ClickUp Review: Are ClickUp Project Management Features Good?

It seems like ClickUp is the new hip project management tool in the tech world. Countless businesses are switching from already established platforms and jumping ship to this app.

In this ClickUp review post we’ll see if it lives up to the hype. Should you choose this app if you're a newbie to project management, or should you transition to it from your current solution?

As you’d expect, here we'll scrutinize the software in terms of features, functionality, pricing plans, and uses. We'll also see what real customers are saying about the software before we give our final conclusion. 

ClickUp review 2023: Is ClickUp software any good?

ClickUp is one of the best project management platforms out there, and most any ClickUp app review will be positive-learning. It's a very robust platform while still being very affordable. Indeed, for most small businesses, the free plan with its unlimited users and tasks does the trick.

The UI looks very clean and elegant, and it's incredibly intuitive to use, even for newbies. Once you understand ClickUp's hierarchy, working within the software will become a breeze. 

Feature-wise, it's packed with advanced capabilities that range from task management and workflow automation to team collaboration and integrations. For this reason, it’s clinched a spot on our list of the best productivity apps, which you might want to stick in another tab for later.

Considering the software lets you have multiple Spaces and Folders, and you can use it for both personal and business-related tasks and projects without any overlap. 

Overall, ClickUp is a powerful tool for managing intricate projects. But it might be overkill if you're looking for a simple to-do app. This ClickUp app review post will discuss the software's main features in greater detail below.  

ClickUp pricing plans

First of all, how much does ClickUp cost? Let’s first review ClickUp prices:

How much does ClickUp cost for nonprofits?

Nonprofit organizations can get access to ClickUp at a discounted rate. You’ll have to navigate over to the nonprofit pricing page on Clickup.com first. Then you’ll get in touch with contact customer support, who will set you up with customized pricing to match your budget.

Are there any ClickUp coupon codes or promo discount vouchers?

We did the research, and it seems there are no ClickUp coupon codes or discount vouchers at this time. 

ClickUp project management overview: what is ClickUp & what is ClickUp used for?

Here’s a short explanation for those of you who are wondering: What is ClickUp app used for?

ClickUp is an app that replaces all other apps. It lets you manage all your work from one central place, without jumping back and forth between multiple platforms. All told, it’s one of the best productivity apps, keeping all your work organized in one beautifully intuitive place. 

Working in ClickUp, you’ll see that work is organized in different areas in a hierarchy. The highest level in your hierarchy is the Workspace; everything else is organized in it. Withit your Workspace, there are Spaces that are high-level divisions to help you keep things organized. 

Depending on how you work, you can have Spaces for teams, projects, or types of work. Within your Spaces, you can create Folders and Lists. Lists are where all of your tasks will live. They can be on their own or grouped into Folders. 

This gives you multiple levels of organization and allows you to have specific settings and customization for each area. Lists and Folders can have their own workflow statuses and custom fields, and Spaces can have extra features called ClickApps that can be turned on and off per Space. These include features like time tracking, multiple assignees, and priorities. 

Within Lists, you can create tasks, assign them to people, give them start and due dates, and add your own specific data with custom fields. Inside tasks, you can add descriptions, attachments, subtasks, checklists, and collaborate in real-time with comments. You can even share tasks with people outside of your organization. 

Best of all, ClickUp is very flexible and can be customized to fit any scenario. It can be most beneficial when used by freelancers, startups, small and midsize businesses, and for remote work. 

ClickUp free vs paid: what’s the difference?

ClickUp has a very generous free plan that’s best for personal use and managing simpler projects. It comes with unlimited users and tasks, 100 MB of storage, and different views like Kanban boards, list view, Table, and Calendar view. 

You can also use Gantt charts and the Timeline view, although in a limited way. Other features that come with the freemium version include Collaborative Docs, Whiteboards, Real-Time Chat, Emails, Sprint Management, Time Tracking, and 24/7 Customer Support. The downside is that you only get 5 Workspaces per month and 100 automations. 

The free plan lacks features like Teams, Private Docs, Cloud Storage, and integrations with tools like Google Drive, Dropbox, Tableau Web Connector, and more. 

There are four paid plans that range from $5 to $19+ per user per month billed annually, or $9-$29 if you’re paying monthly. The lowest tier plan comes with all the features from the free plan, plus unlimited storage, unlimited integrations, unlimited Gantt charts, Goals and Portfolios, Form View, Resource Management, and Agile Reporting. 

If you’re a midsized team, the Business plan would be a good fit for your project needs. This subscription plan unlocks advanced features like Advanced Automations, Advanced Dashboard Features, Advanced Time Tracking, Granular Time Estimates, Workload Management, and Timelines & Mind Maps.

ClickUp features list 

The main features of ClickUp are:

• Task management

• Views

• Integrations

• Time management

• Automation

• Templates

• Document management

• Team collaboration

• Reports and analytics 
   

1. ClickUp task management

ClickUp is a powerful task management tool. Tasks are the fundamental building block of the software. There are all kinds of things you can do within tasks. You can assign them to individuals or multiple team members, set statuses, permissions, and notifications, label tasks by priority, add comments, and upload files directly into a task. 

