Teamleader vs Insightly (2026)

TL;DR

• Both tools chase the same buyer — a services firm that closes deals and then has to deliver them — but they solve different halves of that problem. Teamleader carries the money side: quotes, time, invoices, margin, EU e-invoicing. Insightly carries the delivery side: pipelines that convert into projects with tasks and milestones.
• Teamleader Focus starts at €37.50/month on SMART, and the plan price is only part of the number. Insightly CRM starts at $29/user/month billed annually, and the plan price is also only part of the number. They inflate for opposite reasons.
• Geography decides more of this than features. Teamleader's advantages are Peppol, local accounting connectors, and EU market presence. None of them do anything for a firm in Denver.

The invoicing question comes first

Teamleader handles Peppol, the e-invoicing standard being progressively mandated across the EU. That is not a checkbox feature in Belgium or France — it is the reason a lot of firms move. Worth knowing before you shortlist: the capability is split, with SMART sending Peppol invoices and GROW (€49.50/month) needed to receive them. Firms that buy SMART for the sending half discover the other half at a compliance deadline, so price GROW from the start if you operate under a mandate.

Insightly has no equivalent story. It is a CRM with projects attached, and billing lives in whatever accounting tool you already run. For US and UK firms that is fine. For a Dutch agency it means Teamleader replaces two subscriptions and Insightly replaces one.

Pricing

Teamleader's model changes shape as you climb: SMART (€37.50) and GROW (€49.50) behave as flat-rate packages with a two-user minimum, while FLOW (€67.50 entry) moves to roughly €50 per user. Sitting on top is a catalogue of Boosters priced separately — Project Management €35, Planning €35, Shared Inbox €50, Advanced Insights €25, Accounting Connector €5. A small agency on GROW with project management and planning lands around €119.50/month, well over double the base plan. Build that quote from the Boosters upward, not from the tier downward.

Insightly runs CRM Plus at $29/user, Professional at $49, and Enterprise at $99, all billed annually with no month-to-month option published. The inflation here comes from product stacking rather than add-ons: Marketing, Service, and AppConnect are separate SKUs on separate ladders. Marketing bills by prospect count — $499/month at 2,000 prospects on Professional — so a contact-heavy firm with six staff pays more for its list than for its seats. AppConnect starts at $249/month and carries a $3,000 setup engagement.

Projects: native versus purchased

Insightly includes project management in every CRM tier. Won opportunities convert into projects, and tasks, milestones, and pipelines live in the same record graph as the contacts. There is no upsell for it, which is genuinely the product's best structural argument.

Teamleader charges €35/month for the Project Management Booster, but what you get is tied to billing in a way Insightly's is not: hours logged against a project flow into invoices, and GROW adds margin calculation so you find out whether the work made money. Insightly will tell you the project is done. Teamleader will tell you it was 12% underwater.

Automation, ceilings, and admin

Insightly gates workflow automation behind Professional, and it enforces hard record and custom-field caps per tier — 100,000 records and 50 custom fields on Plus, doubling at Professional. Importing a decade of contacts can push you up a tier for reasons unrelated to headcount, which is worth checking against your existing database before signing. Mass email is throttled by tier too, at 2,500 sends a day on Plus.

Teamleader's constraint is the opposite: not caps, but assembly. Nearly every capability beyond core CRM and invoicing has a price tag attached, and the stacked discounts (17% annual, a six-user volume reduction, a first-invoice cut) make list-price modeling unreliable. Ask for one all-in figure.

Neither is a high-velocity sales CRM. Teamleader's pipeline depth is thinner than Pipedrive's; Insightly's UI shows its age, particularly on mobile.

Who should pick what

• Belgian, Dutch, German, or French SMEs → Teamleader, on GROW. Peppol and local accounting integrations are the deciding factor and no US CRM matches them.
• Firms that bill by the hour and need margin visibility → Teamleader GROW. Time-to-invoice is native rather than integrated.
• US or UK consultancies with 8 to 50 staff → Insightly. Projects included at every tier, Gmail and Outlook sync that actually works, familiar per-seat math.
• Solo consultants → Insightly. Teamleader's two-user minimum means you buy a seat you will not use.
• Large lists, small teams → neither comfortably. Insightly's prospect-based Marketing pricing punishes that shape; price a marketing-first tool instead.

Bottom line

Pick by continent and by which pain is louder. If invoicing compliance and profitability per project keep you up at night and you operate in the EU, Teamleader is built for exactly that and priced reasonably for a firm under ten people — provided you total the Boosters honestly before you sign. If your problem is that deals close and then delivery falls into a spreadsheet, and you are billing customers through something else already, Insightly does that job at $29 a seat with no add-on shopping list. The mistake to avoid in both directions is pricing the base plan and assuming that is the invoice.