monday.com vs ClickUp: Side-by-Side Comparison

When it comes to project management solutions, monday.com and ClickUp are two of the best we’ve tested. However, you’ll find monday.com’s simple approach is easier to get to grips with than ClickUp’s raft of useful – but complex – features. And, in a world where digital downtime spells disaster for most businesses, monday.com’s 24/7 live support is highly assuring to have on hand.

monday.com (4.7/5) – Easier to use, with great customer support
ClickUp (4.5/5) – Better for collaboration & complex task management

monday.com’s tidy interface and quick setup process mean you won’t have to spend long tinkering with different settings to get up and running. This helped it score 4.5/5 on our ease of use tests compared to ClickUp’s 3.9/5 – monday.com was the tool that really blew us away with its user experience. It’ll be a good fit for your team if you’re looking for a significant organizational boost and more clarity over your project delivery. However, ClickUp scores higher for overall functionality 4.6/5 than any other project management software, and will be a better bet if you’re going to be managing really complicated tasks that require a lot of back-and-forth between team members.

If it’s value for money you’re most concerned about, ClickUp is also the better option. ClickUp offers a solid free plan and feature-rich paid plans at affordable price points, which is perfect if you’re looking to shave down costs. However, Teamwork’s Starter plan is just $5.99 per user, per month, which makes it cheaper than both ClickUp and monday.com.

In this guide:

• monday.com vs ClickUp: Head to Head
• Best Value: ClickUp
• Best for Ease of Use: monday.com
• Best for Business Features: ClickUp
• Best for Security: monday.com
• Best for Customer Support: monday.com
• monday.com vs ClickUp: What’s New?
• Should You Switch to monday.com or ClickUp?
• Alternatives to monday.com and ClickUp
• Verdict: Which is Better?
• monday.com vs ClickUp: FAQs

monday.com vs ClickUp: Head to Head

If you’ve been browsing the web for project management tools, you’ve probably seen the names monday.com and ClickUp crop up a lot — and for good reason. In terms of unique business features and usability, both solutions are second to none.

One of the best things about both of these offerings is that they can be used by pretty much anyone, thanks to their flexible pricing structure, intuitive software, and a broad range of features.

However, there are still quite a few, important differences – which are all the more important if you’re already using one of these two providers and you’re trying to decide whether switching is worth it, or even cost-effective.

• monday.com will be better for general project management use, and a wider variety of teams. For example, if you’re a small business or a small team running one or two projects simultaneously, and want an organizational boost without a flurry of complicated features to learn how to use, monday.com will be your best bet.
• ClickUp is a powerful, all-encompassing work management tool with more complex task management features and a wider range of collaboration tools. It’s more of a Work OS than monday.com. This would suit medium-to-large teams managing multiple projects, or multiple teams working on lots of projects.

That being said, for smaller businesses or sole traders on a tight budget, ClickUp may be more appropriate. This is because ClickUp’s first paid plan is more affordable than monday.com’s, and they don’t require a user minimum. ClickUp’s free plan and first paid plan are more powerful than monday.com’s comparable offerings.

But ClickUp and monday.com’s price point isn’t their only distinguishing feature. Below we discuss some other key differences between the two.

What sets monday.com and ClickUp apart?

• Design: Both applications are designed well. However, in comparison to monday.com’s, recently-updated smooth interface, ClickUp’s UI might feel a little crowded and overwhelming, especially for new users.
• Pricing: ClickUp’s free plan is much better than monday.com’s free plan. monday.com’s first paid plan is more expensive than ClickUp’s first paid plan, but its “Standard” projects plan ($12 per user, per month) is the same as ClickUp’s $12 per user, per month Business plan.
• Customer support: monday.com offers amazing round-the-clock support, both via email and a real-time chat function. In comparison, ClickUp’s customer support options are a little basic in comparison.
• Native whiteboard: Both of these platforms used to have online whiteboards for brainstorming, but monday.com is now retiring theirs and directing users to a dedicated whiteboard product.
• AI Assistants: ClickUp’s AI assistant costs $5 per user, per month and isn’t available on the free plan, whereas monday.com’s is available on all plans, but is currently in Beta.

monday.com highlights

monday.com is a cloud-based platform that allows users to manage projects and teams in the most streamlined way possible. Developed in 2010 as an internal tool for Wix, the product now serves over 100,000 businesses worldwide — and its use is growing day by day.

