ActiveCollab vs Monday – The better fit for agencies in 2025

Popularity doesn’t equal suitability. Thousands of businesses may love Monday, but rave reviews don’t guarantee it’s the right fit for your agency.

Agencies don’t just need to track tasks; they need to manage client expectations and balance team workloads, all while keeping a close eye on their business’s profit margins.

While both tools will help you run more organized and connected workflows, they offer two very different types of solutions and target two distinct user types.

While Monday is one of the most popular business work management platforms globally, ActiveCollab has made a name for itself as an all-in-one, agency client project management hub. It doesn’t just organize your work; it ties project execution directly to client billing and business profitability.

That's exactly what we'll be covering in this comparison – which tool suits agencies and service businesses better in 2025 and why.

Why is ActiveCollab the best Monday alternative in 2025?

If there was one sentence that could sum up why ActiveCollab is the best Monday alternative, it would be this: ActiveCollab is a feature-stacked, purpose-built agency tool designed for full-scale client project management and business profitability.

What does this mean? It means you don’t just have a tool, you have an entire agency ecosystem that doesn’t just take care of client projects, but also your internal operations, including your agency’s financial health.

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Before we go into detail on what ActiveCollab lets you do and why it’s superior, here’s a quick snapshot of how ActiveCollab and Monday compare on some key decision-making points that come into play when choosing an agency project management tool.

If you want to take the things other agencies do badly and do them better (so you can beat your competitors), ActiveCollab is the platform to do it with.

With its agency-tailored design and native core features such as time tracking, billing, and workload management, it’s several steps ahead of Monday on multiple fronts. Why? Because it’s a tool where everything speaks to each other. Information flows seamlessly from initial client project quote to project tasks, to invoice. And then it takes all that data to produce a project overview dashboard you can track daily.

So if you want an agency tool that goes beyond basic project management and collaboration, but delivers clear insights to help you run a more efficient agency operation, ActiveCollab is a tool you should at the very least place on your short list and consider trialing.

ActiveCollab is a full-service agency tool, Monday is a generalist workspace

The first and main difference between ActiveCollab and Monday is the concept of each tool.

While ActiveCollab presents a full-service agency tool solution, built specifically for service businesses that run client projects, Monday offers a generalist, customizable workspace for any industry and business type.

ActiveCollab is designed to manage the entire lifecycle of agency project management, from initial scoping to client collaboration and final billing.

You can create projects with budgets, assign tasks with deadlines, track every billable and unbillable hour, and monitor profitability in real time within one system. It merges project management, client management, and resource management, letting you monitor and plan workflows effectively.

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This means nothing can fall through the cracks because you have dashboards, notifications, and alerts keeping you updated and informed. The tool lets you know where each project is at, gives you real-time access to all client collaboration, and also lets you monitor and view what your entire team is working on.

On the other hand, Monday is more of a generalist workspace, where its greatest strength lies in adaptability.

Businesses of any kind, in any industry, can configure boards and automations to fit any type of workflow, whether it be HR, product development, or marketing. While this can be beneficial, you also need to consider the time you’ll need to dedicate to setting up these workflows. This is something you don’t need to worry about with ActiveCollab, as you have a ready-made tool. All you need to do is jump in and start your project.

So while Monday offers a broad, horizontal workspace, ActiveCollab gives you a completely connected hub, with a complete, vertical agency feature set.

ActiveCollab is built with profitability at its core, Monday focuses on workflow visualization

For service businesses such as agencies, profitability is a core metric. Your success isn’t guaranteed simply by on-time delivery of a project, but also by staying on budget because that’s what ensures your client portfolio is profitable.

This is where ActiveCollab stands out because it recognizes this priority. With built-in budgeting tools, client account managers can set budgets and billable rates for individual tasks or team members.

All this information flows through to a single overview dashboard where the founder or project manager can see and track budget vs. actual spend. Having access to this information daily means you can spot red flags, manage project delays early, and make adjustments to protect margins before it’s too late.

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With Monday, the focus is more on workflow visualization for project tracking. It will tell you who is doing what and when, which can be extremely helpful for large, cross-departmental teams.

And it will be able to display that information in Kanban, timeline or calendar view (all of which ActiveCollab does, too), but without custom budget tracking boards, which you’ll need to configure or integrations, it’s not inherently a project profitability tracking tool.

So while Monday will answer the question “Is everything on track with this project?”, ActiveCollab will tell you that, and let you know if you’re actually going to make money out of the project.

ActiveCollab connects capacity & workload to financials, Monday separates the two

Agencies also have to balance their team’s capacity with outstanding and incoming projects, as well as their business revenue goals. This is another area where ActiveCollab differs from Monday.

Features like workload management within the ActiveCollab platform are directly linked to projects and budgets. This means you can set and view individual team members’ daily capacity and available hours, as well as see the financial impact on your bottom line.

By connecting your team’s time to money, agency owners can forecast hiring needs, prevent overallocation and underutilization of their existing staff.

So in essence, ActiveCollab unifies resource planning with agency financials.

Monday, on the other hand, while it does let you manage capacity with its workload view and resource management widgets, it doesn’t automatically tie this to your project financials. To do that, you’ll need to manually set up number columns for things like budget, actual cost, and variance, using formulas to track those figures.

