HoopoeHQ vs monday.com vs ClickUp vs Wrike for agency client delivery
How HoopoeHQ compares with monday.com, ClickUp and Wrike for agencies: client access, approvals, dates, white-label and cost, checked October 2026.
· 6 min read · Client delivery
monday.com, ClickUp and Wrike are general work management platforms that agencies adapt for client work. HoopoeHQ is built only for the client side of agency delivery. If you need one tool to run every internal process, with deep automations and dozens of views, the big three are stronger. If your pain is clients, meaning requests, approvals, dates and what the client can see, HoopoeHQ does that job with less setup and charges for it differently.
We make HoopoeHQ, so treat this as a vendor's comparison and check the facts yourself. Every competitor price and feature below comes from the vendor's own pricing or help pages, checked on 13 October 2026.
The short version
| HoopoeHQ | monday.com | ClickUp | Wrike | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Built for | Agency client delivery | General work management | General work management | General work management |
| How you pay | Per plan: client workspaces with a team included | Per seat, from 3 seats | Per user | Per user |
| Entry price | £39 a month (2 clients, 5 team) | £8 per seat a month (Basic, annual) | $8 per user a month (Core, yearly) | $10 per user a month (Team, annual) |
| Clients | Free and unlimited | Free viewers; guests from Standard | Guest access, rules vary by plan | External users take a paid seat |
| Formal approvals | Named approvers in order, decision log | Built from status columns | Proofing from Business | Business and above |
| Client-visible dates | Landing date on every request | Configurable | Configurable | Configurable |
How each one treats your client
This is the difference that matters most, so it comes first.
monday.com offers unlimited free viewers from Basic, and guest access from Standard. On Standard, three guests are free and every further four use a billed seat; on Pro and Enterprise, guests are unlimited (monday.com guest pricing). A guest works inside your boards, so you decide board by board what each client may see.
ClickUp supports guests with permission levels, and the allowances and rules vary by plan. Its pricing page was showing two price lists when we checked, with the newer one listing Core at $8 and Business at $17 per user a month billed yearly (ClickUp pricing). Confirm the current list before you budget.
Wrike treats external users as full users who take a paid seat, with limited access rights (Wrike pricing). That is reasonable for a contractor who works in your projects every day, and expensive for a client who approves twice a month.
HoopoeHQ gives every client their own isolated workspace. Clients only ever see their own workspace and only the requests marked as client-visible; internal requests and drafts stay with the agency, enforced on the server. Client users are free and unlimited on every plan, and occasional reviewers can review through a private link with no account.
Approvals and sign-off
monday.com's pricing page lists no approval feature; teams build approvals from a status column and automations. That records what someone clicked, not who approved which version.
ClickUp includes attachment annotation (proofing) from Business, and Wrike lists approvals on tasks, folders and projects on Business and above (Wrike help). Both are capable, and both put the client in your internal structure to use them.
In HoopoeHQ, approvals are the centre of the product rather than a feature of a task. Named approvers decide in sequence, feedback is pinned to the file, and every decision is written to an append-only log naming who approved which version and when. More detail on the reviews page, and a walkthrough in how to set up an approval workflow that does not stall.
Dates and timelines
All four can show dates. The difference is what the date means. In the general tools a due date is a field, and whether the client sees it, and whether anyone updates it when work slips, is down to how you configure and police it.
HoopoeHQ puts a projected landing date on every request, set by the person doing the work and visible to the client. When it moves, the request records when, by how much and why. Campaigns appear as bars on a timeline, with the jobs underneath, and any open job landing after the launch date is flagged. The client sees the same timeline, filtered to what is theirs. See landing dates and the campaign timeline.
What it costs a 12-person agency with 8 clients
Here is the team cost only, at list prices on annual billing where offered, excluding tax. It is a rough guide: your real bill depends on plan, billing cycle and how many client guests you need.
| Tool and plan | Team cost | Clients |
|---|---|---|
| HoopoeHQ Agency | £119 | Free, unlimited |
| monday.com Pro (unlimited guests) | 12 x £17 = £204 | Included as guests |
| ClickUp Business (newer price list) | 12 x $17 = $204 | Guests, rules vary by plan |
| Wrike Business | 12 x $25 = $300 | Each external user needs a seat |
The comparison flatters HoopoeHQ at this size and stops flattering it as the team grows. Agency includes fifteen team members, then each extra person costs £8, £5 or £3 a month depending on the band they fall in, so a 25-person team on Agency is £184 a month. The general tools also replace other software that HoopoeHQ will not, which is the next point.
Where the big three are the better choice
- Internal operations. If you want one platform for HR onboarding, sales pipeline, IT requests and client work, monday.com and ClickUp are built for that breadth. HoopoeHQ is not.
- Heavy automation. All three have automation builders and integration catalogues far larger than anything HoopoeHQ offers. HoopoeHQ connects to AI assistants over MCP with personal API tokens, and stops there.
- Large in-house teams. Wrike's structure, permissions and reporting suit a 150-person marketing department with internal approvers.
- Invoicing. HoopoeHQ logs time and shows delivery economics, but it does not invoice. If you want quotes to cash in one system, look at agency management tools instead.
Where HoopoeHQ is the better choice
- Your clients refuse to log in to your project tool, or log in and get lost.
- Approvals are disputed, slow, or live in email.
- Clients ask "any update?" more than once a week. We wrote about why in why clients keep asking "any update?".
- You want clients to see your brand and your own domain, which HoopoeHQ includes on the £119 Agency plan.
Can you use both?
Yes, and plenty of agencies will. A common split is the general tool for the internal production plan and HoopoeHQ for everything the client touches. The cost of that split is double entry for anything that crosses the line, so be strict about which tool owns the request and its date. If you are weighing a broader shortlist, client portal software for agencies, compared groups the wider market by job.
Questions agencies ask when comparing
How does HoopoeHQ compare to monday.com for agencies?
monday.com is broader and more configurable; HoopoeHQ is narrower and ready for client delivery without configuration. monday.com charges per seat from three seats and handles clients as guests; HoopoeHQ charges per plan, includes your team up to a set size, and makes clients free.
How do Wrike and HoopoeHQ differ for agency workflows?
Wrike is built for structured internal teams, with approvals from Business and external users on paid seats. HoopoeHQ is built around the client: isolated client workspaces, free client users, named-approver sign-off and dates the client can see.
Is HoopoeHQ a full project management tool?
No. It covers requests, planning, capacity, time and client delivery, but it is not a general work management platform, and it says so.
If client delivery is where your current tool creaks, start a 14-day trial with one client and compare it on that client's behaviour, not on a feature grid.