Due to the simple and visually engaging design of its platform, minimal training is required for staff members. This makes monday.com more suitable for teams that are new to project management software compared to ClickUp, which offers slightly less user-friendly software.

As you can see from the image below, the Kanban board view is really simple, yet really clear – it’s not too cluttered, but all the information you need for a top-level overview of the status of tasks is included:

The Kanban board view in monday.com. Image: Tech.co’s testing process

monday.com’s project management software makes delivering projects simple, whether you’re spearheading a global operation or running something a little more modest. However, the solution can help you to do far more than just manage projects, with the operating system also offering sophisticated pipeline management, marketing, product roadmap, video production, and recruitment tools.

ClickUp highlights

ClickUp is a cloud-based project management tool that’s been serving teams since 2016. Unlike monday.com, which prioritizes transparency over everything else, ClickUp’s focus is on productivity. To help users be as productive as possible, the product combines a raft of useful features on one centralized platform, including spreadsheets, to-do lists, notepads, and time trackers.

The Gantt chart view in ClickUp. Image: Tech.co’s testing process

Similar to monday.com, ClickUp is cloud-based, meaning that users can access the application anywhere with an internet connection. ClickUp’s cloud compatibility also means that companies don’t need to host their data locally, saving them money and resources.

ClickUp also lets users view their project progression in multiple different ways, offering them a flexible and dynamic perspective on their work. From Gantt to Mindmap and everything in between, the product actually boasts over 15 customizable project views. That’s more than any other software of its kind.

Best Value: ClickUp

monday.com vs ClickUp is a difficult matchup on this front, because both are affordable project management tools with plans for businesses on tight budgets. But when the two are put head to head, ClickUp is slightly better value for money.

In terms of available features and user limits, ClickUp’s first paid plan is second to none. Retailing at $7 per user, per month, ClickUp’s cheapest paid plan (Unlimited) is more affordable and more powerful than monday.com’s $9 per user, per month Basic Projects plan. The Unlimited plan is more comparable to monday.com’s Standard Projects plan ($12 per user, per month), and includes features like time tracking and unlimited storage. For businesses looking to up their productivity on a budget, ClickUp’s free and Unlimited plans can be real lifesavers.

However, while ClickUp’s offering is more affordable overall, this isn’t to say monday.com’s solution isn’t great value for money. monday.com’s Pro plan ($19 per user, per month) costs more than ClickUp’s Business package ($12 per user, per month), but offers a cleaner interface. Both of these plans are geared toward medium-sized teams.

All things considered, we still think ClickUp wins on overall value. It’s also better value than Asana, Wrike, and Smartsheet’s pricing plans. But with monday.com’s offering being extremely compelling, it’s no surprise that its price tag slightly exceeds that of ClickUp’s. Moreover, the price of both solutions increases if users choose to pay monthly. Therefore, if you’re serious about getting the best deal possible for your business, we would recommend paying for the plans on an annual basis.

monday.com pricing plans

Currently, monday.com offers four basic plans. Read on to learn more about them, or see our full monday.com pricing and features guide for an even more detailed overview.

Individual Plan: monday.com’s only free plan is available for up to two users. The limited plan offers limited customer support and no automation or integrations. However, those on the plan can benefit from 500GB of storage and unlimited boards.

Basic plan: monday.com’s stripped-back plan currently retails at $9 per user, per month, when charged annually. This plan can be used by an unlimited amount of users to carry out an unlimited number of projects. 24/7 support is also offered alongside a storage limit of up to 5GB per user.

Standard plan: This plan includes everything featured in the basic plan, with an additional 20GB of storage, guest access, and a 250-action per month limit on integrations and automation. monday.com’s Standard Plan is available for $12 per user, per month, when charged annually.

Pro plan: monday.com’s Pro Plan contains everything in the Standard Plan, alongside time tracking tools, flexible chart views, and a 25,000 automation and integration limit. This plan also lets users create dashboards that combine up to 10 boards. It’s available for $19 per user, per month, when charged annually.

Enterprise plan: monday.com’s most comprehensive plan is designed for big and growing businesses. It offers custom onboarding, premium support, advanced analytic and reporting tools, and scalable automations and integrations. Prices for this plan are available on request.

ClickUp pricing plans

ClickUp’s pricing structure consists of five basic plans and five different price points. We break them down below:

ClickUp Free Forever: ClickUp’s Free Forever plan offers 24/7 support, up to 100MB of storage, and lots of useful features including collaborative docs, whiteboards, time tracking, real-time chat, and in-app recording.

