MELORORIUM FOR DESIGN STUDIOS
Your design studio pays $4,540 / year in SaaS taxes. Flat fee instead.
Figma, Harvest, Asana, QuickBooks, Notion — every seat billed monthly, every year, forever. Melororium replaces all five for $59/mo flat. Track billable hours inside each task card, manage every client retainer in one CRM, generate invoices from time logs in a single click. No seat tax.
10 users included. Time tracking, CRM, invoicing. No seat tax.
THE DESIGN STUDIO TAX
Every new designer you hire makes your software bill worse.
Per-seat pricing punishes growth. Add a junior designer, add a project manager, add an account director — and your tool stack charges you more every single month. Melororium charges one flat monthly price, regardless of how many people you add within your plan. Replace your five-tool patchwork with one fast, flat-fee workspace that covers the full delivery lifecycle: brief intake, task execution, time tracking, client reporting, and invoice generation.
The SaaS Tax
Here is what you are paying every year to run a fragmented workflow:
Cumulative SaaS Tax vs. Flat-Fee Subscription
That's $22,700 saved over 5 years — enough to hire a mid-level motion designer for two full months.
STUDIO DELIVERY WORKFLOW
From client brief to invoice, in one workspace.
Stop routing deliverables between five disconnected tools. Melororium keeps your Kanban boards, task-embedded timers, client CRM, and invoice generation on a single screen — switching takes under 100ms. Your team stays focused on creative output, not admin overhead.
Client Retainer Setup
Open the CRM ledger and create a dedicated client card. Record monthly retainer amounts, billing cycle, point of contact, and project scope. All data is queryable across your entire portfolio instantly — no spreadsheet gymnastics needed.
Kanban Task Execution
Deploy a visual Kanban board per project. Assign tasks to specific designers or developers, attach due dates, set priority levels, and move cards between lanes with sub-100ms drag response. No cloud sync delay, no waiting.
Task-Embedded Time Tracking
Every task card has a built-in stopwatch. Your team taps start when they begin creative work and stop when they switch contexts. Hours log against the task, client, and project automatically — no separate timer app, no forgotten entries, no billing disputes.
Invoice from Time Logs
When a billing period closes, open the Work Reports module. Select the client, choose the date range, and generate a branded PDF invoice from tracked hours in one click. Payment status syncs to your project calendar alongside upcoming deadlines.
VALUE COMPARISON
Why pay per seat when you can go flat-fee?
Compare face-to-face. Other SaaS platforms lock your workflows and data behind endless per-seat fees. We believe professional software should be a flat fee for your whole team.
The old way
Paying monthly subscription taxes for every minor tool you use.
Scattered operational records causing workflow gaps and missed hours.
Heavy, sluggish cloud interfaces wasting your daily billable capacity.
Compiling raw timesheets manually to calculate project margins.
The Melororium way
Flat monthly fee for your whole team. Secure, scalable workspace.
Unified time logging and accounting tied directly to active tasks.
Blazing-fast local-first execution with zero interface latency.
Integrated ledger automation generating live performance reports.
ZERO LOADING SPINNERS
Local-first compilation. Zero server delays.
Melororium compiles all database transactions straight inside your client engine before pushing silent sync tasks to the server.
IndexedDB direct write — zero network dependency
React virtual DOM diff — 1 animation frame
Async worker sync — invisible to the user
Server roundtrip + JSON parse + re-hydrate
LIVE TEST
Run a latency benchmark
Simulate a real workspace action and measure local vs remote execution time.
Click run to measure local performance.
EARLY FEEDBACK
See what teams say about Melororium.
Early adopters from agencies and studios share how ditching the subscription stack changed how their teams operate.
Clara Moss
Founder, Mossglow Studio
"I had a successful shop and absolutely no idea if I was actually making money."
Tom Brauer
Founder, Linkframe
"I was paying to make my own life harder."
Marcus Webb
Founder, North Signal Studio
"Every Friday felt like an archaeology dig."
Built for modern digital operations.
Join the early adopters scaling their business layout with Melororium.
PRODUCT FAQ
Frequently
Asked Questions
Have a question that needs a human to answer?
No problem, email us at support@melororium.com
Compare alternatives
Starter ($29/mo) covers up to 4 users — ideal for small teams. Agency ($59/mo, most popular) covers up to 10 users and lets you pick 5 additional modules on top of the 12 core ones. Studio ($119/mo) covers up to 25 users and unlocks all 20+ announced modules. All plans are billed monthly or yearly (save ~30% annually).
Switch plans anytime — your data stays intact and the transition takes seconds. Upgrade is prorated automatically. No lock-in, no penalties for growing your team.
With per-seat tools, every new hire costs more. A 10-person team on ClickUp pays $1,440/yr in seat fees alone. Melororium charges one flat monthly fee for your whole team — add 1 person or 10, the price stays the same. No seat tax that eats into your margins as you grow.
Security is non-negotiable. Melororium operates on end-to-end data encryption (TLS 1.3) with enterprise-grade database separation. Our AI features use strict Bring Your Own Key (BYOK) architecture — your data is never used for model training.
