28 agency software options that will help you run a successful agency

You can’t have a hair salon without scissors. A repair shop without a toolbox. An airport without airplanes. And these days, you can’t have an agency without agency software—the digital tools that empower agency teams to efficiently manage their operations and deliver high-quality work to clients.

But the world of agency software is big and that makes it easy to get lost and overwhelmed. 

That’s where this guide comes in. Whether you’re looking to optimize your existing agency tech stack, want to add a few new agency tools to the mix, or are starting your selections totally from scratch, we have what you need to know to find the best agency software for your team.

Agency software FAQs

There’s no shortage of agency software options on the market. But before you can make an informed choice about which solutions belong in your agency, it never hurts to confirm you understand the basics—like what agency software is and why it matters in the first place. 

What is agency software?

Agency software is a broad term to describe a category of tools, apps, and platforms that help creative agencies manage their operations and execute creative work.  

Whether it’s allocating resources, planning projects, coordinating billing, or communicating with clients, agencies rely on all sorts of different programs to complete tasks and successfully deliver work to clients. 

All of them fall under the category of software for agencies, regardless of whether they’re only used by agencies or not. To put it simply, any digital tool or solution that an agency uses—from all in one agency management software to something as simple as a time tracker—is considered agency software.

What are the benefits of agency software?

Unless you jump back in time to the Mad Men era, you’d be hard-pressed to find an agency that doesn’t rely on software today. That’s because software offers several benefits:

• Improved agency efficiency: Software makes it easier for agency professionals to work together and quickly find what they need. It also automates or simplifies agency tasks like project tracking or invoicing, which frees up more time for the actual creative work. 
• Smoother project collaboration: Successful agencies rely on collaboration, and that’s another area where the right software offers a lot of support. Particularly when an estimated 75% of creative collaboration happens remotely, software for agency teams makes it easier for them to communicate, share ideas and feedback, and drive project success—regardless of whether they’re virtual or in-person.
• Greater visibility: Agencies keep a lot of plates spinning, and that’s impossible to track with jumbled spreadsheets and sticky notes. Agency management system software gives people more visibility into the work that’s being done across the team and the entire agency. Clients benefit from that increased transparency too, as tools like client portal software for agencies give clients more access to their deliverables and other resources.   
• Better decisions: Combine greater visibility with the reporting and analytics capabilities of some specialized software tools, and agencies are equipped to make more accurate, data-backed decisions about everything from resource management and recruiting to billing and scheduling to actual creative decisions and campaign strategies.  

How do I pick the right agency software? 

It’s tempting to search for the best agency software and call it a day, but what qualifies as the “best” will differ from agency to agency.

Start by thinking about your agency’s unique challenges and needs. Ask yourself these questions:

• What agency processes or workflows are you struggling with?
• Where could your operations be smoother?
• Where could you save time or money?
• Are there certain tasks that people dread and could be automated?

Pull your agency team into this conversation so you can source ideas and opinions about where software could solve real problems. That will help you go from simply finding the best agency software to finding the agency software that’s the best fit for you.

15 key agency software

You’re ready to start making your selections. However, since agency software is so expansive, categorizing your search can give you some clearer direction.

We’ve pulled together 15 agency software options in three distinct categories: 

• Agency management software: The tools you use to systemize and streamline your agency operations, from your resource management and project management to your accounting and payroll.
  

• Agency client management software: The tools you use to successfully organize your contacts, communicate with your clients, solicit their feedback, and maintain strong relationships.
  
• Digital marketing software for agencies: The tools you use for the actual creative work. This includes options like SEO software for agencies, social media software for agencies, and PPC software for agencies. 

Each of these bigger buckets has a lot of different sub-categories and types of tools. For example, your agency management software could include your project management platform, your time tracker, your accounting software, and more.

To keep things simple, we’ve broken down each major category into its distinct functions and provided one software recommendation for each of those. But of course, there are plenty of other options out there—so don’t hesitate to do your research. 

