ClickUp Review: Features Tested, Pros and Cons

ClickUp is a highly customizable, cloud-based project management tool. According to our research, it’s the best project management software for task management and achieved a better overall functionality score (4.6/5) than the 10 other major providers we’ve tested. If you don’t have much of a software budget, ClickUp offers a feature-rich free plan that has no user limit and more than 15 different ways to track your project’s progress. What’s more, on its paid plans, an AI assistant will save you time by summarizing tasks and threads.

ClickUp performed well across the board, and proved more useful than Smartsheet and Trello on our tests. Admittedly, you won’t find it as easy to use as the likes of monday.com, but ClickUp’s plans are better value for money than the likes of Asana and Wrike. All in all, you’ll get a lot of bang for your buck with ClickUp, which can’t be said for all software.

Read the rest of this ClickUp review for more information about its features, functions, and how the provider – which came in joint third place in our 2023 tests – compares to its fiercest rivals. Or, check out the latest project management software deals.

In this guide:

• What Is ClickUp?
• ClickUp vs Competitors
• ClickUp: Pros and Cons
• ClickUp Key Features
• ClickUp: Test Results
• ClickUp Plans
• Who Is ClickUp Best For?
• About our Research
• ClickUp Review Verdict
• ClickUp Review FAQs

What Is ClickUp?

ClickUp is a cloud-based project management tool that serves as a centralized location for planning projects, managing tasks, and communicating with teammates. It can also be used to visualize project data and get a better grasp of how your project is progressing, as well as where your resources are allocated.

ClickUp can be molded to the needs of pretty much any business thanks to the customizable elements of its platform. Its automation builder can be used to streamline workflows, reduce errors, and save time, while collaboration features like a document editor and online whiteboard will save your team from having to switch between a bunch of different apps, all serving different purposes.

Overall, ClickUp scores 4.5/5 when assessed against our project management testing criteria. This is a slight decrease from 2022 when it was our top-rated provider with a 4.8/5 score. This is largely due to an underwhelming performance during our ease-of-use testing.

ClickUp Vs Top Competitors

ClickUp is the joint third-best project management system on the market, according to our research, but there are plenty of alternatives for businesses with specific needs. Below are some top-line takeaways from our research, and after that, there’s a quick rundown of ClickUp’s closest competitors that also offer project management software:

ClickUp – best for task management and collaboration
monday.com – best provider overall, easiest to use
Teamwork – best for budget tracking, excellent value
Wrike – best for integrations, great for large businesses
Smartsheet – best for spreadsheet fans, with great customer support

monday.com received a test-high 4.5/5 score for ease of use – we found it simpler to set up a mock project in monday.com than any other of the 10 providers we tested, including ClickUp.

However, ClickUp scores the highest for functionality, with the best task management score (4.7/5) thanks to the vast range of features available on all of ClickUp’s plans, such as custom fields, time tracking, and resource management tools, It also offers far better collaboration options than the other providers we tested, such as an AI assistant.

monday.com’s pricing plans are actually a little more expensive than ClickUp’s, with the $8 per user, per month Basic projects plan one dollar more expensive than ClickUp’s $7 per user, per month Unlimited plan. ClickUp’s free plan is a lot better than monday.com’s too – there’s no user limit, whereas monday.com’s free plan has a two-person limit.

Asana doesn’t have quite the extensive feature set that ClickUp does, but we found it easier to use and think it’s larger set of integrations will suit a much wider range of businesses using all sorts of marketing, accounting, and finance software.

ClickUp is more of a “Work OS” that doesn’t rely as heavily on having a raft of integrations. With tools like an online whiteboard, ClickUp has much better collaboration options than Asana, scoring 4.7/5 to Asana’s 3/5. According to our summer 2023 tests, ClickUp has better workflow creation features (4.3/5 to Asana’s 4.2/5) too.

It retained this high score from our 2022 tests thanks to the fact that you can build custom automations on all of its plans, including its free plan (you’ll need Asana’s very pricey Business plan if you want this feature). On top of this, it has the best task management options currently available, and it’s also a lot cheaper.

