Item: ClickUp
Rating: 3
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use ClickUp for everything we can do like time and project management, problem tickets, and resolution. We built our Wiki in it. It contains our test plans, onboarding, and personnel records. We use it to run marketing as well. We require ClickUp for people to be paid. We use all the features we can. I've hired their professional services. The real problem is there are no reports. You can't calculate anything in ClickUp. You can't get any details without exporting the information to Microsoft Excel.

Pros and Cons

Time tracking
Allowing detailed level tasks and estimates
A single record system
Wiki

Reporting doesn't exist, in my opinion.
Integration to reporting tools doesn't exist, I believe.
There are no calculations in the fields. ClickUp does not even do sums I've found.

Return on Investment

We created processes and grew on ClickUp
We now spend 40 hours a month trying to bill out of it.
We've gone from productive to unproductive.
I hired professional services. They want to show, not build, I believe.

Collaboration

It's not a brainstorming tool. It works well with SharePoint, MS teams, and our tools. We are disciplined at putting things in but reports don't work anymore. Instead, we use our MS Teams environment and embed links. I think there are a number of ways you could use it to collaborate more than we do, so I might be wrong.

All-in-One Productivity Platform

No. The integrations are minimal at best in my opinion. I believe the APIs are poor and it isn't an open system. Even the integrations advertised are not real in my opinion. The only way to get stuff out of ClickUp that works is to export information to Microsoft Excel I've found. This along with reporting is the weakest point of the product I believe. I've decided to change to Wrike. It's more expensive but my organization at 30 people can't continue to operate without more advanced functionality around reporting, integrations, deeper management, and visibility.

Alternatives Considered

Wrike, Harvest, Forecast and GanttPRO

We are moving to Wrike for its superior reporting in my opinion. Our second choice was Forecast. Calculations can be done inside of fields. We can get instant sums and do customer reporting. The stand reports provide the basic minimum reporting of hours billable, detailed task reporting, tracking hours, and budgeting so we can bill and load balancing. . We needed reports that are a push of a button ready. We need to project our workload at least a month ahead. We decided to put our internal non-billable operations like marketing, and administration onto Harvest. Wrike is higher priced. We evened it out by not putting everyone on it. Marketing projects don't need 4 level deep task management nor the advanced features. Harvest is cost effective and still has reporting that ClickUp doesn't I've found. Forecast was a close second place choice.

Key Insights

Do you think ClickUp delivers good value for the price?

Not sure

Are you happy with ClickUp's feature set?

Did ClickUp live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of ClickUp go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy ClickUp again?

Other Software Used

OnePageCRM, SharpSpring from Constant Contact

Likelihood to Recommend

If you want to run projects at a 2 tier level, want simple graphics to show you how you are doing and one place to keep everything, ClickUp is great. If you need to do detailed billing for a client with subtasks 3 or 4 levels deep I believe this is not the product for you. If you want to do load balancing in detail 4 weeks ahead, this is not the product for you, in my opinion.

Products Replaced

Yes - In the end, we knew we were growing and should have bit off the better functionality with the bigger price tag of Wrike I believe.

Key Differentiators

Price
Product Features
Product Usability

We evaluated a number of products. We used ZohoOne. We still use MS Project for clients, Infinity, Harvest, and more. In the end, ClickUp's pricing was attractive. I thought that as we grew the integrations advertised would get me to the reporting I needed. I found this was true. I hired their professional services and although they were very professional I believe ClickUp just couldn't deliver on the reports.

Evaluation Lessons Learned

Every small business is faced with cost vs functionality decisions. I should have taken a longer view for the functionality. I didn't test the advertised integrations. "Trust but verify," Ronald Reagan said. While the costs would have been higher I wish we had gone with Wrike, but in all honesty the price drove the decision.

ClickUp Review

Overall Satisfaction with ClickUp