If you’re a freelancer tired of messy workflows, late payments, and juggling multiple tools, Indy is a solution with your needs in mind. This project and client relationship management software has just about everything you need to streamline the way you work, from gathering leads and delivering proposals, to staying on top of contracts, invoices, and the actual work you’re doing.
Keep reading to learn more about what we love (and don’t love) about the Indy platform.
Indy Compared to the Best Project Management Software for Freelancers
To write this review, we researched, tested, and vetted dozens of general project management tools. From there, we narrowed them down to the best options that are tailored specifically for freelancers. While Indy is a great option and one of our favorites, it solves a very specific problem for a specific audience.
Here’s a quick look at some other options to consider and when you might want to use them.
Monday.com is centered around databases, making it possible to track just about anything from invoices, tasks, and clients to inventory, leads, and more in one place. You can sign up for a free trial today or use it for free forever.
ClickUp is a scalable and feature-rich project management solution with a ton of collaboration features, including real-time document editing and built-in chat. Test-drive ClickUp’s entry-level plan for free to see if it’s right for you.
Teamwork was made specifically for service and client-based businesses, but focuses on scalability so you can bring on more team members and unlock additional features as you need them. Try it out for free for 30 days.
There’s a common theme among our alternatives above—they’re not built for teams of one.
Because of that, they can feel convoluted and may overwhelm you with features you don’t care about. If you’re looking for a simple, lean, and streamlined solution that includes freelance-specific features, Indy is a great choice.
Indy: The Good and the Bad
When it comes to project tools built for freelancers, there aren’t many options out there. Indy definitely helps bridge the gap between general project management software that’s built for teams and the needs of solo workers. It has a lot going for it, but it’s not perfect (yet).
What Indy Is Good At
Built for freelancers: Indy is the all-in-one digital workspace for freelancers seeking an easy way to wrangle the chaos of running a one-person operation. Unlike clunky project management tools designed for whole teams, everything in the Indy platform is crafted for managing the daily grind of solo project work. From generating proposals to invoicing clients and everything in between, Indy handles it all in an intuitive interface that simplifies your workflow rather than complicating it.
Best of all, Indy offers a free plan so you can hit the ground running at no cost. You’ll have access to handy tools like contract templates, an invoice generator, and a timer to track your billable hours. Indy also provides a library of free video courses covering essential freelance skills, including marketing oneself, negotiating terms and contracts, and much more. Whether you choose to upgrade to their affordable paid plan or not, Indy is dedicated to equipping you with the resources you need to build a thriving freelance business.
Streamlined dashboard: Gain a high-level synopsis of all your work in one glance with Indy’s built-in dashboard, which delivers cross-project insights so you can stay on top of your to-do list and keep everything on schedule.
Unlike other platforms that bury you in tabs, views, and notifications across multiple sections, Indy’s dashboard gives you a 10,000-foot perspective of where things stand right now. At any given moment, you’ll know your income this month, what invoices are overdue, which documents need signing, and what to work on next—all in one snapshot. And, when you’re ready to move forward with a new proposal, contract, invoice, or task, you can add it straight from the dashboard to keep your workload flowing.
Task management: Within the Indy platform, each of your client projects gets its own dedicated workspace. Within each project, you’ll have areas for tasks, files, invoices, and essential paperwork. You can add as many projects as you need and invite your clients into specific workspaces for real-time collaboration via Indy’s built-in chat and commenting.
When it’s time to build out an actionable roadmap, adding tasks is simple. All you have to do is give the task a name and due date, include a quick description if needed, and tag it for easy filtering. You can view tasks in a list, on a Kanban board, in an interactive calendar, or sync them to your Google Calendar to stay on schedule. As a solo operator, Indy’s lack of task assignees, statuses or custom fields won’t bother you and helps keep the software lightweight and easy to use.
Proposals, contracts, and invoices: Whether you use Indy’s free or paid plan, you have access to over 100 lawyer-created proposal and contract templates for different types of freelance jobs, including writing, development, and design, and common documentation needs like NDAs and subcontractor agreements. Simply select a template, fill in the blanks with your project details, and send the finished document directly to your client for signing, all without leaving the platform.
