ClickUp Review 2023: Features Tested, Pros and Cons

ClickUp is a customizable, cloud-based project management tool. According to our research, it's the best simple project management software on the market right now, achieving a better functionality score (4.6/5) than the 10 other major providers we've tested. It's one of the few providers with enough collaboration and data tools to represent a real alternative to the confusing web of apps that you're probably using at work.

In our hands-on testing, 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 Teamwork, 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 pros, cons, features, and functions, as well as how the provider – which came in joint third place in our 2023 tests – compares to its fiercest rivals.

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 includes a wide range of tools that can be used to get a better grasp of how your project is progressing and where you should be allocating your resources.

ClickUp's Gantt chart. Image: Tech.co's testing process. 

ClickUp's automation builder can be used to streamline workflows, reduce errors, and save time, while collaboration features like a document editor and Chat view 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, largely due to an underwhelming performance during our ease-of-use testing.

ClickUp Vs Top Competitors

ClickUp ranks in third place in our buying guide to the best project management system and has just rolled out the latest iteration of its software, ClickUp 3.0, to all customers.

According to our research and platform testing, however, 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

monday.com Compared to ClickUp

monday.com received a test-high 4.5/5 score for ease of use – we found it simpler project management software to use. It's easier to set up a mock project in monday.com than any other of the 10 providers we tested, including ClickUp, thanks to its minimalistic interface.

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 still runs it close for features, however, and its data dashboards are cleaner and simpler to understand.

However, monday.com pricing is 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.

Check out our full head-to-head comparison of monday.com vs ClickUp to learn more.

Asana Compared to ClickUp

Asana doesn't have quite the extensive feature set that ClickUp does, but our testing group agreed that it's slightly easier to use. Plus, its larger set of integrations will suit a much wider range of businesses using all sorts of marketing, accounting, and finance software than ClickUp.

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 slightly better workflow creation features (4.3/5 to Asana's 4.2/5) too – its automation builder has a lot more templates.

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 software options currently available, and it's also a lot cheaper. To find out more about how these providers stack up against each other at these two providers, check out our full comparison of Asana vs ClickUp.

Smartsheet vs ClickUp

Smartsheet is your best bet if you like to organize your information in a spreadsheet that contains powerful reporting, analytics, and data protection tools. It's a bit of an all-rounder, and scored above 3.5/5 for security, customer support, integrations, task management, and various other categories, with few extreme weak points to write home about.

Like ClickUp, however, Smartsheet had an underwhelming ease of use test performance and dropped down the rankings in 2023. 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.

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. Here's what we found when we tested ClickUp's new software, ClickUp 3.0.

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.

Setting up with ClickUp

ClickUp offers a range of preset project management 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.

Importing project data in ClickUp 3.0 is easy enough. To test this, our testing group created tasks list made up of several stages of building a website. On my test, I told ClickUp that I was working with Excel/a CSV file, and once I’d answered the setup questions, I clicked on the corresponding button that appeared in the bottom right-hand corner of the interface to import my data. This only took four minutes.

While our testing group found it quite hard to import data into the likes of Smartsheet, in ClickUp, this is an extremely simple process. The software identifies cells in your file that include headings and then matches them to fields in ClickUp (while also providing you with a custom field option if your cell doesn’t match any existing fields).

Importing and classifying project data in ClickUp. Image: Tech.co's testing process.

This importing process meant I didn’t have to enter any task names manually, while ClickUp’s intelligent analysis of my documents meant it was largely formatted correctly once the upload was completed. However, I did have to input some of my due dates manually – ClickUp seemed unable to convert text dates (i.e. September 24, 2024) to a numbered date (09/24/2024). However, this didn’t set me back by much time.

Project views and layout

ClickUp has a detailed folder and space hierarchy which will allow a business that consists of multiple teams and sub-teams to organize their work in one place without confusion. First up you have “Spaces”. ClickUp supplies you with a space entitled “Everything” which is where you can view all the projects that are taking place.

Then, the software will prompt you to create a “Team Space”, within which you can have multiple projects. On my test, I renamed this space “Web Team”, and the project data I’d imported sat underneath this. This is clearly designed to be really simple and easy to understand, so minimal Googling or reading is required to organize your spaces.

After that, you can add different project views to the top menu bar, such as a Gantt chart, a Kanban board, a Table view, and a List view. In the List and Table views, you can keep adding columns such as a “progress” bar which will change depending on the completion of sub-tasks, or a status column that connects to your Kanban board:

Assigning tasks in ClickUp's List view. Image: Tech.co's testing process.

All of the project data inputted during setup is accessible in every view, and when you change one thing (like creating status in the board view) this will alter the information on other views, such as the List view, which ensures you're never out of sync.

There are some nice signs of subtle intelligence in ClickUp’s software – for example, I created a board view column called “Sign Off” during my test, so ClickUp made it my final column and included a check box, which you can see in the board view.

