I’ve been freelancing on the side since basically the day I got out of school. Part of it was practical (student loans aren’t going to pay themselves), but honestly a big part of it was that freelancing let me do the kind of creative work my day job didn’t always make room for. The projects that actually get me excited. The ones where I find myself coding at 2am not because I have to, but because I literally cannot stop.
I’m an art director by trade, but I’ve been playing with code since I was a preteen building guild pages on Neopets. Don’t judge me. That’s where it started, and it never really stopped.
Over the years I tried pretty much every freelance management tool out there. Invoicing apps, project trackers, contract builders, time trackers. I’ve used them all at some point. Some were fine. Most were forgettable. But in 2018 I found and.co, and something finally clicked.
Everything was in one place. The company actually listened to their users. They kept adding features that people asked for. I genuinely loved it. I felt like I was part of something growing, and that feeling is kind of rare with software.
You probably already know where this is going.
And Then Fiverr Bought It
If you know anything about the design world, you know Fiverr is basically the design-purist’s arch nemesis. So when the acquisition was announced, I rolled my eyes, hard.
And honestly, I wasn’t completely surprised. They had already slowed way down on updates after the purchase, so the writing was kind of on the wall. I was just more annoyed that they went through the whole process of buying it out just to shut it down a couple years later. It had so much potential. Such a waste.
So there I was. Staring at a folder full of Excel spreadsheets, rebuilding my entire business setup from scratch. Again.
If you’ve ever had to do that, you know how demoralizing it is. It’s not just the data migration. It’s the hours you spent setting up your contract templates, your proposal presets, your client list, your project workflows. All of it, gone. And now you have to go find a new platform, hope it sticks around, and start over.
I thought about Mint too. We all loved Mint. Intuit bought it and then quietly killed it. Same story, different industry.
That’s when I made a decision. I was not doing this a third time.
The Problem With Every Platform
Here’s the thing nobody really talks about when they’re comparing the popular freelance management tools out there. Most of them are cloud-based. Your data lives on their servers. Your client history, your contracts, your invoices, your entire business infrastructure. All of it sitting on someone else’s computer, subject to someone else’s decisions.
I want to be clear: I’m not knocking these platforms. A lot of them are genuinely good products built by people who care about freelancers. For a lot of people, cloud-based tools are the right choice. They’re easy to set up, they handle updates and security for you, and they just work.
But they’re not for everyone.
What happens when a platform gets acquired? When prices go up? When a feature you rely on disappears? When the company decides to go in a different direction? You’re along for the ride whether you like it or not. Because your data lives with them, not with you.
I’m not saying that’s likely to happen to any specific tool. I’m just saying it happened to me. Twice. And once is enough to make you start thinking differently about where your business data actually lives.
Why WordPress?
I already had WordPress. Most designers and developers do. It’s where my portfolio lives, it’s a platform I know inside and out, and it’s genuinely the most flexible content management system on the planet.
So the idea was pretty simple. What if my freelance business management lived right there, on my own site, in my own database, on my own server? Nobody can shut that down. Nobody can raise my prices. Nobody can take my client list away from me.
I know what you’re thinking. That sounds like a lot of setup. And sure, it’s not quite as simple as signing up for a SaaS account. But if you already have a WordPress site (and if you’re a web designer or developer, you almost certainly do), installing a plugin takes about five minutes.
And then everything is yours. Forever.
So I Built It
I started building Freelance Studio the same way I build everything else. Getting into it late at night, getting stuck on bugs, staying up way too late trying to fix them, slowly watching it come together into something real.
I built it for myself first. Everything I actually needed to run my freelance business. Client management, project tracking, invoicing, time tracking, contracts with e-signatures, proposals, expense tracking, scheduling, reporting. The whole workflow from first contact to final payment, all in one place, all on my own site.
And then I kept building. Because once you start, it’s hard to stop. (Ask anyone who’s ever been personally victimized by a really satisfying debugging session at 1am.)
I even built a version for my husband, who’s a freelance sports cameraman. Because freelancing looks really different depending on what you do, and I wanted to eventually build something that reflects that.
What I Want You to Know
I’m not going to tell you Freelance Studio is perfect. I only know my own perspective, and I built this to solve my own problems. Which means there are probably things it doesn’t do yet that you need it to do.
That’s actually kind of the point though. I want your input. I want to recreate that feeling I had with the original and.co, where it felt like we were building something together. Where your suggestions actually went somewhere.
I’m committed to this. I’ve formed an LLC. I’m maintaining it actively. I’m not going to get bored and bail on it one day, leaving you without updates. This isn’t a weekend project. This is something I genuinely care about and plan to keep building for a long time.
I’d honestly love to freelance full time one day. But there’s that pesky thing called healthcare. So for now I do this alongside my day job, late at night, because I love it. Which means I get it. I get the side hustle. I get the juggle. I get why having your business tools actually work the way you think matters so much.
Want to Try It?
Freelance Studio has a free version. You can download it, install it on your WordPress site, and start using it without spending a dime. If it does everything you need, great. If it doesn’t do something you need, reach out and tell me. That’s literally how we make it better together.
And if you’ve ever lost a platform you loved, if you’ve ever rebuilt your business setup in Excel, if you’ve ever rolled your eyes at an acquisition announcement… this one’s for you.
