ClickUp Review: Best All-In-One Collaboration Tool? – Have you ever been in a state of confusion where you have to figure out how to make use of many software to achieve a goal? I bet you must have wished you had an all-in-one platform that puts all your project management work stuff in one place and also lets you communicate with team members. ClickUp is a platform that helps organizations and individuals keep all their project management activities in one place. But is it good enough? — that we shall find out in this ClickUp review.
Launched in 2016 by Alex Yurkowski and Zeb Evans, ClickUp has quickly grown to become one of the most-used productivity software in the business world. Some of the prominent users of ClickUp include Samsung, Google, Belmond, Netflix, IBM, Nike, etc. ClickUp also claims that their users testify of a smoother workflow and have about a 20 percent increase in productivity when compared to using separate apps for achieving their project goals.
ClickUp has also become very popular among Mac users as Microsoft Projects do not work on Mac. This seems to be a springboard for ClickUp. ClickUp can also be installed on a PC. This gives ClickUp a larger market to prey on when compared to Microsoft Projects.
ClickUp is targeted at businesses or organizations that have a team of professionals working on projects. Standing as an all-in-one project management software, ClickUp boasts amazing features that help you create projects, plan a project, track a project’s progress, delegate responsibilities among members, get feedback, and share projects among project team members.
Key Features of ClickUp
ClickUp claims to offer key features that should boost the productivity of any business, organization, or group of freelancers.
1. Agile development.
Agile development is one of the key features ClickUp offers both businesses and individuals to increase productivity. Agile development is great at increasing customer satisfaction and getting feedback that helps to build a better product and complete a project successfully.
ClickUp aids project management becomes smooth by incorporating agile development. This involves breaking down complex projects into bits and small milestones which can also be called sprints. These sprints are usually worked on within a space of 1 – 2 weeks. Project managers gather feedback from customers for every completed sprint which helps them to create a finished product with every module that is lovable by the customers.
2. Creating to-do lists
To-do lists are one way to stay on track with your project. They create visual objectives and help keep your mind on the next task for the day or week. ClickUp let project managers and team members create a clear multifunctional to-do list that can be accessed from anywhere and from any device.
There are available templates to choose from which makes creating a to-do list easy and stylish. The home view gives you a birds’ eye view and helps you assign priorities, reschedule tasks, and set reminders. You can also customize your to-do lists using colors, text formatting, and connecting lines or links to objects, tasks, or assignees.
3. Project scheduling and reminders
With ClickUp, you can schedule projects and add reminders which you can manage from any device. You can also schedule project delegations to your team members and add attachments to reminders that can be set as recurring.
ClickUp also lets you notifications on comments in a task to follow up on important conversations. You can also hit the snooze button on reminders, reschedule, delegate reminders to team members, and check off reminders that have been attended to. With the project scheduling and reminders feature, you don’t have to manually contact or remind team members of the next step in a project or when it’s time to commence working on a project.
4. Task management and project management
ClickUp launched as an all-in-one platform that can help one handle both tasks and projects. Task management seems to be easy with ClickUp as there are many features that aid one goes about his tasks. Some of those features that ClickUp renders for successful task management are task scheduling, to-do lists, tasks planning, calendar, tasks tracking, etc.
Project management on the other hand is a little vaster than task management. Here, ClickUp has built-in features to help team members collaborate, share ideas, and complete tasks to build a lovable product. Some features ClickUp offers for easy and successful project management include reporting, tracking, documentation, collaboration, etc.
5. Time tracking and time management
Another feature ClickUp included to its platform is the ability to track and manage time. Once logged into the system, you don’t need to manually input the start and end times of your working hours. ClickUp tracks your working hours automatically and shows how long you have spent working on a specific task or project. Time tracking can be done on the App on any device including web browsers using the chrome extension.
Time management is one of the most important features of project management software. And ClickUp offers good time management features that let you see how much time you should spend working on a task. It also lets you know what tasks you are spending the most time on. You can also allocate time to team members and estimate the time that each team member would take to finish up a task. ClickUp also lets you use time management integrations and a built-in calendar.
