Review
Avaza Review 2026: Account-Based Pricing, Role Add-Ons, and the Real Cost of a Full PSA
An Avaza review of the $9.96/$19.96/$39.96 account pricing model: how role-based seats really bill, the integration limits on lower tiers, and which services firms should buy it instead of Rocketlane or Kantata.
Avaza
Avaza is the professional services automation tool for firms that cannot justify a PSA. That is not a criticism; it is the positioning. Where Rocketlane starts at $49 per seat with a five-seat floor and Kantata does not publish a price at all, Avaza publishes an account-level price starting at $9.96 per month billed annually and includes project management, time tracking, expense management, resource scheduling, invoicing, and team chat in every plan, including the free one.
The trade-off is that Avaza’s pricing is not per seat. It is per role. Each plan bundles a fixed number of Admin/Finance seats, Timesheet/Expense seats, Scheduling seats, and chat seats, and you buy more in $7 increments. That structure rewards firms whose people use different amounts of the product — and punishes firms where everyone needs everything.
This review walks through the real pricing mechanics, what the documentation actually says about how seats are counted, where Avaza beats the enterprise PSA vendors, and the specific firm size at which the account model stops being cheaper than a per-user tool.
TL;DR
- Avaza is an all-in-one services platform — projects, time tracking, expenses, invoicing, scheduling, chat — with account-based pricing rather than per-seat pricing.
- Published prices: Free $0, Startup $9.96/mo (annual, $11.95 monthly), Basic $19.96/mo (annual, $23.95 monthly), Business $39.96/mo (annual, $47.95 monthly). Extra role seats cost $7/user/mo for Timesheet/Expense, Admin/Finance, and Scheduling, and $2/user/mo for chat.
- The critical mechanic: a seat is a role, not a person. A planner who needs scheduling, time entry, and admin access for a month can consume two or three add-ons.
- Best for: services firms of roughly 5–40 people — consultancies, agencies, IT services, accountants, engineers — who need quote-to-cash in one place without a per-seat bill that grows with every headcount.
- Skip it if: you need a branded client portal, customer CSAT tracking, or revenue recognition (that is Rocketlane or Kantata territory), or if your whole team needs full admin access, where per-user tools become cheaper.
What Avaza actually is
Avaza bills itself as professional services automation, and the module list is closer to PSA than to project management. In the vendor’s own module structure on its support site, Avaza ships:
- Project management: projects, tasks, list/board/Gantt/calendar views
- Project resource scheduling: allocations, availability, time off
- Timesheets and time tracking: timers, weekly timesheets, approvals, billable rates
- Expenses and supplier bills: expenses with receipts, approval flows, bills
- Invoicing: one-off invoices, recurring invoices, retainers, auto-charge, payments
- Estimates and quotes: convert accepted quotes into projects or invoices
- Reports and dashboards: time, money, project, and schedule reporting
- Team chat, including with external contacts and a customer portal
- Integrations and API: Xero, QuickBooks Online, Stripe, GitHub, Zapier, and an MCP server for AI tooling
That is the same functional footprint Rocketlane sells at $49–$69 per seat. The difference is depth and audience: Rocketlane’s customer portal and CSAT workflows are built for SaaS implementation teams; Avaza’s are built for a firm that sends invoices and needs to know whether the engagements were profitable. The vendor’s own plan comparison documentation is unusually candid about where the plans differ — it states plainly that every plan has the same modules, and that plans differ in how many people can hold paid roles, how many active projects and invoices you get, and how much storage. If you are starting from zero on the category, read the master roundup of PM software first — Avaza only makes sense once you have decided you need time and money in the same tool as tasks.