Yes. Melororium supports dedicated Client Portals at no extra cost. Clients can view project timelines and download deliverables. Guest client access does not count against your team seat limit.
Every plan includes: Dashboard, Kanban, Projects, Calendar, Team management, Client CRM, Invoices, Work Reports, Live Timers, Inbox, Time Tracker, and Settings. Agency and Studio plans add extra modules on top of these.
Project Management for Design Studios: The Flat-Fee Alternative to Per-Seat SaaS
Design studios run on creativity and margin. Every hour logged on a client project, every revision round tracked, every invoice sent accurately — these are the operational fundamentals that determine whether a studio grows or stagnates. Yet most project management tools used by design studios are either too simple (Trello, Basecamp) or too expensive (Asana, Monday per-seat pricing). This guide explains how a flat-fee workspace designed for creative operations gives design studios the management infrastructure they need without the per-seat cost that punishes growth.
The Specific Challenges of Managing a Design Studio
Design work is iterative by nature. A brand identity project moves through discovery, concept exploration, refinement, client review, revision rounds, and final delivery — each phase requiring different team members, different deliverable formats, and different amounts of time. Project management tools built for sequential task completion handle this poorly. Design studios also face the challenge of accurately billing creative time. A designer who spends 3 hours exploring a concept direction that gets rejected still spent those hours — and if time is not tracked, those hours do not appear on the invoice. Studios without systematic time tracking consistently under-bill, often by 15–25% of actual hours worked. At $100/hour average billing rate, that is $15,000–$25,000 per year in uncaptured revenue for a 5-person studio.
The Per-Seat Cost of Common Design Studio Tools
A typical 8-person design studio pays for: Asana or Monday ($120–$160/month for project management), Harvest or Toggl ($96–$120/month for time tracking), FreshBooks or Xero ($30–$50/month for invoicing), and potentially a CRM tool ($80–$120/month). Total: $326–$450/month, or $3,900–$5,400 per year. Melororium Agency at $59/month replaces all four tools. The annual savings for a studio of this size: $2,500–$4,100.
How Melororium Works for Design Studio Workflows
Melororium's project structure maps naturally to how design studios work. Each client has a CRM record with contact details, billing rate, and project history. Each engagement becomes a project with a Kanban board customised to the studio's workflow — typically something like Brief, Concepting, Design, Review, Revision, and Delivery. Tasks represent specific deliverables or work packages: 'Logo concepts — round 1', 'Brand colour palette exploration', 'Typography selection'. Each task has an assigned designer, a due date, and an embedded timer. Designers start the timer when they begin working on a task and stop it when they finish or pause. The time is logged automatically against the project.
Revision Tracking Without the Spreadsheet
Revision tracking is a persistent pain point for design studios. When a client requests changes, that request needs to be captured, acknowledged, actioned, and tracked — so there is a clear record of what was in scope and what was additional work. Melororium handles revisions as tasks or subtasks within the project, with client notes attached. When a revision request falls outside the original scope, it is visible in the task history and easy to reference in a scope conversation.
Client Portal for Review and Approval
Design studios frequently share work-in-progress with clients for review and approval. Melororium's client portal allows clients to view project status, see deliverable progress, and communicate feedback directly in the workspace — without requiring the client to have a full Melororium account. Portal access is unlimited and does not consume team seats.
Invoicing Design Projects: Fixed Fee vs. Hourly
Design projects are billed in two primary ways: fixed project fees (common for clearly scoped deliverables like a logo or a website) and hourly rates (common for ongoing retainers or projects where scope is variable). Melororium handles both billing models through its invoicing system. For fixed-fee projects, create the invoice manually with the agreed project fee and a description of deliverables. For hourly projects, Melororium generates the invoice from tracked hours automatically — applying your billing rate and listing each work session as a line item. The client receives a detailed, professional PDF invoice that shows exactly how their fee was earned.
Managing Multiple Active Projects for Different Clients
The global Kanban view in Melororium shows every active task across every project simultaneously. For a design studio director managing 8–12 active client projects, this view is the operational nerve centre: a quick scan shows which projects have tasks overdue, which have active timers running, and which are waiting on client feedback. No status meeting required — the board tells the story.
Getting a Design Studio onto Melororium in 3 Days
Day one: invite your full design team (all 10 users on the Agency plan are included). Set up your active client list in the CRM with billing rates and contact details. Day two: create projects for your two or three most active client engagements and populate their Kanban boards with current deliverables. Have your designers start logging time on tasks from day two onwards. Day three: review the first time logs to confirm accuracy and configure your invoice template with your studio's branding. By the end of the first week, your studio has a live operational view that was previously spread across three or four separate tools. By the end of the first billing cycle, you have your first automated invoice — and evidence of exactly how much time the studio spent on every project.
Stop paying per seat. Own your studio stack.
$59/mo flat for 10 users. Project Kanban, task-embedded timers, client CRM, invoice generation, and financial reports — all in one workspace. No seat renewals, no seat tax, no add-on fees. Start a 14-day free demo, no card needed.