Agency management software

Your agency can’t deliver top-notch work if your internal operations are a mess, which is why agency management software (which you might also hear called agency operations software) is so important. 

Your resource management software and agency project management software are two of the fundamental elements in this category. They’re crucial for ensuring your team can get work done on time, under budget, and without a bunch of chaos. 

So, we’ll kick off this category by discussing both resource management and project management in detail. Beyond that, we’ll share some other agency manager software options to help you handle some other business operations, like optimizing your staffing, taking control of your financial processes, and more.

1. Resource Guru for resource management and time tracking

 

People are an agency’s most valuable resource, and agency resource management software gives agencies the visibility and control they need to assign team members and freelancers to projects, adjust project plans, and make the most of people’s skills and availability. 

Resource Guru is simple resource management and agency scheduling software that makes it easy to see who’s doing what, as well as where and when. It takes the groans and eye rolls out of important tasks like allocation, capacity planning, forecasting, scheduling, and time tracking.

Your work is constantly evolving, and if something gets delayed or rescheduled, you can drag and drop commitments and automatically adjust the schedule without a bunch of manual updating.

Avoid overbooking people by getting immediately notified about conflicts and adding things to the waiting list to tackle later. You can make the most of your billable time and revenue by reviewing reports to understand your team’s productivity and utilization rates.

Stop scrolling through endless email threads, comments, and random spreadsheets to understand who’s booked, who’s available, and what everybody’s working on. Resource Guru makes it easy to build and adjust super simple schedules and maximize your best resource: your people. Plus, Resource Guru comes with built-in timesheets, making it fast and easy to stay on top of how your team members spend their time.

Resource management software in action: Traffic management 🚦

One area where your resource management software really comes in handy? Traffic management. This involves managing the flow of work within an agency—including planning timelines, monitoring tasks and resources, and confirming that the agency can deliver work on time to clients. 

Agency traffic managers will use plenty of tools to make this happen. However, most of this planning will happen with the agency’s project management and resource management software. When you use them both together, they can serve as your dedicated agency traffic management software, a crucial part of your overall agency operations management software. 

For example, Resource Guru will give you a bird’s eye view of your team’s capacity so you can readily understand what work you’ve booked, what you can still reasonably commit to, and what timeline you can deliver it in. With Resource Guru, you can stay on top of resource management and time tracking in one place, helping you stay on top of project budgets across the project life cycle. 

Put simply, your traffic agency software gives you repeated reality checks about the work your agency has taken on so you can under-promise and over-deliver (rather than the other way around). 

2. Asana for agency project management

 

Your agency works on some complex projects and campaigns, and the right agency project management software makes even the hairiest projects seem more manageable. 

In your search for the best project management software for agencies, Asana is a name you’ll see come up again and again—and for good reason. It’s like your team’s headquarters for all of your tasks, projects, deadlines, and relevant communication.

The gist is the same as any other popular project management software for agencies. Within the platform, you set up projects and then break them down into tasks and subtasks. Assign team members and due dates to those tasks to keep your work moving. 

If you want to see all of the projects and tasks that are currently in progress, Asana has several different views—like a Kanban board, list, timeline, calendar, or Gantt chart—to give you the visibility and understanding you need. 

There’s an assortment of project management templates for common workflows if you want to avoid starting from scratch, and it’s also easy to save your projects as templates if your agency does recurring work or produces certain deliverables over and over again. And while templates are helpful, Asana also offers custom fields so you can tailor the software and format to your agency’s unique preferences. 

The best agency project management software should serve as your team’s centralized spot for anything and everything related to the work you’re doing, and Asana does exactly that. 

3. Harvest for time tracking

 

Your project management agency software might have built-in timesheets or time tracking that you can use. But if it doesn’t, you’ll want to look for separate agency time tracking software.

This software gives you real data about how your team members are using their time so you can maximize your billable hours and create more accurate forecasts and project plans moving forward. Harvest is one of the most popular options among agencies. 

