Teamwork

1. Introduction: Built by Agency People, for Agency People

I've tested over 30 project management tools, and most of them treat time tracking like an afterthought, a third-party integration, a premium add-on, or a feature buried so deep nobody uses it. Teamwork is the exception. Time tracking is built into the DNA of this platform because the people who created it ran an agency and understood that tracking billable hours isn't optional, it's how you stay in business.

After five months of running 35+ client projects through Teamwork with a 14-person agency team, I can tell you that this platform solves specific problems brilliantly. Project profitability tracking revealed that two of our retainer clients were actually unprofitable, something we suspected but couldn't prove until we had accurate billable hour data connected to project budgets. The workload view prevented our senior designer from being triple-booked for the third month in a row. And the client portal gave our most important client visibility into project progress without the weekly status email they'd been demanding for a year.

But Teamwork isn't for everyone, and this review will be honest about that. The interface feels more functional than inspiring, our designers compared it unfavorably to Monday.com's vibrant boards. The learning curve, while not as steep as Jira's, took three weeks before the team was fully comfortable. And if you don't bill clients for your time, many of Teamwork's distinguishing features provide no value.

My testing framework evaluates project management tools across time tracking quality, client management capabilities, project profitability features, general PM functionality, ease of adoption, and pricing value. Teamwork scored exceptionally well on the first three categories, the agency-specific capabilities, and adequately on general PM. For its target audience, that's exactly the right optimization.

2. What is Teamwork? Understanding the Platform

Teamwork launched in 2007 from Cork, Ireland, founded by Peter Coppinger and Daniel Mackey, both experienced agency owners who built the tool they wished existed for their web development agency. That origin story matters profoundly because it explains why Teamwork treats time tracking, client management, and project profitability as core features rather than afterthoughts.

Today, Teamwork serves over 20,000 organizations with particular concentration in agencies, consulting firms, and professional services. The company has expanded its product suite beyond project management to include Teamwork Spaces (documentation and wikis), Teamwork Desk (help desk and support), Teamwork CRM, and Teamwork Chat, creating an integrated ecosystem specifically designed for client services organizations. You can manage client projects, track their support tickets, handle the sales pipeline, and collaborate on documents all within the Teamwork ecosystem.

The platform positions itself as "the only project management platform built for client work," and after five months of testing, that claim holds up. Where Asana and Monday.com treat time tracking as a feature, Teamwork treats it as the foundation. Billable rates exist at user, project, and task levels. Project profitability calculates automatically from tracked hours multiplied by billing rates versus project budgets. Client users have distinct permission levels that let them see project progress without seeing internal discussions, time logs, or budget figures. These aren't tacked-on features, they're woven into every aspect of the platform.

The core structure reflects agency thinking. Projects contain work for specific client initiatives. Task Lists group related deliverables within projects. Tasks break down into subtasks for granular tracking. Time Logs record effort against any task. Milestones mark key client deliverables. And the Company/Client model separates internal and external relationships, something surprisingly few PM tools handle natively.

3. Teamwork Pricing & Plans: The Agency Value Proposition

Teamwork's pricing becomes compelling when you consider what's included. Most competitors charge separately for time tracking (Asana + Harvest, for example), but Teamwork includes it at every paid tier. For agencies that need both PM and time tracking, the combined cost often undercuts competitors.

3.1 Free Plan (5 Users) - A Taste, Not a Meal

The free plan offers 5 users with 2 projects, basic task management, board views, and limited time tracking. It's generous enough to explore the platform but the 2-project limit makes it impractical for real agency work, most agencies have more than 2 active clients. Think of it as a try-before-you-buy rather than a sustainable free tier.

3.2 Starter Plan ($8.99/user/month) - Time Tracking From Day One

At $8.99/user monthly (billed annually, minimum 3 users), Starter gives you up to 300 projects, full time tracking with billable/non-billable categorization, task and subtask management, Kanban boards, calendar view, and 100GB of storage.

The key differentiator at this tier is time tracking. At a comparable price point, Asana ($10.99) doesn't include time tracking at all, you'd need Harvest ($12/user) or Toggl ($9/user) as an add-on. Teamwork gives you project management plus time tracking for $8.99 total.

What's Missing: No Gantt charts, no dependencies, no workload management, no project templates, and no billing features. Starter handles basic PM with time tracking; agencies needing real project scheduling will need Deliver.

