A ClickUp Review: 11 Key Features of This Project Management Software

"What's the status of that campaign?"

"Is that ad design ready yet?"

"The reports are due tomorrow. What are we missing?"

These are common questions that swirl around in small- to mid-sized businesses. Whether tracking your marketing or wrangling other projects, keeping tabs can be tough.

That's where project management software comes in, with popular names like ClickUp, Monday, Trello and Asana. No matter what you choose, they can help. After all, while only 22% of companies use this type of software, GoRemotely reports 77% of all "high-performing" projects use it.

If you're considering ClickUp, our review has you covered. Full disclosure: We at Zoe Marketing & Communications have used ClickUp since 2019 — two years after its launch — to manage our nitty-gritty. Since then, we've found plenty of advantages and a few hiccups, too.

In this blog we'll briefly define ClickUp and then cover 11 key features, including:

1. The structure of ClickUp

2. Task management

3. Workflows

4. Team communication and collaboration

5. Customizability for user

6. Integrations for outside apps

7. Time management tools

8. Goal setting and tracking

9. Automations

10. Pricing

11. Support

By the end of this ClickUp review, you'll feel grounded in how it works, including its perks and challenges. And you can decide if it's the right productivity software for you.

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What ClickUp is (in a nutshell)

ClickUp is one of the leading project management software options, founded in 2019. With web access and desktop/mobile apps, it offers a well-designed way to handle your company's — or clients' — ongoing and special projects. You can even create personal things-to-do lists.

It's known for its high customizability, communication methods and view formats. As we'll explore, those layers offer a lot of freedom. But they could be more than what you need.

1. The structure of ClickUp

At its core, ClickUp includes a six-layer hierarchy. Here's an overview, plus a visual.

1. Workspaces: These are the highest-level "containers" for everything. It could also be your company name, client, project or department, depending on your needs.

2. Spaces: A second layer that separates different areas of your company/project/etc.

3. Lists: This collects related tasks. It can be a place to store tasks for a project, like launching a new website, or to place tasks that need to be done in a particular order.

4. Folders: An option that lets you group lists together. For example, you might round up lists for one client into one folder.

5. Tasks/Subtasks: This is where it gets action-oriented. Each task is a step, complete with an assignee, deadline and more. Need more detail? Subtasks have you covered.

6. Nested Subtask: An even more detailed layer of steps for a subtask, if needed.

There are a lot of options here (for comparison, Asana has 5, Monday has 4 and Trello only 3). 

That's a boon if your company manages complex projects. Having this many layers allows you to "drill down," track accountability and make it more of a live process.

But it can be overwhelming if you prefer simpler functionality. Because there are so many choices, ClickUp can have a steeper learning curve than its competitors.

The good news is that just because the tools are there doesn't mean you must use them all. You can use what you need in ClickUp — and the layers are there if you grow into them.

2. Task management

Expect this level of choice to follow you into the all-important tasks. You can manage projects, from simple to complex, with various options. A few essential ones:

• Project templates: Pick from 100+ choices tailored by industry, complete with pre-built task lists you can easily edit as needed. Examples range from marketing campaigns to event planning. It's also easy to create and duplicate your own templates.

• Recurring tasks: You can set up to repeat daily, weekly, monthly or at whatever intervals you need.

• Custom fields: Add as many as you need to any task. For instance, at Zoe, we've added multiple fields for our client approval process.

• Prioritization: Assign a level. Options include none, low, medium and high.

A caveat: It's easy to duplicate and tweak tasks, but setting them up does take time. You may have to decide what's worthy of being a project in ClickUp to keep things efficient.

And again, it takes time to learn — so training your team and getting their buy-in is essential. But the level of specificity can help keep complicated projects on track.

3. Workflows

What's a project's status? ClickUp's workflow options help your team visualize the progress using a "Kanban" view. It shows which tasks are at what stage in the process.

As a default, options include "to do," "in progress" and "done." There's also a "backlog" choice, if you haven't prioritized a task yet. Need to be more specific? Replace it with your own categories.

Workflows are a cleaner way of informing people vs. pinging them via email or Slack. They also help busy leaders see a project's status at-a-glance.

4. Team communication and collaboration

Teamwork gets plenty of attention in ClickUp. You'll find the basics, like assigning a person to a task and setting deadlines (with start and finish dates, and down to exact times), plus:

• Dependencies: If a task "depends" on another person finishing a different task first, you can link those tasks. The second is assigned only after the first is complete.

• Watchers: Want to make sure someone is informed? Just curious about a task or project? Assign "watchers" to receive updates, even if they aren't doing the tasks.

• Comments: There's a dedicated column for these in any task. Tag a teammate, or even assign a comment to them (they can click "resolve" when done). Comments are editable, luckily, and you can respond with a wide range of emoji reactions.

• Attachments: For any images or documents you need to share, load them to the task or appropriate area. They live in a dedicated space to the lower left of your screen (on a desktop).

• Permission-controlled guests: You can invite either 5 or 10 outside guests to collaborate — plus 2 to 5 more guests per Workspace member. 