It integrates with a lot of the other tools and platforms your team already uses, like Slack, Asana, Google Workspace, and plenty more. That makes it easy for your team to capture their time without disrupting their daily workflows.

People simply click the button to start tracking their time against a specific project or deliverable (you have full control to set these up the way that works best for you). There are tons of visual reports to give you a rundown of how time is spent and how your team can work more efficiently. 

If you don’t have a separate agency accounting software, Harvest can also easily turn your tracked time into invoices so you can collect payment right away with integrated solutions. 

No more guessing where the hours go or wading through complicated timesheets. With simple and lightweight agency timesheet software and time tracking, you can pinpoint how your team’s time is spent (and how to use it better).

4. Zapier for workflow and process management

 

Systems, processes, and workflows might sound like they stifle the creative work that happens in agencies. But in reality, the opposite is true: solid and reliable processes free up more time and energy for the actual work. 

That’s where agency workflow software like Zapier comes in. This powerful tool is built for anyone (and not just agencies), but even so, it’s one of the best options for your agency workflow management software. 

Here’s the gist: Zapier is an automation tool that connects your various tools and apps so that they can “talk” to each other. You determine the various triggers and actions to build automated workflows that push the busywork off your agency team’s plate.

For example, you could use Zapier to automatically save email attachments to your Google Drive. Or to automatically create Asana tasks from client emails. Zapier has thousands of integrations with apps, so you can connect all of your different tools and automate your workflows with this helpful agency process management software. 

5. Workable for recruiting and staffing

 

Your agency can’t do its best work without the right people, yet finding and hiring the best candidates can be a struggle—particularly without the right recruitment software for agencies to support you. 

Workable is some of the best recruitment software for agencies, regardless of your size and specialty. While some software focuses only on a certain part of the process or pipeline, you can use Workable for every phase from posting the job to hiring the right applicant. 

Through Workable, you can post your job posting to over 200 job sites with a single click. When it comes time to evaluate your candidates, you and the rest of your hiring team can collaborate within the software to decide who to move forward with. 

This recruiting software for agencies will manage and organize all of your other recruitment tasks as well, like scheduling interviews and accepting signatures on offer letters. Once a candidate signs on the dotted line, you can also use Workable to onboard new team members and get them up to speed with your company policies and more.

In your search for the best recruitment software for agencies, UK users (or agency owners all over the world, for that matter) don’t need to worry—Workable is international. 

If you’ve previously managed all of your recruitment with jumbled spreadsheets, emails, and stacks of resumes, there’s a better way. Use Workable as your agency staffing software to streamline all of your hiring workflows and find the best new hires for your agency. 

Be aware that, if you hire on a pretty limited basis, a solution like Workable might be a little too comprehensive. Instead, look for some free recruitment software for agencies like Zoho Recruit. You’ll be limited to posting one job at a time. But if that’s enough to meet your needs, you can skip a heftier price tag. 

6. FreshBooks for accounting and billing

 

Agencies are full of creative brains, which means accounting and bookkeeping aren’t high on anybody’s list of favorite tasks (unless you have a dedicated accountant or bookkeeper).

But keeping track of your numbers is important, which is why you need agency accounting software like FreshBooks. Think of this software as the home for anything and everything numbers-related within your agency. 

You can prepare and send invoices, log payments, set up recurring client billing, track your expenses, and generate all of the reports you need to understand your financial performance and get prepared for tax time. FreshBooks also has built-in time tracking, so you can capture all of your team’s billable time. 

FreshBooks is intuitive and easy to use, so this agency billing software can whip your finances into shape even if you don’t pride yourself on your accounting knowledge. You and your team can spend less time staring at digits or line items and more time on the creative work you enjoy. 

Agency client management software

There’s no shortage of options for the best agency management software—the platforms you use for everything that’s happening “under the hood” at your agency.

But now let’s move beyond your internal operations to talk about some of the client-facing aspects of running an agency. This account management software for agencies will help you build and maintain strong client relationships (and look polished and professional while you do so). 

