ClickUp, monday.com and Teamwork are general project tools priced per person, from $10 to $29.99 a user a month. Lumea Direct is priced by client count, from $98 a month with unlimited seats. Your pick comes down to one question: should your software bill follow your team, or follow your client list?
Every list of agency software names the same three project tools. All three are strong, and all three were built for projects with a start date and a finish date. An SEO retainer has neither. It resets on the first of the month, every month, for every client. This page compares the four on price, on what each one does well, and on what the retainer month asks for.
Every price below comes from each company’s own pricing page, checked October 9, 2026, on monthly billing.
What Do ClickUp, monday.com and Teamwork Cost?
The three project tools run from $10 to $29.99 per user a month on monthly billing. ClickUp Unlimited is $10 a user, monday.com Standard is $14 a seat, and Teamwork Basics is $13.99 a user. Lumea Direct starts at $98 a month for up to 5 clients, with no per-person fee at all.
| Tool and plan | What it covers | Price on its own page | Priced by |
| Lumea Direct Starter, $98/mo | Delivery, time, reports, profit | $98 a month for 1 to 5 clients, unlimited seats | Client count |
| Lumea Direct Growth, $197/mo | Delivery, time, reports, profit | $197 a month for 6 to 12 clients, unlimited seats | Client count |
| Lumea Direct Agency, $296/mo | Delivery, time, reports, profit | $296 a month for 13 to 25 clients, unlimited seats | Client count |
| Lumea Direct Solo, $49/mo | One business, not an agency | $49 a month for 1 business | Flat |
| ClickUp Unlimited, $10 per user | Delivery, native time tracking | $10 per user a month, billed monthly | User |
| ClickUp Business, $19 per user | Delivery, time, dashboards | $19 per user a month, billed monthly | User |
| monday.com Standard, $14 per seat | Delivery, no time tracking | $14 per seat a month, billed monthly | Seat |
| monday.com Pro, $24 per seat | Delivery, time tracking | $24 per seat a month, billed monthly | Seat |
| Teamwork Basics, $13.99 per user | Delivery, billable time | $13.99 per user a month, billed monthly | User |
| Teamwork Accelerate, $29.99 per user | Delivery, time budgets, retainers, invoices | $29.99 per user a month, billed monthly | User |
Source: each company’s own pricing page, checked October 9, 2026. Prices change, so confirm on the linked pages before you buy.
Annual billing lowers all three project tools. ClickUp lists up to 33 percent off, Teamwork lists 29 percent, and monday.com lists 18 percent, which brings Pro down to $19 a seat. ClickUp and monday.com both offer a free tier, and monday.com caps its free plan at 2 seats. Teamwork gives you 14 days free on Basics and Accelerate. Lumea gives you 14 days free with no card.
Why Does Per-User Pricing Cost an SEO Agency More Over Time?
Per-user pricing climbs every time you hire, even when your client count never moves. A 10-person agency pays $190 a month on ClickUp Business, $240 on monday.com Pro and $299.90 on Teamwork Accelerate. Lumea Growth is $197 for the same team, covering up to 12 clients.
Agencies do not add people and clients at the same rate. You hire a VA, a link builder and a second writer to serve the same twelve clients. Revenue holds steady while headcount rises, so a per-user bill rises with the cost side of your business instead of the income side. Add two more VAs and watch what happens.
- ClickUp Business: $190 a month at 10 users. $228 at 12 users.
- monday.com Pro: $240 a month at 10 seats, the figure monday.com shows on its own page. $288 at 12 seats.
- Teamwork Accelerate: $299.90 a month at 10 users. $359.88 at 12 users.
- Lumea Growth: $197 a month at 10 users, 12 users or 30 users, covering up to 12 clients.
At two people and three clients, a per-user plan costs less than Lumea. The lines cross around your fourth or fifth hire, and they do not cross back.
What Does Each Tool Do Well?
Each of the three leads on a different strength. ClickUp packs the most features into the lowest price, monday.com gets a team using it fastest, and Teamwork handles billable client work best of the three.
ClickUp
ClickUp gives you the most product per dollar. Native time tracking starts on Unlimited at $10 a user, along with unlimited custom fields, unlimited Gantt charts and unlimited integrations. Business at $19 a user adds dashboards with advanced cards, 5,000 automations a month, portfolio workload management and Google SSO. ClickUp hands you the raw parts. You build the structure yourself, and an owner usually spends a few weekends doing it.
monday.com
monday.com wins on adoption. Boards read clearly, the templates get a team moving in a day, and people stop asking how it works. Watch the plan ladder. Time tracking sits on Pro at $24 a seat, not on Standard at $14, so an agency billing hours has to budget for Pro. monday.com also notes on its page: prices exclude tax.
Teamwork
Teamwork aims at client services work more squarely than the other two. Basics at $13.99 a user tracks and reports billable time. Accelerate at $29.99 a user adds time budgets, retainer management, client invoices built from logged hours, and HubSpot and Quickbooks connections. Profitability by project sits on the Optimize plan, which carries a quote-only price and a demo call.
Where Do Project Tools Break Down on an SEO Retainer?
