ClickUp is a flexible project management software with customizable views, real-time reporting and other advanced features. See if it’s right for your business.

ClickUp is a project management software solution whose advanced features make it unique amongst its competitors. Its impressive free plan, the cost-effectiveness and flexibility of its premium plans, and its high customizability make it all the more worth consideration. Further, ClickUp’s customized views and suitability for Agile management differentiate it from other alternatives.

If your organization either depends on Agile development or needs highly customizable views, then ClickUp is worth considering. However, we have highlighted a couple of alternatives should ClickUp not be a great fit.

Jump to:

• Pricing
• Key features of ClickUp
• Pros
• Cons
• If ClickUp isn’t ideal for you, check out these alternatives
• Review methodology

Pricing

ClickUp delivers one of the most impressive free plans for project management software. In addition to a free plan, ClickUp offers four premium plans: Unlimited, Business, Business Plus and Enterprise.

Free

The free plan has a variety of features that may satisfy the project management needs of individual users or small team leads. And unlike many of its alternatives, it does not provide a user limit. The free plan however is limited in terms of storage, workflows, organization and integration.

Unlimited

The Unlimited plan costs $5 per user per month when billed annually and $9 per user per month when billed monthly. This plan may provide the most value for small teams. However, for teams that require more security features, they may have to consider the Business plan at the very least.

Interestingly, ClickUp offers the unique opportunity for prospective users to “make a deal,” inviting them to suggest how much they are willing to pay per user per month. This opportunity is available only for the Unlimited plan.

Business and Business Plus

Targeting midsize teams, the Business plan costs $12 per user per month, billed annually, and $19 per user per month, billed monthly. Business Plus is billed at $19 per user per month, billed annually, and $29 per user per month, billed monthly.

The Business Plus plan was created with the management of multiple teams in mind. Its notable upgrades over the Business plan include more customization, security and support features.

Enterprise

ClickUp’s Enterprise plan targets many large teams; however, to obtain pricing information, you would have to reach out to their sales teams. For users who plan to use ClickUp over a lengthy period, then it becomes quite obvious that an annual subscription is preferable.

Key features of ClickUp

Agile project management features

ClickUp’s Agile project and product management features set it apart from its competitors, as these features enable teams to collaborate on sprints, roadmaps, backlogs and more. Users can automate their sprint workflows and streamline bug and issue tracking.

ClickUp delivers Agile Dashboards to ensure teams are aware of their progress through customizable dashboards and sprint widgets. Its views, including Kanban Board, Gantt and Box, are easily adaptable to Agile use cases.

ClickUp also offers an Agile project management template to sidestep the learning curve that beginners to this approach often encounter (Figure A).

Figure A

15+ views

ClickUp delivers more than 15 views for its users to tackle their work from their desired perspectives. These views include the list (Figure B), board, box, calendar, Gantt, embed, chat, activity, mind maps, timeline, workload, table, map and whiteboard views.

Figure B

Customization without code or add-ons

The customization features of ClickUp require no use of code or add-ons, making their implementation intuitive for a variety of users. ClickUp shows its customization capabilities through Automations. The tool offers automation recipes that users can customize or utilize in the form of prebuilt recipes.

ClickUp also offers hundreds of templates for users to customize and empowers users to customize the relationships between tasks, documents and more while being integrable with over 1,000 tools.

Collaboration

Through a variety of collaboration features, such as its chat feature, ClickUp makes it simple for teams to collaborate on any kind of project. Its whiteboards provide a real-time visual canvas for teams to collaborate on workflows and ideas and convert them into trackable tasks.

Additionally, teams can not only send and respond to comments on any task within ClickUp but also proof and annotate all of their designs. Moreover, users can communicate in real time using Chat or send and receive emails directly within ClickUp (Figure C).

Figure C

Real-time reporting

With ClickUp’s real-time reporting features, you can set goals, keep track of progress and increase the effectiveness of your resource management. The Dashboards feature helps users bring crucial project indicators into one place and enables them to add visual widgets for tasks, time tracking, sprints and more (Figure D).

Figure D

The Workload and Box views provide the ability to visualize a team’s day-to-day work capacity while the Goals feature presents the tools to measure project goals. Users can also set milestones to show when a key project phase is complete. Further, the Pulse feature enables users to view automatic activity reports powered by machine learning to deliver insights on how time is being used.

Pros

• Unlimited storage in its premium plans.
• An impressive suite of features and capabilities in its free plan.
• Great pricing and value for money considering its suite of core and advanced features.
• A user-friendly interface, particularly its use of negative space and UI customization options.
• Suitable for the management of complex projects.

Cons

• ClickUp’s high customizability and the wide array of features it offers naturally introduce a steep learning curve.
• The higher premium tiers can price out small businesses. It may also be less cost-effective for short-term premium users, as the contrast between the monthly cost of an annual subscription versus the cost of a monthly subscription is notable.

If ClickUp isn’t ideal for you, check out these alternatives

monday work management

monday work management is a project management tool that delivers an all-in-one management solution for teams. Its strengths lie in its versatility, flexibility and highly visual nature.

Trello

Perhaps you seek a project management tool that is easy-to-use and user-friendly but also powerful. Trello fits this criterion, with its kanban boards being arguably the best among its competitors. Trello further excels as a kanban board tool through its built-in automation features.

Airtable

Airtable is a project management tool that is effective for data-driven use cases. One of the limitations of ClickUp is the learning curve it inadvertently introduces due to so many features and vast customization. Airtable avoids this by delivering many ready-to-use project management templates.

Review methodology

We reviewed this project management solution by examining official product documentation, vendor blogs, customer reviews and software review sites such as G2 and Gartner Peer Insights. This review also involved signing up for the free version of ClickUp to get a feel of the usability, UI and basic functionality.

Read next: The 10 best project management software (TechRepublic)

Also See

• Hiring kit: Project manager (TechRepublic Premium)
• Checklist: Project management (TechRepublic Premium)
• Feature comparison: Time tracking software and systems (TechRepublic Premium)
• Best software for businesses and end users (TechRepublic on Flipboard)