If clients keep asking what is in progress and revisions get lost in Slack, your request queue can almost certainly stay on Trello. Give each client one free board and invite them as a guest, and the status question is answered for $0. Pay for Trello Standard at $6 per user a month once you outgrow the Free plan's 10-collaborator cap. Only look at ClickUp, Asana or a portal's built-in queue once the team passes about five people, or if you are buying a portal anyway.
The rest of this page covers what each tool costs for 1, 3 and 6 people, and the board fixes to try before you switch anything.
What a request queue has to show
A client should be able to open the queue on a Tuesday morning and answer one question: is my landing page being worked on? If not, why not? That takes five states, in this order.
- Intake. The request has arrived. Nobody has checked the brief yet.
- Ready. The brief is complete and the client has ranked it. Work starts the moment a slot opens.
- Active. A designer is on it. On a one-request-at-a-time plan, each client has one card here, never two.
- Waiting for client. You need an answer, a file or an approval. The card says what, and since when.
- Done. Delivered and approved. The card stays, so the history is there when the client asks what you shipped in March.
The states only mean something if a few rules hold:
- A client sees their own requests and nothing else. No other client's cards, no internal estimates.
- One person, the queue owner, moves cards from Ready to Active. Designers move their own card to Waiting or Done.
- If priority changes after work starts, the card records who asked, why, and the new expected date.
- Every card in Waiting names the next action and who owes it.
Run those rules against a real week of requests with the workflow and approval checklist. Inspect what the tool prevents and what it merely labels. A column called "Active (max 1)" stops nobody from dragging in a second card. A displayed limit that nobody monitors is not a capacity policy.
What each tool costs once clients are guests
You pay for your team, not your clients, on every tool below, as long as clients come in the way the vendor intends. The table uses each tool's cheapest paid tier, billed monthly where the vendor publishes a monthly figure.
| Tool and tier | Per user, billed monthly | Per user, billed annually | 1 user | 3 users | 6 users | Free plan and client access |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Trello Standard | $6 | $5 | $6 | $18 | $36 | Free for up to 10 collaborators per Workspace |
| Notion Plus | €9.50 (about $10.82) | Up to 20% off yearly, no figure shown | €9.50 (about $10.82) | €28.50 (about $32.45) | €57 (about $64.89) | Guests are free but limited to the pages you invite them to |
| ClickUp Unlimited | $10 | $7 | $10 | $30 | $60 | Free Forever plan; guests handled with permissions on paid tiers |
| Asana Starter | $13.49 | $10.99 | $13.49 | $40.47 | $80.94 | Personal plan free for 2 users; free guests do not count against licences |
| Airtable Team | Not published | $20 | $20 | $60 | $120 | Only users with edit rights are charged; form and share-link viewers are free |
For a six-person studio the difference between the cheapest and dearest option is $84 a month, about $1,000 a year.
The free plans are where the rules bite. Trello Free covers up to 10 collaborators per Workspace, so check how Trello counts your invited client contacts before you rely on it. Six staff plus five client contacts is already 11 people. Asana's Personal plan stops at 2 users. ClickUp's Free Forever plan lists one form, enough for one intake form but not one per client. Confirm the current limit on ClickUp's pricing page before you build intake around it.
Trello, Notion, ClickUp, Asana and Airtable for a request queue
Trello is the default. A board per client, five lists and the client invited as a guest give you the status view clients ask for. It is also what DesignJoy, the best-known solo subscription, ran on. A June 2025 podcast recap of DesignJoy's founder puts it plainly: "Clients can request one thing at a time via Trello." In his 2021 Indie Hackers AMA the tool list was Trello, Airtable via IFTTT, Webflow, Memberstack and Slack. What you give up: Trello has no request form, portal or billing of its own. Premium is $12.50 per user billed monthly, or $10 billed annually. It adds Table, Calendar and Dashboard views, which is how you see every client's Active card on one screen.
Notion suits a studio that already keeps briefs and brand files there. Build one requests database with a status property, then share a filtered page with each client. Guests only see the pages you invite them to. What you give up: you design the whole thing yourself. Notion's Free plan gives one person unlimited blocks but caps the number once a second member joins. It also limits uploads to 5MB, which rules it out for design files.
ClickUp fits when you want forms, several views and proofing in the same tool. Unlimited is $10 per user billed monthly or $7 billed annually. What you give up: a week of setup, and a screen with far more options than a client needs to see.
Asana fits a team past about five people that wants intake forms and approvals in one place. What you give up: it is the dearest monthly-billed option here, at $13.49 per user on Starter.
Airtable fits if you think of the queue as data: every request a row, every client a filtered view. Clients who submit through a form or read a share link are not charged. What you give up: it is a database, not a board. Team is $20 per user billed annually, with no published monthly price.
You will also see monday.com, which bills in EUR. Its Basic plan is €9 (about $10.25) per seat a month, billed annually, with a free plan for up to 2 seats. UseQueue is another option, though we have not been able to price it. For a head-to-head setup of the three most common choices, read Trello vs Notion vs ClickUp for a design request queue.
When a portal's built-in queue is the better home
Client portals ship with their own request queue. If you are buying one for intake, billing or pause handling, run the queue there and drop the separate board.
- ManyRequests Core is $59 a month billed monthly, with one seat included and extra seats at $20. It gives you request forms plus Kanban, list and queue views.
- Zendo has a free Essential plan for up to 3 clients and 1 published service. Core is $29 a month. Zendo shows client requests in list, table or Kanban views.
- Wayfront Base is $129 a month billed monthly with 5 team seats, and runs delivery with tasks, statuses and owners.
Is the queue alone worth that? For five people, Wayfront Base costs $129 a month against $30 on Trello Standard. The portal earns its price through billing and intake, not the queue. Our client portal comparison covers when that trade is worth making.
Fix the board before you change the tool
Do not buy replacement software because staff use inconsistent status names. Most "where is my request?" messages come from vague columns and nobody owning the queue, and a new tool imports both problems on day one. Try this for two weeks first:
- Rename every client board's lists to the five states above, spelt the same way on every board.
- Name one queue owner. On a six-person team that is usually the founder or the account lead, not a designer.
- Hold a 15-minute review each morning: clear Intake, check every Waiting card has a named next action, confirm one card per client in Active. The daily queue routine walks through it.
- Hold the line on one active request per client, using the wording in the one active request rule when a client pushes a second job in.
Keep Trello instead of migrating if clients stop asking for status by the end of those two weeks. Move only when something stays hard to represent: a client with several requesters who need different permissions, a history you cannot search, or no way to see all Active work across clients. The requests and delivery guide covers the rest of the workflow around the queue.