An In-Depth ClickUp Review: Is it the Best Free Solution?

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Our Verdict

ClickUp is extremely customizable and feature-rich + it offers the best free plan

ClickUp is a name most people know. It’s renowned for being an all-round solid solution for project and resource planning as well as for effortless collaboration.

This, alongside what’s easily the most generous free solution (not to mention that it’s affordable to scale), makes it easy to recommend it to any business.

You’ll struggle to find a more comprehensive tool, but this does come at a cost. Some find it has quite a high learning curve when pitted against other tools we compare it to in this review.

That said, we found ClickUp does offer ample resources to make onboarding and using this tool to its max a lot easier, making it a worthy investment for most.

Either way, we recommend reading this review to see how it compares to leading rivals.

Pros

  • Excellent customization options
  • Feature-rich free plan
  • Extensive collaboration tools
  • 15+ project views
  • Affordable to scale

Cons

  • Steep learning curve
  • Relatively limited mobile app

Our ClickUp review will discuss in detail everything you need to know about this value-packed project management platform. It’s been around since 2017 and has amassed over 10 million users. However, its popularity doesn’t mean it’s the perfect solution for everyone. Read on as we dig deep into ClickUp’s pricing, features, and pros & cons, and see how it compares to top rivals.

ClickUp Pricing

ClickUp offers 4 plans, including a free forever plan. Let’s look at what each plan has to offer:

Free Forever Unlimited Business Enterprise
Starting Price Free $7/user/month $12/user/month On-demand pricing
User Limit
Free Version
Task/Project Limit Unlimited Unlimited Unlimited Unlimited
Time Tracking 60 uses
Project Views 9, including List, Board, Calendar 11, including Team, Map, Mind Map, Gantt, List, Board 11, including Team, Map, Mind Map, Gantt, List, Board 11, including Team, Map, Mind Map, Gantt, List, Board
Automation 50 Active Rules + 100 Automation executions 500 Active Rules + 1,000 Automation executions Unlimited Active Rules + 10,000 Automation executions Unlimited Active Rules + 250,000 Automation executions
Custom Fields Basic Basic Basic Basic & Advanced
Approvals
Templates 1,000+ 1,000+ 1,000+ 1,000+
Security Two-factor authentication Two-factor authentication Two-factor authentication and Google SSO Two-factor authentication, HIPAA compliance, Microsoft SSO, Custom SAML SSO.
Integrations 50+ (1,000+ including Zapier’s) 50+ (1,000+ including Zapier’s) 50+ (1,000+ including Zapier’s) 50+ (1,000+ including Zapier’s)
Free Plan

Free Plan

ClickUp offers a free forever plan with features like unlimited tasks, 50 active rules, 3 whiteboards, 100 automations, in-app video recording, 50+ native integrations, and two-factor authentication.

You also get different types of unlimited views like list, board, calendar, and table. When compared to the free plans of competitors like Monday and Asana, ClickUp has a few advantages.

For example, neither allows automation on the free plan—ClickUp does. Similarly, there are no Gantt or timeline views on their free plans, whereas ClickUp provides 60 uses of both views.

However, certain features are only available for limited use, such as custom fields, Gantt and timeline view, time tracking, goal reports, and folders.

Unlimited Plan - $7/user/month

Unlimited Plan — $7/user/month

This plan is ideal for small teams because, as the name suggests, it offers ample unlimited features, including storage, integrations, dashboards, portfolios, Gantt charts, and custom fields.

Apart from this, you get higher limits on the features that were restricted in the free plan—10 whiteboards, 100 mind maps, 100 timeline views, and 1,000 automation executions.

Plus, this is the first ClickUp plan that is AI-compatible. You can add the ClickUp AI to this plan at an additional cost of just $5/member/month.

When compared to Monday, not only is ClickUp cheaper, but in some instances, it also delivers more value for money. For instance, Monday’s Basic plan doesn’t include automations or time tracking.

That said, when you compare it to rivals like Asana, it may seem more expensive than ClickUp at $10.99/month, but it includes AI functions—something you’d need to purchase separately with ClickUp.

But again, you don’t get time tracking and portfolio management with Asana, so it all depends on your specific needs.