3.3 Deliver Plan ($13.99/user/month) - Where Agencies Should Start

At $13.99/user monthly (billed annually, minimum 3 users), Deliver unlocks the features most agencies actually need: unlimited projects, Gantt charts with dependencies, project templates, workload management, resource scheduling, milestones, forms for intake, and portfolio views.

Our 14-person team operated on Deliver for the full evaluation. Project templates saved roughly 3 hours per new project setup, we had templates for website projects, brand campaigns, and retainer work. The workload view showed each team member's allocation across all projects, color-coded by capacity. And dependencies ensured that design couldn't start before the strategy phase completed, which had been a recurring coordination problem before Teamwork.

3.4 Grow Plan ($25.99/user/month) - Profitability Intelligence

At $25.99/user monthly (billed annually, minimum 5 users), Grow adds the business intelligence that transforms how agencies understand their financial performance: project budgets with alerts, profitability tracking, invoicing capabilities, fixed-fee and retainer billing, advanced reporting, and planned-versus-actual time comparison.

The profitability features were revelatory for our team. We'd been estimating project profitability based on gut feel and rough spreadsheet calculations. Teamwork's automated profitability tracking, which multiplied each team member's tracked hours by their billable rate and compared the total against the project budget in real time, showed us that two of our eight retainer clients were actually costing us money. The data allowed us to renegotiate both retainers with confidence, ultimately recovering $4,500/month in underpriced work.

Pricing Comparison Table

4. Key Features Deep Dive

4.1 Time Tracking - The Feature That Justifies Teamwork

Time tracking is where Teamwork separates itself from every general-purpose PM tool I've tested. It's not a checkbox feature, it's deeply integrated into every aspect of the platform.

The timer sits in the top navigation bar, accessible from anywhere in Teamwork. Click it, select a task (or create one on the fly), and start tracking. The timer persists as you navigate between projects and pages, showing elapsed time in the corner. When you stop the timer, it creates a time log attached to the task with the duration, date, and any notes you add. During our testing, the average time to start tracking was 3 clicks and 5 seconds, faster than any standalone time tracking tool I've used.

What makes Teamwork's time tracking agency-grade rather than just "included" is the billable rate system. You can set billing rates at three levels: user (John bills at $150/hour), project (this client project bills at $125/hour), and task (this specific deliverable bills at $200/hour). The most specific rate wins. When our senior strategist tracked time on a premium consulting engagement, her user rate of $175/hour was overridden by the project's $225/hour rate. This granularity matches how agencies actually bill, different rates for different clients, different work types, and different team members.

The timesheet view aggregates all time entries into a weekly grid that looks like a traditional timesheet. Team members see their week at a glance: Monday 8.5 hours, Tuesday 7 hours, Wednesday 9 hours, broken down by project and task. The operations manager sees all team members' timesheets side by side, identifying who's logging consistently and who's forgetting. We reduced "forgotten time" (unlogged hours that represent unbillable work) by 35% in the first month simply because the timesheet view made gaps visible.

4.2 Project Profitability - The Business Intelligence Layer

Profitability tracking on the Grow plan transforms Teamwork from a PM tool into a business intelligence platform for agencies. This was the feature that had the most significant impact on our business during the evaluation.

Here's how it works. You set a project budget (say $15,000 for a website redesign). As team members track time, Teamwork multiplies their hours by the applicable billing rate and compares the running total against the budget. The project dashboard shows a real-time profitability gauge: how much budget has been consumed, what the projected final cost will be based on remaining tasks and historical velocity, and whether the project is tracking toward profit or loss.

We discovered that our website redesign projects were consistently profitable (averaging 22% margin) while our brand strategy projects were breaking even or losing money (averaging -3% margin). The difference was scope creep during the strategy phase, clients requested additional research rounds that extended the project beyond the original estimate. With this data, we restructured our brand strategy proposals to include explicit scope boundaries and change order pricing. Within two months, brand strategy margins improved to 15%.

The planned-versus-actual time comparison adds another layer of insight. Before a project starts, you can estimate hours per task. As the project progresses, Teamwork compares estimates against actual tracked time. This data feeds into future estimation, after tracking 20 website projects, our estimates became remarkably accurate because we had historical data showing exactly how long each project phase actually takes.

What's Missing: The profitability features require the Grow plan ($25.99/user), which prices out smaller agencies. The reporting, while useful, doesn't provide the depth of dedicated business intelligence tools like Databox or custom dashboards. And the invoicing capabilities, while functional, don't replace a full accounting system, you'll still need QuickBooks or Xero for actual financial management.

