By Ali Demirci, founder of Woofocus · October 22, 2026 · 6 min readWhat we checked, and who this is for
We are a web studio, and we make Proofyard, a production board for studios. We are not freelancers, and Proofyard was built for teams; where it fits a freelancer and where it does not is at the end. None of the vendors below pays us.
We read each vendor's own pricing and help pages on 22 October 2026, with the price for one person, billed yearly and monthly, and what the AI costs on top. We have not used every tool on client work. Prices move often, AI prices most of all, so check the page before you pay.
The lists that rank for this search are mostly written by a vendor that ranks itself first, several carry 2020 to 2024 dates under a 2026 title, and few give a price. A freelancer needs the price.
The short answer
- $5a month, billed yearly, for Todoist Pro or Trello Standard, the cheapest with AI
- $27a month for one person on monday.com Basic, which starts at 3 seats
- $9a month on top for ClickUp's Brain AI
- 2 of 16list no AI on their pricing page: Dubsado and Markup.io
What is the main thing you need help with?
What do you need help with most?
Use Todoist or Trello
The cheapest paid plans with AI, $5 a month billed yearly.
- Setup
- An evening
- Claude sees
- Your tasks, not your clients
What a freelance web project needs from its tools
A site for a client goes the same way whether a studio or one person builds it: a brief, a quote, copy and design, the client's feedback, a sign-off, the build, a check and an invoice. On your own, the hard parts are not the tasks. They are the client's side: notes that come in by email and WhatsApp, an approval nobody can find later, and an invoice that waits for a "looks good".
So we looked at four things for each tool: the price for one person, what the AI does and what it costs, what a client can see without paying, and whether there is a seat minimum that makes one person pay for three.
Four kinds of tool
Task and project tools with AI
General project tools, priced per person, with AI as part of the plan or on top.
| Tool | One person a month, billed yearly / monthly | The AI | Free plan |
|---|---|---|---|
| Todoist Pro | $5 / $7 | Task Assist and unlimited Ramble on Pro | Yes, 5 personal projects |
| Trello Standard | $5 / $6 | Listed on Standard and up, not Free | Yes, up to 10 collaborators |
| ClickUp Unlimited | $7 / $10 | Brain AI is $9 a person a month on top | Yes, with a trial of the AI |
| Notion Plus | $10 / $12 | Only a trial; full Notion AI needs Business, $20 / $24 | Yes, 10 guests |
| Asana Starter | $10.99 / $13.49 | 5 AI requests a person a month, more at $0.50 each | Personal, for 2 users |
| monday.com Basic | $27 / $36 for its 3-seat minimum | 1,000 AI credits a month | Yes, up to 2 seats |
| Motion Pro AI | $29 / $49 | 7,500 AI credits a month included | No, a trial |
Notion and Asana let clients in as free guests on paid plans, and ClickUp's Unlimited plan gives a one-person workspace five guest seats. None of these has a client portal in the sense a client expects, with their open items, approvals and invoices on one page.
Freelance business suites
Built for one person who sells services: proposals, contracts, invoices and a client portal, with some project tracking inside.
| Tool | One person a month, billed yearly / monthly | The AI | Client portal |
|---|---|---|---|
| Moxie Starter | $10 / $12 | Moxie AI assistant on Starter | White-label portal from Pro, $20 / $25 |
| Plutio Core | $15.83 / $19 | 500 AI credits a month (Plutio Pal) | On every plan; Core holds 9 active clients |
| Bonsai Essentials | $19 / $25 | No AI named on the pricing page; an MCP server for your own AI | From Essentials |
| Dubsado Starter | $27.92 / $35 | None listed | On every plan; proposals need Premier |
| HoneyBook Starter | $29 / $36 | HoneyBook AI listed on every plan | On Starter |
If most of your week goes on quotes, contracts and chasing payment, start here. Their project tracking is lighter than the tools above, and none of them knows what a website review looks like.
An AI assistant as your project manager
Claude Pro is $17 a month billed yearly ($20 monthly), and ChatGPT Plus $20 a month. Both have Projects: a place per client with the brief, your notes and files, where the assistant drafts the plan, the proposal and the reply to the client.
For one person this goes a long way. It stops where the client comes in: the client sees nothing, there is no record of who approved what, and on Claude's Pro plan a project cannot be shared, which is a Team plan feature. Our Claude for small business guide has the plans, and our guide to the Claude models says which model fits which job.
Website feedback tools
For notes pinned on the client's site instead of screenshots by email. BugHerd's Standard plan is $42 a month billed yearly ($50 monthly) for 5 members, with unlimited client users and AI that writes a title for each note. Markup.io is $79 a month for 50 MarkUps, with unlimited users. Both are priced for teams; for one person, the price is the same as for five.
Watch for seat minimums
- monday.com says plainly: "Plans start from 3 users." Basic shows $9 a seat, but one person pays $27 a month.
- Bonsai asks for 3 users on its Elite plan.
- AI on top: ClickUp's Brain AI adds $9 a month, and Notion's full AI is a plan up. The cheapest price on the page is often the one without the AI.
Where AI saves a freelancer time
From our own client work, and what we see in the tools above, the time goes back in a few places:
- The brief. Paste the client's email and ask for a page list, open questions and a quote outline. Every tool above with AI can draft this; the assistant in Claude or ChatGPT does it best with the client's earlier mails in the project.
- The call. A note taker writes the summary, and you check who does what by when. Our comparison of AI note takers has the prices.
- The client's notes. Pins on the site, read into a list you can work through, beat a long email with screenshots.
- The follow-up. A draft of "here is where we are" for the client, which you read before you send.
The AI should prepare and you should decide. Nothing in the list above is worth letting a tool send to a client on its own.
Where Proofyard fits, and where it does not
Proofyard is a production board for web and design studios: phases from brief to launch, a client portal where clients approve with the design beside them, pinned feedback on designs and live sites, and Claude doing the connecting work. Clients and reviewers are free.
For a freelancer it costs $12 a month billed yearly ($15 monthly), with 3,000 AI credits a month. That is more than Todoist or Trello. There is no free plan, only 14 days free, and it has no proposals, contracts or invoices, so you would still need one of the suites above or your accounting tool for those. It fits a freelancer who builds sites for clients, has more approvals and feedback rounds than quotes, and wants one place for both. If you mostly need a to-do list and invoices, it is the wrong tool.
Before you choose
Tick what the tool you are weighing does for one person
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Start with the price and the seat minimum; the rest only matters if those fit.
Sources
All read on 22 October 2026. Prices in US dollars before tax, for one person.
- ClickUp pricing, Notion pricing, Asana pricing, Trello pricing, Todoist pricing, Motion pricing, monday.com pricing
- Bonsai pricing, HoneyBook pricing, Moxie pricing, Moxie assistant, Plutio pricing, Dubsado pricing
- Claude pricing, Claude Projects, ChatGPT pricing
- BugHerd pricing, Markup.io pricing
- Proofyard: our own pricing page on 22 October 2026.