The other option is to use a separate tool for financials. However, having two different tools creates silos and splits key project information across two systems, which leaves lots of room for error.

So while ActiveCollab gives you a birds-eye view of workloads and financials in one place, Monday separates people management from money management.

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ActiveCollab is tailor-made for client work & billing, Monday relies on integrations

One thing many big-name project management tools don’t place an emphasis on is client collaboration and management. They do a great job of giving you features that will let you connect with people and teams within your organization, but external collaboration is not always an easy or affordable option.

This is a gap ActiveCollab has worked hard to fill with its client-first features. But what they offer is not a CRM; it’s a business client management system built for collaborating, billing, and running project operations in partnership.

What does that look like in reality? It means agencies can use ActiveCollab to run projects, track billing, and collaborate so smoothly that clients see them as a natural extension of their own team. With team and client collaboration features like in-app chat, discussions, and task access (if access is granted), agency teams can communicate with external partners in real-time and not rely on email.

When you onboard a client, you can set up a client profile, select the level of access you want to provide to the project, and enter all their billing information. You can set up projects to be billed by hourly rates, fixed project price, or retainer, and ActiveCollab will track billable hours accordingly.

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And when the project is complete, you can take all the logged timesheet hours, include expenses, and generate invoices which clients can pay online via multiple payment platforms, including Stripe & PayPal.

When the project is done, you can provide your clients with an end-of-project summary report within the ActiveCollab platform that outlines exactly what their money was spent on. This kind of transparency builds and promotes trust, which is invaluable for long-term client relationships.

With Monday, while you can invite clients as external guests to collaborate on boards, and you can pull reports on time and tasks, it doesn’t have the native billing features an agency needs to take a project from task to invoice, to final payment. However, you can set up invoices and payments via their dedicated Quotes & Invoices app.

So while Monday gives you a way to communicate and collaborate on project tasks with your clients, ActiveCollab covers your entire client service workflow needs, from client onboarding to invoice payment.

ActiveCollab vs Monday – Which is easier to use & scale with?

Both ActiveCollab and Monday pride themselves on being user-friendly platforms, but they’re ideal tools for different business operations at different growth stages.

ActiveCollab gives you a clean, straightforward interface that’s built for agency operations and client projects. It’s a log-in and go kind of platform.

Essential agency project or campaign management features like task management, time tracking, and invoicing are well integrated, so your people won’t have to navigate through multiple menus to do their daily work.

You can start with these project basics first and gradually incorporate things like workload management and reporting.

On the other side, you have Monday, which, with its colorful and familiar spreadsheet-type interface and drag-and-drop board, is quick to set up. This makes it perfect for departments within larger organizations that want or need a tool that can be customized to their workflows.

For basic task management and collaboration, most users will find the tool easy to use. However, once you start configuring columns for more complex features such as financials, usability will depend on the individuals’ comfort level with this type of system.

One thing that needs to be called out is task dependencies. While both tools let you set task dependencies, the setup in ActiveCollab is more straightforward, and it also includes automatic schedule updates when dependent tasks move around.

As for scaling agencies, ActiveCollab, with its reporting features, collects and stores all the data to inform agencies on where their greatest growth potential lies.

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By analyzing your clients and projects, you can identify what the most profitable projects are so you can chase more of the same. It will also reveal where your lowest margins are so you can reevaluate your pricing.

So while Monday has a large enterprise customer base, which confirms it’s a good choice for large-scale projects and agile teams, ActiveCollab is more relevant for scaling agencies, specifically.

When you look at price and value, which is better?

When you crunch the numbers, which tool gives you more value for the price you pay will essentially depend on your business type and the pain points you want to solve.

If you’re an agency or consultancy business with 3 or more team members, you’ll get more of the features you need for a lower price with ActiveCollab.

ActiveCollab’s highest plan, which comes with all the features, will cost less per user than Monday’s mid-tier plans, which don’t cover an agency’s essentials, such as client billing, unless you connect with third-party apps (or use their CRM).

While Monday gives you more flexibility through customization options and extensive integrations, ActiveCollab’s purpose-built nature means agencies don’t need to spend time on setting up and tweaking their workflows. You zoom straight into client and project creation mode.

So if we were to strictly compare price-for-capabilities important to agencies, ActiveCollab comes ahead for the agency use case.

ActiveCollab is an intuitive, all-in-one hub for scaling agencies

Before you sign up for a tool like Monday, run it by your agency's pain point checklist.

Ask yourself: Does it fit the bill? Will you get everything you need? How much will it cost? And is there a better option out there?

A tailor-made, specialized option that’s been designed specifically for agency workflows. ActiveCollab is an intuitive, all-in-one agency ecosystem that gives you built-in native features – not plugins.

You’ll have everything you need to run a smooth, client service business operation under one roof. With features like task management, flawless team communication, time-tracking, invoicing, workload management, and client collaboration all integrated, your agency will say goodbye to team silos and project misalignment.

Instead of piecing together various third-party apps and customizing boards, your team can jump straight into project creation and execution mode. Know where every task is at, and where every hour has been spent. Use that information to generate reports, better understand your business profitability, and create an effective scaling strategy.

If you’re an agency founder or operations lead weighing up your agency tool stack, don’t commit just yet.

Make sure you take the 14-day ActiveCollab trial or get a demo from one of our people before you buy or renew your agency project management subscription.