You can break down big projects with subtasks and then add things like assignees, due dates, comments, and more into each subtask. Tasks can have dependencies to get a clear order of operations among them. You can even create checklists within tasks to track anything from multi-step workflows to simple to-do lists.

You can set recurring tasks and even automate repeatable processes to spend more time focusing on more critical tasks. Tasks can even be saved as templates and used multiple times, which is a great way to streamline recurring workflows.

The Views feature lets you visualize your tasks in different ways so that everything is displayed in a format that best suits your project. We’ll discuss Views in greater detail below. 
 

2. Views

ClickUp lets you see your work in 15+ views so you can tackle work from any angle. The basic task view types are List, Calendar, and Board view. There's also Gantt, Box, Timeline, Workload, Table, Map, Doc, and Form view. 

You can even embed views from platforms like Excel. The list view is the most basic task view where tasks are presented in a list, divided into groups. ClickUp has great Kanban boards, which are on par with Trello's. You can drag and drop cards along across lists; nothing about managing the boards is confusing. 

The Calendar view can be great for scheduling. It plots out tasks on the calendar to easily see start and due dates. You can choose between a weekly, monthly, or day view. Box view arranges tasks by person so you can get an overview of each person's workload and progress. The interactive Gantt charts can visualize dependencies.

The good thing is that each View can be set the way you want. 
 

3. Integrations

ClickUp Integrations let you connect ClickUp with your favorite apps, even if they don't have a native integration function with ClickUp. If there's not a native integration with a certain app, you can easily connect ClickUp with that app via Zapier and set up connections and automations. 

There are native integrations with apps like Slack, Github, Gitlab, Webhooks, Google Drive, Outlook, Dropbox, Figma, Youtube, Zendesk, Loom, and more.
 

4. Time management

The time tracking feature is available for users of all plans, including the freemium version. You can track time from your desktop, mobile, or Chrome browser inside and outside a task. You can add hours manually, along with notes about the time entry. The third option is to add a range of time or a specific time block throughout the day. You can view, edit, or delete time entries as needed. Additionally, you can track time on subtasks. All time that is tracked on any subtasks will roll up to the parent task level. 

The Time Estimates feature allows you to better predict how long it takes to complete your work. You can add estimates to any task or subtask and split the time between team members.

Other time-saving features include adding start and due dates, due date remapping, rescheduling dependencies, milestones, customized timesheets, and time reporting. Additionally, ClickUp integrates with all major calendars and time-tracking apps.
 

5. Automation

ClickUp comes with a good deal of automation features to automate repetitive actions and ensure that nothing falls through the gaps. You can easily set triggers and actions for all types of repeatable processes. You can even add conditions that will stop the automation unless they're met. With automation, you can automatically assign tasks, post comments, move statuses, and more.

You can also use integrations as the action for your automation. For instance, a new issue can be created in Github when something changes in a task. Or, an email can be sent to someone's inbox when a task's due date arrives. 

You can choose pre-designed automation from the Automations library or create your own Custom Automations. There are over 50 Automation templates that you can apply to any Space, Folder, or List.

Users of the free plan get up to 100 automations per month, while the lowest tier gives you 1,000 automations. The number of automations per month increases as you subscribe to a higher plan. 
 

6. Templates 

The Templates section contains ready-to-use templates ClickUp has designed for you and the templates you've created and saved on your own. There are templates for Spaces, Folders, Lists, Tasks, and Docs. You can't use a Space-level template for Tasks or a Doc-level template for Lists. 

You can search templates by name, tags, use case, or by who created the template. Additionally, you can choose a pre-made template and customize it to fit your needs.

Templates are available on every ClickUp Plan.
 

7. Document management 

With ClickUp Docs, you can create beautiful docs, handbooks, knowledge bases, and more. You can create, customize, and connect your Docs to your tasks and workflows. You can even collaborate with your team members in real-time inside any documents. You can tag other people with comments, assign them action items, and convert text into tasks. 
 

8. Team collaboration

ClickUp comes with many collaboration features like Whiteboard, Chat, Email, and Proofing that make it easy to work together on any type of project.

Whiteboards are collaborative work areas for brainstorming and sharing ideas. For example, you can use it to plan your sprints or brainstorm marketing collateral concepts.

You can add a Whiteboard to Spaces, Folders, or to Lists as views. Use this functionality to map out your projects and collaborate with team members in real-time. You can add all kinds of stuff to your Whiteboard, like text, images, drawings, notes, media files, tasks, and more. You can use connectors in the form of lines and arrows to create relationships between objects.

Chats are a great place to discuss anything with your team, from work-related things to random stuff. You can have a Chat at different levels, like at a Folder level, Space level, or a List level. You can create a Chat for specific teams or projects. In Chat, you can embed webpages, spreadsheets, and videos and include code blocks, bulleted lists, banners, and more.

The Proofing feature centralizes feedback and expedites approval processes by assigning comments directly on task attachments. 
 

