A Bonsai alternative, and real project management
Bonsai is freelance admin with project tracking attached. OIO is real project management with the client side attached: each client job gets one page with its tickets on a kanban or a timeline, status, budget and hours, team chat, files and recorded calls, and the proposal and invoice come from that same project.
OIO does not process card payments. Your client pays you by bank transfer, your own payment link or crypto, and you mark the invoice paid. Bonsai takes the payment for you.
What Bonsai is good at
Bonsai covers a lot of freelance admin in one product: proposals, contracts, invoices and payments, time and expense tracking, and on higher plans a Gantt view, multi-currency billing and accounting integrations. Time tracking is on every plan. If you bill by the hour and want timesheets feeding the invoices, it is a strong fit.
Where it stops
- Invoices, payments, proposals, contracts, forms and the client portal start at the Essentials plan, per its pricing page. Basic is time tracking, tasks and a CRM.
- The Gantt view, multi-currency billing, the deals pipeline, client messaging and the accounting integrations start at Premium.
- Custom permissions start at Elite, which has a three-user minimum.
What OIO does instead
OIO is project management for client work. Each client job gets one page with its tickets on a kanban or a timeline, status, budget and hours, deadline, files, team chat and recorded calls. Around it sit the inquiry form that brings the lead in, the prospect pipeline, and the proposal and invoice that come from the same project.
Your client logs into the same place with their own account and sees only their side: their project, their documents, their invoices. You can invite someone who is not on OIO yet, and they see the project once they sign up. Contracts and proposals go out for signature as a link, and the client signs on any device without an account.
One price covers the work and the money. Viewers are free and use no seat; only people who edit your work do, and Studio comes with five.
OIO also does not send payment reminders on its own. Overdue invoices get their own list, and OIO drafts the reminder for you to send from your own mail.
Feature by feature
| What you actually need | OIO | Bonsai |
|---|---|---|
| Invoices and proposals | ||
| Contracts | ||
| A client portal | ||
| Task management | ||
| A timeline or Gantt view | ||
| Invoices in many currencies | ||
| Takes card and bank payments for you |
Has it Partly, or a paid add-on Does not
Bonsai's column was checked against its pricing page on 5 October 2026. Several of these are on Bonsai's higher plans; the list above says which. Prices are left out on purpose because they change. Sources: Bonsai pricing.
Questions
Is OIO a good Bonsai alternative?
If your work runs on boards, tickets, files and a team talking it through, and the invoice should sit on the same project, yes. If you bill by the hour from timesheets and want clients paying inside the app, Bonsai does that and OIO does not take payments.
Does OIO take payments like Bonsai?
No. OIO issues invoices and proposals, shows what is outstanding and what is paid, and drafts the reminder for an overdue invoice. The client pays you by bank transfer, your own payment link or crypto, and you mark the invoice paid. Bonsai takes card and ACH payments online, with Stripe as its payments partner.
Try it against your own work
Free plan, no card. Set up in under a minute, and you can keep using Bonsai alongside it while you decide.
Start freeOther comparisons: OIO vs ClickUp, OIO vs Monday, OIO vs Notion, OIO vs Asana, OIO vs Trello, OIO vs HoneyBook, OIO vs Dubsado, OIO vs ShotGrid, OIO vs ftrack, OIO vs Kitsu, OIO vs Productive, OIO vs Teamwork. All of them on one page. Or see the full picture of what OIO does.