4.3 Client Portal & Collaboration

Teamwork handles the delicate balance of client visibility better than any tool I've tested. The client user role sees project progress, milestones, and deliverables without seeing internal discussions, time logs, budget data, or team assignments. This sounds simple, but getting it wrong, accidentally showing a client your internal critique of their feedback, or your hourly rate, or your honest project health assessment, can damage client relationships.

We invited six clients as client users during our evaluation. Their experience was straightforward: they could see project milestones, view completed deliverables, add comments on tasks, and track overall progress. They could NOT see time entries, budget utilization, team workload, or any task marked as private. One client specifically commented that the portal "felt transparent without being overwhelming"—exactly the balance agencies need.

The permission model extends to messages and files. You can mark any message thread as "private to team" or "visible to client." Files can be tagged as internal or client-facing. This granularity prevents the anxiety that comes with inviting clients into your project management tool.

4.4 Task Management & Views

Teamwork's core task management is solid without being revolutionary. Tasks support descriptions, assignees, due dates, priorities, tags, dependencies, time estimates, file attachments, and comment threads. Subtasks break down complex deliverables. Task lists group related work within projects, we typically created lists matching project phases (Discovery, Strategy, Design, Development, QA, Launch).

The Gantt chart (Deliver plan and above) handles dependencies with proper scheduling. Finish-to-Start, Start-to-Start, and milestone dependencies adjust automatically when predecessor tasks move. It's not as sophisticated as Smartsheet's (no critical path calculation) but handles standard agency project scheduling well. We used Gantt charts for our website projects where sequential phases mattered, and board views for ongoing retainer work where flow mattered more than sequence.

The workload view shows each team member's allocation across all projects on a weekly or monthly view. Colors indicate capacity: green for available, yellow for fully allocated, red for over-allocated. During our evaluation, this view prevented at least four instances of accidentally assigning our senior designer to three simultaneous projects, a recurring problem we'd had with our previous PM tool that had no resource visibility.

4.5 Project Templates & Intake Forms

Project templates saved our team measurable time. We created templates for five project types: website redesign (47 tasks across 6 phases), brand campaign (32 tasks across 4 phases), content retainer (15 recurring tasks), SEO audit (28 tasks across 3 phases), and social media launch (22 tasks across 3 phases). Starting a new project meant selecting the template, setting the start date, and assigning team members. A website project that took 2 hours to set up manually took 15 minutes from a template.

Intake forms (Deliver plan) standardize how work enters Teamwork. We created a client request form that captures project description, deliverables, timeline, budget range, and brand assets. The form creates a task in our intake project, which the operations manager reviews and converts into a full project using the appropriate template. Before forms, project requests arrived via email, Slack, and verbal conversations, inconsistent and often incomplete.

5. Teamwork Pros: The Agency Advantage

Integrated Time Tracking Is Genuinely Best-in-Class

The combination of one-click timer, billable rate hierarchies, timesheet views, and automatic profitability calculation creates a time tracking experience that standalone tools like Harvest can't match for project context, and that PM tools like Asana and Monday.com don't attempt at this depth.

Profitability Tracking Changes Business Decisions

Seeing real-time project margins transformed how we priced proposals, managed scope, and evaluated client relationships. The discovery that two retainer clients were unprofitable, and the data to renegotiate confidently, paid for our Teamwork subscription many times over.

Client Portal Gets the Balance Right

The ability to give clients transparent project visibility without exposing internal data (time logs, budgets, private discussions) solves a genuine problem that agencies face. Most PM tools either give clients too much access or too little.

Project Templates Save Real Time

Creating a 47-task website project from a template in 15 minutes versus 2 hours manually, repeated across 35+ projects, represents hundreds of hours saved annually.

Time Tracking Inclusion Reduces Total Cost

When you factor in the cost of separate time tracking tools, Teamwork's all-inclusive pricing often undercuts the combined cost of competitors plus add-ons.

6. Teamwork Cons: The Honest Tradeoffs

Interface Lacks Modern Visual Energy

Teamwork's interface is functional and organized, but it doesn't spark the enthusiasm that Monday.com's colorful boards or Notion's clean aesthetic generate. Our designers described it as "serious but boring." The tool works well; it just doesn't make work feel exciting. For teams where tool aesthetics affect adoption, this matters.

Profitability Requires the Expensive Tier

The features that most distinguish Teamwork for agencies, project budgets, profitability tracking, invoicing, require the Grow plan at $25.99/user. That's a significant jump from Deliver at $13.99, and it means smaller agencies on tighter budgets can't access Teamwork's most compelling capabilities.

