Skip to Content
Skip to Content
  • Jan 18, 2023
  • 21 Min

Top 10 ClickUp Alternatives and Competitors in 2023

slider-img

If you’re a project management nerd like us, you probably already have more project management (PM) tools in your arsenal than actual projects to manage. Don’t feel bad, we’ve seen it happen before. And it’s normal. Your projects are like your babies: you only want what’s best for them. And if you’re here reading this, there’s a good chance you’ve already tried ClickUp to manage some of your projects, but something doesn’t quite click (pun intended!) and you’re looking for the best ClickUp alternative on the market.

So worry not, our young PM padawan, because in this post we’re going to tell you all you need to know about ClickUp (in case you’ve missed something!) and the top ClickUp alternatives you need to consider in 2023.

What is ClickUp?
Main Features of ClickUp
ClickUp Pricing and Limits
Why you Need a ClickUp Alternative
How to Choose the Right ClickUp Competitor for You and Your Team
Top 10 ClickUp Alternatives in 2023
1. Nimbus Platform
2. Taskade
3. Monday
4. Notion
5. Trello
6. Asana
7. Infinity
8. SmartSuite
9. Ora
10. Blue
Let’s Wrap This Up

What is ClickUp?

ClickUp is an all-in-one project management tool which aims to unify all the PM features you might need into one single platform: tasks, docs, goals, whiteboards, dashboards, chat, etc.

On its website, ClickUp claims to be “one app to replace them all”. However, this Lord of the Rings kind of claim does not resonate with everyone using ClickUp. We ourselves are more into Harry Potter, to be honest. And, FYI, not everyone enjoys a 10-page-long description of a tree, Mr Tolkien!

So despite ClickUp being a masterpiece of a project management tool and having raised an impressive Series C, there are still people like yourself looking for ClickUp alternatives. You aren’t alone, we promise.

Main Features of ClickUp

As we mentioned above, ClickUp does quite a bit of everything when it comes to handling your team tasks:

  • Overviews: ClickUp allows you to set and manage the hierarchy of your projects and tasks as you wish, making it relatively easy to choose or build the right structure to fit the needs of your projects and team. With ClickUp’s Everything view, you can find whatever you need inside your projects, regardless of where it is located in the hierarchy.
  • Views: ClickUp boasts one of the widest range of views for project tasks. Tables, lists, timelines, calendars, embeds, forms, mind maps. You name it — ClickUp most likely has it.
  • ClickApps: You can customize your projects in ClickUp by toggling off whatever functionality you might not need. This is a nice feature in ClickUp because it allows you to make things simpler and adapt the tool to the characteristics of your project.
  • Automations: The latest trend in PM tools are automations, and ClickUp has over 50 actions, triggers and conditions that you can use either to build your own automations or as part of their ready-made automation recipes.
  • Templates: With ClickUp you can use pre-built project templates to save time and get on with what really matters: work.
  • Integrations: ClickUp integrates with over 1000 tools, which is very convenient if you’re already using other apps to handle some aspects of your business projects and need that information inside your PM platform.
  • Collaboration: ClickUp allows you and your team to collaborate on any project and keep everyone engaged and on the same page. In fact, collaboration is one of ClickUp’s main strengths, with comments, chat, an email inbox and more.
  • Docs: With ClickUp, you can create detailed documentation for your team to access and share whenever necessary. You can also connect documents and tasks to include them in your workflow.
  • Reporting dashboards: With ClickUp dashboards, you can see how your project is going thanks a to a visual representation of your main goals and KPIs. With charts, graphs, timelines and the like, you can keep track of your team’s progress easily.
  • Time management: With this native ClickUp feature, you can check your employee’s workload to prevent bottlenecks and allocate resources more appropriately.

As you can see, ClickUp aims to provide you all the key features and tools to manage your projects efficiently, and for many, it is the first choice when it comes to PM software.

ClickUp Pricing and Limits

ClickUp offers 5 pricing tiers to choose from, starting at $0. To be fair, their pricing compares well to other alternatives out there.

Let’s take a closer look at ClickUp’s plans and limits:

  • Free forever ($0/month): This ClickUp plan is quite generous, as you can collaborate with others even on their free plan. However, it’s limited to 5 workspace only, so if your business involves splitting your projects into different workspaces, you might need to upgrade. You’re also limited by 100 automations per month.
  • Unlimited (starting at $5/member/month): One of the most interesting things about this ClickUp plan is that we jump from 100MB storage on their free plan to unlimited storage. Also, on this plan you get custom fields, guests with permissions, form views and agile reporting. However, automations are not unlimited, as you get only 1,000 automation runs per month. This might be enough for freelancers or small businesses.
  • Business (starting at $12/member/month): ClickUp’s Business plan, which is probably more suitable for larger companies, introduces a much larger number of automation runs (10,000), as well as advanced time tracking and workload management.
  • Business Plus (starting at $19/member/month): While similar to the regular Business tier, with this plan you can now create custom roles inside ClickUp and even get access to training webinars and priority support, among other things. Also, the number of automations jumps to 25,000.
  • Enterprise (custom pricing): ClickUp’s Enterprise plan is the only tier which offers white label, but the cost will definitely not suit every business out there. They don’t even mention it on their pricing page!