ClickUp's Kanban board. Image: Tech.co's testing process.

ClickUp also has a Team view option which not all competitors offer and a “Me mode” where you can view just your own tasks, which is useful if you want to reduce the noise on your screen made by other people working in the same space.

Managing tasks with ClickUp

Managing tasks in Clickup is pretty easy – just click on a task, after which ClickUp will bring up the individual task screen. You can quickly add files that are relevant any task below the description box, assign them to team members, and add sub-tasks. From there, it’ll prompt you to use the platform’s AI tool to generate sub-tasks and actions. Much like ChatGPT, it’s not perfect, but it's certainly helpful.

Using ClickUp's AI tool to generate a task description. Image: Tech.co's testing process.

I turned one of the suggestions it made for my task description into a sub-task, but you can easily add sub-tasks yourself in the sub-tasks area too. After that, Clicking on each of the small items will let you edit the due date and other elements. AI is also on hand to help here and will generate sub-tasks for you based on the description of your main task.

Although most of our testing group found managing tasks in ClickUp easy, one thing that stumped us was the task dependency tool. It took quite a lot of hunting around to find it, and I eventually Googled it. It was tucked away in a small menu on the right-hand side of the task box.

Adding a due date to a sub-task in ClickUp. Image: Tech.co's testing process.

So, while the raft of features makes it obvious why ClickUp scores 4.6/5 for overall functionality and 4.7/5 for task management, not everything is easy to find. As you can see from the images, there are buttons absolutely all over the interface, and it isn’t quite as tidy as the likes of monday.com.

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.

Creating automations in ClickUp is largely straightforward. Below is an example of automation I built while testing the software, which changes who a task is assigned to when the status of that task changes to “final checks”.

Building a simple automation in ClickUp. Image: Tech.co testing process.

However, much like managing tasks, the amount of choice does feel a little overwhelming. Automation building is one of the more difficult project management software duties and it’s unhelpful to be presented with an avalanche of options in some cases.

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.

A dashboard we built in ClickUp. Image: Tech.co's testing process.

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, this is one of the many improvements which has been made in ClickUp 3.0.

While software like Asana will auto-populate your first dashboard for you, ClickUp actually provides quite a lot of instruction in this aspect of the software, giving you a choice of three templates. There's a “simple” dashboard, a reporting dashboard, and a dashboard for time tracking.  However, you can also choose from a wide range of other dashboard templates, including several geared towards Agile teams:

ClickUp's dashboard templates for Agile teams running sprints. Image: Tech.co's testing process.

ClickUp scores 4.8/5 for data visualization, and its wide range of preset charts and widget templates are only really matched by Asana and monday.com. However, it’s not quite as visually appealing as these two. You can create custom charts and widgets with ease though, and I found it a lot easier to do in ClickUp than Smartsheet and Zoho Projects.

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

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.

You can easily add files that are relevant to the task and comment on the task in the activity column on the right-hand side, which also displays the history of things that have happened to the task. This means it’s super easy to catch up on the latest goings on of each task you’re responsible for completing.

Commenting on tasks in ClickUp. Image: Tech.co's testing process.

ClickUp also has a “Chat” view which you can add to your top menu bar. You can add any combination of team members to a specific chat, making it sort of like a channel you’d find in an app like Slack or Microsoft Teams.

ClickUp's Chat view. Image: Tech.co's testing process.

ClickUp's 4.7/5 was the collaboration 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 the whiteboard tool mentioned earlier.

ClickUp Review: Test Results

ClickUp came third in our recent project management platform testing series, with an overall score of 4.5/5. It was the best on test for task management, collaboration, and workflow creation.

Ease of use (3.9/5)

ClickUp is pretty easy to use, and once you get your head around the different buttons, functions, and settings, you'll be able to harness them to improve your project's overall workflow from an organizational perspective. However, the sheer number of features means you might feel a little overwhelmed at first, especially if this is your first time using project management software.

Some members of our testing group found that the automation builder took longer to get used to than some competitors, and not everyone enjoyed the lack of instructions provided. “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.

Others experienced longer loading times when flicking between aspects of the software than we often did with other providers.  “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. 

Functionality (4.6/5)

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 Table view (pictured below), 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.

ClickUp's Table view. Image: Tech.co's testing process. 

“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.”

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.

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.

There's also no 24/7 live support service like the one monday.com provides. However, ClickUp does provide 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, which you'll find a useful resource if you'd like specific aspects 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”.

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, and time-tracking – and you can use all of the provider's views, such as the classic “Board” view:

List view in ClickUp. Image: Tech.co's testing process.

ClickUp offers custom and pre-built automation for streamlining workflows on all of its plans, something that most other providers don't offer.  There are also lots of charts and widgets for displaying project data on the free plan.

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 this year. It now costs the same as Smartsheet's Pro plan ($7 per user, per month). But as most rivals like Asana are pricier, 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, ClickUp is 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