We do video editing for agencies, so we hear that exact same question at least once per week: “What project management (PM) software can be used to prevent six active brand client projects from conflicting?” As always, the solution will depend on how many people are in your team, which post-production tools you have already paid for and if each client wants access to their own portal login or simply an easy-to-understand weekly status report via email. That is why we created this neutral summary of options based on what we see as an editor/team member on the other end of your PM process. We don’t sell PM software. We work with whatever PM software the agency has already purchased.
- Software for project management tracks who is doing what at what time. Video production requires managing multiple subteams effectively. Examples include StudioBinder, Plaky, Yamdu, monday.com, ClickUp, Notion and Wrike.
- Review and approval software collects time stamped feedback. Examples Frame.io, Krock.io, Filestage and Vimeo Review.
- Production specific tools handle scripts, call sheets and shot lists and payroll. Examples StudioBinder excels in managing film and video productions with scheduling and scripts but overlaps with PM and Final Draft and Cast & Crew for payroll.
Buy one PM tool and one tool for review. Don’t try Frame.io as your PM stack or monday.com board as your layer for review. Agencies that try to do both inside one product tend to delay and frustrate clients. Review/approval layer pairs with PM for the other part of the stack.
What agencies actually get from PM software
Agencies really benefit from using PM software in Three ways.
Visibility into capacity (editor lead views the calendar of an editor who is working 38 hours next week and another with 12 hours available and therefore will approve freelancer requests sooner). Freelancers and small teams benefit from simple video sharing and review tools. Using project management software can save 3-5 hours weekly on admin tasks.
Transparency to clients in regards to workflow gating (sharing a board eliminates the need to send “where are we at?” Emails to clients while keeping sensitive information such as client costs and internal data private). Video production software manages terabytes of data efficiently.
Consistency across all recurring engagements through templating (each brand project rebuilds itself when using a template. Email threads do not).
U/GoatPantsKillro on r/editors described how he utilized Wrike to accomplish these goals after being an editor for 9 months: “you can assign Tasks to non-creative work. Examples include billing, quote status/approvals, purchase orders, and script approvals. Wrike offers pixel-accurate feedback tools for video projects. In addition, you can set up templates to automatically generate recurring Tasks based on regular engagements, such as a quarterly creative project.”
Same reviewer noted the cost side: “requires someone to build and maintain Tasks. My agency employs 2 full-time employees to solely build and manage our Tasks. However, my agency currently has approximately 30+ active clients of moderate size.”
PM software is a scale lever, not a fix. It will only surface broken processes faster than before.
Nine Video Project Management Software Tools to Compare in 2026: Finding the Best Project Management Software
Video project management software helps teams track and review media production. The pricing of these nine video project management tools has been verified through May of this year. Before purchasing any of the tools referenced herein, please visit each vendors website to verify current pricing information. Sources include; StudioBinder, Plaky, Kanbanchi & Digital Project Manager. StudioBinder was the first and only tool created from the ground up specifically designed for film and video production. The two generalist tools used by many in the video industry (Plaky & Monday) have both been adapted to support video projects. While Frame.io is a review platform that can be misused by some teams as their PM tool, Yamdu is an enterprise-level production aware product that is priced accordingly.
How to choose the best fit for your team type
Use Notion or Trello for a small team of 1-2 people, or as a large group of 3-5; Notion enables video comments directly on shared pages and its Plus tier will be about $10-20 per month. A very simple, easy-to-use, low-cost option, the money spent on it will likely be less than what will go into the cost of implementing and training staff in an expensive project management system. Add in frame.io free to get reviews going. From r/editors’ user Russ_Abbott: “I tested countless systems but returned to Trello, frame.io and slack each time.”
StudioBinder or Plaky for a small boutique shop of 4-9 people. Use StudioBinder if you make commercial productions, or do other types of film projects where there will be a lot of crew involved. If you are primarily doing post-production and will just occasionally use some pre-production tools, you can use Plaky for $3.99 per month per user. For agencies with 10+ people, monday.com, ClickUp, or Wrike may be better options. This has nothing to do with how many features the tool has, this has everything to do with roles. When you get big enough to have 10+ people you will find that you will need to assign permissions (Admin, Editor, Freelancer, Client Viewer), which simply aren’t clean when using smaller tools. monday.com Pro at $19 per month per user seems to be where most shops end up. Wrike is good if you have a person on-staff in operations who will take ownership of the tool.