• Chat view: Think of it as the comments section, but more real-time. It can pull in attachments, links and tasks and even supports video and voice calls.

If you already use outside software like Slack, the chat view might not be as useful (to name one possibility). But you can always scale down and use what's most helpful.

5. Customizability for users

If you're involved in many projects, ClickUp's notifications get overwhelming in a hurry when left in default settings. Any completed or assigned task might land you an email update or desktop notification if you're using the app.

Fortunately, each user can control that in their notifications center. Get constant updates or daily or weekly roundups or nothing; it's up to you.

Where ClickUp is a powerhouse is "views." Users get 15+ options to tailor how they view their tasks. Odds are good there's something for anyone. A few top examples:

• List view: A simple list of tasks you can filter by assignee, priority, due date and more.

• Board view: Displays tasks based on status in a column formatting.

• Calendar view: Populates a calendar with your tasks and projects. 

• Gantt view: Offers a timeline-based view — a very visual way to see progress.

Granted, you won't use most views. But plenty of thought has gone into different learning and processing styles here.

6. Integrations for outside apps

There's a good chance your existing communication and productivity software will sync up with ClickUp. And that's essential. After all, you don't work exclusively within this app!

ClickUp offers about 50 native integrations. These include standard tools like Slack, Toggl, Google Drive, Dropbox, Outlook, Vimeo, YouTube, Zoom, Chrome, Zendesk and Calendly.

Need more? You'll likely find it if you link to Zapier, which unlocks 1,000+ more apps. ClickUp even imports everything from your old project management software, if you're switching.

7. Time management tools

Another handy feature of ClickUp is its built-in time-tracking tool. With a simple click of the "play" button on a small timer, you can record how long it takes to finish each task. Ultimately, it tallies the total time a project took to complete.

This helps if you're billing clients or trying to determine your team's productivity — or how long it actually takes to do something. That can help streamline processes or identify where you need more resources. These can also be manually added or edited.

8. Goal setting and tracking

ClickUp's "Goals" section lets you set high-level objectives at the individual, team or company-wide level. You may want to increase your monthly enewsletter subscribers or annual revenue by a certain percentage. You can set that here.

Then, you'll create "Targets" to hit, to work toward achieving that goal. There are four targets:

• Number: You can track increases or decreases between a range of numbers.

• True/false: This is a simple "done/not done" checkbox, for simpler targets.

• Currency: You track ups and downs for a money-related goal.

• Task: Create (or pipe-in existing) tasks, subtasks or lists.

If you're on the free plan, you get 100 goals max. All other plans offer unlimited, but you'll need the Business plan (more on all this in #10) to get folders — which you might need after a while.

9. Automations in ClickUp

You can set up all the automations you need in ClickUp, too. The app can automate over 50 actions and offers 100+ templates to get you started.

For instance, you can alert specific team members if a particular project is finished. Or automatically update a status or priority when a task is marked complete. Common general areas to automate include task and project management, along with time tracking.

10. Pricing

Not surprisingly, ClickUp also offers quite a few pricing options (variety is definitely its game). You'll save 45% when you pay annually, but there are also monthly choices. At a glance:

• Forever Free: Ideal for personal use. You'll get unlimited tasks, but you're limited in some of your views and storage (only 100 MB).

• Unlimited: Geared at small teams, it's $5/member/month ($9 if paid monthly). It unlocks unlimited storage, integrations, guests with permissions and custom fields, plus email.

• Business: Best for mid-size teams, it's $12/member/month ($19 if paid monthly). It includes a variety of advanced settings, goals folders and more.

• Business Plus: Crafted for multiple teams. You'll pay $19/member/month ($29 if paid monthly). It features priority support, custom permissions and team sharing.

• Enterprise: This one's for large teams; you'll need to contact ClickUp sales for pricing. It has advanced permissions, white labeling and lots more.

For fine-point details, see the image below or browse ClickUp's current pricing page. Also: Consider whether all your team members need to be on board. In some cases, this could lower your needs and price.

11. Support

ClickUp has a formidable warehouse of digital resources. This includes its University, which packs in live training and even certificates. Plus, find videos, a help center, webinars, demos, a glossary, onboarding and a community. Phew!

If you need more, there's chatbot, or you can request to work with a consultant. Unfortunately, it phased out its live chat in 2022, and there's no phone support. But its other options should have most companies covered.

Next steps for picking project management software

Project management systems can catapult your company's productivity and improve communication. In this ClickUp review, we covered its many capabilities and brass-tack details like pricing and support.

The bottom line? ClickUp is a powerful software packed with customizations. If you're looking for a lot of detail, it won't disappoint. But either way, expect a learning curve — and get cozy with those online resources to unlock its fullest potential.

If you want to get more productive in managing your marketing, talk to us. Zoe Marketing & Communications can put its 15+ years of digital marketing experience to work for you.

Still getting organized? Get your bearings by discovering how digital marketing can help you achieve your business goals.