How to choose software for your web agency
Most web agencies buy their second tool before they have properly used the first. What you end up with is three subscriptions that never talk to each other and a project margin you only discover on the final invoice. This guide covers how to choose software for your web agency: which modules matter, what to ask at the demo, the red flags that should stop you, and when buying nothing is the cheaper call.
How to choose, in short
- Start from the number you cannot calculate today: margin per project, or profitability per client.
- Insist on the four core modules: projects, clients and retainers, time tracking with invoicing, domains and hosting.
- Check that logged hours reach the invoice with no manual export — that single hop is where the time saving lives or dies.
- Make the demo run your scenario: a 20-hour retainer that ran to 26 hours, not a guided feature tour.
- Compare the 12-month total against the subscriptions it replaces, not against zero.
The four modules that move the numbers
An agency tool is not judged on how many features it has, but on how many money questions it closes. These four close them.
- Project management: briefs, sprints, deliverables with an owner and a due date, client sign-off on each deliverable.
- Client management: the client file, the monthly retainer, project history and profitability per client.
- Time tracking and invoicing: billable and non-billable hours, role-based hourly rates, the path from timesheet to invoice.
- Domains and hosting: the client portfolio, expiry dates, SSL certificates, renewals and rebilling.
- Monthly client reports generated from the same data — not rebuilt by hand in a slide deck.
Table: three separate tools vs. one platform
An 8-person agency typically ends up with a project tool at €11/user, a time tracker at €7/user and an invoicing tool at €25/month — roughly €169 a month. The subscriptions are not the problem.
The problem is the work between them. Somebody exports the hours, pastes them into an invoice, recalculates the retainer and rebuilds the monthly report: three to four hours a week, about 15 hours a month. At 150 lei an hour that is 2,250 lei a month — more than double the subscriptions themselves (around 840 lei).
Three-tool stack vs. one platform, an 8-person agency
| Criterion | Three separate tools | One platform |
|---|---|---|
| Subscription cost per month | around €169, across three vendors | one subscription, one vendor |
| From hours to invoice | CSV export, manual paste, double-checked | logged hours become invoice lines |
| Project margin | worked out in a spreadsheet, after delivery | visible while the project is still running |
| Domains and hosting | a spreadsheet of expiry dates, in one person's head | a portfolio with expiry alerts and rebilling |
What to ask at the demo, and the red flags
A good demo does not show features; it resolves a situation you actually had last month. Bring it in writing.
- Ask to see a 4,000 lei/month retainer for 20 hours, run up to 26 hours: where does the warning show up, and who gets it?
- Ask them to go from timesheet to invoice on screen, with different rates per role and no export in between.
- Ask for the profitability-per-client report over the last three months, then ask exactly which data it is computed from.
- Red flag: “that's doable with a small automation” for every single link between modules.
- Red flag: time tracking is a separate module, billed separately, syncing once a day.
- Red flag: no mention of e-Factura, even though B2B invoices in Romania must go through the RO e-Factura system.
When you don't need agency software
Honestly: below three or four simultaneous projects and two people, a well-kept spreadsheet beats any platform. The real cost of a new tool is never the subscription — it is the month your team fills it in halfway.
And do not confuse categories. Agency software does not replace Figma, Git or an IDE, it does not run Google or Meta Ads budgets, and it does not track stock. Teamwork and Monday have far larger integration marketplaces, Scoro is stronger on multi-currency, and Productive has a more mature resource forecast. What 4webagency has instead: e-Factura through 4invoices, the client domain and hosting portfolio — which none of those four offers — and one subscription instead of three.
- One big client and one open project: there is nothing to compare yet.
- No role-based rates and no estimates in hours: the tool will only show you that you have no data.
- Nobody to keep the data clean — a timesheet filled in every other week does not produce margin, it produces fiction.
- What you are missing is a sales pipeline, not delivery: that is CRM territory, not agency-tool territory.