We find Zoho Projects to be one of the best in terms of value, however, with a 4.6/5 pricing score and a first-paid plan priced at just $4 per user, per month – the cheapest general-use project management plan we’ve come across this year. Elsewhere, Smartsheet is your best bet if you like to organize your information in a spreadsheet that contains powerful reporting, analytics, and data security tools.

Remember, the best tactic for choosing the right tool for your needs is to reflect and assess your priorities and then compare project management software on that basis.

ClickUp Review: Pros and Cons

If you don’t have time to view our ClickUp review and user testing results in full, here’s a quick summary of the provider’s pros and cons – many of which surfaced when we tried to set up a mock project with ClickUp. Remember, you can currently get 15% off a ClickUp subscription with the code TECHCO15.

ClickUp Review: Key Features

ClickUp’s key features include task management options like Gantt Charts and a Kanban board which will let you view your project’s progress, a custom automation builder to streamline workflows, and an online whiteboard and team messenger for collaborating.

It’s our top-rated provider for functionality, scoring 4.7/5 for task management, 4.3/5 for workflow creation, 4.8/5 for data visualization, and 4.7/5 for collaboration.

ClickUp’s tools for managing tasks

Compared to other project management software, ClickUp has a large range of tools for both managing and viewing tasks.

These include a function that can be used as an issue log, a time tracker, milestones, task dependencies, and custom fields. ClickUp also has a sub-tasking feature, which is useful for when issues arise as a sub-task can be added to the task where the issue arose.

There are over 15 ways to view your team’s tasks in ClickUp, including a List, Box, and a Timeline view as well as the more traditional Gantt Chart (pictured below) and a Kanban board view.

Gantt Charts in ClickUp
Image: Tech.co testing

Automating workflows in ClickUp

In terms of workflow adjustments, custom, and pre-built automation (pictured below) is available on all ClickUp plans – although there’s a limit of 100 actions per month on the free plan and 1,000 on the Unlimited plan. As we covered above, ClickUp scores 4.3/5 for workflow creation, the best score out of the 10 providers we tested.

This is due in part to the provider’s useful range of preset project templates based on nine different organizational departments including finance, marketing, operations, and IT. Custom project templates can also be made, and there’s a workflow designer available on every plan, which will help you visualize and organize all of the automations you’ve built. Trello, monday.com, and Basecamp do not provide this feature, and didn’t perform as well in this assessment area.

Automations in ClickUp
Image: Tech.co testing

Displaying project data with ClickUp

On all of ClickUp’s plans, you’ll have the ability to use preset charts and widgets to display data from your project like a pro.

From the Business plan, upward, you can create custom charts and generate custom widgets, too. In addition, the dashboard for displaying data, which is limited to 100 uses on the free plan, can be used as much as you want.

Although the dashboard is effective, it isn’t perfect. When we tested the platform back in 2022, one issue with their chart creator was that you couldn’t pull data from custom fields. However, when we recently tested ClickUp, we found out that this is now possible.

However, you can add burndown charts, which are useful for Agile teams working on projects that demand continuous development.

Automations in ClickUp
Image: Tech.co testing

Collaborating with teammates within ClickUp

A couple of years ago, if you’d asked us to pick a weak spot for ClickUp, it would have been collaboration. But on our most recent round of testing, it achieved an improved 4.7/5 for collaboration. ClickUp is one of the few providers with an online whiteboard for brainstorming ideas, and it also has a team messenger and a document editing feature on every plan.

This was the best score achieved out of the 10 providers we recently tested by quite some way, with monday.com in a distant second scoring only 3.3/5. ClickUp actually improved significantly on its 4/5 collaboration score from our 2022 tests, thanks in part to the introduction of an AI assistant and improvements to its whiteboard tool.

ClickUp has an instant messenger, a calendar, a task comment function (pictured below), the aforementioned online whiteboard, a document editing feature, and a project message board. The AI assistant is available on all of its plans for just $5 per workspace, apart from the free plan.