ClickUp Unlimited: As the name suggests, ClickUp’s most basic paid plan offers unlimited storage, integrations, and dashboards — and is available to an uncapped amount of users. ClickUp Unlimited can be secured for $7 per user, per month, when charged annually.

ClickUp Business: ClickUp Business contains everything in the Unlimited plan, alongside advanced time tracking, workload management, public sharing, and goal-finding tools. The plan is available for $12 per user, per month, when charged annually.

ClickUp Enterprise: ClickUp Enterprise is the provider’s most generous plan. It features everything in ClickUp’s Business Plus plan, in addition to access to managed services, white labeling functions, unlimited custom roles, and default personal views. Prices for ClickUp Enterprise are available on request.

monday.com vs ClickUp: which has the best free plan?

Not every business will have a budget for project management tools. If you’re looking to manage projects with a complimentary plan, we would recommend using ClickUp’s free service.

ClickUp Free Forever is an excellent package for sole traders or small teams looking for feature-rich project management software. It’s available to an unlimited number of users, tends to unlimited tasks, and offers a suite of useful tools from a real-time chat function and whiteboard tools to in-app recording. Compared to monday.com’s free plan, which only caters to two users, ClickUp’s is a clear winner. In fact, we think ClickUp Free Forever is probably the best complimentary package on the market.

While ClickUp’s free tier is one of the best around, free plans always have limitations. Therefore, for larger teams or those handling complicated projects, paid models will be much more suitable.

Best for Ease of Use: monday.com

Planning and managing a project is hard enough. The last thing teams need to do is complicate things further with inaccessible and complex software. Luckily, both monday.com and ClickUp are relatively simple to use, even for those new to the tools. However, while both options offer intuitive design and a strong user experience, we found monday.com’s product is a little more straightforward to use. monday.com scored 4.5/5 on our ease of use tests, the highest out of the ten providers we tested. ClickUp scores 3.9/5.

Compared to ClickUp’s somewhat cluttered interface, monday.com boasts a much more minimal design. We found that this made the software much simpler and easier to navigate, so we’d recommend it to project management software newbies. We really liked the way we were able to set up boards and automize key processes within a couple of clicks. In contrast to ClickUp and its slightly lengthier setup process, we think monday.com provides a better solution for businesses looking to hit the ground running.

That being said, while monday.com is renowned for its slick design and fuss-free setup, ClickUp doesn’t fall too far behind. It wasn’t like it was unassailable, or overwhelming to the point of being unusable. The platform is extremely customizable and offers lots of user-friendly features, particularly when it comes to task and resource management. And for those struggling to get to grips with the software, ClickUp also offers free training and live chat support so no user will remain confused for long.

Best for Business Features: ClickUp

When it comes to picking the top project management software, business features play a major role. Pick a solution with a variety of handy tools, and you’ll be able to manage tasks and teams with ease. Opt for a less feature-rich package, and its use will be much more limited.

Both ClickUp and monday.com offer incredibly versatile software, with a vast collection of useful features. This made picking between the two after our tests were completed extremely difficult. ClickUp offers a greater number of business features, helping to a test-high functionality score of 4.6/5, compared to monday.com’s 4.2/5. Below we explain why we came to this decision, by summarizing the main functions of each app and putting individual features head to head.

monday.com vs ClickUp: Collaboration

When it comes to team collaboration, ClickUp is in a league of its own. ClickUp scores 4.7/5 for collaboration, compared to monday.com’s 3.3/5. We enjoyed using the platform’s project message board, where you can reference and tag specific tasks, something you can’t do if you’re using monday.com’s comparable feature. You can also create documents from scratch in ClickUp, and a unique ‘Pulse’ mode lets you see which members of your team are online, as well as what they’re working on.

monday.com’s communication features aren’t as robust. What’s more, its handy ‘Online Whiteboard’ which let users interact and collaborate in real-time is being retired soon, and users are being directed to a third-party product. ClickUp’s whiteboard, on the other hand, comes with pre-made templates for collaboration sessions, and documents and images can be imported onto the interface.

monday.com vs ClickUp: task management

ClickUp is a cut above the competition when it comes to task management, scoring a test-high 4.7/5 in this assessment area to monday.com’s 4.5/5. ClickUp includes pretty much every task management feature you can think of (other than a team view) on all of its plans, including its free plan.