Business Plan - $12/user/month

Business Plan — $12/user/month

Most ClickUp features on the Business plan are offered without any limits. For example, all of the 17 views offered by the platform are accessible in this plan.

You can also create user groups, share content with external parties, create private documents, build a separate folder for your goals, and create your own time-tracking dashboard.

This plan is ideal for mid-sized businesses with several teams. You can find cheaper project management apps, for example, Trello’s premium plan costs $10/month.

However, as an example, our Trello review highlights how it only offers 7 views and integration support is limited to 200+. This is popular, whereas ClickUp offers 17 views and 1,000+ integrations.

Overall, as with the Unlimited plan, ClickUp’s value-for-money proposition is hard to beat.

Enterprise Plan - Custom

Enterprise Plan — Custom

You get everything ClickUp has to offer with its Enterprise plan. The biggest difference between the Business and Enterprise plans is the level of security they offer.

With this plan, you get Microsoft SSO, Custom SAML SSO, HIPAA Compliance, custom permissions and roles, and private spaces. You also get:

  • Priority support
  • A customer success manager, and
  • An onboarding training workshop

ClickUp Features

ClickUp offers a host of useful features, making it one of the best project management solutions around. We got hands-on with it for this ClickUp review; here’s what we found:

Automations

Automate project management with ClickUp

ClickUp is one of the best automation-oriented project management platforms, as it comes with 50+ pre-built automations—even on the free plan.

For example, whenever the status of a task changes, it can automatically be assigned to a specific employee, or when a task’s due date approaches, the task can automatically be moved up the list.

Automations in ClickUp work in three ways—you can either:

  1. Build custom automations
  2. Use an integration template to automate tasks
  3. Choose automations from its extensive library of Triggers and Actions

For example, you can create a new task in ClickUp based on the events planned in Calendly. Other integration automations include GitHub, HubSpot, Twilio, and loads more.

Whiteboards

Collaborate and brainstorm with ClickUp's Whiteboard

ClickUp whiteboard is your go-to place for meaningful collaboration and brainstorming. It’s a blank slate where you can add tons of elements such as shapes, sticky notes, tasks, lists, and images.

What’s special about this is that instead of creating a task and then adding it to the whiteboard, you can directly create and delete tasks on the whiteboard itself.

Apart from this, ClickUp offers several ready-made whiteboard templates, including project roadmaps to help define project milestones, assign responsibility to employees, and set due dates.

Or you can use the Work Plan whiteboard, where you can assign tasks, leave comments, and track project progress. That said, what we loved the most about ClickUp is its mind maps feature.

A mind map helps you establish and discover relationships between various elements on the whiteboard, helping your team break complex projects down into various sub-parts.

Time Tracking

ClickUp offers a time tracking feature

ClickUp provides native time tracking features on every plan. To enable time tracking, click on ClickApps, search for time tracking, and toggle to activate it.

Every task in a specific workspace can be time-tracked with various modes, including:

  • Timer – The timer will run until you stop it. You can notes and tags or mark the hours as billable or non-billable
  • Manual – If you don’t do live tracking, team members can also add the hours worked manually, even for past dates
  • Range – Enter the time slot, and ClickUp will automatically calculate the number of hours worked

Apart from this, ClickUp also offers various time-tracking integrations like Clockify, Everhour, Timely, and Timeneye. When compared to some rivals, ClickUp stands out in this respect.

For example, as we found in our review of Notion, many (including Notion) don’t offer time tracking, even on their paid plans, never mind their free versions.

Customization

ClickUp views - List view

ClickUp’s award-winning software is unsurprisingly popular. While most project planning tools boast 6-9 project views, ClickUp offers a whopping 15. This translates to insane customization capabilities.

This includes popular ones like Gantt charts, Kanban boards, workload, and box views to ensure you’re managing your human resources efficiently, as well as an “everything view”.

This gives managers an overview of all your team’s spaces and lists into one. That said, everything with ClickUp is customizable – with custom fields, notifications, roles, statuses, filters, and tags.

You can make ClickUp your own. This is why many use this software for HR (think consolidating onboarding, tracking candidates in your pipeline, etc.), as well as:

  • Engineering project management needs
  • Interior design projects
  • Marketing and advertising content management
  • IT/software development sprints

ClickUp’s use cases are limitless. 