Free Plan Is Too Restrictive

Two projects for 5 users is barely enough to evaluate the platform, let alone run a team on it. Competitors offer significantly more at the free tier: ClickUp provides unlimited tasks and projects, Asana allows up to 15 users, and Trello provides 10 boards. Teamwork's free plan is effectively a trial.

Not Suited for Non-Agency Teams

If you don't bill clients for your time, many of Teamwork's differentiating features provide no value. The billable rate system, client portal, and profitability tracking are irrelevant for internal product teams, marketing departments at non-agency companies, or general business operations. Those teams would get better value from Asana, ClickUp, or Monday.com.

Ecosystem Is Narrow

Teamwork's additional products (Spaces, Desk, CRM, Chat) are functional but not best-in-class compared to dedicated alternatives (Notion, Zendesk, HubSpot, Slack). The value of the integrated ecosystem depends on whether "good enough but connected" beats "best in class but separate" for your organization.

Learning Curve Exceeds Simple Tools

Our team needed three weeks to become comfortable with Teamwork's full feature set. That's better than Jira (4-6 weeks) but worse than Trello (minutes) or Monday.com (days). The investment is justified for teams that will use the agency-specific features; it's unnecessary overhead for teams with simpler needs.

7. Setup & Implementation

The Real Timeline

Week 1: Foundation

Create your workspace, set up client companies, invite team members, and define billable rates for each user. Build your first project, we recommend starting with an active client project rather than a test, so the team learns with real stakes. Connect your Slack integration for notifications and your cloud storage for file management.

Weeks 2-3: Templates & Processes

Build project templates for your most common project types. Create intake forms for standardized work requests. Configure notification preferences so the team gets useful alerts without noise. Train the team on time tracking, this is the critical habit to establish early. Our biggest adoption challenge was getting consistent time logging; weekly timesheet review meetings for the first month established the habit.

Weeks 3-4: Reporting & Client Setup

Build dashboards for team lead and executive visibility. Set up client portals for your most important clients. Configure project budgets if on the Grow plan. Start reviewing profitability data and using it in business discussions.

8. Teamwork vs Competitors: Detailed Comparisons

Teamwork vs Monday.com: Agency Focus vs Visual Flexibility

Where Monday.com Wins: More visually appealing interface, faster team adoption, more flexible customization, better mobile experience, and broader applicability beyond agency work.

Where Teamwork Wins: Integrated time tracking with billable rates, project profitability tracking, client portal with granular permissions, and purpose-built agency workflow features.

Choose Monday.com if: Visual appeal drives team adoption, you don't need billable time tracking, or your work isn't client-service oriented.

Choose Teamwork if: You bill clients for your time, need project profitability visibility, or want a platform designed specifically for agency operations.

Teamwork vs Asana: Client Work vs Work Management

Where Asana Wins: Cleaner interface, Goals feature for strategic alignment, better workflow rules, stronger free plan, and broader integration ecosystem.

Where Teamwork Wins: Native time tracking (Asana requires Harvest integration), client management with portals, project profitability, and invoicing capabilities.

Choose Asana if: You're managing internal work without client billing, or you need goal tracking connected to execution.

Choose Teamwork if: You need time tracking and client management integrated into project management, not bolted on.

Teamwork vs ClickUp: Agency vs Everything

Where ClickUp Wins: More features at a lower price, more views, built-in docs, more generous free plan, and broader functionality for diverse team types.

Where Teamwork Wins: Better time tracking with billable rates, client portal, project profitability, and agency-specific workflow patterns. ClickUp includes time tracking but lacks billable rate hierarchies and profitability calculations.

Feature Comparison Table

9. Best Use Cases & Industries

Digital Marketing Agencies - Perfect Fit

Teamwork is tailor-made for marketing agencies. Campaign management with client visibility, time tracking for billable work, profitability analysis per client, and project templates for recurring campaign types create a complete agency operations system. Our testing environment was a marketing agency, and every feature felt designed for our workflows.

Professional Services & Consulting - Perfect Fit

Consulting firms managing client engagements with billable hours, fixed-fee projects, and retainer arrangements benefit from the same time tracking and profitability features that serve agencies. The client portal provides the transparency consulting clients expect.

Creative Agencies - Good Fit

Design studios, video production companies, and creative agencies benefit from Teamwork's project management and time tracking. For creative review and proofing, Wrike offers more specialized features, but for overall agency operations, Teamwork is strong.