Team Chat in ClickUp
Image: Tech.co testing

ClickUp 3.0: What’s included in Clickup’s new software?

Since February 2023, ClickUp has been slowly releasing ClickUp 3.0 features to users. Included in ClickUp 3.0 is a “Universal Search” tool, which you can use to search for files not only stored in ClickUp, but also any app or drive that you’ve integrated into the project management software tool.

Other useful features being added include custom task types, an inbox to collate all of your inter-app communications, custom keyboard shortcuts, new automation types, and increased customization around agile features (e.g. sprint design). ClickUp will also provide users with “Hubs” which it describes as “convenient location[s] to find and access all of your files.”

The provider is still updating the more fundamental elements of its software, however, and is releasing new templates all the time. In July 2023, ClickUp released four new helpful templates. Now, there’s a template oriented towards teams running people operations, one for onboarding new users, a template for collecting and organizing employee engagement survey data, and one for creating employee handbooks.

Another exciting, recent change is the makeover ClickUp has given its data dashboards. Now, you won’t have to flick between your task lists and dashboard nearly as much because you can click on specific sections of charts, graphs, and widgets and extract granular information about the data they’re displaying.

ClickUp’s new AI capabilities

ClickUp also announced this year that it’s adding a brand new AI assistant to its software, something monday.com also has in the pipeline. All paid plan subscribers will be able to use the tool for just $5 per workspace per month.

ClickUp’s AI assistant can help with a number of different time-consuming tasks, including writing and editing, summarizing the content of documents, sub-tasks, and translating your content.

It can be used in task descriptions and comments, documents, your inbox, the toolbar, Notepad, the chat view, and the chat view dashboard.

ClickUp Review: Test Results

We’ve tested all the leading project management software providers with hands-on tasks, to see how they fare setting up a mock project with a budget and resources, monitoring the progress of tasks in that project, and seeing the project to completion (including the post-project feedback stage).

Ease of use (3.9/5)

When we tested ClickUp, it didn’t get off to a great start – it initially told some users in our testing group that it would take hours to import their project data, but in reality, it didn’t take that long.

When we were set up, however, we found the customizable task list that you can edit at the click of a mouse pretty simple to get to grips with. The vertical bookmark bar at the top of the screen makes it easy to access different tools when we were setting up.

Once you populate one view, like the Kanban board, ClickUp will then populate all the rest with the same information, saving you time. Features like this make ClickUp simple enough for most teams to quickly get the hang of, at least compared to a more industry-specific project management software program like Jira.

“I found the setup process really easy. I think I managed it the quickest of any of the other sites that we’ve been using. So that’s really positive” said Eleanor, who participated in our project management ease-of-use testing process.

However, we found that the automation builder took a bit more time to get used to than some competitors, and not everyone enjoyed the lack of instructions and guidance. “You don’t always know where to click, and given it is the first time that I’d tried ClickUp, I would’ve loved some prompts – or anything that could help me,” said Maite, who also tested ClickUp for Tech.co.

Several members of our group also experienced longer loading times when flicking between aspects of the software than we often did with other providers, as well as some freezing when we tried to load up certain things within the software.

“It just got so annoying that when you get to the loading screen it’s just the logo,” said Stephanie, who was part of a team that tested ClickUp for Tech.co. “It doesn’t tell you whether it’s stuck or what it’s doing or anything like that. So it kind of leads you in this state of like uncertainty what is happening” she added.

It certainly doesn’t make for a bad user experience on the whole, but we found the likes of monday.com and Teamwork much simpler to get to grips with. The above experiences contributed to ClickUp’s ease of use score being reduced from 4.1/5 in 2022 to 3.9/5 in 2023. 

Sometimes in the world of software, the price you pay for being highly powerful and functional in ClickUp is that your software can be somewhat overwhelming for newcomers, and evidently a little slow.

Functionality (4.6/5)

ClickUp has a Gantt Chart and Kanban Board; additional tasks management tools, such as sub-tasks, task dependencies, an automation builder, and custom project templates. Displaying project data is easy with custom charts, as is collaborating with a team instant messenger.

