ClickUp Review: Can It Compete With the Best in 2024?

A Powerful and Affordable Platform, but There Is a Learning Curve

“One app to replace them all” is ClickUp’s slogan, but since the guy who coined the original version of this phrase didn’t do so well, I was skeptical at first. However, after thoroughly testing the platform, I am happy to say that ClickUp offers one of the most impressive feature sets out there for helping streamline all your projects in one place.

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ClickUp allows you to do all the standard project management stuff like assigning tasks, setting deadlines, and logging time. But it also provides advanced (and incredibly useful) tools like shared dashboards, workload management, and robust real-time collaboration options, helping it to stand out from the competition.

You’d expect ClickUp’s flexibility and features to be costly, but this software has one of the most comprehensive free plans out there – and its paid plans are affordable, too. The platform is available in English and French, while the Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese versions are currently in Beta mode.

While there’s no doubt ClickUp is one of the most well-rounded project management solutions on the market, it’s not perfect. ClickUp isn’t hard to use, but the sheer number of features and customization options results in a cluttered interface that’s not always intuitive. In the end, ClickUp’s steeper-than-average learning curve may discourage beginners.

So, is ClickUp worthy of your projects? Let’s find out.

Visualize Your Workflow From Top to Bottom

ClickUp’s granular task setup allows you to break the bigger picture into smaller details. Your Workspace is at the top level and gives you insight into everything – your account settings, integrations, and all of your work, including to-do lists, trending tasks, mentions, and more.

You can organize your Workspace into individual Spaces, which contain Lists of your tasks where you can create documents, embed videos, and chat with your teammates, among other things.

ClickUp gives you the freedom to organize your work in the way that suits you best, but let’s dive into specifics to see if its features are right for your business.

Flexible List and Task Management Features

In ClickUp, Lists are collections of your tasks, and every List includes an overview of your tasks’ key elements, like assignees, statuses, task descriptions, due dates, and comments. You can easily set up deadlines and priorities, and you can assign a task to multiple team members.

You can also add various columns to your tasks to provide more information. For instance, you can add a column for attachment files, additional notes, completed subtasks, and more.

Multiple Task Views

ClickUp lets you visualize your tasks in 11 ways, including Board, Timeline, Gantt, and Workload (which shows your team’s capacity) views. The one I find particularly interesting is Mind Map. As the name suggests, not only can you use it to visualize the hierarchy of your workspace, but also to brainstorm ideas.

A Gantt view (which shows the planned timeline of a project and all the individual tasks needed to achieve it) is a premium feature with most PM software. ClickUp, however, lets you access it on the free plan – though it limits you to 100 uses.

Set Up a Project in Minutes With Templates

ClickUp has hundreds of templates to help you speed up the process of setting up a project. They are categorized based on type (i.e., Spaces, Tasks, or Docs) and departments (i.e. Design, Finances, and Marketing).

All templates are fully customizable, so you can tweak elements to fit your exact needs. But if you want complete creative freedom, you can always create a template from scratch. They’re also reusable across projects.

Easy Time Tracking

ClickUp has a built-in time tracking function that lets you track time at the Workspace level or that of individual Spaces. While this tool is available on all plans, if you want advanced features like the ability to add a time entry description and mark a time entry as billable, you’ll need to upgrade to a Business subscription.

In addition to its native time tracker, ClickUp also lets you integrate third-party time tracking apps, including Timely, Harvest, and Clockify.

Automations Save Time And Boost Your Workflow

Automations are designed to save time on routine tasks, and you can bet that ClickUp allows you to set these up.

By using a series of “when this, then that” statements, you can set up automations in ClickUp to create tasks, change assignees and priorities, and more.

Setting them up is fairly easy, too, as many automation options come with intuitive built-in triggers and actions.

ClickUp Is Easy to Use – Once You Get to Know It

ClickUp manages to strike a relatively good balance between being user-friendly while offering advanced project management tools. It isn’t hard to use, but you’ll need some time to explore a fairly large number of features, from task filtering options to custom fields.

Luckily, ClickUp offers an onboarding checklist to guide you through the process of setting up your Workspace, individual Spaces, and tasks. That said, I wish it dedicated more attention to helping you set up Lists, which can be overwhelming at first.

Getting Started With ClickUp

You only need an email address to create a ClickUp account, and then you’ll be taken through a thorough onboarding process. ClickUp asks you questions about your business and suggests templates to help you personalize your workspace.

From here, you can easily integrate suggested apps with a few clicks, import existing data from other PM platforms like Asana and monday.com, and customize your Workspace’s avatar.

If you prefer to jump right in and learn as you go, ClickUp’s lengthy onboarding process might be a little annoying. On the other hand, it helps to give you some familiarity with the platform before you get started, which is no bad thing given the breadth of features you’ll encounter.