Special Case: over 30+ active clients: Look to Wrike, ClickUp Enterprise or post-production focused tools such as ftrack and Shotgun (Flow Production Tracking) . From r/projectmanagement : “Shotgrid/shotgun/flow or ftrack is my suggestion for the most robust feature set with the largest community for growing companies seeking to manage their production. Also note these are industry standard.” They both come with a steep learning curve and price point.
Top Choices Evaluated: Specialized Production Management Software and Management Software for Video
StudioBinder ($49/month, free version)
Correct choice for production heavy agencies. Created on top of the things that break a shoot; call sheets, shot lists, script, crew lists. Production Management Features built atop the StudioBinder Production Platform. In a quote by a client: “StudioBinder is an incredibly useful resource for our production process. Its modern design and call sheet tracking capabilities provide us with the ability to be organized and efficient.” With four or more shooting days per month, the cost of StudioBinder will pay for itself through the call sheet management alone. Sincere warning from Krock.io: “While StudioBinder provides many of the project management features required for film/TV productions, there are additional features such as budgeting and contracts that would require either Quick Books/Harvest integration or another software solution.”
Plaky ($3.99/user/month, Free Version)
Lowest Price to Feature Ratio in this List. Custom Workflows, KanBan Boards, Time Tracking via Clockify, Unlimited File Uploads available on Paid Plans. From Plaky’s Review Roundup: “Plaky is very simple to use and has a nice clean design…therefore you don’t have to spend hours training your less tech savvy employees because they’ll be able to figure it out in no time at all!” Unfortunately Plaky lacks Integrations. As stated previously: “I believe one major limitation of Plaky is the limited number of integrations it offers. However, I think this limitation is somewhat mitigated due to how well-plaky works on it’s own to complete most work-flows.”
monday.com ($9-$19/user/month)
Default Choice for Generalist Agencies (10+) People. Strength: you can create templates to fit almost any workflow. Weakness: each Video specific feature will require creating a Template, and Templates become outdated once Ownership Changes hands. From Reddit User Eli_Franklin: “monday.com is pretty flexible and you can customize monday.com to fit your Business Needs perfectly.” While true, monday.com templates are the reason that 12-18 Month Old monday.com setups begin to Drift.
Wrike (enterprise pricing, contact sales)
The serious option for agencies with more than 10 employees
Wrike is built specifically for creative types: easy media uploads, internal approval flows, free freelancer collaborator seats, template driven recurring projects. One of Wrike’s strongest endorsements came from a reviewer who said Wrike acts as a backup storage system. “need to find that video from two years ago? Look up the task related to it!” in addition to the fact that he liked using Wrike for backup purposes, he also noted that there was a 9-month learning curve required before getting maximum benefit from Wrike.
How Much Do You Need to Learn About Integrations? Connecting Editing Software and Final Draft
What tools you currently use:
Your PM tool needs to integrate well with the rest of your creative video production stack. Otherwise, you’ll lose too many hours of productivity by having to manually move statuses from app to app.
Adobe Creative Cloud integrates with Frame.io the most (because Adobe owns it), while monday.com and ClickUp use Zapier to integrate. StudioBinder allows you to export your script to PDF format and view online. There isn’t a direct connection to Frame.io (or any Adobe product) natively available within Notion.
You can treat Frame.io like another level of review. The only thing your editors would have to do differently after using Frame.io is go into Premiere Pro and create a marker where they made the edit based on the feedback given to them in the Frame.io review. Some of your clients might not understand how to make the transition from reviewing footage in Frame.io to importing the comments as markers inside Premiere Pro. They may also prefer simply sending you an e-mail with their thoughts rather than using Frame.io. See our Frame.io Alternatives article here.
Nearly all of the major PM tools have native Slack apps. According to U/curious_catarina: “We linked Krock up to slack. And every single time anyone writes a note or changes something in file/deadline/task assignment, we find out immediately.” In addition to being a great Slack app, Kanbanchi’s main differentiator is that it was designed specifically around Google Drive. StudioBinder is able to take in Final Draft scripts. Cast & Crew typically uses CSV export when integrating with Payroll systems. Therefore, you’ll need to reconcile payroll manually each week.
Security and Data Protection
Before signing any agreement, two items you should look for are Single Sign-On (SSO) and client facing portals that allow clients limited viewing capabilities. If you’re working with an agency of 10 people or greater, then you should expect your PM tool to offer SAML SSO (at least) on one of its tiers. monday.com pro, ClickUp business +, and Wrike Enterprise all provide SAML SSO. StudioBinder provides SSO on its enterprise tier. Plaky does not – as of May 2026.
