A Harvest alternative for small studios

Harvest is time tracking for teams that bill by the hour, with invoices made from the logged time. OIO is project management for small studios: projects, tasks, files, freelancers and the client in one place, with the quote and the invoice on the same project. If you run a small studio that quotes per job rather than per hour, this is the comparison.

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What Harvest is good at

Harvest is a time tracker people keep using. Timers feed timesheets, reports, project estimates and invoices, expenses are tracked on every plan including the free one, and more than fifty integrations, Asana and Slack among them, let people start a timer from the tool they already work in. On paid plans invoices and payments sync with QuickBooks, Xero and Stripe, and Harvest Forecast, a separate product, schedules people across projects.

Where it gets heavy for a small studio

It tracks the time and bills it, but the work happens elsewhere. Its pricing page lists no task boards, file storage or chat, so the delivery runs in a second tool.
The free plan is one seat and two projects. Everyone who logs time is a paid seat after that, freelancers included.
Its numbers come from the timer, so budgets and invoices are only as good as the hours people remember to log.

What OIO does instead

OIO is project management for small studios. Each client job gets one project page with its tickets on a kanban or a timeline, the deadline, files, a whiteboard and team chat, and on paid plans recorded calls with transcripts. The budget, the hours and what has been paid sit on the same page.

A freelancer gets a link to a ticket. In a browser they read the brief and the feedback, upload the work and mark it done, with no account and no seat. The client gets a status link that shows where the project stands.

The quote and the invoice come from the same project, in any currency. Studio is $69 a month for five seats, and people who only view use no seat. The free plan covers 3 projects, no card.

More on how a studio runs on it: project management for studios with remote freelancers.

When Harvest is the better fit

If you bill by the hour from timesheets, Harvest is the better fit. OIO has no time tracker; the hours on a ticket are a number you enter.
If your invoices and payments have to sync with QuickBooks or Xero, Harvest is the better fit. OIO has no accounting integrations.
If you want to schedule people across projects weeks ahead, Harvest is the better fit with Forecast. OIO has no resource planning.

Feature by feature

What you actually need	OIO	Harvest
Time tracking
Invoices built from tracked time
Estimates and invoices on the project
Tasks on a kanban or a timeline
Freelancers work without a paid seat
Accounting sync with QuickBooks or Xero
A free plan

Has it Partly, or a paid add-on Does not

Harvest's column was checked against getharvest.com/pricing on 17 October 2026. The middle mark means it starts on a paid plan. Prices are left out on purpose because they change. Sources: Harvest pricing.

Questions

Is OIO a good Harvest alternative?

For a small studio that quotes per job and needs the tasks, files, freelancers and client next to the invoice, yes. If you bill from timesheets or need invoices synced to accounting software, Harvest does that and OIO does not.

Does OIO track time like Harvest?

No. OIO has no timer and no timesheets. Each ticket and project holds hours you enter, next to the budget and what has been paid. Many studios that quote a fixed price per job do not need more than that.

Can freelancers work in OIO without a seat?

Yes. You send them a ticket link. They read the brief and the feedback, upload the work and mark it done in a browser, with no account. If they want to keep a history of their work, they can create a free account later.

Try it against your own work

Free plan, no card. Set up in under a minute, and you can keep using Harvest alongside it while you decide.