7. AgencyAnalytics for reporting

 

Reports help you understand your agency’s performance and share those results with your clients (while simultaneously proving your value). But when you’re juggling a lot of different tools and campaigns, reporting can be taxing and time-consuming.

AgencyAnalytics is agency reporting software that creates beautiful and informative reports, without all of the manual effort. AgencyAnalytics integrates with more than 75 of the most beloved and popular marketing platforms so you can pull all of your clients’ marketing data into one spot.

There are pre-built reports and templates to save you time, along with a drag-and-drop interface so you can quickly add in the details that are most relevant to your client. Reports are also easy to customize, so you can design them to match your agency’s brand. 

You can even go beyond periodic reporting and build custom marketing dashboards for all your clients, so they have full and instant visibility into the metrics that matter most to them. Think of it as a way to make your clients feel like they have your 24/7 attention—without actually having to focus on account management around the clock. 

8. HubSpot for CRM

 

Your agency is focused on delivering top-notch work to your existing clients. But to remain competitive, you also need to constantly prospect new business and opportunities. Keeping track of all of those contacts can be challenging, particularly if you don’t have a defined system for doing so.

HubSpot is one of the most popular agency CRM software options on the market, and its free CRM software is both robust and easy to use. 

In addition to contact management, you’ll get visibility into your entire sales pipeline so your team members can understand where deals are and what needs to be followed up on. Reports help you understand the strengths and weaknesses of your existing sales process so you can make strategic improvements.

Whether you have a dedicated agency sales team or work more collaboratively to handle sales conversations, this CRM software for agencies will support you in forging strong relationships and closing more deals.

9. Mention for reputation management

 

Your agency will likely use reputation management software in two different ways: to monitor and improve the reputation of your clients’ brands and to oversee your own agency’s online reputation. That means any worthwhile reputation management software for agencies will be able to do both of those jobs well. 

Mention makes it easy to keep track of conversations about your brand (or your clients’ brands) that are happening online across a variety of sources—social media, articles, review sites, forums, and plenty more. You can use that visibility to identify trends, pinpoint problems, and engage with audiences in a more relevant and meaningful way. 

You can also draft, schedule, and publish posts to a variety of social media channels from directly within Mention, making it a one-stop shop for understanding and shaping brand stories, perceptions, and reputations.

10. Semrush for client portal

 

Your client portal is some of your most important agency account management software—it’s like the home base for your agency clients. It’s where they can go to find the resources and assets they need, check in on project progress, leave a comment or feedback, and give their approval. 

Having this centralized spot allows your clients to feel involved and kept in the loop, and it also makes it easy for your agency team to get what they need. 

Most project management platforms have client portal features you can use, particularly if you want to give clients visibility into your daily work. But if you’re looking for some more dedicated agency portal software for your clients, Semrush is worth a look. 

Semrush’s client portal features are part of their Agency Growth Kit. You can easily set up branded portals for all of your clients where you can create and send auto-updated client reports, share project statuses and tasks, and collect necessary approvals.

Semrush can also double as your agency SEO software, PPC software for agencies, along with other marketing functions (don’t worry—we’ll cover more about these types of solutions in the next section), which means you can pull together more valuable tools in one platform. 

Digital marketing software for agencies

Your clients hired your agency to do a job—to lead a rebrand, launch a new website, create a strategic marketing campaign, take over management of their social media accounts, or maybe even all of the above.

We’ve already covered the different tools you could use to manage your internal processes and keep in touch with your clients. In this section, let’s take a closer look at some of the agency marketing software you’ll use to manage the actual marketing tasks you were hired for.

11. Moz for SEO

 

In your search for the best SEO software for agencies, you’re sure to come across Moz—one of the big players in the SEO world. 

Moz bills itself as an all-in-one SEO tool and that’s not just lip service. It really does do it all. It fits the bill as agency rank tracking software, keywords tracking software for agencies, and your knowledgeable guide as you improve site SEO performance, analyze and identify backlink opportunities, and determine the best keywords your clients should rank for. 