In ClickUp, you’ll have access to a Gantt chart, Kanban board, spreadsheet, and List view for viewing project progress, a time tracking tool, milestones, and custom fields, no matter which plan you choose. In contracts, monday.com doesn’t include a number of features – such as time tracking, a calendar view, milestones, and a Gantt chart – until you opt for the Standard, Pro Projects or Enterprise plan.

Both monday.com and ClickUp offer useful time-tracking tools, but ClickUp goes above and beyond. ClickUp’s software syncs up to Google, Outlook, and Apple Mail, and lets you add time estimates, start and due dates, and even allows you to time tasks and record them to your calendar with its ‘Pomodoro Timer’ integration.

Both ClickUp and monday.com now offer AI assistants that can turn unstructured work into action points or tasks.

monday.com vs ClickUp: workflow creation

ClickUp comes out on top for workflow creation, with a 4.3/5 score and a custom automation builder available on every plan, including the free plan. There are more than seven automation categories and even pre-built automations that relate to specific software programs that integrate with ClickUp.

It also has a slightly higher automation limit on its Unlimited plan (1000 actions per month) than monday.com’s Standard Projects plan (250 actions per month). monday.com has nine categories of pre-built automations, but none of these are available on monday.com’s free plan or Basic Projects plan.

We found building automations in monday.com slightly easier, although ClickUp and monday.com are home to the two most similar automation builders out of the 10 providers we tested, as they both opt for text-based tools with high levels of customization.

Both monday.com and ClickUp include form builders on their paid plans, and neither provides native billing and invoicing tools.

monday.com vs ClickUp: data visualization

If tracking your project’s progression visually is important to you, monday.com will be a safer bet – although ClickUp scores very well in this area too.

monday.com scores 5/5 for data visualization, and its useful, interactive ‘Stacked Bar’ feature lets users compare categories of data side by side. This tool also lets you add benchmark and cumulative data, making it easy to track progression over time. There are also six preset chart types to choose from if you don’t want to build your own, six widget types, and over six custom chart builder categories. Although not available on monday.com’s first paid plans, it’s a larger selection than ClickUp offers.

You can also create custom charts to display project data, shown below:

Building a chart in monday.com. Image: Tech.co’s testing process

ClickUp’s ‘Dashboard’ feature also uses a variety of techniques to display your metrics, helping the provider to an impressive 4.8/5 score for data visualization. There are three different types of charts you’ll be able to make, and like monday.com, you can pull through data from custom fields to make charts. There are also five different widget options to choose from. However, the tool isn’t as robust as monday.com’s, and its use is limited on certain price plans. On the free plan, for example, you can only use it 100 times. However, ClickUp still scores 4.8/5 for data visualization, a better score than Teamwork, Smartsheet, and Wrike.

Data dashboard interface in ClickUp. Image: Tech.co’s testing process

monday.com vs ClickUp: integrations

ClickUp scores 3.4/5 for integrations, and although it has some useful ones, it doesn’t really offer a range comparable to that of monday.com. Like its rival, you can import data directly from a range of other project management software. However, ClickUp only integrates with RingCentral and Zoom, and offers a much smaller range of marketing and CRM integrations.

Conversely, monday.com scores 4/5 for integrations. It loses a point due to the fact there are no real integration options on monday.com’s free and first paid plan – although you’ll still be able to import data from Asana, Jira, Basecamp, Facebook Ads, and Zendesk. However, its Standard, Pro, and Enterprise plans integrate with Slack, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and a long list of both marketing and CRM integrations (50+ each). This makes monday.com a slightly better option for most teams with existing software they’re using to manage customer relationships or communicate with colleagues.

Best for Security: monday.com

When delivering projects, security should be a top concern. If the solutions you are using aren’t completely secure, your company’s private information could be put at risk. Therefore, when settling on project management software, it’s important to pick tools with advanced security and privacy features.

monday.com and ClickUp both take security seriously, with monday.com scoring a perfect 5/5 for security, while ClickUp scores a very respectable 4.4/5. Both providers offer server-side encryption, two-factor authentication, advanced permissions, and single sign-on (SSL), among a range of other data-protection features to their ‘Business’ and ‘Enterprise’ users.

However, with monday.com encrypting and backing up data every hour, we believe it goes the extra mile. Also, ClickUp doesn’t provide IP restriction services on its Enterprise plan, whereas monday.com does. Don’t let this put you off ClickUp’s software though, your data will be in safe hands with whichever solution you decide to move forwards with.