Creating invoices is just as straightforward. All you have to do is enter your billing details, send it to the client, and they can pay right from the invoice. Plus, you can export, resend, or duplicate it with just a few clicks. In this way, Indy combines the best parts of billing and invoicing software with contract management software. Freelancers with strong brand identities can change document fonts and colors to match and Indy even offers a digital assistant (still in beta) that can generate document sections for you in mere seconds.
Advanced file sharing: Indy gives you tons of storage space to house all your project documents, photos, and videos. The free plan comes with 10 GB of space and the paid plan includes an entire terabyte with no file size restrictions. Plus, you can organize everything into folders by client or phase of work so you can find what you need in an instant.
When it’s time for client review, simply share files directly from the Indy platform. Your clients can then view, comment on, and approve your work without creating an account (and at no extra cost to you). Indy also supports full file versioning, so you get change tracking and the ability to revert back to previous drafts at any time. No more rummaging through endless email chains or cloud storage links to find the right version of your files.
Client-facing collaboration: Indy is a digital workspace within which you and your clients can connect in real time, co-create together, and build an ongoing dialogue. No more chasing down approvals, endless rounds of revisions, or miscommunications that lead to missed deadlines.
Need feedback on a new campaign or website prototype? Start a conversation in Indy’s built-in chat or send files out for approvals and feedback. Questions come up in the middle of the week? You can reach out in the project channel or message your clients directly. Indy organizes all your communications in one place so you have full context on every discussion. And with @mentions, quote replies and message editing features, conversations remain clear and actionable, no matter how long they become.
Intuitive form builder: Meaningful connections are the lifeblood of your freelance business. With Indy’s form builder, you get an easy way to field work inquiries, onboard clients, and gain useful insights through feedback.
You can start with one of four templates and add single or multi-line fields, ratings, long responses, or whatever else you need to get the details that matter. On Indy’s paid plans, you can customize the form with your brand colors and logo, then embed the form directly on your website. With its drag-and-drop functionality, creating even the most complex forms is simple and you can make them as long or short as you’d like. You can even duplicate existing forms so you never have to start from a blank screen.
With the form builder, you can replace your standard contact page with a form that syncs with your Indy database, collect project details up front so you start with a clear direction and a mutual understanding of the work, learn about your clients’ needs, priorities and preferences, and request reviews and testimonials you can use to promote your services.
Automated time tracking: As a freelancer, your time is how you make money. Tracking your billable hours and how you spend your days is essential. With Indy, you have built-in time tracking available on every screen, so you can start and stop the clock whenever you switch between tasks, meetings, and client work. You can also add multiple time records to the same activity to keep everything organized.
Even if you forget to start the clock, Indy lets you add manual time entries to account for all of the hours you actually worked. At the end of the week, you’ll have a clear view into how you invested your hours and how much of that time is billable so you can get paid properly for the work you did. Plus, you can filter your time records to see the total hours tracked for a project, how many of those hours have been invoiced, and how many you have left to bill. For those on paid plans, attaching time records to existing invoices or creating new invoices directly from your time logs is a breeze.
Responsive dev team: Behind Indy’s intuitive and streamlined interface is a development team keenly focused on building your ideal software. Through the feature request portal, you have their ear to suggest tweaks, changes, and new features that would make your life as a freelancer easier. Hundreds of others have already piped up with their wish lists, which the Indy team actively reviews, selects from, builds, and releases at a regular cadence.
For example, at the request of nearly 150 real users, they’re putting the final touches on a client portal to launch later this year. They’re also crafting project templates with predefined repeatable tasks so you can skip creating the same to-dos every time. Every update and new feature release makes your routine a little simpler, so you can keep your focus where it belongs.
What Indy Is Lacking
Still in active development: Indy is still very much a work in progress. That’s a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it allows for the agility to add new features that Indy’s users are requesting. On the other, some kinks remain to be worked out.
You may notice some missing pieces compared to other tools, such as client portals, meeting schedulers, and proposal templates. Some of those are forthcoming additions to the platform, fortunately. Newer features like the AI assistant and automation builder are limited right now because they’re still in beta. They may feel clunky or overly rigid at the moment, but you’ll get to help shape them into useful tools as you use the Indy platform.
If you can handle some roughness around the edges, you’ll gain a tool that significantly streamlines your work. That’s supported by a team of innovators invested in making it the best software for freelancers—not large teams. While established platforms may currently outshine Indy in terms of the number of features, none share its vision or dedication to one-person teams.
