Kantata alternatives for marketing agencies: 8 options compared (2027)

Kantata is one of the most capable professional services automation (PSA) platforms on the market, and plenty of marketing agencies evaluate it once spreadsheets stop working. Many then go looking for Kantata alternatives. The platform is built around resource management and forecasting for mid-market and enterprise services firms, pricing is only available through a sales conversation, and a 30-person agency often needs something different: retainers billed correctly, hours tied to the invoice and a clear margin for each client.

This guide is for owners and operations leads at marketing agencies with roughly 10 to 200 people. It covers what Kantata is today, why agencies look elsewhere and how eight alternatives compare on pricing, retainers, client margin and resource planning. Vendor details come from each company's own website as of November 2026, so check them again before you buy.

Quick answer: the best Kantata alternatives

• Verbial: best for marketing agencies that want the CRM, proposals, time, invoicing and client margin in one system, with public pricing.
• Productive: best for agencies that want delivery, budgets and resource planning in one tool with published plans.
• Scoro: best for larger multi-service firms that want to build a PSA app by app.
• Teamwork.com: best for project-led client teams that want retainers and capacity on top of project plans.
• Accelo: best for professional services firms that want a guided, quoted rollout of a full platform.
• BigTime: best for consulting, IT and engineering-style firms that bill time and materials or fixed fee.
• Float: best for teams whose only real Kantata use case is resource scheduling.
• Workamajig: best for creative agencies that want project management and full accounting in one product.

What Kantata is in 2027

Kantata was formed when Mavenlink merged with Kimble Applications. According to Kantata's own Mavenlink page, Mavenlink is now Kantata OX and Kimble is now Kantata SX, so you can run Kantata as its own platform or on top of Salesforce. That is why people still search for "Mavenlink alternatives".

Kantata describes itself as an AI-powered PSA. Its resource management pages cover capacity planning, scheduling, skills inventories and managing a network of internal and external staff. Its agency page says it takes a resource-first approach to planning and supports fixed-fee, retainer and hybrid engagements. The homepage quotes an IDC MarketScape assessment that places it as serving mid-market and enterprise services firms.

That positioning matters. Kantata is designed for firms with dedicated resource managers, complex staffing and often a Salesforce-centred sales process. For many marketing agencies it is more platform than they need.

Why agencies look for Kantata alternatives

The reasons usually come down to fit rather than quality.

• No public price. The Kantata pricing page says plans are tailored to company size, goals and the way your team works, and asks you to fill out a form to talk to a PSA advisor. You cannot compare cost per seat until you are in a sales process.
• Built for scale and complexity. Skills matching, talent networks and multi-plan resource scenarios are valuable for a 500-person consultancy. A 40-person agency with four departments often just needs to know who has room next week.
• Two product lines to choose between. Choosing between the standalone platform and the Salesforce version shapes your whole stack.
• Setup needs an owner. A platform this deep needs someone to configure roles, rates, workflows and reports. Agencies without an operations lead often stall halfway through.
• Agency billing is the daily pain. Most agencies lose money on retainers that run over, extra work nobody billed and ad spend counted as revenue, not on a strategist booked to the wrong project. A servicing gap is a billing and margin problem first.

First decide what you are replacing Kantata for

Most lists of Kantata alternatives mix three different kinds of product. Decide which job you need done first.

1. A lighter PSA. You want one platform for projects, resourcing and financials, with public pricing and less configuration. Look at Productive, Scoro, Teamwork.com, Accelo and BigTime.
2. Resource scheduling only. You mainly wanted Kantata for the resource plan and will keep time, billing and CRM elsewhere. Look at Float.
3. Run the agency. You want the deal, the proposal, the hours, the invoice and the margin for each client connected, built around how agencies sell and bill. Look at Verbial, or at Workamajig if you also want accounting in the same product.

A quick test: list the last five questions leadership asked. If they were "who is free for this pitch" and "what does next quarter's bench look like", resourcing is the core need. If they were "are we over the retainer" and "which clients actually make money", you need the third category.

How to choose a Kantata alternative for a marketing agency

Score each option where agency work differs from generic professional services.

