Blog · July 10, 2026 · ~10 min read

Moxie vs. HourTab for retainer client visibility: what each tool does and where each falls short

Moxie (formerly AND.CO) is one of the better all-in-one tools for solo freelancers: contracts, invoices, proposals, time tracking, and client management in one place. For giving retainer clients a live, no-login view of their hours remaining, it has a gap that a dedicated tool fills. Here’s the breakdown.

What Moxie is designed to do

Moxie (launched as AND.CO, acquired by Fiverr in 2017, rebranded as Moxie in 2022) targets solo freelancers who want to run their business from a single tool rather than stitching together separate apps for each function. Its feature set covers the full freelance business lifecycle:

Proposals and contracts. Moxie includes templated proposals with e-signature. The workflow is: create a proposal, get the client to sign, convert to a project. For freelancers starting a new client engagement, this removes the need for a separate tool like HelloSign or DocuSign.

Time tracking. Moxie has a timer that logs time to specific projects and tasks. Solo freelancers who want to track hours without a separate app (Toggl, Harvest) can do it directly in Moxie. The timer can be started from the project view and entries can be added manually for time logged outside the tool.

Invoicing. Moxie generates invoices from tracked time entries. For retainer clients, it can generate recurring invoices on a set schedule. Payment is via Stripe or bank transfer. The invoicing workflow covers the gap that many freelancers try to patch with FreshBooks or Wave while using a separate time tracker.

Client portal. Moxie has a client-facing portal where clients can view proposals, invoices, and project files. Access requires the client to create an account and log in. The portal shows them their history with you but is designed primarily for document review and invoice payment, not for checking real-time retainer hours.

Expense tracking and reporting. Moxie tracks business expenses and generates financial reports. For freelancers who need to separate billable expenses from overhead, this is a useful addition to the core time-tracking and invoicing flow.

Moxie is priced around $16–$20/month depending on plan, positioning it in the same category as HoneyBook Starter and Bonsai’s entry plan. For a solo freelancer who needs all those features, it consolidates a stack that might otherwise cost $40–$60/month.

What Moxie does not provide for retainer clients

The retainer-specific gap in Moxie is the same gap that exists in most all-in-one freelance tools: there is no dedicated, no-login, shareable URL that shows a client their current hours remaining with a visual progress bar and cycle context.

What Moxie’s client portal provides is a historical invoice and document view. A client can log in to their portal account and see their invoices, the signed contract, and project files. What the portal does not provide is: “As of today, you have used X of Y hours this cycle, with Z hours remaining and the cycle resetting on August 1.”

This matters most in the middle of a billing cycle, which is exactly when clients ask the question. At invoice time, the cycle is over and the hours are finalized — the client can see the total on the invoice. Between invoices, a client who wants to know their current standing has to either log into the Moxie portal (where hours data isn’t displayed in a retainer context) or email their freelancer to ask.

The “client logs into a portal” model also introduces friction that a shareable URL avoids. Every new retainer client requires an account creation step. Clients who have multiple vendors using different portals accumulate password management overhead. Many clients resist creating yet another account for a dashboard they’ll check infrequently.

What HourTab provides that Moxie doesn’t

HourTab is not a business management tool. It does not handle contracts, invoices, proposals, or expenses. It does one specific thing: it takes a CSV export from your time tracker (including a CSV from Moxie’s time log), generates a public URL, and that URL shows your client their current retainer status in a format they can read without logging in.

The client URL shows:

A visual progress bar that immediately communicates how much of the retainer is used versus remaining. A client opening the URL from their phone understands their status in two seconds without reading any numbers.

The exact hours count: “14 of 20 hours used • 6 hours remain.” This is the number they need to decide whether to make a new work request this cycle or defer to next month.

The cycle reset date: “Cycle resets August 1.” Hours remaining on the 28th mean something different than on the 3rd. The reset date makes this context explicit without requiring the client to remember the invoice schedule.

A work log listing each time entry with date, description, and hours. This answers the client’s secondary question: “What did I pay for?” without requiring them to review an invoice or ask the freelancer for a breakdown.

The key difference: the client does not create an account. They receive a URL once and bookmark it. Every time they want to check their status, they open the bookmark. No login prompt, no password reset, no portal account.

Moxie’s time tracking and HourTab’s CSV input

If you already use Moxie to track time, you do not need to switch time trackers to use HourTab. The workflow is:

Log time in Moxie as you normally would. Add entries via the timer or manually. Tag them to the correct client project.

Export a CSV from Moxie’s time tracking report for the current billing cycle. Moxie allows you to export time entries by project and date range, which maps directly to what you need: the current cycle’s hours for a specific client.