Start with a site audit to crawl your clients’ sites, identify problems, and issue fixes. Use it as agency rank tracker software to understand ranking performance and build more suitable strategies. This SEO enterprise software for agencies has everything you need to amp up search performance for your clients. 

As you zero in on the best SEO software for agencies, free trials can help you make your choice. Moz offers a generous 30-day free trial so you can get a feel for all of the features and determine if it’s the right SEO software for agency teams like yours. 

12. Sprout Social for social media

 

There’s no shortage of social media management software for agencies on the market. Having options is encouraging, but it also makes it tougher to find the right fit for your team. 

The best social media management software for agencies will allow you to not only create and schedule social content, but also track performance with detailed analytics, create helpful client reports, uncover trends and content opportunities through social listening, and engage with audiences—all directly through the platform. 

Sprout Social is a leader in the world of social media software for agencies because it does all of those (and more). Sprout Social also integrates with numerous other marketing platforms and productivity tools, so you can easily build your clients’ social media management into your agency’s workflows. 

Sprout Social is comprehensive, making it a solid choice for agency social media management software—particularly for larger agencies.

13. Mailchimp for email marketing

 

Mailchimp is more than just email marketing software for agencies—it’s an all-in-one marketing platform. But let’s focus specifically on email first. 

Within Mailchimp, you can use a variety of drag-and-drop email templates to build beautiful and branded emails for your clients, even if you don’t have a designer on staff.  Mailchimp also has robust segmentation features, so you can better understand your clients’ audiences and communicate with them in the most meaningful ways. 

Visual reports and analytics will give you a detailed understanding of how campaigns are performing. Plus, Mailchimp has a variety of AI-assisted optimization tools to help you both create and improve all of your content. 

Mailchimp also fits the bill as marketing automation software for agencies. It’s easy to build out the customer journey and trigger emails or SMS messages in response to a variety of customer actions, like abandoning a cart or viewing a specific page.

So, it’s probably not even fair to bill it as some of the best email marketing software for agencies—it’s simply some of the best marketing software for agencies.

14. AdEspresso for PPC

 

If you’re running PPC advertising campaigns for your clients and your social media marketing software for agencies doesn’t include options for paid advertising, then you’ll need some PPC management software for agencies to streamline and oversee the entire process.

AdEspresso gives your agency one place to manage all of your clients’ campaigns across three different channels: Facebook, Instagram, and Google. 

Onboarding your clients for PPC services can be a challenge, particularly when you need access to various pages and accounts. This is easy with AdEspresso’s Onboarding Requests tool, which makes it easy for clients to share access.

When you need to change an ad setting, it’s simple to edit, clone, or delete your ads or your targeting settings. You can also automate your post boosting within the platform to broaden your clients’ reach without more manual effort. And when it comes to tracking performance, you can create and automatically send tailored reports to share important analytics with your clients. 

However, be aware that AdEspresso only focuses on three channels. If you’re running PPC campaigns on other platforms—like YouTube, LinkedIn, Amazon, or elsewhere—you’ll need other software to create and track those. 

14 additional agency software options to consider

You might think we’ve covered it all. But agencies are diverse and multifaceted, which means there are plenty of other software categories to think about as you refine your tech stack. 

Here are 14 other types of agency software to explore. However, keep in mind that finding the right software isn’t a numbers game. Return to your agency’s unique needs to find the solutions that are suitable to you—rather than defaulting to a “more is better” approach. 

1. AI

Artificial intelligence (AI) continues to gain steam. Many of the software options we already mentioned have built-in AI features to streamline and speed up your work. But from content creation to project management, there are plenty of other AI tools your agency could check out. Try the ever-popular ChatGPT to brainstorm headline ideas or generate an outline. Or use Fotor to automatically generate images. 