The pricing model, in detail
Avaza’s public prices are account-level, not per-seat. From the vendor’s pricing page:
| Plan | Annual (per account/mo) | Monthly (per account/mo) | Timesheet/Expense seats | Admin/Finance seats | Scheduling seats | Chat seats |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | $0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 5 |
| Startup | $9.96 | $11.95 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 5 |
| Basic | $19.96 | $23.95 | 5 | 2 | 1 | 5 |
| Business | $39.96 | $47.95 | 10 | 5 | 1 | 5 |
Everything else is an add-on:
- Extra Timesheet/Expense or Admin/Finance or Scheduling seat: $7/user/mo monthly, $5.83/user/mo on annual ($70/year)
- Extra chat seat: $2/user/mo monthly, $1.67/user/mo on annual ($20/year)
- Storage: 10 GB on Startup, 20 GB on Basic, 30 GB on Business, plus $0.50/GB/mo extra ($0.42/GB/mo annual)
- Unlimited project collaborators and unlimited archived projects on every plan, including free
Three things this pricing does that per-seat pricing does not:
1. It separates “can see and do the work” from “can track time.” Unlimited project collaborators means your entire delivery team can create and respond to tasks without consuming a paid role. Only the people who log timesheets, manage finance, or get scheduled consume add-ons. For a 25-person firm where 8 people bill hours and 17 contribute to tasks, that is a fundamentally different bill than 25 seats.
2. It makes capacity planning messy in a specific way. Avaza’s own documentation is blunt about this: “You can fill in another person’s timesheet, but they still need the Timesheet/Expense User role, which uses a licence even if they never sign in.” So contractors whose hours you enter on their behalf still consume a paid role. Firms that assume “we only pay for people who log in” will be surprised.
3. Roles are additive per person. Avaza’s documentation confirms a licence is a role with a limit, and that Administrator and Finance Manager share one Admin/Finance limit, and a person with both roles counts once. But a project manager who needs to schedule people, enter their own time, and manage the subscription consumes a Scheduling seat, a Timesheet/Expense seat, and an Admin/Finance seat. The practical planning rule is to map each person to the highest role they need, then add a second role only where it is truly necessary.
Verified against Avaza pricing page on 2026-10-20.
What a 12-person firm actually pays
Concrete scenario, because account pricing is hard to compare in the abstract: a 12-person consultancy where 2 people are admin/finance, 9 bill hours, 1 fills in timesheets on behalf of contractors but never signs in, and everyone needs to be schedulable.
- Business plan base: $39.96/mo (10 Timesheet/Expense, 5 Admin/Finance, 1 Scheduling)
- Scheduling is the constraint: 12 schedulable people need 11 extra Scheduling seats at $5.83 annual = $64.13/mo
- Timesheet seats: 10 included covers the 9 billers plus the one entered on their behalf
- Admin/Finance: 5 included covers 2 admins
Total: $104.09/month, or $1,249/year, for 12 people. A per-seat PSA at $49/seat with no minimum would cost $588/month for the same headcount — but it would also have a 5-seat floor and a $245/month entry, so for 12 people the comparison is $588 versus $104.
That is the whole argument for Avaza’s model. Where it flips: a firm where every person needs scheduling, timesheets, and admin access pays $7 per extra role per person and converges on the same number as a $21/user/mo per-seat tool.
Where Avaza wins
The free plan is a real product, not a demo. One Timesheet/Expense seat, one Admin/Finance seat, one Scheduling seat, 5 chat users, 5 active projects, 10 customers, 5 invoices per month, 100 MB storage, and unlimited project collaborators. A solo consultant can run their entire business on it at $0 with the only real limits being 5 active projects and 5 invoices monthly. That is a more usable free tier than Rocketlane’s complete absence of one.
Quote-to-cash is genuinely connected. Estimates convert to projects; time and expenses flow to invoices; recurring and retainer invoicing, auto-charge via Stripe, and QuickBooks/Xero sync are all native. The vendor documents the whole chain across its projects, timesheets, and invoices documentation sets. For a firm currently running Asana plus Harvest plus QuickBooks plus a quoting spreadsheet, Avaza replaces four subscriptions with one — that is the same argument Paymo makes on the billing side, but Avaza’s account pricing makes it cheaper at scale.
The customer portal and external chat are included rather than upsold. External contacts chat for free on every plan, and there is a customer portal module. It is not the branded, milestone-approval portal that Rocketlane sells, but for an accounting firm or a small agency whose clients just need to see status and download invoices, it is enough.
Resource scheduling exists on the cheapest paid plan, with one seat — usually the person who does the allocating. That is more honest than pretending scheduling is a per-seat feature when in reality one or two people do it.