Upload to HourTab. Paste or upload the CSV, set the client’s monthly hours cap and cycle reset date, and the URL is generated. The client gets a link they can bookmark. You repeat the CSV upload each time you log significant new time — weekly or at milestones, depending on your workflow.

This means Moxie and HourTab are not competing for the same role in your stack. Moxie continues to handle what it does well: contracts, invoicing, and time logging. HourTab handles the client-facing hours display that Moxie’s portal doesn’t cover.

When Moxie alone is sufficient

For some freelancers, Moxie’s client portal covers the retainer communication need adequately. These are the conditions where Moxie alone works:

You have one or two retainer clients who never ask mid-cycle. If clients don’t ask about hours between invoices and don’t seem to need visibility, there is no gap to fill. Moxie handles invoicing, and the relationship is smooth.

Your clients are comfortable with a portal login. If your clients actively use Moxie’s portal for invoice review and document storage, they are already logged in. Adding a retainer dashboard to that portal experience is low friction for them. The gap here is that Moxie’s portal doesn’t have a built-in retainer hours dashboard, not that portal logins are universally bad.

You bill flat-fee rather than hourly retainer. If your retainer is a fixed deliverable fee rather than a time-based arrangement, the “how many hours remain” question doesn’t arise. Moxie’s invoicing covers the flat-fee use case cleanly.

You have fewer than three retainer clients. With one or two clients, a monthly hours-update email is manageable overhead. As the client count grows past three, the overhead of status-update emails compounds and a dedicated URL becomes worth the setup.

When you need HourTab alongside Moxie

The signal that you need a retainer hours URL is simple: clients are emailing you to ask about their hours. If this is happening once a month, the overhead is manageable. If it’s happening multiple times per client per cycle, or across multiple clients simultaneously, it becomes a significant time cost.

You are getting mid-cycle hours questions from multiple clients. Each “how many hours do I have left?” email requires you to open Moxie, navigate to the project, find the time report, add up the hours, subtract from the cap, and reply. That sequence takes 5–10 minutes per email. With three retainer clients and two questions per client per month, that is 30–60 minutes of non-billable admin per month just for status updates.

Invoice friction is increasing. When clients don’t have visibility into hours during the cycle, the first time they see the total is on the invoice. Surprises at invoice time create payment delays and relationship friction. A client who could check hours throughout the month has no surprise at invoice time — they’ve been watching the number build.

Retainer renewal conversations are awkward. Renewing a retainer is easier when the client has felt informed throughout the cycle. Clients who had no visibility into how their hours were used tend to be less confident in renewal decisions. Clients who bookmarked a URL and saw their hours in real time feel like they got what they paid for, because they watched the value accumulate.

You are scaling to four or more retainer clients. Moxie’s time tracking scales well for your internal needs. The client-communication overhead scales with client count, not with Moxie’s features. HourTab addresses the communication overhead, not the tracking overhead.

Direct comparison: what each handles

The Moxie + HourTab stack for retainer freelancers

For solo freelancers already using Moxie who want to add client-facing retainer visibility, the two-tool stack works cleanly:

Moxie handles everything it already handles: proposals at deal close, contracts at project start, time tracking throughout the month, and invoicing at cycle end. Nothing changes in the existing workflow.

HourTab adds the client communication layer that Moxie doesn’t have. At the start of each billing cycle, you export the previous cycle’s CSV and upload a fresh one to HourTab. The client URL remains the same — you sent it once when the retainer started. The client bookmarks it and returns throughout the month without any action on your part. When you log significant new work, you upload an updated CSV so the URL reflects current state.

Total cost of the combined stack: $16–20/month for Moxie plus $9/month for HourTab Solo. For a freelancer billing $75/hour on a 20-hour retainer, that’s $25–30/month in tooling against a $1,500/month retainer contract — under 2% of the contract value for a workflow that eliminates status-update emails and improves client confidence in the retainer relationship.

For freelancers who are evaluating whether to add client-facing hours visibility, the retainer client reporting workflow explains the end-to-end process in detail. The short version is that the CSV export-and-upload takes about 5 minutes per client per update cycle, and the reduction in mid-cycle email volume typically pays that back within the first month.

The broader retainer client communication context is that hours visibility is one component of a communication practice, not the whole thing. Moxie handles most of the other components well — contracts, invoices, client file storage. HourTab handles the one component it doesn’t: the live, bookmarkable, no-login hours URL that lets clients self-serve on the question that currently requires an email.

HourTab gives retainer clients a no-login hours URL from a CSV upload. Works alongside Moxie without changing your existing workflow. Start free →