SyncHQ vs Teamwork.com
Agency PSA
Manual / spreadsheets
SyncHQ vs spreadsheets and email
An honest look at when a spreadsheet-and-email workflow is genuinely enough for an agency, the specific point it stops being enough, and what replaces it.
Last reviewed August 9, 2026
The short answer
Spreadsheets win until two people need the same number at the same time. After that, every hour you save by not switching is paid back with interest in reconciliation.
- 01A sheet has no notion of who is allowed to see what, so the client never gets access and every status question becomes an email you write by hand.
- 02Time, scope, and invoices live in three different files with no link between them, so nobody can answer "did this project make money" without an afternoon of work.
- 03Nothing is wrong with the tool. The failure is that the tool has no memory of the process, so the process lives in one person's head.
What each one costs
SyncHQ
Free plan (3 projects, 5 members). Professional $29/mo. Enterprise $99/mo.
Spreadsheets and email
Effectively free, if you do not count the hours.
The thing that changes the bill: The real cost is the unbilled time nobody reconstructs on Friday and the scope creep nobody has a written record of.
Prices as published on August 9, 2026. Vendors change pricing without notice - check the source links below before you budget.
Capability by capability
YesPartialPaid add-onOn the roadmapNoNot published
Choose SyncHQ when
- More than one person needs the same number and you have caught them disagreeing.
- A client has asked "where are we?" more than twice on the same project.
- You suspect hours are going unbilled but cannot prove which ones.
- Onboarding a new hire means someone explaining which file is the real one.
Choose Spreadsheets and email when
- You are a solo operator with two or three concurrent clients and a process you can hold in your head.
- Your work is genuinely one-off - no retainers, no repeat scope, no multi-week delivery.
- You are still working out what your process even is. Do not encode a process you have not settled.
Questions people actually ask
Is a spreadsheet really that bad for agency work?
No, and any page that tells you otherwise is selling something. A sheet is the fastest way to model a process you are still inventing. The specific point it breaks is concurrency: two people editing the same truth, or a client who needs to see part of it and none of the rest.
What actually breaks first?
Almost always billing. Time gets logged late and approximately, scope changes are agreed verbally, and at invoice time nobody can reconstruct which hours belonged to which agreement. That gap is the money.
Can we move gradually?
Yes, and it is the sane way to do it. Move one project, keep the sheets running alongside for a cycle, and compare. Anything that only works because a person remembers to update it will show up immediately.
See whether it fits before you commit
The free plan runs three projects with five people - enough to put a real client through intake, delivery, and an invoice before you decide anything.
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