“Adding new tasks was really easy,” says Conor, another member of our project management testing group. “Once I had all of the labels and due dates set up, it was just very easy. Add the task, click it, add the date, edit the information – all of this took a matter of seconds.”

ClickUp scores 4.6/5 for functionality overall, with a market-best 4.7/5 for task management. You’ll get all the basic tools you need for managing tasks, like Gantt charts, a Kanban board, and task dependencies, on ClickUp’s cheapest plan, but there are also more advanced tools like a custom field creator, which monday.com only offers on its most expensive plan.

As well as this, ClickUp secured a 4.3/5 score in our testing for workflow creation, in part thanks to pre-built and custom automation being available on all plans. It also scores a near-perfect 4.8/5 for data visualization due to its strong range of customizable charts and widgets, and the fact you can pull data from custom fields to make charts, which you can’t do in Wrike or Trello.

ClickUp even has a form builder (pictured below) for compiling post-project feedback – although Smartsheet’s was slightly easier to get to grips with.

Form builder in ClickUp
Image: Tech.co testing

See how all the leading project management tools’ features compare based on our tests here.

Customer support (3.3/5)

ClickUp’s customer support options include a knowledge base, live chat, and email – so all of the essentials are covered. However, its mediocre score is down to the fact that there’s only onboarding support on the Enterprise plan and no phone support on any plans, which is offered by Teamwork and Wrike.

There’s also no 24/7 live support service like the one monday.com provides. However, like Smarthseet, ClickUp provides a “University” portal within which customers can take courses and attend live training to ensure they’re getting the most out of the software. There are even specific courses geared towards marketing teams, software teams, and guests who only have temporary access.

ClickTips is part of ClickUp University, and it’s a really useful resource if you just have a small issue, or you’d like one, isolated aspect of the software explained to you clearly and comprehensively.

It’s effectively a bank of short, straightforward tutorials that cover topics like “How to manage automations”, “Google Calendar integration” and “customizing your calendar view”. With so many learning resources available, it’s actually quite hard to become truly stuck when using ClickUp.

Pricing/Value for money (4.4/5)

ClickUp has a better feature set than competitors like monday.com, but it also offers less expensive plans, making it remarkably good value for what you pay. We found that the free plan, for example, has virtually everything you need to manage a project for a small team.

ClickUp is different from a lot of its competitors because it keeps very few features locked away on its expensive plans. On ClickUp’s free plan, for example, there’s no user limit, document editing functionalities, and time-tracking – and you can use all of the provider’s views, such as the classic “Board” view:

Board View in ClickUp
Image: Tech.co testing

ClickUp offers custom and pre-built automation for streamlining the mundane parts of your day, plus collaboration tools on all of its plans, something that most other providers don’t offer.  There are also data dashboards custom charts and widgets for displaying project data, as we discussed earlier in this ClickUp review.

Somehow, ClickUp manages to offer more functionality than monday.com and Wrike with more affordable plans. However, Clickup did increase the price of their first paid plan in Summer 2023, so it now costs the same as Smartsheet’s Pro plan (both $7 per user, per month). But as most other project management software tools like Asana are still more expensive, it means ClickUp was able to retain the impressive pricing score it was awarded in 2022 on our 2023 tests.

However, if pricing really is your top priority, we’d highly recommend looking at Zoho Projects – it offers the cheapest paid plan out of the 10 providers we recently tested. The Zoho Projects Premium plan is available for just $4 per user, per month yet still managed a 4/5 score for task management, thanks to features like an issue log which ClickUp, monday.com, and others do not provide – so it really is a steal.

Security (4.4/5)

ClickUp scores a very respectable 4.4/5 for security. Importantly, 2-factor authentication and user permissions are available on all plans, which can’t be said for every competitor in this space.

There’s also Google authentication available as an option on all ClickUp plans, although the provider loses points for not providing IP restriction capabilities – Wrike offers this on its business and enterprise plans, and Teamwork offers it for an additional cost.

