Introduction
Monday.com and ClickUp are two of the big players in the crowded task and project management Saas market. Both are packed full of features, easy to use, and offer free options, with reasonable pricing plans. Choosing between the two for your team or company can be difficult, so read on to see a head-to-head comparison of the two to see which one suits your team.
What is Monday.com?
Monday.com started out focusing on task management, and it is now Monday.com Work OS, a customisable platform that includes task and project management, a Sales CRM and workflow, a marketing platform, and a platform tailored to development teams.
What is ClickUp?
ClickUp is an all-in-one project and task management tool with a large number of features. It is newer than Monday.com, and the feature set is rapidly growing.
Try Monday.com or ClickUp for Free
Pricing
If we compare the standard package for 10 seats, Monday.com costs $100 ($10 per seat) per month, and ClickUp costs $50 ($5 per seat) per month. This comparison is based on the standard set of features, since ClickUp uses different names for their packages.
Both offer 5 levels of pricing, from a limited free version, to Enterprise pricing. Both require a fee per seat (per person).
| Monday.com | ClickUp |
| Individual (Free) | Free |
| Basic $8 | Unlimited $5 |
| Standard $10 | Business $12 |
| Pro $166 | Business Plus $19 |
| Enterprise (negotiable) | Enterprise (negotiable) |
Task Management
Monday.com
Monday.com has long been one of the big players in this space, taking teams from Excel sheets, and post-it notes to a flexible and visual solution. Monday.com still offers a mature and flexible way to manage tasks, and to see the work for teams and organisations in different ways, such as GANTT and Kanban boards.
ClickUp
ClickUp provides much of the functionality that Monday.com does, but the big selling point for ClickUp is the different ways that tasks can be viewed. We described some of the views and their use in the article ClickUp Task Views and When to Use Them. Apart from the typical timeline and Kanban views, ClickUp offer a list, calendar, table, MindMap and map view.
Time Management
Monday.com
Monday.com offers time tracking so you can track and report on the time taken to complete tasks and subtasks. If you want to go one step further, you can use the data in a formula column to calculate the expected cost by multiplying it by the hourly rate, for example). It is also possible to export the data to export for further analysis if needed. The time used for a take can be entered manually or you can use a timer.
ClickUp
ClickUp provides time tracking by way of the Time Tracking ClickApp, but it must be enabled by an administrator. Once enabled, the ClickApp users can track and report on their time through ClickApp. This is useful for teams and freelancers that charge their customers by the hour (e.g. they have a “Time and Materials” agreement). Some advanced options such as labelling the time reported, or marking the time as billable, are only available on the Business Plan.
Time management functions help users manage their priorities in ClickApp. Examples of time management functions available in ClickUp are:
- Set start and end dates for tasks, and set time estimates
- Dependencies
- Milestones and goals
- Multiple views of tasks to suit your team and way of working
- Reminders and alerts
Collaboration
Monday.com
Monday.com primarily relies on external integrations in this area (apart from collaborating on the tasks. For example, you can communicate via the tasks on the board, but if you want to chat, then integrating with a tool such as Slack is the best way to go.
ClickUp
ClickUp, being the all-in-one tool it promotes itself to be, has built-in collaboration tools such as real-time co-editing on docs, and real-time chat. See our article on replacing Slack with ClickUp for more information. Updates on tasks happen in real-time. It also has a built-in whiteboard and a mind-mapping function.
Automation
Both Monday.com and ClickUp offer solutions for automation that don’t require any coding. You will however need to use your logic and understanding of the product and your team’s workflow to utilise the feature.
Monday.com
Automations in Monday.com can be triggered when there is a change to a task. When this happens, Monday.com can perform actions like notifying a team member or manager, moving to another status, alerting the task owner, sending emails, etc. Like ClickUp it is simple and powerful.
ClickUp
Automation is achieved through using triggers (when something happens, like a change of status to a task), actions (what should happen when the status is changed), and conditions (when the task status is changed to particular status). Integrate this with external tools and you’ve got a simple but powerful tool.
Integrations
Monday.com
Monday.com and ClickUp are similar here, although ClickUp claims to integration with more external applications.
Monday.com integrates with Outlook, Teams, Slack, Dropbox, Zoom, GMail, Adobe Creative Cloud, amongst other, and many more through Zapier. Monday.com also have an API, allowing you to access and modify data via the GraphQL database.
ClickUp
ClickUp integrates with other tools through their own native integrations, and through Zapier.
Native integrations include GitHub and GitLab, Toggl, Figma, Loom and BitBucket. Zapier integration offers hundreds of integration possibilities. ClickUp has also developed an API, so other services can use the API to integrate with ClickUp.
What is Better?
ClickUp packs more features into their packages, so many features that you might not need all of them – or you can take the time to replace other tools you are using with the ClickUp tool. For example, ClickUp has whiteboards now (albeit a limited number unless you are on the business plan), so you could potentially replace Miro or Mural.
Monday.com differentiates itself through its customisable Work OS platform, where it can be setup to be a CRM for sales teams, tailored for the workflow of marketing and creative teams, and for development teams. The standard setup is the classic task management.
To answer which is better is not easy. A good way to think about it is to think about the needs of you, your team and your company. Do you need a solution that can be tailored to different departments? Monday.com is probably the best fit. Do you need an all-in-one solution that includes a whiteboard, communication, and lots of different task views? ClickUp may be a good solution.
Comparison Chart
| Monday.com | ClickUp | |
| Free Version? | Up to 2 team members | 1 person only |
| Project Management features | Yes | Yes |
| Agile taskflow | Yes | Yes |
| Rolled up view of multiple projects | Yes (via a ‘high-level’ board) | Yes |
| Multiple Projects | Yes | Yes |
| Multiple Teams | Yes | Yes |
| Alerting Options | Automations Calendar Integation | Automation |
| Messaging | Yes (using @ mentions) | Yes |
| Financial Tracking and Report | Yes | Yes |
| Mobile App | Yes | Yes |
| Budget Tracking and Reporting | Yes | Yes |
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