• Pricing you can see. Can you price the full setup, including add-ons and seat minimums, without a sales call?
• Billing models. Can one client have a monthly retainer, hourly overages, a one-off project and pass-through ad spend, ideally on one invoice?
• Retainer pacing. Can you see retainer burn against the month while it is still running, not after the invoice goes out?
• Real margin. Does the tool store a cost per person as well as a bill rate, so it reports margin and not just revenue? Does it keep media and other pass-through costs out of agency revenue?
• Enough resource planning. Do you need skills matching and scenarios, or a weekly view of who is booked against who has room? See our guide to agency capacity planning.
• Migration. Can you import clients, projects, people and time, and preview it first? Our migration checklist lists what to export.

Kantata alternatives compared

The table summarises what each vendor lists on its own site. "Custom quote" means there is no public price.

The 8 best Kantata alternatives in 2027

1. Verbial

Verbial is comprehensive agency management software built for marketing agencies. It connects the CRM pipeline, proposals, time tracking, invoicing, client reporting and profitability, so every client shows its real margin while the month is still running.

The difference from Kantata is the starting point: Kantata starts from resourcing, Verbial from what each client pays and what the work costs. Retainers are billed in advance, overages are quoted and paid up front, and approved hours for hourly clients go straight onto the invoice. Time is logged with a timer or a quick entry and tagged to the right client and department, and Verbial warns you when a retainer reaches 85% of its allocation with days left in the month. The profitability view shows margin by client, project, department and person, keeps media pass-through out of revenue and puts idle capacity on its own line.

• Best for: marketing agencies that want one system for winning, delivering and billing client work, rather than a resourcing platform with billing attached.
• Resource planning: capacity planning shows who is booked against who has room, week by week, next to logged hours. It is in beta and available on plans that include resource planning, so check the plan comparison if scheduling is a must-have.
• Switching: the migration hub imports from tools such as HubSpot, Salesforce, Harvest, Toggl Track and Productive. Kantata is not a named source, so you would export to CSV and use the template import, which you can preview and undo.
• Pricing: priced per full seat, with lower-cost contributor seats for people who only track time against assigned work. Clients view shared items free, with no login or seat. See the Verbial pricing page for current plans. The 14-day free trial needs no credit card.

2. Productive

Productive is an agency operations platform that combines projects, budgeting, resource planning, time tracking and reporting. It publishes per-user plans, and its Professional plan adds recurring budgets, billable time approvals, rate cards and invoicing integrations. The top Ultimate plan is "Let's talk".

• Best for: agencies whose main pain is delivery planning and budgets across many projects, and who want resource planning without a full enterprise PSA.
• Watch out for: every plan requires at least 3 seats, and freelancers and contractors are charged the same price as employees. We compare it in depth in Productive vs Verbial.

3. Scoro

Scoro is a PSA platform made of eight core apps: Do, Deliver, Track, Resource, Sell, Estimate, Spend and Invoice. You combine the apps you need, and combinations start from €15 per user a month. There is a 14-day free trial with no credit card, and the Deliver app includes retainer management.

• Best for: larger agencies and multi-service firms that want quoting, delivery, resourcing and billing in one platform and have someone to own the setup.
• Watch out for: the minimum is 5 users on every combination, so price the full set of apps you need, not the starting combination. Our Scoro comparison goes further.

4. Teamwork.com

Teamwork.com is project management built for client-service teams. Basics, at $9.99 per user a month billed yearly, covers project views and billable time. Accelerate, at $24.99, adds workload and live capacity planning, time budgets and retainers, and client invoices built from logged time. Quotes and deeper profitability sit on Optimize, which is priced through sales.

• Best for: teams that plan everything in projects and tasks and want capacity and retainers to live inside that plan.
• Watch out for: the commercial side, from quote to profitability, is on the sales-priced tier. See our Teamwork comparison.

5. Accelo

Accelo is a PSA covering client management, projects, resourcing and capacity planning, project financials and business intelligence. Pricing is a custom quote based on team size and growth goals, and plans include implementation guidance and onboarding support. Accelo says most teams are up and running in a matter of weeks.

• Best for: established firms that want a guided rollout and are comfortable with a sales-led buying process, much like Kantata's.
• Watch out for: like Kantata, there is no public price. Our Accelo alternatives post covers the trade-offs.

