ShotGrid alternatives for small studios

The short answer

If you need shot and asset tracking by pipeline step and a proper review player, the real alternatives are ftrack Studio and Kitsu. If you are a small studio whose jobs are a handful of images or one film at a time, a production tracker is more structure than the work has, and a project tool fits better: OIO if you want freelancers and invoicing on the project, ClickUp or monday.com if you want a general tool you configure yourself.

What ShotGrid is, and why small studios look elsewhere

Autodesk renamed ShotGrid to Flow Production Tracking in 2024. It follows every shot and asset through the pipeline steps, schedules artists, and ships with RV for colour-accurate review, version comparison and drawn notes. It connects to Maya, 3ds Max and Unreal, and a Python toolkit lets a pipeline team wire in other software.

The reasons small studios look for something else are consistent:

• It is built to be configured. Pipeline steps, entities, fields and permissions pay off when a person looks after them. A five-person studio rarely has that person.
• It is sold per named user, with no free plan. Every artist and producer who works in it is a subscription, freelancers included.
• It tracks the production, not the business. What the job is worth, what the freelancer costs and what the client has paid live in another tool.
• Its data model is shots, sequences and assets. A product job with eight stills and a turntable has to be bent into that shape.

None of that is a flaw for a VFX facility. It is a mismatch for a studio doing client work at a smaller scale.

Alternatives that are still production trackers

ftrack Studio

ftrack, now part of Backlight, does production tracking, scheduling and media review in the browser. Reviews sync live across locations, external reviewers join without a paid seat, and ftrack Connect links it to Maya, Nuke, Houdini, Cinema 4D, Unreal and Adobe applications. Your own team is still per seat, with a 14-day trial and no free plan, and there are no quotes or invoices. Pick it if you want ShotGrid's shape with a lighter setup and better outside review. Our detailed page is OIO vs ftrack.

Kitsu

Kitsu, by CGWire, is open source. It breaks a production into sequences, shots and assets, reviews work in playlists with drawn notes and version comparison, and publishes previews from Blender. The hosted version is per user; self-hosting removes the subscription and adds a server someone has to update and back up. The Blender Studio makes its films with it. Pick it if you work in Blender, want a real shot breakdown and are comfortable running a server, or want the code. See OIO vs Kitsu.

Alternatives that are project tools

OIO

This is the tool we build, so weigh that. OIO does not track shots through pipeline steps. It is project management for small studios: each client job is one project page with the brief, files, budget, deadline and team chat, and each deliverable is a ticket on a kanban or a timeline. A freelancer works from a link to their ticket with no account and no seat: they read the brief, download the files, upload their work, comment and mark it done. The client follows progress on a password-protected status link. Quotes and invoices come from the same project in any currency, and the freelancer's fee is recorded there in their currency.

It has no review player, no drawn notes, no file versions and no plug-ins for 3D software. If those are what you use ShotGrid for every day, OIO will not replace them. The full side by side is on OIO vs ShotGrid, and the studio walkthrough on OIO for 3D studios.

ClickUp and monday.com

Both are general work tools you shape to your process. ClickUp's Proofing and monday.com's file annotations let people mark up an image, which covers part of what studios use RV for on stills. Neither tracks shots or assets out of the box, neither invoices on its work plans, and both charge per seat for anyone who edits. They suit a studio that wants one tool for the whole company and has someone who likes building workflows. See the ClickUp alternative and monday.com alternative pages.

Which one, by studio type

When to stay on ShotGrid

Stay if you track more than a few dozen shots per project through defined steps, if your artists publish from their software into the tracker, if your clients review in RV, or if your pipeline team has built tools on the API. Moving away from those costs more than the subscription saves.

A project tool next to a review tool

Many small studios end up with two tools, and that is not a failure. A review tool does one job: the client watches the film or opens the image, draws on the frame or leaves a note at a timecode, and approves a version. A project tool does another: who is doing what by when, what the client was quoted, what the freelancer costs and what has been invoiced. ShotGrid tries to do both for a large pipeline. For a small studio, a light review tool for the frames and a project tool for everything else is often cheaper and faster to set up than one tracker configured to do both. The thing to avoid is a third and fourth tool for the money and the files.

Moving off it without stopping work

Do not migrate history. Finished projects can stay where they are, read-only. Start the next job in the new tool, run it to the invoice, and only then decide. If you move to OIO, projects, clients and tickets import from a CSV file, which is enough to bring over open work. Use the quote template to check your per-deliverable pricing while you are at it.

Questions