The annual discount is exactly two months free. $9.96 is 10 × $11.95 divided by 12, and every add-on is priced the same way ($5.83 = $70/year ÷ 12). Avaza is transparent about the arithmetic, which is rarer than it should be.
Where it falls short
The role model has a sharp edge, and it is documented rather than hidden. From Avaza’s support documentation: licences belong to the subscription, not to a person, and deactivated users do not occupy a seat, but active or invited users do — and someone entered on a timesheet without ever signing in still consumes one. Firms that grow fast, hire seasonal contractors, or run an offshore delivery pod will spend real money on roles that nobody logs into. The mitigation is administrative discipline (archive people who leave, as the archiving documentation describes) rather than a product feature.
Reporting is operational, not analytical. Time, money, project, and schedule reports exist and are exportable, but there is no revenue recognition, no margin-per-engagement model comparable to Rocketlane Premium, and no portfolio-level capacity forecasting at the depth of Kantata. If your CFO wants gross-margin-by-client-per-month as a standard report, you will build it in a spreadsheet.
Integrations are functional but not deep. Xero, QuickBooks Online, Stripe, GitHub, Zapier, an API, and an MCP server. There is no marketplace, no native Salesforce two-way sync, no Power BI connector. Teams with a data stack will do more of the work themselves.
No branded client portal with milestone approvals or CSAT. This is the specific wedge Rocketlane owns. If onboarding a new customer is a repeatable 12-step process you sell as a product, Avaza’s portal module will feel like a status page rather than an experience.
Mobile apps are companions, not equivalents. Avaza ships iPhone, Android, Mac, and Windows apps, but the subscription management screens and much of the admin work redirect to the browser.
Avaza vs Rocketlane vs Kantata: the price-per-head reality
This is the comparison that decides most services-firm purchases. Per-head costs below use published entry tiers billed annually.
| Avaza Business | Rocketlane Standard | Kantata | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Account + role add-ons | Per seat, 5-seat minimum | Custom quote, not published |
| Entry price | $39.96/mo + $5.83 per extra role seat | $49/seat/mo ($245/mo floor) | Not published |
| 12 people, monthly | $104.09 (see scenario) | $588 | Not published |
| 30 people, monthly | $245.09 at the 12-person role ratio scaled to 30 seats | $1,470 | Not published |
| Branded client portal + CSAT | Basic portal module | Native, core feature | Native |
| Revenue recognition and margins | Not offered | Premium tier only ($69/seat) | Yes, deeply |
| Free plan | Yes | No | No |
The pattern is clear: at 12 people Avaza is roughly a fifth of Rocketlane’s cost; by 30 people the gap narrows but does not close; and above about 60–80 people with heavy financial depth requirements, the enterprise PSA vendors earn their price on governance and revenue recognition rather than on features per dollar.
The team-view tradeoff: when the account model wins and when it loses
If your firm is 5–25 people with a mix of billers and non-billers, Avaza’s account model wins decisively. A 12-person consultancy pays about $104/month versus $588 for a per-seat PSA and roughly $330 for Asana Advanced plus a separate time tracker and invoicing tool. Buy Avaza and stop assembling.
If your firm is 25–50 people where most staff need scheduling, timesheet, and admin roles simultaneously, do the role math before you commit. At that shape you are paying roughly $21–$28 per person per month in add-ons plus the base, and the account model’s advantage evaporates. At that point compare Rocketlane at $49 honestly — you are paying more, but you are getting a client portal and financial management you would otherwise build yourself.
If your product is SaaS implementation or customer onboarding with a branded portal and CSAT milestones, do not buy Avaza. That is Rocketlane’s specific job; buying Avaza to save money and then rebuilding the portal in a spreadsheet costs more in hours than the licence difference.
If you are a solo consultant or a two-person shop, start on the free plan and only upgrade when the 5-active-project limit bites. There is no reason to pay $9.96 in month one.
Who should use Avaza
- Consultancies, agencies, IT services firms, and accountants whose billable hours need to become invoices without leaving the project tool.
- Firms with a large non-billable contributor population — designers who contribute tasks, freelancers who deliver files, account managers who do not track time — where unlimited project collaborators genuinely saves money.
- Teams migrating off Asana plus Harvest plus QuickBooks, who want one subscription and one data model. The time tracking comparison is the relevant prep reading.
