Item: ClickUp
Rating: 8
Author: Stephanie Taale

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I use ClickUp in several ways
- My full-time business: For my business, I use it to manage my client projects, for internal operational tasks, content creation and as a resource hub (things like brand guidelines, keeping track of books I want to read, compiling market research)
- Travel blog: For my blog, I use it to plan my content and keep track of affiliates
- Personal: ClickUp was great to organise the renovation of my house

Pros and Cons

Custom views. No need to replicate projects, just duplicate a view and adjust it to your needs. Any updates you make to one view will sync with your other views
Custom fields make live so much easier as they provide additional task data without having to use descriptions and it allows you to filter your projects.
Automates repetitive steps
Dashboards because you don't need to search for what you need to work on that day. Everything is there for you in your dashboard

It can be a little hard to find features through the various menus as they only appear when you hover over them
Speed needs to be improved. It has become slower over time but I know they are working on that.
Some of the new 3.0 features that I was very excited about were put behind higher subscriptions.

Return on Investment

Time saving due to streamlined processes and less manual work
Using ClickUp for my multi-channel content plan has been a game-changer due to the automations. Just have to add the topic and new tasks are created for each channel
Reduced overwhelm because of the possibility of time blocking in ClickUp. With time estimates for each task and my time blocks, I can plan my weeks based on time capacity. No more overcommitting or feeling like I am not getting anywhere

Collaboration

I don't have a team but I have worked with sub-contracted that I added to my ClickUp to manage tasks. It was a great experience to keep working the way I always do. All I had to do was invite them to my ClickUp and assign tasks by changing a custom field. They were able to leave comments to ask questions or provide updates.

All-in-One Productivity Platform

It did not allow me to reduce the number of apps I use as I switched from one project management system to Clickup but the ease of embedding Google Docs, Google Sheets or Miro boards reduces how often you need to switch between tools, saving precious time on a daily basis

Alternatives Considered

Asana

The main pain point I had with Asana was the manual work required to plan my days effectively. The interface focuses more on individual tasks and their details, rather than providing that comprehensive bird's-eye view I was looking for. While Asana provides different project views, they are limited to each individual project, and features like the reporting tool are only available on a paid plan. The home and my tasks tabs have been slightly improved by now, but it just was not giving me the overview that I needed to keep my design projects on track and know how much work I had ahead of me for each design project.

Another hurdle with Asana was the free versus paid plans dilemma. I tried making do with the free plan, but I hit limitations left and right and felt like all the features I really needed were locked away, and I couldn't even test them out before committing to a paid plan.

Key Insights

Do you think ClickUp delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with ClickUp's feature set?

Yes

Did ClickUp live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of ClickUp go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy ClickUp again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Dubsado, Google Drive

Likelihood to Recommend

Customisation and flexibility in setup
Some other project management tools have a reputation for their flexibility, but these can get messy really quickly. While others feel a bit too rigid for my liking. The level of customisation and the features that ClickUp offers give the perfect balance between flexibility and structure, giving me enough freedom to tailor the tool to my specific needs while providing a strong foundation to work from. And the best thing to me is the ability to switch between different views such as List, Board, Calendar, or Gantt chart, with just a click.

Task Management
Within ClickUp you can determine how many layers of tasks you want and all you need to do is click the down arrow to see them. Added benefit is that subtasks can be turned into tasks. There are so many possibilities within each task with ClickUp's standard setup like:Time tracking, Checklists, Image and video attachments, Threaded comments, linking to people, tasks, and docs. Plus, the game-changer for me (this is what made me upgrade) was the use of custom fields. The flexibility this creates to sort projects based on the design phase, track progress by using a dropdown to mark design elements as in progress, on hold and done as well as use checkmarks to display if an element is approved by the client

Great tool to manage your clients and business needs, even as a solopreneur

Overall Satisfaction with ClickUp