Best for Customer Support: monday.com

When it comes to customer support, monday.com edges ClickUp, scoring 4.5/5 to its rival’s 3.3/5. This gap is in part due to the fact that monday.com provides 24/7 live support, whereas ClickUp no longer offers this feature.

Furthermore, monday.com has a community forum for those that want to try and fix problems for themselves, whereas ClickUp doesn’t offer this. When we tested monday.com, we were impressed by how responsive and helpful the on-hand support team was – they clearly explained how to use specific tools included within the software when we ran into a couple of issues.

monday.com vs ClickUp: What’s New?

ClickUp have made a major change to their pricing plans – the provider no longer offers its Business Plus plan, which means it now offers four plans overall instead of five. ClickUp also increased the price of their Unlimited plan from $5 per user, per month to $7 per user, per month towards the end of 2023 – but it’s still one of the best value project management packages currently available to small businesses. Out of the major players in the market, only Zoho Projects and Trello offer cheaper initial paid plans.

monday.com, on the other hand, underwent a major layout change in July of last year, making the provider’s interface even more minimalistic, tidy, and spacious. The changes also mean that monday.com’s interface is amenable to a wider variety of screens and devices, the provider says. In addition to this, in August of this year, monday.com rolled out new user functionality, including the ability to disable and enable weekends from project management tasks, save progress while completing forms, and export canvases into PDF format.

monday.com and ClickUp have also both started to roll out AI assistants for their platforms, which we’ve discussed just above. ClickUp’s offering is a little more like your classic chatbot than monday.com’s, but you do have to pay to use it. It costs $5 per user, per month. You can sign up to become a beta tester for monday.com’s AI assistant, which the provider is rolling out gradually to customers.

Should You Switch to monday.com or ClickUp?

There are a number of benefits to switching to software that’s better suited to your business. For one, although it might take up some time to switch, you’ll save time in the long run if the features contained within the software you’re switching to align better with your business goals. The more functional your software is in the context of your use case, the less time staff will have to spend fiddling with settings, tools, and features that ultimately, they don’t need.

Specifically, you may want to consider switching to monday.com if the current project management software you’re using is too complicated. Wrike and ClickUp, although great at dealing with complex task management, won’t suit all businesses or teams. Conversely, if you’re finding your project management software too limiting, then ClickUp’s powerful set of task management features will help.

Of course, there are some project management tools it’s easier to switch between than others. For example, if you’re using Asana, Trello, or Basecamp, you can easily import data into monday.com or ClickUp.

You can import data from monday.com into your new ClickUp account, and ClickUp provides instructions on how to migrate your data on their website. However, if you want to import data from ClickUp to monday.com, you’ll have to use a third-party data migration tool like Relokia, or simply convert your project data into a CSV file and import your tasks that way.

Unfortunately, when migrating between software, you may lose some of the dashboards you’ve set up and other settings you’ve configured. For example, ClickUp mentions on its website that monday.com import limitations prevent it from “importing info-boxes, tags, dependencies, or linked tasks, among other data”, but that “Sub-items are imported into ClickUp as tasks.”

However, as we’ve said, you’ll make back the time you spend building them within software that’s better suited to your team, and more useful to achieving your business’s goals.

Alternatives to monday.com and ClickUp

monday.com and ClickUp are both great safe bets when it comes to project management software, but they aren’t right for everyone. If you’re curious about the other solutions out there, take a look at our top alternatives in the table below.

About Our Project Management Research

At Tech.co, we conduct our own, independent research into all of the products, services, and software we write about. A typical investigation into a vertical like project management involves significant pre-assessment research to identify the top providers on the market, as well as conversations with businesses buying the software to understand their pain points and priorities. This helps us develop testing criteria that our readers will find useful. After that, extensive user testing is conducted by Tech.co’s writers and researchers over a number of months.

For project management software, we focused on five core areas: Integrations, Security, Functionality, Ease of Use, Customer Support, and Pricing Factors. “Functionality” is further broken down into four subcategories: Data Visualization, Workflow Creation, Collaboration, and Task Management. Each provider was awarded a score for each of these areas based on a selection of different performance factors.

Although we do have commercial partnerships with some of the products and services we write about, it’s our research that allows us to stay editorially independent. Our rankings are determined by the conclusions we draw from our research. If we don’t have the data, we don’t write the article.

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