9. Reports and analytics

ClickUp has powerful reporting capabilities. 

Dashboards are the platform’s reporting engine. They’re the best way to build high-level views of everything going on in your Workspace. You can track sprints, epics, high-level initiatives, projects, portfolio management, and more.

The Workload & Box views let you visualize your team's day-by-day work capacity to see who is under or over capacity to allocate resources effectively. 

The Goals feature lets you measure your project goals by tying them to specific tasks, numbers, monetary values, and more.

The Pulse feature gives you automatic activity reports powered by machine learning to help you see where your time is being spent. 

ClickUp pros and cons

Here are the advantages and disadvantages of ClickUp:

ClickUp advantages

• ClickUp is incredibly customizable. You get a fully customizable project management solution that lets you personalize your projects and make the software work for your workflows, business model, and personal preferences. 

• Support team collaboration and communication. The software offers many features that enable teams of all sizes to collaborate and communicate with each other in real-time. There are tons of useful features like real-time chat, collaborative docs, in-app video recording, emails, and more. This makes ClickUp a top-notch tool for remote teams. 

• It’s cost-effective. You get everything for less than any other SaaS product out there. The cheapest paid plan costs only $5 per user per month, compared to the $10.99 per user month you would pay with Asana. The free version is an excellent way to explore what the software has to offer before you submit to a paid plan.

• It has time-tracking functionality. Users can easily track how much time they spend on a task, and managers can stay up-to-date with billable hours. You can also set estimates, add notes, and view reports to be more on track with your work hours.

• It’s suitable for both teams and individuals. The free plan is quite generous and ideal if you’re a solopreneur or freelancer. At the same time, there are four paid plans with different sets of features that cater to teams of all sizes. For example, the Unlimited plan is perfect for small teams, while the Business Plus is great for companies that manage several teams at once. 

ClickUp disadvantages

• It can feel bloated with too many features. ClickUp is quite robust and comes with an extensive set of features. This can be both an advantage and a disadvantage. Users that need more basic software that's less overwhelming to use might need to look elsewhere.

• It has a learning curve. The sheer number of features and the extent of customization options make ClickUp a software that takes a while to learn. But as long as you want to stay simple, you can ignore the complexity and it will stay out of your way. Onboarding can last a few days, at least. The good news is there are plenty of help articles that educate you on the basics of the software and how everything works. 

ClickUp complaints & praise (from real ClickUp customer reviews)

Most reviews of ClickUp are positive. These focus on how the software is intuitive to use for new users and has all the features a serious user would want. 

Other positive reviews mention how ClickUp has everything you could want from a project management tool, from boards and Gantt charts to estimation features and time tracking capabilities. 

Many a Clickup user will say the best part of this app is its versatility. The app’s fans love how they can organize their work, side business, and personal life, all from within ClickUp. They love how they don’t have to use any other apps apart from ClickUp and how you can see everything at different levels. 

There are very few negative ClickUp reviews. Some ClickUp reviews that complain talk about how the software can become cumbersome or confusing with all of the options. Others say that the user interface is slow and buggy at times. 

There are a few negative reviews that talk about the Android and iOS mobile apps and how they lack certain features that make work on the go a little bit difficult. 
 

Review of ClickUp support

The ClickUp knowledge base is very extensive. It contains webinars, templates for various use cases, and 100+ help articles explaining how each feature works. Additionally, there's ClickUp University, which contains a collection of courses and tutorials covering everything from ClickUp basics to productivity tips. 

If you can’t find help in the ClickUp knowledge base, that’s okay because customer service is available 24 hours a day, every day of the week, including holidays. 

There are several ways of connecting with a customer support agent. You can chat with them online, reach out via email, or call them by phone if you have a billing question. 

Additionally, you can even submit a bug and request new features. There’s also an active community where you can communicate with other users and ask questions or help them with their issues. 

And in case you need professional help, you can hire a ClickUp expert who will provide you with one-on-one training and walk you through the process of setting up your ClickUp account and workflows. Keep in mind this is a paid service. 

If these complaints scare you, we suggest exploring alternatives, such as Podio. For more information on how these tools compete against each other, read our Podio vs ClickUp comparison.

Is ClickUp worth it? Our conclusion

If one thing’s for certain after reading this post, it’s this: ClickUp is a fully customizable and flexible tool for small to midsize businesses. 

But is ClickUp worth it?

If you need a project management platform that would be all things to your team, ClickUp might be exactly what you need. You can use it as a task management, document management, resource management, and communication tool at the same time without having to jump from one app to another. 

The best way to use ClickUp is to know what you want from the system. Analyze your workflows and bottlenecks, and then set up the software in a way that helps you work more efficiently and with greater transparency. 

Of course, this is a competitive field, and there are quite a few ClickUp alternatives out there. If you’re still in doubt about whether this is the right solution for your needs, you may also want to take a look at our best project management software article. That list includes apps like Basecamp, Wrike, Monday.com, and Jira. 

We hope you find the tool that ticks all the boxes.