2. All in one

When tool fatigue and software sprawl are such real challenges, it makes sense that you’d want to look for all in one agency software to cut down on the amount of solutions you need. However, you won’t find software that handles every single thing for your agency. Instead, pick a specific function (such as social media scheduling or agency financial software) and look for a comprehensive platform in that one area.

3. Automation

Much like AI, automation is a growing topic of conversation—particularly among agencies that want to maximize billable time. Plenty of the above platforms include automation features, but you can also explore other automation software options to lighten your team’s load and dedicate more time and attention to your clients. 

4. Budgeting and financial

Managing your agency’s finances can be complex, especially ensuring you have enough cash flow to operate. Agency budgeting software helps you keep an eye on your digits and stay in the black. Your accounting platform might have budgeting features. But even a simple Google Sheet can help you plan out your spending. 

5. Call tracking

Proving return on investment to your agency clients is always a challenge, but that’s particularly true if their clients tend to call. How can you demonstrate that your marketing efforts and campaigns generated that phone call? Finding the right call tracking software for agencies (CallRail is a popular option, if you’re looking for one) helps you capture that information and reinforce your value. 

6. Collaboration

There’s a huge array of agency collaboration software outside of your project management platform. There are online whiteboards like Miro and FigJam, instant messaging solutions like Slack, and video meeting platforms like Gatheround. Regardless of whether you need virtual agency software or your staff works together in-person, the right software helps them communicate and get their best work done as a team.  

7. Database

Agency database software is another broad category. It could include your CRM, your applicant tracking system, or anything else that requires you to store and organize large quantities of data in a way that’s easy to reference and use. 

8. Free agency management software

Your agency software management can cost a lot or it can cost a little. You can find costly, comprehensive solutions. Or you can keep your tech stack lean and scrappy with free tools. When it comes to agency management software, free doesn’t have to mean inadequate. 

9. Influencer

Influencer marketing wasn’t even a thing just a couple of decades ago, but now it’s an undeniably powerful strategy. Influencer marketing software for agencies helps you find the right influencers and collaborate with them on client campaigns. Upfluence and TapInfluence are two popular options in this category. 

10. Insurance

Insurance protects your agency, but all of the jargon and policy language is enough to make your eyes glaze over. Look for an insurance provider that uses agency insurance software that will help you understand your policy, see what’s covered, and pay your premiums. 

11. Payroll 

Your financial software or your HR platform may or may not include features for you to run payroll for your agency staff. If it doesn’t, you’ll need to look for some agency payroll software like Gusto or Rippling so your team members can reliably receive their hard-earned paychecks. 

12. Project margin

Project margin is how much your agency makes on a project after subtracting all costs. Needless to say, it’s an important metric. You might be able to calculate this using some of your existing solutions like your accounting platform or your project management solution. If not, you’ll need to look for specific project margin software for agencies.

13. Quoting

Before you can sign a new agency client, you’ll likely need to provide them with a quote for your services. Most accounting solutions will help you create an estimate or you can look for agency quoting software to get the job done. Software like HoneyBook manages the client journey all the way from that initial quote to their invoice payment. 

14. White label

Think of this one as more of a feature than a category of software. As you evaluate your options, keep an eye out for white label agency software, which allows you to apply your agency’s branding to the materials you share with clients (like reports, portals, invoices, and more). It makes your agency seem far more professional and polished. 

Agency success starts with the right agency software

Just like you can’t have a painter without a paintbrush, you can’t have a thriving agency without the right agency software.

You and your team will rely on those digital tools to effectively manage and invest in your people, organize your internal operations and workflows, establish and maintain strong relationships with clients and vendors, deliver winning work to your clients, and ultimately ace your agency management in general. 

However, when it comes to finding the best software for your agency, there isn’t a mold for you to fit into (although, we think top-notch resource management software is always a safe bet). The better route is to identify your agency’s needs and select software options that are the right fit for those. 

At the end of the day, the best software selections aren’t always the ones with high ratings and instant name recognition—they’re the ones that are personalized to your specific agency.