6. BigTime

BigTime is a PSA for growing services firms. BigTime Essentials starts at $20 per user a month, and every plan includes time tracking, invoicing, expense management and payments. Higher tiers add custom reporting, project budgeting and margin tracking, and resource management and quoting are sold as additional modules.

• Best for: consulting, IT services, engineering and architecture firms that bill time and materials or fixed fee.
• Watch out for: BigTime's industry pages focus on those professions rather than marketing agencies, and the modules you would compare with Kantata cost extra on top of the base plan.

7. Float

Float is a resource scheduling tool. You pay per scheduled person: Starter is listed at $7 a month and Pro at $12, and people who do not need scheduling can join free as guests. Pro adds time tracking, client rate cards and project cost estimates. There is a 30-day trial.

• Best for: agencies that only wanted Kantata for the resource plan and are happy to keep time, billing and CRM in other tools.
• Watch out for: Float does not list invoicing or a CRM among its features, so retainer billing and client margin still need another system.

8. Workamajig

Workamajig is all-in-one software for agencies and in-house creative teams. The agency plan is listed at $49 per user a month for teams of 10 or more, with lower rates at 25 and 50 users. It includes project management, time tracking, resourcing and scheduling, digital proofing, a sales CRM, revenue forecasting and a full accounting package.

• Best for: creative and advertising agencies that want project management and accounting in one product.
• Watch out for: Workamajig says a traditional implementation takes 2 to 3 months. Our Workamajig competitors guide covers the alternatives.

How the options score for agencies

The matrix scores each option on the four things agencies usually weigh against Kantata. A full mark means it is part of the product, a half mark means it is partial, an add-on or only on a sales-priced tier, and an empty mark means you will need another tool.

The PSA platforms (Productive, Scoro, Accelo and BigTime) are closest to Kantata on resourcing, but bring seat minimums, paid modules or sales-led pricing. The specialists split the job: Float does scheduling only, while Verbial puts billing and client margin first and treats capacity as a weekly view rather than a full resourcing engine. If your losses come from unbilled work and over-serviced retainers, weight the billing and margin columns first.

A worked example: resourcing view vs margin view

Take a hypothetical client on a $10,000 monthly content and SEO retainer, budgeted at 80 hours, with $6,000 of ad spend re-billed each month. By the 18th, the team has logged 70 hours.

A resourcing-first view tells you the account team is fully booked this week and next, and that a content strategist is free from the 25th. Useful, but it does not tell you whether the client is profitable. A margin-first view shows the retainer at about 88% used with 12 days to go, the expected overrun in hours and cost, the fact that two senior people logged most of those hours, and the margin on the $10,000 fee alone, with the $6,000 of ad spend kept out of revenue. Most agencies need the second view every week and the first only when staffing new work.

When Kantata is still the right choice

Kantata is a strong product, and there are cases where it is the better fit.

• You have well over 150 people, multiple offices or entities, and dedicated resource managers.
• Your sales team runs on Salesforce and you want the PSA inside that environment.
• Skills-based staffing across a large bench, including contractors, is a daily problem rather than an occasional one.

Otherwise, a lighter PSA or agency management software is usually faster to set up and cheaper to run.

How to switch without losing a billing cycle

The safest switch runs alongside one billing cycle. Pick a start date just after an invoice run, so the first invoices from the new tool are a full month later.

1. Week 1: export and clean. Export clients, projects, people with their bill and cost rates, and at least 12 months of time entries and invoices. Archive dead projects before you import them.
2. Week 2: set up billing first. Recreate each client's billing model, including retainers, hourly rates, overages and pass-through costs, before anyone logs time.
3. Week 3: run both. Have the team log time in the new tool while finance checks a sample of entries against the old system. Fix rates and project mapping now, not on invoice day.
4. Week 4: invoice from the new tool. Send the next invoice run from the new system, compare totals with what the old one would have billed, then keep the export as your archive.

If you are coming from a lighter stack rather than Kantata itself, our guides to Harvest alternatives and agency resource management software cover the same decision from the other side.

The bottom line

The best Kantata alternative depends on why you looked at Kantata. If you need a full PSA with resourcing at its core, compare Productive, Scoro, Accelo and BigTime. If scheduling is the only gap, Float is the simplest answer. If the real problem is that the deal, the hours, the invoice and the margin for each client live in different places, look at agency management software such as Verbial, which connects them so you can see each client's margin while the month is still running.