2 days from now, and send a “Can someone handle this?” notification.

Other automations in Trello are based on button clicks, due dates, and calendar functions. Calendar and due date commands can be used, for example, to keep a board fresh by clearing out cards that are older than a week or preset date. Also use the calendar and due date combination to sort lists, move cards, and add new lists to a board.

This may be a good automation to keep things from being messy.

Pros

• An ideal platform for Kanban teams
• Impressive notification system including email and mobile push alerts
• Simple and affordable pricing

Cons

• Limited features for advanced project management needs
• Requires third-party integrations for advanced features
• Provides only a single visualization view

Things to Know

• Best for: Visual work management tool with automations
• Free trial: 14 days
• Paid plans start at: $6/seat/month
• G2 customer rating: 4.4 stars

4. Harvest for Agency Time Tracking

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If your agency or time management software doesn't come with a built-in time tracker, a separate time tracking software may help.

Harvest lets you track how everyone on your team is spending time. It also enables you to know how much a project is taking in terms of time and costs. You can track projects individually by clicking the provided timer when starting a task and turning it off when you're done with the task. This feature is useful for tracking time used on specific clients, tasks, and projects.

For team tracking, Harvest integrates the time-tracking data of every team member into one place. In this dashboard, you can see who's tracking their time and billable hours tracked by each member.

The dark blue progress line next to an employee’s name shows the billable hours the employee has worked, while the light blue line indicates the capacity of an employee. The progress line becoming red means the employee is at over capacity. Use this information to determine if a particular employee needs a break or maybe it’s time to reassign their tasks to someone else.

Chances are you wouldn't want to stop using your main agency management software just because it doesn't have a time-tracking function. Harvest integrates into other project management software such as Asana, and Trello, as well as business productivity tools like Google Calendar, Chrome, and Outlook.

Pros

• Robust team and personal time tracking infrastructure
• Easy to use and integrate with other management tools
• Reporting and invoice tracking feature

Cons

• Expensive
• Lacks search option
• Issues with resource planning

Things to Know

• Best for: Time-tracking solutions for agencies with multiple clients
• Free trial: 30 days
• Paid plans start at: $12/seat/month
• G2 customer rating: 4.3 stars

5. Zapier for Workflow Integration Between Apps

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Like many other businesses, yours will at some point—if not already—have to incorporate multiple agency software to get things done efficiently.

Instead of going back and forth between two or more apps, integration software can simplify processes. Integration apps have the function of connecting multiple tools or apps so all of them can “talk” to one another.

Zapier is a popular automation tool well known for its capability to connect apps and services. This way tasks can be automatically executed based on preset rules.

Use Zapier to connect your email client to Google Drive, so you don't have to manually upload files between the two platforms. You can also use it to integrate WordPress forms into Google Sheets, so any data collected through the forms on your site automatically populates into Google Sheets.

Zapier can provide over 7000 integrations, so you can be assured that your favorite app or service will be Zapier compatible.

Pros

• Integrate apps and services without codes
• Robust integration and automation capability
• Easy to use

Cons

• High price compared to similar products
• Fixing an error can at times be quite challenging
• Poor customer support

Things to Know

• Best for: Integrating and automating apps and services
• Free trial: 14 days
• Paid plans start at: $29.99/month
• G2 customer rating: 4.5 stars

Agency Client Management Software

Hopefully, you've seen different apps and tools that can help supercharge your agency's internal operations. The apps discussed above may even provide you with ideas of what solutions or functions to explore during your search.

Now, let's switch to the client-facing side of your business. Agency client management software solutions are designed to help and assist you in maintaining strong client relationships.

6. Clinked for Client Portal and Project Management

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For businesses that interact directly with clients or customers to deliver products, services, or solutions, a client portal could just be the main agency software required to run their operations.

A client portal serves as a secure online platform where clients can access information and communication related to their projects.

Clinked is a client portal provider that provides a robust solution where clients can view project progress, securely share files, and collaborate with business teams. There’s an option for member communication, time tracking, billing and invoicing, analytics, and lots more. Just call it a centralized hub to manage anything related to a client’s project.