Internal Product Teams - Poor Fit

Teams building internal products without client billing get no value from Teamwork's distinguishing features. Billable rates, client portals, and profitability tracking are irrelevant. These teams should use Asana, ClickUp, or Jira instead.

Freelancers and Solopreneurs - Mixed Fit

Solo consultants who bill clients find value in time tracking and invoicing, but the per-user pricing (minimum 3 users on paid plans) makes Teamwork expensive for a single person. Toggl + simple invoicing might serve better at lower cost.

10. Who Should NOT Use Teamwork

Teams Without Client Billing

Teamwork's differentiating features, billable rates, client portals, profitability tracking, serve client-facing organizations. Internal teams get better value from general-purpose PM tools that optimize for features relevant to their work.

Very Small Teams (1-3 People)

The minimum 3-user requirement on paid plans and the overhead of Teamwork's feature set exceeds what tiny teams need. Todoist, Trello, or ClickUp's free plan serve micro-teams better.

Teams Prioritizing Beautiful Interfaces

If your team's tool adoption correlates with how inspiring the interface feels, Teamwork's functional-but-plain design will be a headwind. Monday.com or Notion provide more visually engaging daily experiences.

11. Security & Compliance

Compliance Certifications

Two-factor authentication on all plans. SSO/SAML on Scale (Enterprise) plan. Data encrypted in transit and at rest. IP restrictions available on enterprise tiers. Regular security audits and penetration testing.

12. Customer Support Reality Check

Support quality was solid during our evaluation. We submitted four tickets: one billing question (resolved in 6 hours), one time tracking configuration issue (resolved in 12 hours with detailed instructions), and two feature questions (resolved within 24 hours). All responses were helpful and demonstrated product knowledge. The knowledge base is comprehensive for standard use cases, and video tutorials cover setup and common workflows.

Teamwork also offers professional services for implementation at additional cost, useful for larger agencies rolling out to 30+ people who need customized setup and training.

13. Performance & Reliability

Teamwork performed reliably throughout our five-month evaluation. Page loads averaged under 2 seconds. Time tracking start/stop was instant. Project switching was responsive. The Gantt chart rendered smoothly for projects under 100 tasks; larger projects showed slight lag during drag-to-reschedule operations.

We experienced no full outages. One brief period of degraded performance (slower notifications) lasted approximately 15 minutes. The mobile app performed adequately for time tracking and basic task updates but isn't suited for complex project management.

14. Final Verdict & Recommendations

Overall Rating: 4.1/5

Teamwork is the best project management tool for agencies and professional services firms that bill clients for their time. The integrated time tracking, billable rate system, project profitability analysis, and client portal create a purpose-built agency operations platform that no general-purpose PM tool matches.

The rating isn't higher because Teamwork's advantages are narrowly targeted. If you're not billing clients, the differentiating features don't serve you, and general-purpose tools provide better value. The interface, while functional, lacks the visual energy of modern competitors. And the profitability features that most distinguish Teamwork require the expensive Grow tier.

Not Recommended For: Internal product teams, startups without client work, small teams under 5 people, or teams that prioritize visual appeal over functional depth.

ROI Assessment

14-Person Agency (Grow plan, ~$4,368/year):

• Profitability tracking revealed 2 unprofitable retainers; renegotiation recovered $54,000/year
• Time tracking reduced "forgotten hours" by 35%, recovering ~$28,000/year in billable time
• Project templates saved 200+ hours/year in setup time
• Replaced separate PM ($2,100/year) + time tracking ($1,680/year) subscriptions
• ROI: 18x after accounting for Teamwork cost vs previous tool costs

Implementation Advice

1. Start with the Deliver plan, it includes the PM features agencies need without the premium price of Grow.
2. Make time tracking a team habit from day one. The entire value proposition depends on accurate time data.
3. Build project templates for your top 3 project types before onboarding the team.
4. Set up client portals for your most important clients immediately, the transparency builds trust.
5. Evaluate Grow plan profitability features after 2-3 months of consistent time tracking data, so you can see real profitability numbers on day one of the upgrade.

The Bottom Line

Teamwork is the rare PM tool that understands a specific audience deeply rather than trying to serve everyone superficially. For agencies and professional services firms, the combination of project management, time tracking, profitability analysis, and client management in one platform eliminates the tool fragmentation that plagues most agency operations. The interface won't win design awards, but the business intelligence it provides, particularly around project profitability, drives decisions that directly impact the bottom line.