What are the Main ClickUp Drawbacks?

Just like Sauron’s Great Ring of Power had the tiny inconvenience that it would corrupt and consume you, ClickUp is also not perfect. So let’s take a look at some of ClickUp’s main disadvantages from a user point of view:

  • No custom domain and white label: If you’re sharing projects with your customers and want to look really professional by offering a white label solution, you’ll need an alternative to ClickUp. ClickUp’s branding is all over the place, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but a white label alternative will certainly make you and your company look better.
  • Complex and overwhelming: While ClickUp’s user interface seems friendly at first, you can soon drown in a myriad of toggles and checkboxes which can feel overwhelming and unnecessarily complex. The ClickUp team even created a “ClickUp University” to teach you how to use it. Do we really need another degree to learn to use ClickUp? Please, no. We’d rather just find a simpler alternative to ClickUp.
  • Cannot work 100% offline with ClickUp: No internet connection? Careful with your edits. As their own help center specifies, “You cannot edit tasks while in Offline Mode, which includes creating subtasks“. Some of the ClickUp alternatives we recommend later on in this article do work fully offline, so keep on reading.
  • ClickUp’s Unlimited plan is very… limited?: Dear ClickUp, why call a plan unlimited if almost the only unlimited thing is storage? It seems like a gimmick to get you hooked to their most affordable paid plan, only to realize that you need to upgrade to Business if you want more mind maps, whiteboards, timelines, etc.
  • Demanding performance: Since it’s such a massive app, the ClickUp platform can sometimes run slow on older computers, as it probably is a bit of a RAM hogger. If you’re running ClickUp on Chrome and on an older computer… well, let’s just say you can take more than one coffee break. If you’d rather avoid this nuisance, you can try some lighter ClickUp alternatives we recommend in this article.
  • Mobile vs web app: ClickUp’s mobile app doesn’t feature all of the functionalities of the web app (e.g.: the form view), which can sometimes be frustrating while you’re on the go if you need to do something in particular that is missing on your phone’s app. Although this might happen with other alternatives, it all depends of whether the functionality you need is available or not in that competitor’s app.

While some of these drawbacks might not be reason to run away, they can certainly build up and get you looking for a better ClickUp alternative.

Why You Need a ClickUp Alternative

There are many reasons why you might want to consider using an alternative to ClickUp for your project management needs. Maybe you’re looking for an alternative that’s more tailored to your exact needs, or one with more (or simply, different) features. Or maybe you just don’t like the way ClickUp works and you’re looking for an alternative. You don’t need to explain yourself!

Here are three specific reasons why you might want to consider using an alternative project management tool to ClickUp:

  • You or your team aren’t particularly techie: Needing a PM tool does not necessarily imply that you are techie. If you or your staff don’t feel comfortable with complex software, ClickUp is probably not for you and you’d be better off with a ClickUp alternative with a less cluttered interface and fewer options to manage.
  • You want a PM alternative that suits your needs better: One of the biggest complaints about project management tools like ClickUp is that it’s not particularly well suited for certain types of projects. For example, imagine you need to share your work with your clients but don’t particularly want them to know that you are using ClickUp. There’s no way to prevent this unless you opt for their Enterprise plan, which is likely to exceed most people’s budgets. And in that case, we recommend a more affordable white label alternative on the market.
  • Too many features: ClickUp does a lot, but that’s not necessarily good. Having to decide what to use and what not to use can be a waste of time if your projects are not that demanding of a project management tool. In that case, just like we talked about in the Monday alternatives article, you should choose a ClickUp alternative that feels less overwhelming and with which can get your projects up and running faster.

Whatever the reasons, it’s important to consider an alternative project management tool if you’re unhappy with ClickUp. There are a number of great competitors available on the market, as we will see in a minute, and choosing the right one can make a big difference in your project management workflow. Trust us!

What to Look for in a ClickUp Alternative?

If it was up to us to look for a ClickUp alternative, we would look for a solution with the following characteristics:

  • Clear and uncluttered interface: This seems to be one of the main issues with ClickUp, so finding an alternative with an interface that is easier to navigate is a must.
  • Custom domain: Do you want your ClickUp alternative under a custom domain to showcase your awesome company? We think it’s a great idea, but it’s not possible with ClickUp.
  • White label client portal: Find a ClickUp alternative that allows you to create a white label customer portal to share your work and deliverables with your clients.
  • Lightweight and fast performance: Since ClickUp can be resource-demanding on older computers, maybe you should opt for an alternative which doesn’t require much to perform optimally.
  • Native apps with offline work capability: Nowadays, this is basic. We’re often on the go and not always connected to the Internet, so any ClickUp alternative that offers this is a big plus.
  • Great content management features: If you’re working online, you’re probably creating blog posts, SOPs, wikis and articles, so we recommend finding a ClickUp alternative that has awesome capabilities to manage content.
  • Integrated chat and video meeting features: If you want true collaboration, your alternative to ClickUp must include live chat and video.
  • Pre-built project templates: Get your projects launched in no time by finding a ClickUp competitor that has varied project templates that you can use immediately without much fiddling with the setup.

We’re not saying ClickUp doesn’t have some of these things, we’re simply listing some crucial aspects to bear in mind when thinking of an alternative.