Disclosure: Trail Mix Creative is an official 17hats Ambassador and earns a commission if you sign up through our link. We paid for 17hats for years before either of those things was true, and we would recommend it either way.
Trail Mix Creative has been selected as an official 17hats Ambassador for 2026–2027. 17hats is the client management platform this agency has run on since close to the beginning, keeping leads, contracts, invoices and scheduling all in one place. The ambassadorship turns a long-standing working relationship into a formal one.
What is a 17hats Ambassador?
A 17hats Ambassador is a business owner the company selects to publicly represent the platform, chosen by application. It is an endorsement programme, not a reseller arrangement: ambassadors are working operators using the software in their own businesses, not a sales channel.
The part worth stating plainly is the direction it ran in. We applied. Nobody approached us, and this was not traded for coverage. We filled out an application to publicly endorse software we were already paying for every month, and would have gone on paying for either way.
Why we applied
Because the recommendation was already happening informally. Enough clients had asked what we use to run the business side of an agency (how quotes become contracts, how contracts become invoices, how any of it stays straight during a busy month) that the honest answer had become a small speech. Making the relationship official simply means the speech now comes with a disclosure attached.
What we actually run on it
Everything client-facing that is not the creative work itself. 17hats handles four things for us: enquiries land in one place instead of scattered across three inboxes; contracts are sent, signed and stored against the project they belong to; invoices go out and chase themselves, which is the part nobody wants to do by hand; and scheduling happens without the back-and-forth.
It has held up through every hire, every busy season, and every stretch where work arrived faster than we could track it. That last one is the real test. Most tools are fine when things are calm.
The detailed walkthrough, covering what each part does and where it saves time, is in our earlier write-up on how 17hats simplified the business. This page is the announcement; that one is the explanation.
Does this change what we recommend to clients?
No, and it is worth being direct about why not.
We recommended 17hats before there was an ambassadorship, and the recommendation was already conditional then: it suits service businesses that send quotes, sign contracts and invoice repeat clients. It does not suit everyone. A shop selling products needs different software, and we will say so.
What changes is the disclosure. If you sign up through our link we earn a commission, and that is now stated on every page where the link appears. A recommendation you can check is worth more than one you have to take on trust.
Where to start if the admin is running your business
The symptom is usually not the software. It is that quoting, contracting, invoicing and scheduling each live somewhere different, so every project is reassembled by hand and something eventually slips. Consolidating those four is the fix, whichever tool you land on.
If you want the longer version, start with the 17hats write-up. If you already know it is the right shape for your business, you can see 17hats for yourself. And if the bottleneck is the website rather than the back office, our web design and development work is the other half of that problem, and our pricing is published rather than quoted on request. Either way, get in touch and we will tell you honestly which one you actually need.