Looking for a Teamleader alternative: start with the reason, not the list

Search for "Teamleader alternative" and you find seven lists with roughly the same names in them. What they have in common: they are written by companies that are one of those names, and that one happens to be at the top. This article is written by such a company too, so read it with the same suspicion. The difference I am trying to make is that I start with a question those lists skip.

That question is: why do you want to leave Teamleader? There are three common reasons, and they lead to completely different software. Pick an alternative without being clear on your reason and you will have the same feeling in a different package a year from now.

What does Teamleader actually cost?

Their own pricing page lists three packages: Smart, Grow and Flow, starting at 37.50 euros. CRM, quotations, invoicing and time tracking are in all three. Project management is not included as standard, it is a separate Booster at 35 euros per month. There is a 17 percent discount for annual billing, and from the sixth user onwards you pay half.

That last point matters for the sum: Teamleader gets relatively cheaper as your team grows, and is expensive when you are three or four people who need extra boosters. How to make that sum honestly is covered in what a CRM costs for an agency.

Why do agencies look for a Teamleader alternative?

There are three reasons in practice, and identifying yours is the most important step in your search.

Reason 1: you pay for invoicing you do not use. Many agencies do their bookkeeping and invoicing somewhere else, at their accountant or in a separate package. In Teamleader, invoicing is a big part of the product. If you are in this group, you want something lighter without a financial module.

Reason 2: the project side disappoints or costs extra. You have Teamleader for the client side, but you manage the actual work in Trello, Asana or Monday anyway. So you have two systems and possibly pay for a Booster as well. Then you want something where client and project genuinely flow into each other.

Reason 3: it has become too heavy. You use ten percent of the features and pay for one hundred percent. Then you want simplicity, not more features.

What stands out about the standard lists: they often put Odoo or Zoho at the top, and those are systems with more features than Teamleader, not fewer. For reason 3 that is exactly the wrong direction.

Which Teamleader alternatives are there?

The names you find everywhere, and what they are in practice:

• Gripp and Simplicate. Dutch packages close to Teamleader in setup, including hours and invoicing. Gripp is now part of Exact. Comparable, in other words, so if reason 1 or 3 is yours, they solve little. I put them side by side in Gripp vs Simplicate vs Teamleader.
• HubSpot. Strong when marketing and sales are your centre of gravity, and the free tier is genuinely usable. You do pay for scale and for features an eight-person agency rarely needs. More on that in HubSpot alternative for small agencies.
• Pipedrive. Built entirely around the sales pipeline and good at it. It is just not agency software: once the deal is won, it stops.
• Odoo and Zoho. Modular suites that can do almost anything. Powerful and cheap per module, but you will be spending time configuring. Choose this if you have someone who enjoys that.

What should you watch out for when switching?

One thing almost no list is honest about: if you leave Teamleader, something you currently use will probably go with it.

Teamleader does CRM, quotations, invoicing and hours in one package. Move to something lighter and you have to put invoicing and time tracking somewhere else. That is perfectly workable, and often better, because accounting software is better at accounting. But it is a second subscription and a second place. Count it in, or the alternative will look cheaper than it is.

Beyond that, the usual: can you export your client data and quotation history, how long does your contract still run, and who on your team actually has to work in it. A tool you like and that Bep and Sjef ignore has become an expensive spreadsheet.

Where Wecooking fits in

Wecooking is an alternative for reasons 1 and 2, and not for the rest. It is CRM and project management in one, where a won deal becomes a client project in one click, with a client portal, quotations and a meeting notetaker alongside it. From 19 euros per month, everything included, so no separate boosters, and currently free in beta.

What is not in it, and for this comparison that is the most important part: no invoicing and no time tracking. If those two are exactly what you value in Teamleader, Wecooking is a step backwards and you should look at Gripp, Simplicate or Odoo. And Wecooking is young, so you get a product that is still growing rather than the years of stability of an established player.

If what you are after is the lighter package where client work and project work finally sit in one place, you can try it for free and see for yourself whether that was the reason you left.