6. Workload view
With a workload view, you can have a birds eye’s view of how much work all the team members are working with. The workload view graphically illustrates how much work all the team members have worked on or are still working on for the selected time frame. The time frame could be in days, weeks, or months. Each team member’s workload can be compared differently using the capacity set for them.
Using the workload view, ClickUp lets one create a workload view, assign, reschedule, move tasks, and set capacities. You also get the option to customize capacities per day, set a day to no capacity, and have a full view of the total capacity for tags and statuses.
7. Set task dependencies
Task dependencies create a link between documents and tasks and show the order in which tasks are to be carried out. This way, team members know which tasks to perform first and what route to follow to make the project successful.
With dependencies, you can link tons of tasks together, link customers to orders, link clients to deals, and lots more. You can also add waiting on or blocking to keep team members away from certain tasks and point them towards the tasks you want to be executed first. ClickUp task dependencies make jumping between documents, tools, and related tasks easy. ClickUp also lets you personalize your relationships and view them in one place using rollups.
8. Switch between different views, such as Gantt chart view, box view, table view, and more.
ClickUp offers different ways one can view tasks. You are also offered options to switch between different task views to aid you to get a detailed report about project tasks. Each task view offers a different and unique way to visualize your tasks. They all have different ways of filtering, sorting, and grouping tasks.
To start creating views, it is advisable to start from the simple representations like list views and board views, then work up to other complex task views. ClickUp offers an array of task views and they include list, board, calendar, Gantt, timeline, box, table, mind map, workload, activity, and map.
ClickUp Project Management Software Features
ClickUp offers several project management software features that they boast could improve business productivity by 20 percent. So in this ClickUp review, we will be reviewing each of the features this all-in-one project management software has to offer.
1. Task Management
On ClickUp, we have found customizable task management features that let you plan, collaborate with team members, and organize your projects all in one place. They provide over 30+ clickapps to use to customize your task management which brings in some level of automation, helps you assign custom field data, assign sprint points, and lots more.
For task management to be successful, there has to be some level of collaboration. ClickUp lets you assign tasks to team members and track their performance. There is also a chat box or comment thread where you can chat with a team member, share screen, and assign actionable items.
With ClickUp, you can break a huge task into other smaller tasks or subtasks which can help simplify a project for team members to understand. You can also use the multiple task views to have a full glimpse of what tasks you and your team members will be working on. In the task view, you can choose to make changes or further customize your tasks by rearranging subtasks or making a massive edit.
Speaking of views, ClickUp offers many kinds of views that can be grouped under 3 categories: page views, core views, and advanced views.
- Page views
Page views let you customize what items you want to have on a page. ClickUp offers 4 types of page views and they are embed, form, doc, and chat.
The embed page view answers to its name — you can embed documents, spreadsheets, pictures, videos, and other stuff alongside a project task. In the form view, you can build attractive forms to collect information from customers, stakeholders, and prospects, and organize the collected information as tasks for your team members.
Meanwhile, in the form view, you can make rich formatting, use task links, create nested pages, and collaborate with team members whilst making real-time editing. The chat view is just a chat room with team members.
- Core views
The core views are basically how tasks are arranged and sorted visually. The core views include the list, board, and calendar view. In the list view, you can sort, filter, group, and further customize your tasks in columns.
The board view lets you have a visual Kanban board to drag and pin tasks on the board. The calendar view lets you organize and plan tasks according to calendar dates. ClickUp arranges your tasks on a graphical calendar. You could also use the drag-and-drop feature to place tasks on earlier dates to tell team members that they have to work on that task first before the next.
- Advanced views
The advanced views let you see tasks in more advanced ways. The advanced views include the map, activity, box, Gantt, mind map, table, timeline, and workload. You can view task maps to know where your task or destination falls on a map, switch to activity view to monitor the activities of team members, and know what tasks they are done with and which they are still working on.
If you want an overall graphical view of how much work team members are putting in and how much progress, in general, your team is making towards a project, the box view caters for that. The Gantt view lets you plan time, plot dependencies, and manage task resources.
