Cycling through all six. Tap any point to stop.

Measured on six things

Agency CRM and management software for small creative teams.

Speed

Lighthouse mobile 71/100 with LCP 3.2s and CLS 0.31; desktop 87/100. TBT is 0ms so the page is not JS-heavy, but the mobile layout shift is real and visible.

Screenshots

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Orbit Studios

About this app

Orbit Studios is an all-in-one agency management platform designed for small creative teams of one to ten people. It combines CRM, project management, retainer billing, time tracking, invoicing, and a branded client portal into a single, calm workspace. Key features include Kanban boards, calendar views, workload management, time tracking, retainer and ad hoc billing, and an AI companion that prepares your day. Pricing is a flat £15 per user per month with a 30-day free trial. Orbit Studios aims to replace the fragmented tools that small agencies often juggle, such as spreadsheets, chat apps, and memory. It offers a client portal where clients can approve estimates, follow projects, comment on work, and view invoices. The platform is tailored for boutique studios, freelancers, and small marketing agencies.

Key features

1Retainer and ad hoc billing that tracks committed hours, rollover and overage against actual logged time.
2Branded client portal where clients approve estimates, follow projects, comment and view invoices.
3All-in-one workspace: CRM, Kanban, calendar, workload, time tracking, invoicing and team messaging.

Target customer profile

Drawn from the product itself, not from a survey.

Demographic

Freelance designers and solo creatives

Pain points

Juggling multiple tools, tracking billable hours, managing client approvals

Primary needs

Simple CRM, time tracking, invoicing, client portal

Demographic

Small creative studios (2-5 people)

Pain points

Lack of visibility into team workload, disjointed project management, retainer billing complexity

Primary needs

Project management, workload view, retainer billing, team collaboration

Demographic

Boutique marketing agencies (6-10 people)

Pain points

Scaling without admin overhead, client communication gaps, financial tracking

Primary needs

Integrated CRM, client portal, financial reports, task management

Scout Review

Written by AI from measured evidence, scored out of 100.

Orbit Studios is a well-positioned all-in-one for small creative teams, and the positioning is its strongest asset. It names a real problem — the gaps between spreadsheet, chat and memory where small studios lose money — and offers a coherent answer: CRM, projects, retainer billing, time tracking, invoicing and a branded client portal in one flat-rate workspace. The marketing site is disciplined and specific, the accessibility baseline is strong at 96/100, and the 30-day no-card trial lowers the barrier to trying it. The weaknesses are executional rather than conceptual: mobile layout shift (CLS 0.31), missing security headers, no published compliance certifications, and no proper documentation hub despite promising to replace five tools. At £15/user/month it is priced competitively against Productive and Scoro, both of which target larger teams. For a studio of two to six people tired of stitching tools together, Orbit is worth a trial — just do not expect enterprise-grade compliance paperwork yet.

Measure by measure

Usability

30-day trial with no card, a 24-hour contact promise, and a long-form client-management guide that doubles as onboarding. No dedicated help centre or searchable docs index was found.

Design

Dark, editorial landing page with numbered feature blocks and a confident, specific voice. Judged from the marketing site and portal login, not an app UI — no store screenshots exist to assess the product surface itself.

Speed

Lighthouse mobile 71/100 with LCP 3.2s and CLS 0.31; desktop 87/100. TBT is 0ms so the page is not JS-heavy, but the mobile layout shift is real and visible.

Security

HTTPS enforced with HSTS, secure cookies, SPF and DMARC in place (9/13 header checks). Missing CSP, frame protection and Permissions-Policy; no SOC 2, ISO, pen-test or bug bounty published.

Accessibility

Lighthouse accessibility 96/100 with one failing audit: insufficient colour contrast. No WCAG statement or multi-language support published, but the automated baseline is strong.

Growth

A real, specific problem for a named segment (1–10 person studios), with retainer billing plus a branded portal as a genuine wedge. Early-stage: domain registered 2026, socials just starting.

Improvement areas

Mobile performance: CLS 0.31 and LCP 3.2s need fixing before the 'calm workspace' claim holds up.
Documentation: no help centre or searchable docs index despite replacing five separate tools.
Security transparency: no SOC 2, ISO, pen-test or bug bounty published; CSP and frame protection missing.