Four gaps show up by month two, and all four trace to one root. A project tool tracks tasks with due dates, while a retainer sells a monthly count of deliverables per client.
- The month does not reset. Four posts, two landing pages, a technical fix list and a report start over on the first. A project tool has no concept of a month starting over, so you rebuild the same board twelve times a year or copy a template and hope nobody edits the wrong copy.
- Tasks are not deliverables. Four blog posts become twelve tasks across three people with no shared count. Ask how many of the four are done on the 22nd and somebody goes counting. The client asks the same question and somebody counts again.
- The client report is a second job. Rankings, traffic, calls and completed work sit in four places, none of them the project tool. You retype numbers into a doc, paste screenshots and export a PDF. Two hours a client, every month. At twelve clients you have spent three working days.
- Profit per client stays hidden. Hours live in the project tool, retainer amounts live in your invoicing, and contractor costs live in a spreadsheet. Nothing joins the three, so the client eating 40 hours a month against a $1,500 retainer stays invisible until you are angry about it.
How Is Lumea Direct Different?
Lumea Direct is built around the retainer month instead of the project. You set each client’s monthly deliverables one time, Lumea rebuilds the month on the first, and every logged hour carries a client, so profit per client runs on its own with no spreadsheet.
- Service tiers set the month. You define what Basic, Premium or your own tier includes once, then assign a client to a tier.
- Deliverables carry a count. Four of six posts shows as four of six, to your team and to the client.
- Hours belong to a client. Time entries attach to a client and a work type, so hours roll up by client without sorting a spreadsheet.
- Pay periods close and lock. Rates lock to each entry when it closes, so labor cost lands against the client it belongs to and does not move later.
- Client reports pull real data. Search Console numbers come in from the connection instead of being retyped from a screenshot.
- Every feature sits on every plan. There is no time tracking one tier up and no reporting add-on. Plans differ by client count alone.
Lumea does not replace your research tool. Semrush, Ahrefs and Google Search Console keep doing what they do. Lumea holds the delivery, the hours, the money and the report.
How Do You Choose Between the Four?
Six questions settle it, and the first one settles most of it. Answer them against your own numbers, not against a feature list.
- How does it charge? Per user, per seat or by client count. Per-user pricing grows with every hire, including contractors.
- Does the month reset on its own? Recurring deliverables by service tier, not a project template you copy each month.
- Are hours tied to a client? Time tracking without a client on each entry cannot show you profit.
- Can it show profit per client? Fees minus client costs minus the cost of logged hours, salaried staff included.
- Can the client see results? A client-facing report or login with real Search Console data, not a slide you built by hand.
- Can you bring your data in? Spreadsheet import for clients, prospects and topical maps, so month one is not retyping.
Pick the question you care about most and test it with one real client during a free trial. Not a demo client. A real one, with real hours and a real report at the end of the month.
Price the Tool Against Your Client List, Not Your Team
Michael Gleed built Lumea Direct inside his own SEO agency. For years the client facts lived across Drive, a project board, a time tracker and three spreadsheets, and the month-end report took a weekend. Lumea puts the retainer month, the hours, the costs and the client report in one place, priced by how many clients you serve rather than how many people you hire.
Start your 14-day free trial with no card and no sales call. Run your top 3 clients through one full month and compare the report you send to the one you send today.
Questions About SEO Agency Project Tools
Which is cheapest for a 5-person SEO agency?
On monthly billing, ClickUp Business at 5 users is $95 a month, monday.com Pro is $120 and Teamwork Accelerate is $149.95. Lumea Starter is $98 a month for up to 5 clients with unlimited seats. At five people the numbers sit close together. At ten people ClickUp Business reaches $190 while Lumea Starter stays at $98 for the same client count.
Do ClickUp, monday.com and Teamwork track time?
All three track time, at different prices. ClickUp includes native time tracking from Unlimited at $10 a user. Teamwork tracks and reports billable time from Basics at $13.99 a user. monday.com puts time tracking on Pro at $24 a seat, so an agency billing hours needs the Pro plan rather than Standard.
Can I build client SEO reports in a project tool?
You can build internal dashboards in all three. None of them pulls Google Search Console data into a client-ready monthly report on its own, so plan on a separate reporting tool or a manual build. AgencyAnalytics runs about $20 per client a month for this job.
Do I pay for a seat for every contractor?
With ClickUp, monday.com and Teamwork, yes, for anyone who logs in and does work. monday.com includes unlimited free viewers from the Basic plan, which helps for read-only stakeholders. Lumea has no seat fee, so contractors, VAs and freelancers cost nothing to add.
Can I run Lumea next to ClickUp or monday.com?
Yes, and some agencies do. They keep the general board for internal work, product work and anything outside SEO, then run client retainers, hours, costs and reports in Lumea. The two do not fight over the same job.
What happens to my Lumea bill when I add a client?
Nothing until you cross a band. Starter covers 1 to 5 clients at $98, Growth covers 6 to 12 at $197 and Agency covers 13 to 25 at $296. Your sixth client moves you from $98 to $197. Clients seven through twelve cost nothing more.