A more useful way to visualize relationships in projects is using the mind map view. This way, you can get a full view of how tasks links to one another and their hierarchy. On the other hand, the table view is a spreadsheet that lets you organize data as you would do on a spreadsheet package.
The timeline view shows you how long it takes a team member to complete a task and how much time they have left to complete a task. Meanwhile, the workload view lets you have a glimpse of how much work a team member has to work on. You can set a workload capacity for each team member and go to the workload view to know if you are reaching that limit.
2. Automation and Workflow Management
Workflow management involves the processes and activities one has to take in creating an optimized workflow that achieves a goal. Using ClickUp helps one automates those processes instead of having you set up workflows regularly or manually.
Using automation on ClickUp is easy and makes work way faster. Automation helps you process several tasks that you would have done. It just needs a trigger and some settings. You can automate your tasks using built-in automation or you can customize and create your automation.
You can create automation for posting comments, moving statuses, applying tags, changing templates, etc. Automations on ClickUp can assign team members to a task when you add tags, change statuses, or prioritize. Furthermore, ClickUp lets you can create up to 50 custom automation and let you set them to become functional from a particular date.
ClickUp also integrates other apps into its system, this way, you can also automate certain functionalities in your favorite app using ClickUp automation.
Things that make ClickUp automation work
Certain things make ClickUp automation work and they are triggers, conditions, and actions.
- Triggers
Triggers are the things that have to happen first so that automation can be triggered. Example of some things that can trigger automation in ClickUp includes the creation of tasks, changing of status, applying tags, or if the set date for the automation to start running reaches.
- Conditions
Conditions are the thinking cap for automation. Conditions are statements that must be true for automation to work. Example of some conditions that determine if automation will run or not includes asking automation to run if you assign a task to a specific team member, if you add a specific tag, or add a specific date.
- Actions
Actions are the results of automation. It is what will happen if there is a trigger and a condition was true/met. An example of some actions can be that your set automation changed the status of a task, added a comment, or a custom field.
3. Team Collaboration
One strong feature ClickUp has is team collaboration which makes working with team members easy. With team collaboration, you keep everyone on the same page. Everyone can see who is editing a document and when a document is being edited in real-time just like Google docs. Multiple team members can view and edit documents at the same time.
ClickUp also has the function to turn off collaborative editing. When this function is turned on, team members will no longer be able to edit a document at the same time. Instead, team members will have to edit a document one after the other. You can also take control of a document that is actively being edited by a team member by clicking on the take over button on the top of the document.
Team members can also receive instant notifications about changes in task statuses, and receive instant feedback from customers or quality evaluators, and comments. As a team member, ClickUp lets you see everything in real-time.
ClickUp offers little features to help with collaborative detection. For instance, to know if other team members are viewing a task, you will find yellow binoculars alongside the team members’ display pictures. Also, to know if they are actively writing a comment, you will find a purple eclipse beside their display picture.
You can also turn on the who’s online click app to know which team members are online and when they are not. There will be a green dot attached to a team member’s display picture who is online. ClickUp also lets you create and view team members’ profiles.
4. Project and Time Tracking
On ClickUp, tracking projects and time is easy. You can set estimates, add notes, view reports, and track time from anywhere and from any device. You could also use a chrome extension if you are using the Chrome web browser on a desktop and easily link it back to your tasks on ClickUp. Also, you can start and stop time from any device too.
You can track time using ClickUp’s global timer or login your time manually. ClickUp offers only 30 spaces for time tracking on tasks. Time tracking can be activated for your workspace and also for your individual space.
To enable time tracking for individual spaces, follow these steps:
- Click on space settings
- Click on more and select ClickApps
- Select time tracking
- Make your settings and hit save
You can also enable time tracking for your workspace by following these steps:
- Click on your workspace avatar
- Select ClickApps and select
- Select time tracking and enable it on all spaces
- You can disable spaces that do not use time tracking
ClickUp offers features that help with project and time tracking in general. So in this ClickUp review, we are going to be talking about some of them.
● Edit time
ClickUp gives you the freedom to edit your time. You can choose to adjust the time that you have set for your tasks previously.
