Anyone can give you tasks and a calendar. Versions, videofeedback, heavy media, budget and real cost per piece only come from a tool built for production.
LITE plan free forever, with unlimited external collaborators.
Updated: September 2026
A project tracker like Monday, Asana, ClickUp or Notion is a horizontal tool: it works for a product launch, for an office move and for a shoot, because it knows nothing about any of the three. Play is vertical: the project is a piece of video, so versions, review on the video itself, the media library, the budget and the real cost all come as standard. The practical difference: with a general-purpose tracker you end up running it alongside review software and a spreadsheet, with Play you work in one place.
Video is a small part of what your team runs, you already have the tool rolled out for everything else, and what you need is for content tasks to live where the other tasks live.
Producing content is the job, not one more project. You need to approve cuts, control what each piece costs, and bring in outside suppliers without paying a licence per head.
Almost everything that separates the two shows up when the project stops being a task list and becomes a 40 GB file that four people have to approve.
| Capability | Play | Project tracker |
|---|---|---|
| Tasks, boards and calendar | Yes | YesIt is the core of the category |
| Automations and configurable views | PartialProduction views, not a free-form builder | YesHome ground for the category |
| Use outside production: HR, sales, IT | NoPlay is vertical, production only | Yes |
| Media library for heavy files | Yes250 GB on LITE, 1 TB on PRO | PartialAttachments, with per-file limits |
| Video review with comments on the cut | YesVideofeedback by version | PartialSome include generic proofing |
| Automatic AI tagging of video | YesFrom the PRO plan | No |
| Budgets, rate cards and cost control | YesCost Control, expenses and purchase orders | NoHandled in a separate spreadsheet |
| Talent and crew management | YesMore than 1,200 vetted professionals | No |
| CRM and sales funnel for production companies | Yes | PartialOnly in their CRM product, paid separately |
| Production services you can hire | YesPLAY /Services, in the same environment | No |
| External collaborators at no per-seat cost | YesUnlimited on LITE, PRO and Enterprise | PartialGuests with limited permissions, depending on the plan |
| Priced per workspace rather than per user | Yes149 €/month with 5 users included | NoPer-seat pricing, nearly always with a seat minimum |
It is a horizontal tool for coordinating work: tasks, owners, dates, statuses and boards. Its strength is that it adapts to any process, and its weakness is the same one: it comes with no opinion. Everything specific to your work, a shoot included, has to be built by hand out of custom fields, and whatever the tool cannot do — reviewing a cut, adding up what a piece cost — ends up in another application.
Play is a Production-Tech company. It combines three pieces in one flow: Play Platform, the software where production is planned, managed, approved and optimised; PLAY /Services, the creative, production and post-production team that makes the content; and KAMI AI, the assistant that structures briefs, organises projects and tags footage. Play comes out of having run more than 10,000 video projects, so the platform reflects how a production actually works.
A DAM only stores. A project tracker only organises tasks. Review software only covers one stage. And a traditional production service hands you the video but gives you no platform and no control. Play is the only option that puts platform, services and AI in a single flow, from brief to publication.
None of them is a single missing feature in the project tracker. It is that it was not designed for this job.
In a project tracker, the third pass on the edit is a comment inside a task, with the file attached and the feedback spread across the thread, an email and a stray message. In Play each cut is a version of the piece, and comments sit on the video itself, timestamped and grouped by version.
Feedback stops getting lost between version 2 and version 3, which is where it always gets lost.
You can create a field called budget, but it stays a number somebody typed. Play includes the rate card, the budget, the expenses and the purchase orders inside the same project, so the cost of a piece comes from what was actually charged to it, not from what someone remembered to update.
Real cost per project and per account, without rebuilding it at the end of the month.
A shoot brings in freelancers, a production company, the agency and the client. If each one takes a licence, either the budget runs away or you end up sending them files on the side, which is worse. In Play external collaborators are unlimited on every plan, the free one included.
You invite a whole external crew without the invoice changing.
When you run short of capacity, a well-built board does not shoot anything. Behind Play there is a network of more than 1,200 vetted professionals and an in-house creative, production and post-production team in Barcelona, Madrid and Toronto. You can use only the platform, only the services, or both.
You scale volume without building an internal team or opening a procurement process.
General-purpose project trackers are excellent at what they do. The question is not which is better, it is which part of your work weighs more.
The comparison is not settled by the entry price. A project tracker charges per seat and usually asks for a minimum; Play charges per workspace and does not count external people.
0 €
149 €/month /workspace
Custom
Annual billing works out at 10 months. Extra storage at 29 €/TB per month.
To be straight about it: for a small team that only needs to hand out tasks, a general-purpose project tracker is cheaper in licence terms and more flexible. Play stops being comparable once you add up what it replaces: the review software, the cost spreadsheet, wherever you keep the media, and a per-seat licence for every external collaborator. See all of Play's plans and add-ons.
The usual route is not migrating the back catalogue. It is opening Play with the next project and letting the general-purpose tracker keep everything that is not video.
The LITE plan is free, allows 3 internal users, unlimited external collaborators and 250 GB. Enough to run a real project, not a demo.
Brief, tasks, calendar, media, review and cost. Half a piece in each tool proves nothing; a whole one shows within a week.
Client, freelancers and production company come in without taking a licence. This is where most teams feel the change from per-seat pricing.
The usual split: video production in Play, and the rest of the department's work where it already was. Nothing has to be cancelled in the first month.
For video production, yes: Play covers briefing, tasks, calendar and delivery queues, and adds what a general-purpose tracker does not have, such as video versions, videofeedback, a media library and cost control. For coordinating the rest of the company's work, no: Play is vertical and does not try to replace a horizontal tool.
Yes, and that is the most common starting point. Video production runs in Play and the rest of the department's work stays where it was. Many teams end up dropping the video part of the general-purpose tracker because it stops being used on its own.
Versions and videofeedback on the piece itself, a media library built for heavy files, automatic AI tagging, budgets with a rate card, expenses and purchase orders, talent management, and the option to hire production without leaving the platform.
Play has a free LITE plan, a PRO plan at 149 € per workspace per month with 5 users included and 19 € per extra user, and a custom Enterprise plan. Project trackers charge per seat per month, and several require a seat minimum, so the cost grows with every person who joins.
Not in Play. They are unlimited on LITE, PRO and Enterprise, and only internal users are counted: 3 on LITE, 5 on PRO and custom on Enterprise. In most project trackers a guest either has cut-down permissions or uses a seat, depending on the plan.
Not to the same level. General-purpose trackers have spent years polishing a very capable automation builder, and they have the advantage there. Play ships the views and flows a production needs already built, rather than a blank canvas.
Not yet. Integrations, the API and MCP support are in development. If your workflow depends on connecting the task tool to the rest of the stack, a general-purpose tracker has the advantage on that point today.
Open a free LITE workspace, take a whole project through Play, invite the team and the external people, and switch on the budget and cost modules. One complete piece is enough to see whether it pays off.
An agency delivers the piece.
A traditional production company delivers the video.
Air organises your material and what you do with it.
Bynder governs your brand's assets.
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