Customizable Layout

ClickUp allows you to make layout changes based on your style and preference. You can choose a layout with simplified navigation, a layout with clearly separated Spaces for an extra clean look, or a layout without separation between your Spaces.

If you would like, you have the option to modify your Workspace color theme without impacting what your team members observe. Furthermore, if you are working during nighttime, you can activate Dark Mode, and this action will adjust your screen’s background color to black.

Bulk Action Toolbar

The time-saving Bulk Action Toolbar lets you make edits to multiple tasks, subtasks, or documents all at once. You can update statuses, adjust due dates, merge similar tasks to declutter your workspace, and more.

What I particularly like is the ability to add tasks to multiple lists, which comes in handy when you can’t decide which List a task belongs to.

Extensive Reporting Tools

ClickUp’s reporting tools let you easily track the progress of individual tasks, as well as the project as a whole. For example, the Pulse feature provides a high-level report of your entire team’s active you can digest at a glance, so you can see who’s online and what they’re working on.

Also, the Critical Path & Slack Time tool highlights which tasks must be completed on time, and which can be rescheduled without affecting longer-term deadlines.

ClickUp Was Designed to Simplify Team Communication

Compared to other project management software, ClickUp has one of the most comprehensive sets of collaboration features on the market. In addition to a built-in chat function, you can communicate in real time with your colleagues via dashboards and docs. You can also share your Spaces, Lists, and tasks with team members and control user access.

Team Dashboard and Communication

To collaborate with your team on projects and tasks, ClickUp lets you easily create shared dashboards where you can add a Chat widget to host discussions and keep all communication in one place.

You can also use ClickUp’s Whiteboards, which function like mind maps that allow you to collectively brainstorm and action ideas in one place. These let you connect objectives by drawing or inserting lines, as well as add images, sticky notes, and files for more context. You can also create tasks directly from a Whiteboard.

ClickUp’s native Chat app is your go-to place for direct communication with team members. You can @mention people and tasks, and even record a screenshare with audio to give detailed information or instructions. It should be noted that this feature works only on Chrome and Firefox browsers, though.

File Sharing

ClickUp lets you upload all sorts of files, including images, docs, PDFs, and videos, either from your desktop or cloud-based hosts like Dropbox and Google Drive. You can add files to tasks, comments, dashboards, Whiteboards – pretty much anywhere inside your Workspace.

ClickUp’s built-in Docs app makes it easy to create and share documents with your team. Multiple team members can edit content in real time, add comments, and answer questions or provide feedback.

ClickUp also lets you add annotation to images and PDFs, which can be quite useful if you’re working on design mockups.

Mobile App

Though it doesn’t offer every function you get with the web app – for instance, you can’t edit templates or use Whiteboards – ClickUp’s mobile app is great for keeping up with project updates on the go. It lets you create tasks and docs, change statuses, add assignees, track time on tasks, and more.

ClickUp Has Responsive and Helpful Customer Support

ClickUp offers 24/7 email and live chat support. When I sent support an email with a question about user permissions, I first received an automated email telling me that it might take a while to get a reply due to a high volume of requests. The answer to my question arrived 24 hours later.

The support agent was friendly and gave a detailed response with plenty of useful information. When I tested live chat, I got an answer within a couple of minutes, and it was an equally pleasant experience.

ClickUp’s support documents are also first-rate – there is a plethora of guides and lessons to assist you in finding your way through the numerous options and configurations. The articles are arranged in a clear, sensible manner, allowing you to locate information rapidly.

Fair Prices for a Comprehensive Service

In addition to three paid plans, ClickUp offers a generous forever free plan. The free plan is a good option for individuals and small teams as it comes with 100MB of storage and access to most major features, including Chat, Docs, and time tracking.

That said, there are limitations to the free version, mainly in the number of times you can use certain features. For instance, you can only create five Spaces (with 100 lists per Space), three Whiteboards, and you get limited access to some task views, such as Gantt and Workload (100 uses).

The cheapest paid plan starts at $7.00 per month (per member), and it provides unlimited storage, plus access to integrations like Google Drive, Dropbox, and Box. You can add five guests (plus two more with each additional member), set user permissions, and schedule 1,000 automations per month, which is a solid offer. You can also add unlimited “view-only” guest seats.

ClickUp’s Business plan offers the best value, and it will likely be enough for any type of business. It includes full access to all task views, 10,000 automations per month, as well as advanced reports and the ability to add 10 guests, with an additional five per member.

ClickUp has no shortage of tools, which makes it a worthy competitor to big players like monday.com and Smartsheet. But unlike these platforms, ClickUp makes most of its premium features available even on its lower-tiered plans, giving you great value at an affordable price.