Unlike other platforms offering client portals as part of their overall solutions, Clinked focuses on portal solutions for agencies and businesses in the client-facing industry. This focus lets Clinked keep delivering exceptional services to its users.

Part of the features that make many choose Clinked is the white-label offering. With Clinked, you don't have to worry about the branding on your web-based and mobile applications not matching with your company’s. You have full control over the logo and other branding elements on your customized web-based portal and the iOS/Android app.

Clinked's Client Portal Solution

You can keep using Clinked with your productivity tools or existing management software you might have. Clinked uses Zapier integration to connect with Monday.com, Harvest, Google Drive, Google Calendar, and many more apps.

Pros

• Client portal solution with robust features
• Fully customizable white label offering
• Can be connected to productivity tools and other agency software

Cons

• Not well-suited for businesses outside the client-facing industry
• Limited features on the mobile app

Things to Know

• Best for: Client portal solution for client project management and collaboration
• Free trial: 10 days
• Paid plans start at: $119/month
• G2 customer rating: 4.8 stars

7. HubSpot for Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

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HubSpot is a digital agency management software solution that offers a suite of products, including the Service Hub. Service Hub comes with the platform’s free CRM tools with which you can manage client interactions and data. The free plan comes with limitations and the HubSpot branding.

With a paid Service Hub, you have unrestricted access and more control over features such as ticketing, live chat, conversational bots, email scheduling, team emails, meeting scheduling, and dashboard reporting. 

The further up you go with HubSpot Plans, the more expensive it gets and the more functionalities you have access to for managing everything related to your customers/clients.

Pros

• Excellent solution for conversations, ticketing, and CRM capabilities
• Comprehensive and robust software for managing client relationships
• Integrations with other apps and services

Cons

• Expensive pay-per-seat pricing
• The initial setup can be challenging
• Limited capabilities of the Knowledge Base feature

Things to Know

• Best for: CRM for streamlining customer data and interactions
• Free trial: 14 days
• Paid plans start at: $15/seat/month
• G2 customer rating: 4.4 stars

8. Mention for Reputation Management

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It's important for your agency to have  a system to monitor and manage its reputation online. Mention is an online reputation monitoring and management software that works like Google Alerts.

The web-based software alerts you in real-time what people are saying about your agency on social media sites, blogs, and news websites. Mention also claims it can help track even television mentions.

Mention also lets you track what people are saying about your competitors. This can be a good way to know what people like and don't like about other agencies in your industry and use such information to improve your offerings.

Mention can be connected to other business and productivity tools your agency uses daily, including RSS, Slack, and Zapier.

Pros

• Find mentions of your brand across multiple social channels
• Monitor social profiles of other brands
• Comes with features to easily review and preview mention sources

Cons

• Takes a while to load the previews
• Lack of ability to monitor other social profiles you manage
• Sometimes can produce inaccurate and irrelevant search results

Things to Know

• Best for: Reputation management software solution for monitoring and managing online reviews
• Free trial: 14 days
• Paid plans start at: $49/month
• G2 customer rating: 4.3 stars

9. SurveyMonkey for Online Survey

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Another agency client management software is SurveyMonkey. SurveyMonkey is an online survey platform that helps create and send out professional surveys. Use gathered information to drive process improvements, growth, and innovation.

SurveyMonkey comes with lots of features that are dependent on the subscription plan. The basic plan has a cap of 10 questions and lets you collect a maximum of 100 responses per survey.

The premium plan gives you questions and response collection, with no limits. You have several templates you can quickly work with without having to worry about how to structure questions. You can collect responses from several channels, including website pop-ups, social media sites, and embedded links.

There is an option for analysis, custom reports, and creating custom dashboards for managers or specific users so they can see survey and poll reports in real-time.

Pros

• Provides a robust solution for creating online surveys and polls
• Many options to distribute created surveys
• Permission to keep anonymous identifiable information

Cons

• The platform can occasionally be difficult to navigate
• The free plan is extremely limited in use
• User interface needs improvement

Things to Know

• Best for: Online survey and poll creation platform
• Free trial: No free trial but a free plan
• Paid plans start at: $25/user/month
• G2 customer rating: 4.4 stars

Digital marketing Software for Agencies

While you use agency client management software to manage internal operations and communications with your clients, you also need a set of tools to complete the jobs clients hired your agency to do. From creating clients' websites to managing ad accounts, let’s see what’s inside this toolbox.