● Add notes
You can also add notes to your time entries when creating a time tracker so that you can remember what you spend that time on.
● Labels
Labels help you sort out tasks quickly which in turn saves time. It came also to be used to filter time that is spent on tasks.
● Sorting
ClickUp will let you sort your tasks according to tasks with the highest time consumed. This will let you know the tasks that you are spending the most time on.
● Filtering
You can filter time that is tracked by date, labels, priority, and more.
ClickUp also supports other helpful features like billable time, rollup, customizable time sheets, and integrate time tracking with your favorite third-party apps to help you track time perfectly.
5. Reporting and Analytics
With reports and analytics, you get the full details of what is happening in a project — how many tasks are completed, how many are still in progress, which team members are doing the most, which team member needs motivation and lots more.
Reports and analytics will show you if your time estimates were fulfilled and will help you make plans and estimations. Daily accomplished tasks can also be reported alongside undone tasks. Plus, you get to see a leaderboard of team members where you can pinpoint who’s crushing it and who is need support.
ClickUp offers a visualized report and analytics which can help you have more insight into the performance of team members. In ClickUp, you will see that reports are split into several segments which are completed, worked on, team points, who’s behind, time tracked, and time estimated.
Completed
Under the Completed report segment, ClickUp shows you how many team members have completed their tasks. You can filter your search to know how many tasks were completed in a day, week, month, or year, and by which team member.
A task will be counted as completed for a team member if that team member was the only or last person to be appointed towards the task before it was completed. You also get to see the lead time which shows how much time was spent on a project from its creation to its completion.
Worked on
Worked on lets you which tasks have been worked on by team members. It can also be filtered to know how much time was spent on each task. This is a work-in-progress place where you can
Team Points
ClickUp lets you create a little competition in the leaderboard by introducing team points. Team points can be a motivation to team members for more productivity and activity. The more tasks activity a team member achieves or carries out, the more team points he gains.
The team member with the highest team points will be ranked first on the leaderboard while the rest will be ranked according to how many team points they have.
Points will be awarded if team members do the following:
- Resolve comments
- Complete tasks
- Work on tasks
- Add comments
- Clear notifications
Who’s Behind
The who’s behind report segment is basically the flipped version of the team points report. Who’s Behind report will show you, of course, who’s behind in crushing his tasks. You can see who exactly is falling behind, what part a team member is not doing well in, which team member can help, and have insight on more ways to improve collaboration.
Time tracked
You can have a report about the total amount of time a team member is tracking. This lets you know how much time a team member is putting into work and which tasks are getting the most attention. This report consists of the time that is tracked both manually and automatically even using Chrome extensions and third-party integrations.
Time Estimated
Using ClickUp, you can see how much time team members have estimated on working on a task. Estimated time can be measured and matched with time tracked to be used to make future adjustments and optimize productivity.
6. ClickUp Integrations
I get it that most of us have made business apps our favorite. Just like the tons of business apps in the market, ClickUp also lets you integrate third-party apps into its system. These integrations will help you bring in the functionalities you have always enjoyed on your favorite business apps into ClickUp so that you have an all-in-one project management software.
Some of the popular ClickUp Integrations include Loom, YouTube, Google Drive, GitHub, Figma, Dropbox, Google Calendar, Zapier, Slack, Gmail, Microsoft Outlook, Webhooks, and much more. These integrations help you easily carry out tasks, share files, get team updates, and save time without letting you switch between software.
ClickUp Pros and Cons
Just like every software in the market, ClickUp also has its pros and cons. So in this ClickUp review, we have to show you the bright side and also the dark side.
ClickUp Pros
- It is an impressive software both for teams and individuals
- Efficient task views and dashboard views
- The free version still offers amazing features
- Their customer support is easily reachable and tries to aid customers to solve their problems.
- Customizable themes and understandable layouts
- All-in-one software that lets you avoid paying for other separate software
- Amazingly low price
ClickUp Cons
- Too many features make it hard for newbies to adapt easily
- Integrating some business apps isn’t too smooth now
- The User Interface still needs some more touch up
- The calendar still needs improvement
ClickUp Pricing
ClickUp offers 5 pricing plans to take a business or team of freelancers from being less productive to about 20 percent more productive. The pricing plans include Free forever, Unlimited, Business, Business Plus, and the Enterprise.
