Teamwork.com vs Basecamp for Agencies: Client Access, Billable Time, and Cost

A five-person agency has two active client projects, one approver per client, and two ways of charging. A redesign is fixed-fee. Support work is hourly. The agency needs to share previews, capture a clear sign-off, and explain its Friday hours without showing either client internal estimates or the other client's files.

Teamwork pricing · Teamwork license types · Basecamp client visibility · Basecamp pricing

Run the same approval in both

Post “Homepage preview v3” with a review deadline and a single question. Ask the approver to reply “Approved for handoff” or name the exact changes still needed. Put your labor estimate and staging credentials elsewhere, with permissions limited to the people who need them. Open the project as a test client and check the preview, notification, and access boundaries. When the client approves v3, reference that reply in the handoff task. Keep a new version separate if the deliverable changes.

Basecamp has per-content client visibility. An outside collaborator is a different user type and can see everything posted in projects they belong to. Teamwork offers free client user seats on Basics and above and limits each client user to five active projects. A Teamwork collaborator is a different license and cannot log time. If a contractor must enter hours, account for the license that gives them that ability. Basecamp permissions · Teamwork license types

Reconcile a small Friday timesheet

Log two hours of fixed-fee design, three hours of hourly support, and one hour of internal QA. All six hours count toward agency effort. Only the three approved support hours go on the hourly invoice. Keep the design hours visible for reviewing the fixed-fee project's cost.

In Teamwork, log the hours against dated tasks assigned to individuals and check that the billable and non-billable entries appear in the Time report. That report has task, date, and time requirements, so compare it with the underlying logs if a row is missing. If you need to build the invoice inside Teamwork, test that step on the relevant plan. In Basecamp, log time on the project or work item and check whether the Timesheet view or export gives your billing owner enough information. If you classify hours outside Basecamp, give the billing owner a stable task reference to reconcile the rows. Teamwork Time report · Teamwork billing workflow · Basecamp Timesheet

Price the workflow and the people

Prices are in USD, checked November 9, 2026. The example uses two client user licenses on Teamwork and counts all seven logins against the published Basecamp cap for sizing. Confirm seat minimums, current checkout terms, and whether your account has legacy pricing. Compare like billing periods if monthly flexibility matters. Teamwork pricing · Basecamp pricing

Pick the plan that handles your weekly handoff. If the biggest delay is chasing decisions, test the approver's experience first. If the billing owner regularly spends Friday reconstructing time, have them reconcile the six-hour sample and see which workflow they could repeat across both clients. A weekly billable-hours tracker gives you a shared way to score that test.