Client portals are More important than you think. Clients should be able to see what is happening with their work without being able to see your team’s hourly rate, who else is a client of yours, etc., etc.. monday.com allows guests seats. Wrike collaborator roles. Notion shared databases with property level permission. Frame.io via shared review links with no project structure visible. Plaky and Krock have less control over granular permissions for clients. A reminder about client logins: Client login fatigue is very real. One-half of your clients will ask you send them an update via email regardless of whether or not the client portal is available for them. Using both an open client portal for your involved clients AND sending a weekly friday summary via email works better than trying to get all clients to use a client portal.
How to Roll Out Project Management Software Across Pre Production and Post Production Teams Without Causing Rebellion
Most common failure modes among video agency clients are not selecting the incorrect tool, but rather correctly identifying the correct tool and poorly implementing/rolling it out. Here’s a four-step plan to successfully implement/rollout PM software:
- Select one test client. Run the new tool in parallel with what you currently have for this client for 21 days. Do not migrate everything all at once.
- Name the tool owner. Name someone in your company who has their job title include “this tool remains clean.” without someone identified as the tool owner, your monday.com account will be messy after 30 days.
- Write a 1 page playbook before training. Include information about how projects live, which user creates the project, the name of each project, etc. In other words, write down all of your procedures so that they’re clear to everyone. If you need 10 pages to explain your process – your process is too complicated.
- Train in cohorts of 3-5. Spend half day with real client work. Editors learn best by doing their next real edit using the new tool – they don’t learn best watching a vendor webinar.
Plan budgeting time: 4-6 weeks between when you pick a tool to use and when you can ask your editors to start using it without complaint. Leadership picked the tool – mandated the rollout – then didn’t use it themselves. As an example of good behavior – use the tool yourself for two weeks before asking your editors to.
How Outsourced Video Editors Integrate With Your Project Management Software for a New Project
Vidpros is located here. We’ve seen Three patterns. Pattern number one – guest or freelancer collaborators inside your tool (monday.com, ClickUp, wrike) Vidpros editors receive tasks to complete via your project management tool. The edits created by Vidpros editors are delivered back to your project management tool for your clients to comment upon. The Vidpros editor integrates perfectly with agencies that already have a well-established project management system. Pattern number two – Vidpros uses Frame.io plus a shared Dropbox folder or Google Drive folder. Raw footage is given to Vidpros along with a brief. The finished edited video is posted in Frame.io for client review. Pattern number Three – Vidpros does the editing layer while you do production: you do shoots, scripts, manage clients; we do edits, color grading, captions, motion graphics. This is the Vidpros integration pattern that agencies typically settle into.
Pattern that does not work: hand off edits to outside editor without any sort of project management system. “we’ll give you access to this Dropbox folder. Edit whenever you want” usually results in missed deadlines and pricing disagreements. Even a light version of Trello beats having no board. For agencies that are running the underlying workflow supported by these tools, the PM software is the load-bearing wall. Get it right – your ability to scale will increase. Get it wrong – every new client adds friction instead of revenue.
Is StudioBinder free forever?
The main features are completely free for all users, there is no limit on how long they can be used. The paid plan costs $49 per month and will give you advanced features such as large-scale scheduling, and collaboration for teams. Key features of video production software include version control and cloud storage.
Will I be able to use Frame.io as my project management tool?
No. Frame.io is an approval and review tool. While it may be used in conjunction with a project management tool, it is not suitable to be the sole tool that manages your projects.
Can ClickUp handle video?
Yes. However, if you create strong templates, ClickUp has its weaknesses. A member of the ClickUp community had this to say; “ClickUp doesn’t have many video-specific features”. (Ziflow blog). In essence, you’ll likely need to spend a day or two creating the template that would otherwise come pre-made with StudioBinder.
Would notion be enough for a small agency?
For agencies of 2-3 people. Yes. At around 5 members, role based access control becomes difficult along with permissioning and auditing trail issues.
How much should we budget?
$1,000 – $2,500 per month for a 10-person agency for just the software itself. Plus .5-.7 full-time equivalent administrator. Generalist tools tend to be less expensive per seat. Vertical tools like StudioBinder & Yamdu tend to be higher priced, however they will remove the necessity of creating templates.
If your company is in need of additional editing resources as opposed to an internal Project Manager (PM), we will be able to work with you in your existing PM software. There are no migrations involved. Please send a sample brief for the first project you would like us to review and edit. We would be happy to show you how we will improve the quality of that project prior to committing to future projects.
