The short version
Hectic is good at the part of freelancing you show to your clients: proposals, contracts, deliverables, invoices. We're good at the part nobody shows anyone: real profit per client, split cost accounting, and the uncomfortable question of which retainer is secretly below-cost. Most serious freelancers need both. If you're picking one, pick based on which hurts more right now.
Honest
What Hectic is actually good at
Hectic wins on
- Polished proposal → contract → invoice pipeline
- Deal-stage CRM (pitched, negotiating, booked)
- Client portal with file sharing
- Built-in e-signatures
- One flat monthly price (no per-client or per-seat creep)
Hustlay wins on
- Per-project P&L with real cost allocation
- Split shared expenses (Adobe, VPS, VA) across clients
- Profit-per-hour via integrated time tracking
- Budgets per project with 80%/100% alerts
- Tags per transaction (retainer cycle, deliverable, season)
- Receipt OCR + email import
- Multi-income-stream support (freelance + side SaaS + creator)
- Cheaper Pro entry ($14/mo vs $15-17/mo)
Side by side
Feature matrix
TL;DR
Our honest take
Use Hectic if the pain that wakes you up is 'I lost another deal to a slow proposal' or 'I keep chasing unsigned contracts.' Use Hustlay if the pain is 'I'm working 50-hour weeks and I'm not sure where the money's going.' If you want both eventually, start with the one that's bleeding the most — and know that our Zapier + webhook integrations can wire to Hectic if you end up running both.