Lacking mobile experience: As a freelancer, you’re going to want your client and task management solution to work on the go. However, Indy’s iOS app hasn’t seen an update in over a year and the Android app is nearly two years outdated. Instead of revamping their apps, Indy is focusing on improving their mobile browser interface. Up until recently, the mobile site was read-only—you couldn’t add or change anything, rendering it pretty much useless. You can now edit some details on the go, but the functionality is limited and the experience is clunky, especially for an app built for flexible freelance work.
While you can now create new contacts, contracts, tasks, proposals and invoices from your phone, you still can’t view your calendar, upload files, track time, or edit forms. The built-in chat feature is also unavailable on mobile. For those wanting a streamlined, mobile-friendly way to manage their freelance business from anywhere, Indy’s lack of focus on their native apps is frustrating. Of course, if you do most of your work from a laptop or desktop and only need basic on-the-go functionality, the mobile site may suffice.
Automations need work: The right automations can help you massively streamline all your work. Indy’s current capabilities in this regard are limited. Right now, you can’t fully automate much, as conditional logic and dynamic workflows aren’t really an option. Instead, you’re limited to automating 1:1 actions, like automatically creating an invoice when a contract is signed or generating new agreements when a proposal is accepted.
These automations can save you time, but they’re basic compared to what other project management tools can automate. The good news is that automations seem to be an active area of development with new settings and options rolling out regularly. If you only have a few clients or are just getting started, Indy’s limited automations may not be a dealbreaker. However, if you have a high volume of clients and projects, you’ll likely crave more advanced automation capabilities that can handle complex sequences.
Limited project management: If advanced project planning and visibility are priorities for you, Indy may feel limited. There are no Gantt charts, timelines, or table views to give you a visual representation of your projects. You can’t assign tasks to specific team members or clients, set task dependencies, or customize statuses, either. Granted, most of that is more useful in team-based project work.
While you can add checklists to tasks, they aren’t prominently visible in Indy’s interface. For complex projects with many moving parts, you’ll likely want more advanced hierarchies and relationships between tasks. Indy also lacks the deeper customization of database-driven project management tools. For those requiring advanced features like these, Indy’s basic functionality may introduce more workarounds and manual processes than actual efficiencies.
Indy Plans and Pricing
Indy keeps pricing simple with two plans to choose from. It’s about as straightforward as it gets—you can choose from its free or paid versions.
The free plan locks you into three or fewer projects, while the paid plan is entirely unlimited. Let’s get into some of the more minute differences between them.
Indy’s Free Plan
With the free version of Indy’s project software, you’re able to send up to three proposals, contracts, and invoices each month at no cost. While you can only have three active clients and invoice up to $1,000 at a time, that’s enough to get your freelance business up and running.
Imagine crafting polished proposals, sealing the deal with professional contracts, and getting paid promptly each month—all for free.
Beyond the basics, Indy’s free plan provides templates, an invoice generator, a calendar for scheduling your time and workload, a form builder for client intake and evaluations, task management views to organize your work, time tracking to bill clients accurately, and 10 GB of file storage.
While the free plan lacks some of the features of Indy’s paid plans (like automations, integrations, customization options, and live support), it gives you a taste of how Indy can transform your freelancing workflow. And, when you’re ready to upgrade, Indy offers you 20% off for life.
For freelancers looking to organize their business and get paid on time, Indy’s free plan is an easy, affordable place to start.
Indy’s Pro Bundle
For only $9 a month, you can unlock the full power of the Indy platform.
With it, there are no restrictions. You get unlimited everything: proposals, contracts, invoices, clients, projects, and more. No longer will you have to worry about maxing out your plan or turning away work. Imagine the freedom of scaling your business without restrictions.
Beyond the lack of limitations, the Pro Bundle turbocharges your productivity with automations, live chat support, embeddable forms, calendar syncing, and 1 TB of storage for all your files and assets. Plus, you’ll be able to start integrating the tools you already use with Indy through Zapier, and you can white-label all of your documents and forms with your own fonts and branding.
While Indy’s free plan is perfect for launching your business, the Pro Bundle is built for growth. For only $9 a month, Indy’s Pro Bundle gives you an end-to-end business management solution without the high costs that other freelancer tools on the market sport.
Sign up now and get seven days to see if Indy is right for you.