Design & Usability

Orbit Studios presents itself as the calm alternative to the spreadsheet-chat-memory stack, and the marketing site backs that up with disciplined, specific copy rather than generic SaaS filler. The numbered feature blocks (01–06) walk through the workflow in order — clients, workload, retainers, portal, AI companion, team size — which is a genuinely thoughtful way to explain an all-in-one tool. The design is dark, editorial and consistent, though we are judging the marketing site and portal login rather than the app UI itself, since no store screenshots exist. Usability leans on a 30-day no-card trial and a claim that studios are productive 'within the first afternoon.' There is a substantial client-management guide that doubles as onboarding content, but no dedicated help centre, searchable docs index, or live demo. For a tool promising to replace five others, the absence of a proper documentation hub is the main friction point.

Speed & Security

Speed is a mixed picture. Lighthouse desktop scores 87/100, and TBT of 0ms confirms the page is not JavaScript-heavy — a good sign for a marketing site. Mobile, however, drops to 71/100 with an LCP of 3.2s and a CLS of 0.31, well past the 0.1 threshold for 'good.' That layout shift is the kind of thing that makes a page feel less calm than the copy claims. Security sits at a competent-but-incomplete 9/13 on header checks: HTTPS is enforced with HSTS, cookies are secure, and SPF and DMARC are configured. Missing are Content-Security-Policy, frame protection and Permissions-Policy — meaningful gaps for a platform handling client invoices and retainer terms. No SOC 2, ISO 27001, pen-test report or bug bounty is published, which is common at this stage but worth flagging for agencies with client data obligations.

Accessibility & Growth

Accessibility is a genuine strength: Lighthouse scores 96/100, with the only failing audit being insufficient colour contrast. No WCAG conformance statement or multi-language support is published, but the automated baseline is well above category norms. Growth is where the interesting question sits. Orbit targets a specific, underserved segment — creative studios of one to ten people — and names real pain points: retainer overage, unbilled time, late invoicing. The wedge is the combination of retainer billing, a branded client portal and an AI daily companion at a flat £15/user/month. Productive and Scoro both cover agency management, but they are broader, heavier suites aimed at larger teams. Orbit's bet is that small studios want less, not more. That is a defensible position, though the category is crowded and the domain was only registered in 2026 — traction is essentially zero so far.

Conclusion

Orbit Studios is early, and it reads that way — a 2026 domain, two social profiles, no published certifications. But the product thinking is sharper than most tools at this stage. The retainer billing model, where committed hours, rollover and overage are tracked against actual logged time, addresses a specific and expensive failure mode that generic project management tools ignore. The branded client portal is the other differentiator: clients approve estimates, follow projects and see invoices without being taught a new dashboard. If Orbit can build out its documentation, tighten mobile performance and publish even a basic security page, it has a credible claim on the boutique studio market. The risk is not the idea — it is whether a small team can out-execute Productive and Scoro on the low end while they are busy serving the high end.

Suggestions for improvement

Fix the mobile CLS of 0.31 — reserve space for images and fonts so the page stops shifting under readers.
Publish a proper help centre or searchable docs index; a single long-form guide is not enough for a five-tool replacement.
Add a security page covering data handling, hosting, backups and any certifications in progress — agencies ask for this.
Add Content-Security-Policy and frame protection headers; the current 9/13 header score leaves obvious gaps.

How we score

Alternatives comparison

Named competitors, point by point. Nobody paid to appear here or to be left out.

	Orbit Studios	Productive	Scoro
Starting price (per user / month)	£15 flat, all features included	Tiered pricing, higher entry point	Tiered pricing, higher entry point
Target team size	1–10 person creative studios	Small to mid-size agencies	Agencies and consultancies of varying size
Retainer billing with rollover and overage tracking	Yes — core feature, invoiced from logged time	Retainer and budget tracking available	Retainer and budget tracking available
Branded client portal	Yes — approvals, project tracking, comments, invoices	Client portal available on higher tiers	Client portal available
AI daily companion / task suggestions	Yes — Orbit AI prepares your day each morning	AI features not a core advertised differentiator	AI features not a core advertised differentiator
Free trial	30 days, no card required	Free trial available	Free trial available