ClickUp Integrations

ClickUp offers a whopping 1,000+ integrations, including popular apps like Slack, GitLab, Google Drive, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams. You can also build your own integrations with its Public API.

Plus, you have the option to connect to more apps through Zapier. In comparison, rivals like Asana also offer 1,000+ integrations; however, many (including Asana) are more expensive.

Plus, Asana (and several others), some integrations are reserved for higher-tier plans—ClickUp offers unlimited integrations right from its first paid plan.

ClickUp Customer Reviews

ClickUp has garnered some excellent customer reviews on several review websites. It has 4.7 stars on G2 from 9,300+ reviews, with a whopping 83% of the reviewers giving it 5 stars.

On TrustRadius, it’s rated 8.5/10, 86% of which are scores in the range of 9-10. Not only that, but ClickUp has also won 7 TrustRadius awards in 2023.

Customer reviews and rating of ClickUp

This includes awards for the Best Value for Price, Best Relationship, and Best Feature Set, which is unsurprising. Users love ClickUp for its ability to:

  • Enhance communication and collaboration across teams, especially remote employees
  • To help project managers visualize deadlines and view real-time bottlenecks.
  • Offer an insane level of customization with unlimited custom fields and several task views

However, several users have complained about navigation issues and difficulty in finding certain features. However, in our experience, this isn’t necessarily a negative.

ClickUp offers a lot of functionality, so naturally, it’ll take new users some time to get used to it and learn how to use it to its full potential.

Need help? Here’s a beginner’s guide on how to use ClickUp.

What is ClickUp Good for?

ClickUp is one of the best project management software solutions for automations—they’re available from the free plan itself, which is true for only a few other platforms.

Plus, you get a pre-built Action and Trigger library, where you can choose from several commonly used automations so that you don’t have to build one from scratch.

ClickUp is also a match made in heaven for those on a budget, as it offers phenomenal value for money and proves cheaper than even the most affordable options like Monday.

However, if you’re looking for an out-and-out AI-backed project manager, you can consider tools like Asana, as it comes with AI features from its first paid plan.

With ClickUp, though, you’ll have to purchase AI settings separately at $5/user/month, which, to its credit, is still cheaper than Notion AI. So, while AI’s certainly there, it’s not as budget-friendly as Asana.

ClickUp vs Top Competitors

ClickUp has a rich array of features for businesses of all sizes. That said, it isn’t your only option. Here’s how it compares to some of the market’s best ClickUp alternatives:

Project Management ClickUp Monday Wrike Smartsheet Teamwork Awork
Best For Automations Any-sized businesses Marketing-oriented businesses Classic table-like project management Time and project tracking Large teams
Starting Price $7/user/month $9/user/month $9.80/user/month $7/user/month $5.99/user/month $10/user/month
Free Version Free plan Free plan Free plan Free plan Free plan 14-day free trial
Compatibility Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android, browsers Windows, Mac, Android, iOS, browsers Windows, Mac, Android, iOS, browsers Mac, Windows, Linux, ChromeOS, iOS, Android, browsers Windows, Mac, Android, iOS, browsers Windows, Mac, Android, iOS, browsers
Top 3 Features Collaborative docs, sprint management, advanced time tracking Unlimited boards and docs, whiteboard collaboration, pivot analysis & reports Unlimited projects, tasks & subtasks, interactive Gantt charts, project blueprints Conditional form logic, unlimited sheets, forms, and reports, custom welcome & help screens Estimated time management, project budget expenses, task list templates List, board & timeline view, project recovery, autopilot

Asana vs ClickUp

If you need a simplistic project manager with minimum bugs and glitches, Asana is a better pick. However, if you’re on a budget, there’s none better than ClickUp.

Its Unlimited and Business plans cost $7 and $12 per user per month, respectively. Asana, on the other hand, costs $10.99 for the Starter plan and a whopping $24.99 for the Advanced plan.

Plus, ClickUp offers more features than Asana despite being cheaper, and although this can mean a higher learning curve, many find it well worth it.

Read More: Our Full Asana Review

ClickUp vs Monday

ClickUp is easily one of the best free project management software solutions. You get unlimited tasks (just 1,000 tasks on Monday) and automations right from the free plan itself.