10. Semrush for Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

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Semrush is used by digital marketing agencies for researching content and keyword ideas that can rank on search engines.

In every online business, visibility is the key and mostly starts with seeking out evergreen or trending topics around which a business can create content.

Semrush doesn't stop at keyword and topic research but offers a whole host of other tools for market research, content production, advertising, and analytics.

The Keyword Overview tool displays the search volume, trend data, and more information about a keyword. It also has the Keyword Difficulty tool. This tool shows how hard it would be to outrank competitors for a keyword. The Site Audit tool checks websites for common SEO issues.

Overall, Semrush is a marketing agency software solution with lots of features that agencies can use to help run digital marketing campaigns, as well as optimize websites for SEO.

Pros

• Features robust keyword research and SEO tools
• Get competitive insights across any industry
• Comprehensive analytics function

Cons

• The learning curve can be steep for new users
• Confusing trend graph in the Keyword Magic reporting
• Reporting for Local SEO needs improvement

Things to Know

• Best for: SEO tools for keyword research and content planning
• Free trial: 7 days
• Paid plans start at: $139.95/month
• G2 customer rating: 4.5 stars

#11 Namecheap for Domain Hosting

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Creating and managing websites for clients as an agency requires using the right software solution. Namecheap is one the leaders in the industry providing web as well as domain hosting.

A quick and easy onboarding process means you can quickly create an account and set things up. Namecheap like many other hosting websites works with a host of content management systems (CMS), such as WordPress, Magneto, WooCommerce, and Joomla. Use any of these content management systems to design the appropriate website type your client needs.

Uptime and security are two major concerns when it comes to web hosting. Namecheap seems to deliver impressive results in these areas.

Namecheap excels in name hosting but has received complaints regarding underperformance in the web hosting department for heavy hosting needs. Depending on how big your system resource use will be, you can look into other web hosting services to meet your hosting needs and requirements.

Pros

• Arguably the best name hosting provider
• Has affordable introductory shared hosting plans
• Easy to use cPanel
• Hosting plans comes with free SSL and domain

Cons

• Configuring name servers for external hosting providers can be tricky
• Limitations in the email hosting feature
• Limited web hosting options for advanced hosting needs

Things to Know

• Best for: Hosting domain names and lightweight website hosting
• Free trial: No free trial
• Paid plans start at: $4.48/month for shared web hosting and as low as $10.28/year for .com domains
• G2 customer rating: 4.4 stars

12. Adobe Creative Cloud for Design and Creatives

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Creating graphic designs and creatives is no doubt a big part of any digital agency’s job. Many clients require graphic design, photography, and video editing. Creative Cloud features apps that can be used to handle different types of designs and content creation.

Creative Cloud includes Photoshop, Premiere Pro, InDesign, and After Effects. Photoshop is widely used for graphics editing and photo manipulation capability. Use Premier Pro for video editing and production. InDesign is used for creating flyers, magazines, and brochures. After Effects excels in visual effects and motion graphics.

This suite of software applications is best used by large agencies that have different departments catering to different types of designs and creatives.

Adobe Creative Cloud offers various plans and pricing so your agency doesn't have to buy all the software applications in Creative Cloud if that’s not necessary. You can always add or remove apps in your plans as needed.

Pros

• Access to industry-standard suite of design products
• Robust features for designing all kinds of creatives
• Integration with cloud solutions for easy file storage

Cons

• Subscriptions can be very expensive in the long run
• No option to buy standalone apps
• Poor customer support

Things to Know

• Best for: Collection of software applications for designs and creatives
• Free trial:  7 days
• Paid plans start at: $91.36/month for business/agency
• G2 customer rating: 4.6 stars

13. Sprout Social for Social Media

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As a marketing agency, you may need to handle social media account management for other businesses or your own social media accounts. The truth is that every social platform has its unique audience. You may need to connect with different audiences scattered across different social platforms.

Manually managing social media profiles for each platform for your own internal operations or client projects can be time-consuming and inefficient. This is where social media management tools come into the picture. These agency management software applications provide post-scheduling, content creation, engagement tracking, and account management. They also help with team collaboration and other options to help with marketing efforts.