Free Forever
Just like its name tag, the Free forever plan is free, for ever. There are no attached payments of any sort. All you need to do is use the software as you would but certain features would be restricted for this plan. As an individual, the restricted features wouldn’t stop you from completing tasks and finishing projects successfully.
The features you will be getting in this plan include:
- 100MB Storage
- Unlimited Tasks
- Unlimited Free Plan Members
- Two-Factor Authentication
- Collaborative Docs
- Whiteboards
- Real-Time Chat
- Email in ClickUp
- Kanban Boards
- Sprint Management
- Native Time Tracking
- In-App Video Recording
- 24/7 Support
Unlimited
The unlimited plan offers a few more features than the Free forever plan. And it is targeted at small teams. If you want the unlimited plan you will have to either pay a recurring monthly or yearly fee. The monthly fee goes for $9 while the yearly fee goes for $5 which will help you save up to 45 percent. That means you will be able to save $48 if you pay yearly rather than monthly.
The features you will be getting in this plan include:
- Everything in the Free Forever plan and
- Unlimited Storage
- Unlimited Integrations
- Unlimited Dashboards
- Guests with Permissions
- Unlimited Gantt Charts
- Unlimited Custom Fields
- Teams (User Groups)
- Goals & Portfolios
- Form View
- Resource Management
- Agile Reporting
Business
The Business plan is targeted at mid-sized teams and offers more features than the Free forever plan. The monthly payment cost $19 which would amount to $228 if you keep up with a monthly payment. But if you choose to pay yearly (which is the better option), you would be paying $144 a year while saving your team $84 which can be invested somewhere else.
The features you will be getting from this plan include:
- Everything in the unlimited plan and
- Google SSO
- Unlimited Teams
- Custom Exporting
- Advanced Public Sharing
- Advanced Automations
- Advanced Dashboard Features
- Advanced Time Tracking
- Granular Time Estimates
- Workload Management
- Timelines & Mind Maps
- Goal Folders
Business Plus
Business Plus is an advanced plan from the Business plan which is targeted at multiple team members. The Business Plus plan goes for $29 per month. A yearly payment will be $228 which gives off a 45 percent discount and lets you save $120.
The features you will be getting from the business plus plan include:
- Everything in Business and
- Team Sharing
- Subtasks in Multiple Lists
- Custom Role Creation
- Custom Permissions
- Custom Capacity in Workload
- Increased Automations & API
- Admin Training Webinar
- Priority Support
Enterprise
The enterprise plan is targeted at large teams that are usually found in large companies. ClickUp doesn’t disclose their price for the Enterprise plan and would ask you to contact them for the price. But the features of the Enterprise plan are known. Of course, the Enterprise is the most premium plan and would have the best features.
The features you will be getting from the Enterprise plan include:
- Everything in the Business Plus plan and
- White Labeling
- Advanced Permissions
- Enterprise API
- Unlimited Custom Roles
- Default Personal Views
- MSA & HIPAA Available
- Single Sign-On (SSO)
- Live Onboarding Training
- Dedicated Success Manager
- Access to Managed Services
Summary
So far into this ClickUp review, we have come to see that ClickUp is one all-in-one project management software that is favored by many well-known enterprises. It lets you gather all your tasks, chats, docs, goals, etc in one. Rather than you having to use multiple business apps to achieve your tasks.
It also lets you plan, manage, and track tasks in any way that seems comfortable to you through the many types of views, automation, and other customizable features. With ClickUp, you can have your individual space where you can set your goals and achieve them, choose your views, and see how you are doing on the dashboard view.
On the workspace, you have access to tons of collaborative features like chats, real-time editing, reports, and analytics, managing budgets, tracking project and time, etc.
As much as ClickUp offers so much for productivity, it can be confusing and broad for individuals or team members who haven’t had any experience with using a project management software. Some users still complain of some glitches here and there and some integrations not working as they wanted.
READ ALSO: