Remote.team vs Teamwork

Managers of digital agencies, IT departments, and distributed teams eventually hit a wall when it comes to efficiency. At first, you choose a powerful tool like Teamwork so that “everything is done the right way.” But after a year or two, you find yourself thinking: the interface is overloaded, clients get confused about access, and employees spend half a day updating statuses across five different tabs.

We analyzed the feedback from those who’ve already been down this road and compared two approaches to project management: the classic heavy artillery (Teamwork) and the new flexible format (Remote.Team).

1. Architecture: “Monolithic” vs. “Browser-Based”

Teamwork was designed as a multifunctional all-in-one solution for traditional project management. It is a desktop-first solution that requires employees to adapt and undergo training. Its architecture assumes that the company has a dedicated project manager who will configure permissions, statuses, and workflows.

Remote.Team operates on the principle of “open your browser and get to work.” The platform requires no installation and combines business chat and task management in a single window. The key idea here is to minimize switching between tools. While communication in Teamwork often shifts to email or a separate messenger (Slack, Telegram), Remote.Team insists that discussion and execution should be side by side.

2. Task Management: Complex Workflows vs. Chat-Based Tasks

The biggest headache for managers in Teamwork is the loss of context. Discussions take place in one place, while tasks appear in another. Remote.Team solves this in a radically different way.

A unique feature of Remote.Team, which you won’t find in classic systems like Teamwork, is the ability to create tasks directly from chat conversations. If a new work request comes up during a discussion, you can turn the message into a task (“request”) in just a couple of clicks. This eliminates two major obstacles to efficiency:

Forgotten tasks — ideas don’t get lost in endless chat feeds.

Unnecessary steps — no need to open a new tab, fill out a form, or assign participants; the system takes context from the conversation.

For managers, this means a lower barrier to entry for new employees and clients. They don’t need to learn complex project management logic; they simply work within the conversation.

3. Analytics: Teamwork’s “Blind Spot” vs. Activity Metrics

One of the most common questions when switching tools is, “How can I make it easier to generate a project report for a client?” Teamwork offers powerful but overly complex reports where it’s difficult to distinguish actual work from red tape.

Remote.Team focuses on metrics that are truly important to managers and collects them automatically:

• Number of completed tasks;

• Response speed;

• Percentage of missed deadlines;

• Task change history.

Unlike Teamwork, where you often have to use third-party plugins for time tracking, Remote.Team allows employees to log time with notes, linking hours to specific projects, and lets managers see not just “logged hours,” but the actual dynamics of the team’s performance compared to previous periods.

4. Working with External Participants: Clients and Contractors

For agencies and outsourcing teams, the following questions are critical: “How do I add a client to a project without requiring them to register?” and “What access rights should clients have?”

In Teamwork, adding an external user often hits plan limits or requires purchasing an additional license. This makes expanding the team or onboarding a new client a costly endeavor.

Remote.Team is designed from the ground up to work with external partners. The platform supports flexible privacy and access settings. You can create private discussions for confidential topics, grant access only to specific tasks, and effectively manage contractors without the risk of unauthorized access or data leaks. Furthermore, the system allows you to manage vacations and time off in a single calendar, which is especially important when working with international teams across different time zones.

5. Security and Cost of Ownership

End-to-end encryption as an architectural distinction

When it comes to security, the approaches differ radically.

Teamwork, like most popular project management systems, uses encryption during data transmission (TLS/SSL). However, information is stored in plaintext on the servers. This means that if technically necessary (or in response to a legal request), platform administrators have potential access to the contents of messages and files.

Remote.Team implements a fundamentally different security architecture—end-to-end encryption:

• Messages and files are encrypted directly on the sender’s device

• Decryption occurs only on the recipient’s device

• Encryption keys are not stored on the company’s servers

• The service’s developers and administrators have no physical access to the content of conversations

This means that even in the event of an external breach of the data center or a technical leak, the data remains inaccessible to third parties.

Why this matters to a manager:

For most teams, this level of security may seem excessive. But if you manage:

• a law firm or accounting outsourcing firm,

• a finance department,

• a medical facility,

• or simply projects involving sensitive commercial data and NDAs,

— then end-to-end encryption becomes not just a “nice-to-have” feature, but a mandatory requirement for a corporate tool.

Users highlight this as a distinct advantage in their reviews: “the end-to-end encryption option, which many market giants don’t offer, is useful for highly confidential discussions.”

Infrastructure and Cost

Both services take infrastructure seriously. Remote.Team uses Amazon Web Services (AWS) with isolated data storage for each team and daily automatic backups—an enterprise-level standard.

Cost. This is the main driver for migration. Teamwork uses a pricing model where costs rise exponentially as the number of projects and users increases. Companies often look for a “cheap alternative to Teamwork for small businesses” or a “fixed-price alternative.”

Remote.Team offers a more transparent model. Unlike Western alternatives, there are no hidden fees for onboarding/offboarding employees or strict requirements for a minimum number of licenses. You pay only for the features you actually use, without having to purchase a “suite” of unnecessary modules.

6. Comparison Chart for Managers

Choosing between Remote.Team and Teamwork isn’t just about picking a “tool for the job.” It’s a choice between a complex ecosystem that requires an administrator and a flexible work environment where management becomes part of the communication.

If your team is tired of Teamwork’s cluttered interface and the difficulties of connecting clients, and wants to see a true picture of employee engagement without manual data collection, Remote.Team offers a more modern architectural alternative.

This option is particularly worth considering if confidentiality is important in your work: the end-to-end encryption offered by Remote.Team is unavailable in the vast majority of mainstream PM systems and addresses security concerns at a level typically found only in specialized secure messengers.

Try starting small: migrate one project to Remote.Team. See how response times and transparency improve when you no longer need to switch between chat, email, and a task manager.