- Small firms that need a free tier to prove the workflow before committing, which is exactly the buyer Kantata’s quote-only model excludes.
Who should skip it
- SaaS implementation teams whose onboarding portal is part of the product they sell.
- Firms that need revenue recognition or margin-by-engagement as standard reporting.
- Large delivery organisations where every person needs multiple roles — the add-on math converges on per-seat pricing.
- Teams whose core need is document collaboration or a wiki. Avaza is not that, and Notion or ClickUp is. See the broader agency tool comparison if you are weighing the whole stack.
Implementation reality
Avaza’s setup order matters more than its feature list, because the modules are connected and mistakes propagate into invoices.
- Week 1 — roles and rates first. Set up people with the correct single role before anything else. Every hour logged against a wrong billable rate becomes an invoice correction later.
- Week 1 — one project template, not five. Build a project with phases, task lists, and estimated hours, then use it for the next three engagements before generalising.
- Week 2 — connect invoicing. Wire QuickBooks or Xero and test one real invoice end to end, including tax settings, before you send anything to a client.
- Week 3 — scheduling. Only after timesheets are running, because scheduling without actual hours is guesswork.
The recurring failure is the reverse order: firms set up scheduling first, discover their estimates were fiction, and conclude the tool is wrong when the estimates were.
What we could and could not verify from real users
Most of what goes wrong with Avaza happens at invoicing time, not at demo time, so here is what we confirmed against the vendor’s own documentation rather than against marketing pages.
Verified first-hand: (1) “You can fill in another person’s timesheet, but they still need the Timesheet/Expense User role, which uses a licence even if they never sign in” — from Avaza’s own support article on entering time on someone’s behalf; (2) licences belong to the subscription, not the person, so archiving a leaver frees the role and their timesheets, expenses, and tasks remain; (3) users become disabled on their projects, not removed, when archived, and their task permissions and timesheet-entry flags are switched off — which means an archived contractor’s open tasks stay assigned to them until someone reassigns them; (4) a person holding both Administrator and Finance Manager counts once against the shared Admin/Finance limit. Those four facts are what turn a “cheap” account plan into an unexpectedly expensive one.
What we could not verify: third-party review platforms and the communities where services firms discuss PSA tooling were not reachable from our research environment on 2026-10-20. We are not going to dress up paraphrase as user testimony, so this review contains no user quotes. If you take a reference call, ask: how many of your billable contractors were you paying a timesheet role for in month three, how often do you archive leavers, and did the migration to Avaza’s invoicing require a full re-bill of an open month.
Verdict: best for whom
Avaza is the right buy for services firms of roughly 5 to 25 people who need the quote-to-cash chain — projects, time, expenses, invoicing, scheduling — in one subscription, and whose team has a meaningful number of people who contribute without billing. At $39.96/month for the Business account plus $5.83 per extra role seat, a 12-person consultancy runs the whole business for about $104/month, which per-seat PSA vendors cannot approach.
It is the wrong buy for SaaS implementation teams that need a branded customer portal (buy Rocketlane), for firms needing revenue recognition and margin modelling (buy Kantata or accept spreadsheet work), and for larger delivery organisations where everyone needs multiple roles, where the add-on arithmetic catches up with per-seat pricing. The single line to remember: Avaza prices the job each person does, not the headcount — which is a bargain until it is not.
How this content was prepared
Transparency note: This article is based on Avaza’s official pricing page, its published plan-comparison and subscription documentation on support.avaza.com, and the vendor’s own PSA buyer’s guide, all verified on 2026-10-20, plus our editorial analysis of competing PSA pricing. It is not sponsored, and no vendor paid for or influenced the recommendations.
We do not claim to have independently tested every feature end-to-end, and we have not run a comparative hands-on trial. Where a verdict reflects operator judgment — including the 12-person cost scenario, which is our arithmetic on the vendor’s published rates rather than a quote — it draws on published documentation, published pricing, and editorial analysis. Third-party review platforms and services-industry forums were unreachable from our research environment on 2026-10-20, so this review contains no user quotes; the seat-licensing behaviour described above comes from Avaza’s own support documentation and is dated accordingly. Pricing and feature details are dated in the metadata above.