Sprout Social is a social media management platform for managing multiple social platforms. The Smart Inbox feature places all incoming messages from all platforms managed into one place. This helps the management team focus on one place instead of switching between multiple apps. 

What seems to be a simple feature eliminates the need for switching between multiple apps, hence saving the team’s time.

Instead of manually posting social media content, the Sprout Social content calendar feature makes it simple to draft, schedule, and publish content. The review management feature gives your agency the capability to monitor reviews from TripAdvisor and similar services. Task feature allows team members to set tasks among themselves.

Pros

• Intuitive and well-organized dashboard
• Message filtering option for the Smart Inbox feature
• Analytics for real-time understanding of audience

Cons

• There are limitations based on your subscription plan
• Limitations with LinkedIn functionality
• Cumbersome subscription plan cancellation process

Things to Know

• Best for: Social media management tools for popular social sites
• Free trial: 30 days
• Paid plans start at: $249/seat/month
• G2 customer rating: 4.4 stars

14. Mailchimp for Email marketing

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Mailchimp is well-known in the e-mail marketing space. Mailchimp provides different automation features that let individuals and agencies create, and send both email and ad campaigns.

A lot of people today prefer to communicate through social media apps. But that does not mean email is now useless. In fact, it still plays a role in communications, including in sales. 

Marketers use email marketing to deliver their offer promotions to users’ mailboxes. People receive news about upcoming events and seminars in their email inboxes. This is why many businesses still use email marketing today.

Mailchimp allows you to design email campaigns by dragging and dropping elements. Or you can select from premade templates and make edits. Marketing automation tools like Customer Journeys let users create automated sequences and follow-ups for audiences. The workflow editor is not complicated to use and can be customized based on different rules and actions. This is a good way to send welcome messages, pre-sales sequences, and finally sales offers.

With the list segmentation feature, you get to target a specific section of your audience.

You can also build landing pages through which you can capture leads of prospects.

Pros

• Excellent template editor
• Comprehensive reporting and analytics
• Extensive list of integrations

Cons

• Not friendly towards affiliate marketing offers
• No email or live support available for free plan users
• MailChimp branding accompanies the free plan

Things to Know

• Best for: Email newsletter and automation platform
• Free trial: Available on request for large list sizes
• Paid plans start at: $20/month
• G2 customer rating: 4.4 stars

15. AdEspresso for PPC

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Instead of relying on organic traffic sometimes it's fast and makes financial sense to run pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. If your agency provides this service for clients, then you need a PPC management software app to streamline and manage the entire process.

AdEspresso is a tool that helps individual and agency advertisers create, analyze, and collaborate on Facebook and Instagram ad campaigns. The platform supports data syncing from ActiveCampaign, Aweber, Get Response, and Google Ads.

The onboarding Requests feature helps streamline the process of requesting access to clients' Facebook ads accounts and pages. You can create an onboarding request within your AdEspresso dashboard.

Advanced Analytics provides you with updates about metrics related to your Facebook campaign and provides daily optimization suggestions.

The app also has an automatic optimization function that uses a set of rules to pause underperforming ads in a campaign, allocating the ad budget to the best-performing ads within the campaign.

As AdEspresso only supports Facebook and Instagram ads, you’ll have to look into other options if you manage for clients or your agency ads outside of these two platforms.

Pros

• Easy-to-use interface for ad creation
• A/B testing feature to see what's working best
• Recommendations for how to get the most out of your budget

Cons

• Limited features compared to Facebook's Business Manager
• UI/UX can be improved
• Basic/limited integration

Things to Know

• Best for: Managing and collaborating on Facebook and Instagram ads
• Free trial: 14 days
• Paid plans start at: $49/month
• G2 customer rating: 3.6 stars

Conclusion

Whether to handle internal business operations, manage client relationships, or complete client projects, you need the right tools to run your agents or business. Just as a professional builder ensures they use top-of-the-line tools to complete projects, it’s equally crucial you use the best software in business operations where you're struggling or seeking to improve efficiency.

If you need a client portal solution built and customized for agency, reach out to us today for more information.