Your life is already cluttered enough. You have kids going to different soccer games and recitals, doctor’s appointments at two different places, your mother-in-law’s birthday is coming up, and you need to see if your coworker ever got back to you about those timesheets. At this point, adding another “productivity app” is just adding more noise.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. What if you could Marie Kondo your to-do list, calendar, and apps all into one? ClickUp wants to do that by helping you streamline your life, and easily see where everything goes. Let’s jump into this ClickUp review, and see if it’s right for you!
What Is ClickUp?
Founded from a Kickstarter in 2007, this San Diego company is about rewriting your ideas about getting things done. They share, “While we absolutely love productivity software, we believe productivity, in general, is broken.” Rather than having you jump between your calendar, to-do list, and tracker, they combine everything into one. They are a customizable workplace productivity platform, that serves all departments across all organizations.
They want to help you save time and space—and their goal is to help you save one day every week!
How Does ClickUp Work?
The premise behind ClickUp is simple—combining your to-do list, calendar, and work-place communications into one place.
To sign up for ClickUp, all you need is your email. They’ll then send you a confirmation code, and you’re ready to launch your account.
As you start, you can input your goals to have ClickUp customized for you—what are your goals? How many people are working together?
ClickUp is simple to use, but their onboarding process will hold your hand through the first few steps. You’ll learn how to create tasks, adjust everything to do with different Spaces, and see how to assign tasks.
The first thing you’ll create is one of your Spaces. These are for different departments of your company—you could have one for Finances, HR, or even private ones for your eyes only. Hit a simple “+” button to add a new Space, and then give it a name and a color. That color will be included on any task or lists made within the Space, so you can easily see what category they belong to, no matter where you are viewing them.
As you create a space, you can decide which statuses tasks will have. This can be as simple as a to-do/complete binary system, or you can have a more complex systems that tasks have to work through—in progress, in review, pending, accepted, and many more.
Spaces can also include ClickApps, which allows for extra customization. You can add time trackers to task, and know how long that report took you. You can assign tasks to multiple people, or add time estimates onto tasks, or even had custom fields, for information like budget or contact info.
As you complete a Space, you can also adjust the way you view it. While a list-format is the default, you can also see it as a board, or as a Gratt, or table. You could view tasks as a calendar, each one on each day; or as a progression box. You could even create a space that is a mind map—to let you brainstorm and organize tasks in a more tactile way.
Inside each Space are folders, lists, and tasks. Folders are related lists of tasks, or pre-created templates. Maybe you need to update your website—that would be its own folder, with a list of tasks inside.
Adding a new task is a simple as clicking the “+” at the bottom of any list, or the “Add task” button at the bottom right corner of your home screen. You can customize your task in almost any way you need to. Name it, describe it, attach files, documents, or folders to it, or even make subtasks within it. You can set the priority of a task, and assign it to any of your team members—they’ll get a notification when you do. In customizable fields you can go more in depth—show the budget for that particular tasks, share the phone number of the contact, or ratings for customers. As tasks are completed or in review, you can mark their status, which will then be displayed in the top right corner.
The beauty of tasks is that you can comment on them as well. Rather than having to dig through an email chain to answer a question about that one task, all the comments can go on that task itself. You can easily tag someone within the chat, by using @theirname, so they don’t miss important information. Furthermore, you can always pin important comments to the top of the chat, so they don’t get buried among other chatter.
As you add to and adjust these lists, everyone in that Space can see them, though only those people assigned or tagged in tasks will get notifications.
Me Mode is your mission control—where you can see that tasks assigned to you, with any comments or subtasks. From there, you can view a Calendar mode, with each of your tasks organized by date. Rescheduling is as simple as dragging and dropping.
Delete anything by mistake? The Trash holds all your tasks and lists for several days, so you can always go retrieve them.
You can also create forms within ClickUp, which are perfect for communicating with your team. Scheduling a pizza night? Find out what day will work best for everyone. Want to get internal feedback? Share a form with your whole team.
You can also track your team’s progress—use custom charts, pie graphs, and line graphs. You can see a projected line of your goals, and then compare your team’s actual progress against it.
And ClickUp is great for on the go too. You can access it via mobile or desktop, and you can set up notifications to come both to your email, or to your iOS/Android device.
Is ClickUp Free?
ClickUp offers that it’s “free for life.” And it is—depending on what plan you use. Their Basic Plan is free, and gives you lots of storage, unlimited users, and plenty of Spaces. It’s great for your everyday needs, and for small business—and it’s always free.
ClickUp also offers Unlimited and Business plans, that allow you more integrations, more dashboards, and automations. Their Unlimited plan costs $5 per month when you sign up for a whole year, and their Business plan costs $8 per month when you sign up for a full year. It’s a great deal—and cheaper than buying your office a cup of coffee!
How To Get The Most Out Of ClickUp
ClickUp wants to help you save time, so there’s a few tricks to use it well! First is to using the customizable blocks on tasks. You can track your time on a task, documenting exactly how long it takes. Then, if you have the contact link attached to that task as well, you can bill straight through there!
You can also take advantage of ClickUp’s webinars. They release these regularly, with tips on how to use ClickUp as a real estate agency, or marketing agency, or as an individual, or to help you schedule out appointments. You can also learn from others, utilizing templates that they have made, to see tasks you might not have thought of!
Conclusion: ClickUp
Productivity and time management are hard skills to master, so let an app help! While there are tons of productivity and scheduling apps out there, from SkedPal to Todoist, ClickUp stans out for being low priced, easy to use, and helps you streamline your work. It’s intuitive when it comes to communicating with coworkers, and allows you to assign tasks or reschedule them with a simple drag-and-drop. You can always see precisely what you need to do. Plus, their customizations allow you to include all helpful information, and saves you the time of having to hop in between apps. If you want to organize your time and rally your team together, then ClickUp can be a great tool for you!
