Comparing paid seats, guests and viewers: who pays

Paid-seat rules differ: Asana charges internal readers as users, monday.com bills Members while Viewers are free, and HubSpot separates paid seats from free View-only seats. External access also depends on the product and plan: Asana Starter includes unlimited free external-domain guests, while monday.com guest charges vary by plan. HubSpot lists Partner seats at no charge.

Build one role roster

List internal Members, internal readers and external collaborators for a normal month and a busy month. Record each person’s organisation status, required actions and access duration, then match them to the product’s role label.

The roles to check are Asana users and guests; monday.com Members, Viewers and guests; and HubSpot Core, Sales, Service, Revenue, View-only and Partner seats. A guest or viewer label does not mean the same thing across products.

Compare plan terms and role costs

Asana Personal costs $0 for one or two people. Starter costs $10.99 per user per month billed annually, and Advanced costs $24.99 per user per month billed annually.

Starter has no user seat limit and includes unlimited free guests on external email domains. Internal read-only staff are paid users; the stated free-guest rule applies to Starter.

monday.com bills Members. Viewers have read-only access and are unlimited and free on paid plans; the Free plan has up to two seats but no Viewers or Guests.

On Basic and Standard, the first three guests are free; the fourth triggers one paid seat, and each further group of four guests adds a paid seat. Pro and Enterprise include unlimited guests. At 10 seats with annual billing, the displayed prices are £8 per seat per month on Basic and £11 on Standard.

Cost the mix, then test access

HubSpot has four paid seat types: Core, Sales, Service and Revenue. View-only seats are free and unlimited, and Partner seats are listed at no charge. Each HubSpot product brings its own seat type, and the Hub subscription is charged separately.

For four editors and six internal readers, Asana bills ten user seats; at the Starter rate, that totals $1,318.80 over 12 months. HubSpot bills four seats, with the six View-only people costing nothing; the four-seat example uses $45 per seat per month, totalling $2,160 a year before tax. monday.com bills five seats for the four editors, while the six Viewers add no seats.

Count the roles each product bills, then apply the relevant plan and billing term. Recount when someone’s role or organisation status changes; for monday.com, check the plan’s guest allowance, and for Asana Starter, confirm a free guest uses an external email domain.

Keep HubSpot’s subscription charge separate from its seat count. Record the role mix and revisit it when access changes.