If you want automation with Monday, you’ll need the Standard plan ($12/month). The storage is less on ClickUp’s free version (100MB), though, but it offers more than Monday from the first paid plan.

Overall, free or paid, many could argue that ClickUp offers more value for money. However, as we found in our Monday.com review, Monday is by far the best if you’re after a clutter-free dashboard.

Unlike ClickUp, it’s learning curve is tiny whilst still offering ample customization capabilities. ClickUp does, however, offer more customization. The choice ultimately comes down to your specific needs and budget.

Recommended Read: A Comprehensive Monday Review

ClickUp vs Notion

Notion is perfect if you’re looking for personal organization and an easy-to-use interface. The best thing about it is its library of 10,000+ templates, neatly organized into various segments.

There are 1,200+ project management templates alone that’ll help you get started in a jiffy. However, if you’re looking to automate tasks in your project management process, ClickUp is best.

It comes with 50+ pre-built automation triggers, along with an advanced custom automation option. Plus, if you have a large team, ClickUp should be your go-to choice.

Both offer a free plan. However, ClickUp offers 100MB of storage compared to Notion’s 5MB. Plus, we found ClickUp’s whiteboard easier to use compared to Notion’s Blank page.

In Notion, you have to use the command “/” and then select from a drop-down menu. In ClickUp, you get a handy toolbar on the left which you can use to drag and drop elements as you like.

To sum it up, If you’re looking for an easy brainstorming and collaboration platform, get ClickUp.

Read More: A Complete Notion Review for 2024

How We Test Project Management Tools

Our experienced team of experts has been testing tech products and software, including project management tools, for over a decade.

We’ve evaluated dozens, so we know how to look beyond the marketing blurb and find out whether a platform is really worth our readers’ time and money.

We put every single tool through 2-3 weeks of in-house evaluations where our experts try out its features first-hand to determine if they work as they should.

Next, we check if the platform offers compatible apps for various devices and whether the apps are easy to use. In addition to detailed competitor analyses, we also read user feedback on reputable sites.

All of this combined ensures we’re able to offer our readers comprehensive reviews that offer accurate insight into the usability of the platforms, where they shine, and where they fall short.

How to Choose the Best Project Management Solution

Keep these factors in mind while picking the best enterprise project management software for your individual/business needs:

PriceFeaturesScalabilityEase of UseIntegrationsCustomer Support

Needless to say, your budget is a major factor—zero in on how much you’re willing and able to spend on a project management tool. Remember, it shouldn’t break the bank. Typically a solid entry-level plan will cost you $5-10/month.

There are several free options as well, and, of course, advanced features are locked behind the paywalls of higher-end plans.

Make a list of project/task management features you’re looking for. This will help you find a plan that provides these within the budget you’ve set. The key is to strike an ideal feature-price combination—so you don’t overspend or compromise on features.

The provider you choose must be scalable, i.e. there must be enough higher-tier, more feature-packed plans to switch to as and when your business grows. You’ll want to take this into consideration as well as the cost of scaling.

The project management tool you choose must be easy to install, set up, and use. Complex learning curves hinder productivity, to put it lightly. We recommend taking advantage of any free plans or trials on offer and double-checking the providers’ online documentation.

Check the number of integrations offered by the platform. There must be support for tools you already use, such as Slack or Google Drive, for example.

Remember, some integrations are reserved for higher-tier plans. Make sure you know which integrations are most important for your business and that you don’t have to subscribe to a super expensive plan just for those integrations.

You can always run into an issue when using tech software, so make sure the provider you choose has a responsive customer support wing. Pay attention to the support timings and methods, too.

Is there live chat, email, and/or phone support? Also, the support agents should be able to quickly get back to you with an accurate answer to your query.

FAQs

Is ClickUp free?

Is ClickUp really that good?

Why not to use ClickUp?

References

Krishi Chowdhary
Tech Expert
Krishi Chowdhary
Tech Expert

Krishi Chowdhary has half a decade of experience writing buying guides and product reviews for numerous leading technology websites. He spent two years writing for Business2Community.com before joining Techopedia.com. He has a degree in Commerce and extensive experience in the technology industry. He's also the key driver behind TechReport.com's news content, delivering expertise insight into the latest tech and cybersecurity news daily.