ClickUp Plans Reviewed

Objectively, ClickUp is a great project management program – but which plan is right for your business will depend on your business’s needs. Here’s a quick rundown of all the plans ClickUp has on offer – but if you’d like more information, visit our breakdown of ClickUp pricing.

Free plan

When it comes to features, ClickUp has the best free plan we tested. 8 out of 14 of the providers we put through their paces had free plans, and on ClickUp’s, you get custom project templates, custom automation, charts, and widgets for displaying data.

ClickUp’s free plan is much better than Wrike’s free plan, despite the fact that Wrike’s free plan has no user limit too, and they’re the only two providers that offer this – Zoho Projects’ free plan, for instance, as a 3 person limit. Wrike has no calendar view, no data tools, and no automation. It’s ideal for freelancers and solo workers.

Unlimited plan

The Unlimited plan removes limits on Gantt chart, milestones, custom fields, and data dashboard features, and allows you to create unlimited projects. This plan is cheaper than our test runner-up monday.com’s Basic plan ($8 per user, per month) and ClickUp is a better value application, offering more features for less money. ClickUp also offers guest access, time tracking, unlimited storage, and a team instant messenger – none of which are included in monday.com’s Basic plan, making it a better option for small teams.

Read our monday.com vs ClickUp guide to learn more about how the two providers compare price-wise or check out our monday.com review for more information on the provider’s features.

Business plan

ClickUp’s Business plan comes in at under $12 per user, per month – but if you compare it to Smartsheet’s Business plan, you’ll see its far better value and the better option for multiple teams. There’s live chat, burndown charts for scrum teams (pictured below), time-tracking, and an online whiteboard, all of which Smartsheet doesn’t have.

Enterprise plan

There’s also an Enterprise plan with features to suit very large businesses with multiple teams, including unlimited custom roles, a dedicated success manager at ClickUp, and live onboarding training.

Who Is ClickUp Best For?

ClickUp is a highly functional, feature-rich program that is best suited to teams that require a highly customizable platform that can be shaped around their project, be it Agile or not.

It’s perfect if you have multi-stage projects that involve complex tasks that may need to be edited and discussed as the project ensues, and want data-driven insights regarding the progress of your project.

With a free plan with no user limit and a relatively cheap first paid plan, it would also be one of our top recommendations for teams on tight budgets, or smaller teams that don’t want to spend upwards of $20 per user, per month on software.

If you’d just like a central hub to manage your tasks, you might find ClickUp’s powerful features a tad overwhelming. You may find a simpler provider like Trello or an easier-to-use provider like monday.com better for your team.

How Did We Rate and Review ClickUp?

Here at Tech.co, we conduct data-driven research into all of the services and software that we write about – including in this ClickUp review.

During our market research periods, we scope out the best providers on the market and put them through their paces with rigorous usability tests. In the case of project management, this involved assessing precisely how each software tool fared when it came to setting up a project with a budget and resources, monitoring its progress, and managing the closing stages.

We did this by setting up a mock project within each software program we tested. We analyzed how easy it was to perform tasks like setting up budgets, building useful automations, compiling post-project feedback, and switching between different project views, such as Gantt and Kanban.

We also looked at how easy it was to communicate changes to others working on the same project using collaboration tools, and whether there were enough features to appropriately display some mock project data.

Only once these processes are completed can we write this research-backed ClickUp review and other reviews and comparisons for our readers.

Project Management software testing criteria

For testing project management software like ClickUp, no matter the size of a provider’s market share, we devise a fair research framework and set of tests to score each one in key areas. The areas each provider was assessed on include:

Overall, we looked at several assessment areas, including ease of use, security, customer support, functionality, and integrations. Within “functionality” we paid particularly close attention to task management, data visualization, workflow creation, and collaboration capabilities.

We weigh the factors that businesses have told us are most important to them more heavily in our overall scoring. So, it’s more important if a provider is good value than if it offers 24/7 phone support, for example.

ClickUp Review FAQs