HoneyBook aims to help creative entrepreneurs and freelancers book more clients, manage projects and get paid all in one place. With HoneyBook, users can automate busy work and stay on top of to-dos, saving time and money, while growing a business. HoneyBook is designed to emulate a personal assistant. The vendor states that small business owners and freelancer customers have tripled their bookings and saved multiple hours a day using HoneyBook. They further state that a variety of small…
$1
6 Months Promo Code = ONLY1
WORKetc
Score 7.0 out of 10
Small Businesses (1-50 employees)
WORKetc is a cloud-based business management system. With integrated CRM, project management, billing, help desk, reporting, and collaboration, teams can access one system for all relevant information. The system supports popular third-party apps such as Google Workspace, Xero Accounting, Quickbooks Online, Outlook, Dropbox, and Evernote.
$78
per month
Pricing
HoneyBook
WORKetc
Editions & Modules
$1 Promo
$1 Per Month
6 Months Promo Code = ONLY1
Unlimited Plan - Monthly
$39
Month
Unlimited Plan - Annual
$390
Year
Starter Edition
$78
Per Month for up to 2 Users
Team
$195
Per month for up to 3 Users (Each extra user + $49/month)
Foundations
$395
Per month for up to 5 Users (Each extra user + $59/month)
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
HoneyBook
WORKetc
Free Trial
Yes
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
Yes
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
For the first 6 months, get HoneyBook for $1 per month with code ONLY1!
I would recommend Honeybook to other coaches, consultants, and small business owners. It may not be appropriate for a large team's use, but works for the size of organization I currently own and manage. It also integrates with QuickBooks and makes financial data management fairly seamless.
If you are looking for a way to organize customer data and projects across regions, then WORK[etc] will get the job done. For our company, the country is divided into 3 regions and each region has a team of workers in charge of providing ongoing support services to that region. WORK[etc] has organized our company exponentially and given us a solid database to pull from to ensure we're meeting contractual requirements, providing timely deliverables and staying ahead of the game. Because I only work in a service industry, I don't know if WORK[etc] would be appropriate for product based companies, However, if you were offering anything [product or service] that required online support, the system will function well.
HoneyBook offers incredible resources to train users how to best use their system. It's informative and eye-opening to watch one of their training sessions.
I love how easy HoneyBook makes it to create highly professional materials that are beautiful. Its brochures and selling materials are stellar and I'm able to streamline the process without feeling like I actually have to sell my capabilities.
I'm thrilled with the billing system and how simple it is to automate. I love that I can see how my customers have engaged with the bills.
The app helps me feel connected to my leads and data while I'm away from my computer.
Connecting all the different methods of communicating with our clients into one place is the best part of the application to us. The Google Apps integration lets us update all of our WORK[etc] details directly from our email page which saves a huge amount of time. It lets us move back and forth freely between WORK[etc] tools and our Google Apps email, documents, calendar, etc. with ease.
Breaking work according to what we are doing helps us group and ungroup things as needed. Since we do tech support and so much more having the ability to connect projects, support cases, to dos, documents, discussions, and more all together makes it easy to work with the relationships of all the different activity.
We have found the discussion tool to be vital to moving things through quickly. There are many discussions that are just FYI while others really need a decision or answer form the team members. Discussions allows us to quickly note the people we need to answer us and what is there as an FYI. It keeps all that history so our decision process become documented easily and not lost in email chains.
The online scheduling tool does not work with different time zones very well. It doesn't automatically adjust to my clients' timezones and it doesn't even have many international time zones as an option! I had 3 clients in a row schedule meetings at the wrong time when I first started using HoneyBook's scheduler. I had to switch to Calendly because HoneyBook's scheduling tool was causing me to lose business.
The transaction fees for instant deposits are expensive.
[I believe} many of the features on HoneyBook are half-baked. It's marketed as an all-in-one business management platform, but I'm still using Calendly, Google Drive, Typeform, Clockify, and ClickUp because HoneyBook's equivalent features aren't as sophisticated or as easy to use.
The notes section for client projects does not have much space or allow for any custom formatting such as hyperlinks, bold text, highlighted text, etc. Tools such as Teamwork, Pipedrive, Asana, and ClickUp do a much better job at displaying this type of information.
The one key issue that it doesn't solve is resource utilisation. You are able to add the number of hours that each "to do" will take but you can't allocate that to an employee and then aggregate all that up to show how much capacity you are using or have left.
One if its great benefits is its flexibility but that is also a drawback because there are multiple ways to do the same thing. This means that to ensure consistency across all employees having your own business procedures on how to use WORKetc is vital.
Some of the financial processes don't fully reflect UK practice currently. For instance it doesn't deal with VAT on expenditure well. However we have been assured that this is being resolved.
Since I do not use ALL the functionality in HoneyBook, I have wondered if the plan I am on is too much. That is why I rated a 9 rather than 10. I have definitely considered downgrading but not leaving HoneyBook.
We, as a company, have put a lot of time and energy into building the system to where it is for us today. With its constant improvements and our continually learning and developing, I couldn't imagine moving away from WORKetc to try a different system out. This really does give us everything that we've wanted/needed in a system without having to utilize 2-3 different products. The part that makes this so unique compared to other systems that we've used in the past is the fact that it has a project management piece built in, and that in itself is a huge driving point in why we will continue to use this.
This is now a copy-paste response since this platform is asking me to answer every single question. It is such a negative experience with Honeybook that they even upset me while I'm trying to warn others of all the horrible pitfalls in working with the platform.
My staff hates it, our clients require transparency and you manual have to enter notes, billing is horrific, as it does not subtotal by type - so as a T&M shop there is no way to easily see how much was spent to each matter or service type.
WORKetc compares well in regards to speed and reliability to other cloud-based products we use such as Google for Work. Compared to our old in-house based CRM, it is a superstar; faster, more reliable and easily run on a variety of browsers and smart phones. The program loads fast as do data screens for contacts, projects, invoices and more
They have ALWAYS been amazing when I needed any type of service or help. Their concierge service is also amazing vs other services I have used in the past. I have confidence when I ask for help - both through Chat or even on their Facebook group that I will get an answer quickly.
WORKetc offers maybe the best support in the business. Product documentation and training resources are outstanding. Support tickets or inquiries are answered quickly. If you do need to address an issue in person, it is easy to schedule a 15 or 30 minute live call with their fantastic support staff who are fast, friendly and skilled
The implementation of the system was fairly easy. Because of our previous experience with a similar system, we were ready and working on the product as soon as we announced the switch. The system also allowed us to simplify our processes by integrating timesheets and project management directly into our CMS.
We switched to HubSpot after a few years of the company using HoneyBook. We switched to HubSpot because we needed more features that would allow us to automate our processes and pull better data on our clients, their vendors, and our overall client process. I appreciated that HoneyBook was its own booking/payment system, that it was easy to use and set up, but ultimately that was not enough to keep us in the platform.
We needed a CRM that would work with US. We found WORK [etc] was exactly what we needed. being able to customize the CRM around our company and further change as we go has been the best thing about it. We haven't been locked into how it is set up and can change it very quickly.
Setting up project templates is time-consuming - if you want to do it right. Nevertheless, it is well worth it! Routine complex projects that used to require at least six people and at least as many "silos of information" are now done with two or three people, and - at most - 2 or 3 silos of information. And that's only because I haven't fully integrated the program with our Accounting programs (and there is an API for Quickbooks). I'd say the initial investment of perhaps 80 hours on my part was saved five or ten times over during our first six months, with better accuracy, accountability, and documentation. Since then, the ROI is at least 20 or 30 times annually of my time...the one thing I can't buy more of.
