ClickUp vs Monday.com Compared: Is Monday.com or ClickUp Better?

There are two project management software solutions that we can’t help comparing and reviewing. ClickUp vs Monday. Both are quite popular, and similarly priced. ClickUp is perhaps best known for its simplicity and ease of use, while Monday.com is well regarded for its amazing design and intuitive features.

Both are top choices for small teams and small businesses, though both also have premium options for large companies and enterprises. 

Read on to see how each matches up against the other when it comes to things like pricing, free plans, customer service and ease of use. Then, we'll do a side by side comparison of the key features.

What is the difference between ClickUp and Monday?

The main difference between Monday.com and ClickUp is not apparent at first glance, as these two project management systems are definitely aimed at the same market. As stated above, ClickUp tends to be seen as an easy-to-use software, while Monday.com is considered to have excellent design and functionality.

Many ClickUp reviews are quick to point out how well ClickUp manages to streamline the various project activities into a single workspace. This includes task management, team collaboration and communication, and progress tracking via goals and milestones.

On the other hand, a typical Monday.com review often begins by addressing the various roles and departments within an organization which might benefit from the Monday.com platform. 

These include sales, marketing, software development, creative and design teams, CRM, HR, operations management and project managers themselves. Sure, many Monday.com alternatives are similar in this regard, but it happens to be one of Monday.com’s strong selling points.

Both platforms have free plans as well as free trials, and normally you do not even need to enter a credit card for these trials. This is because both platforms are eager to prove how effective they are in managing projects, cutting down on wasted time, slashing budgets and expenses, and in helping your project team surpass milestones and smash goals.

Monday.com was founded in 2012 out of an apartment in Tel Aviv, Israel. The system started getting its first subscribers in 2014. In 2016, they launched the Monday.com mobile app. Finally, in 2017 the name Monday.com was officially chosen and then shortly after they moved their HQ to NYC. Today Monday.com boasts that they trade on the NASDAQ and are one of the best places to work. Some of their customers include staff at companies like Hulu, Coca-Cola, NHL, Canva, HubSpot, EA Sports, and Universal Music Group.

ClickUp got off the ground in March of 2017. They got their first paying subscriber in November of that year, as they moved their HQ to San Francisco, though two years later they would move again to San Diego. 

Since then, they’ve successfully had 3 series of funding to help their platform take off. As of the beginning, ClickUp reviews have been positive, and the software has garnered many awards, including the 2021 G2 Best Software award, the 2020 GetApp Best Features award, Capterra’s 2021 shortlist, and Software Advice 2021 Front Runner award. 

Not too many alternatives to ClickUp can boast that, although some can.

ClickUp vs Monday comparison chart

Who doesn’t love to start a side-by-side comparison review article between Monday.com and ClickUp with a nice clear table which lays out all the categories, ratings and winners? So here it is. 

The first part goes over basics like cost, support and user friendliness. Then, the next section picks apart individual tools like task management, docs management, and automation workflow builders. 

ClickUp vs Monday.com: Pricing

ClickUp and Monday.com have quite similar pricing models. Both have free versions, three premium plans with listed prices, and an enterprise version with custom pricing. ClickUp’s most basic plan is cheaper than Monday.com’s, as are all the other premium plans.

Winner: ClickUp

ClickUp wins the pricing plan category since at each level from the basic plan to the standard plan and up to the premium, the costs are always lower than Monday.com’s costs. However, you never know what price tag is waiting for you at the enterprise level.
 

Monday vs ClickUp: Free versions?

The ClickUp free version is really for personal use, meaning for one user, while Monday.com’s is good for only up to 2 users, though that is superior. You also get more file storage with Monday.com in the free plan than you would with ClickUp, at 500 MBs to just 100 MBs. 

However, with ClickUp you can create unlimited tasks for free, while with Monday.com you are limited to 1,000 items.

Winner: Monday.com

Though the tasks are limited, there should be plenty to help a team of 2 manage their projects and workspaces. Monday.com’s free plan also has unlimited docs and a shared whiteboard feature.
 

monday.com vs ClickUp: Customer support

Both Monday.com and ClickUp have 24/7 customer support on all their plans and that is awesome. ClickUp also offers live chat support on some plans, whereas Monday.com does not. Monday.com, however, can offer a 99% uptime for SLAs, or service level agreements. 

Winner: ClickUp

Live chat customer service is quickly becoming the most popular form of support and for that reason ClickUp wins this category. They also offer onboarding workshops and admin training webinars.
 

ClickUp vs monday.com: Knowledgebase & learning

Monday.com has a decent self-service knowledge base that allows its subscribers to help themselves with simple issues. It does not appear that ClickUp has anything comparable at this time. Both offer various forms of tutorials and workshops.

Winner: Monday.com

Knowledgebase, FAQ sections, and customer portals are truly effective ways to not only offer support for simple problems but to foster a deeper loyalty from your users, and Monday.com seems to understand this better than ClickUp.
 

Payment methods

Sadly, no SaaS is free forever if it’s worth its weight in digital bits to help you boost revenue. It only makes sense that you have to pay a little something to get something more back, right? For this reason, both Monday.com and ClickUp try to offer as many payment options as possible to  make it easy for you.

ClickUp accepts all major credit cards, and for large enough enterprise orders, they will also take a bank transfer. Monday.com accepts Visa, Master Card, American Express, Discover, Diners Club, JCB, Carte Bleue, Union Pay, and you can sometimes use PayPal. For enterprise agreements, Monday.com also accepts invoices.

Winner: Monday.com

As you can read, Monday.com has a slightly more robust payment method than ClickUp, and for this reason it wins this area of competition. Both platforms try and make it easy if you want to change your plan or even cancel your plan, although at the same time, both systems obviously want to lock you in for a longer commitment, and they do this by lowering the costs as much as possible.

Monday vs ClickUp features & functionality

Now that the broad-stroke comparisons are done, let’s get into the finer details regarding the project management tool and features.

ClickUp or Monday: Ease of use

ClickUp and Monday.com are two software companies that understand that as project management tools, ease of use must be a top priority in their design and execution. This shows when you get on the learning curve and begin using either of their toolkits.

Winner: Tie

For the category of being user friendly, it is only fair that we call this one a draw. We cannot praise enough how simple but intuitive the functionality of both Monday.com and ClickUp are. 

You’ll find once you load up and begin navigating the interfaces and dashboards, that it will feel like you’ve been using these two project management software solutions all your life.
 

Task management

Task management is the nuts and bolts of project management in general. Both Monday.com and ClickUp help you plan and organize tasks, create subtasks, task dependencies, and milestones, as well as for including data like due dates, estimated time frames, task assignees and roles, and set up to-do lists and checklists.

Winner: ClickUp

This is a close category, but ultimately ClickUp edges past Monday.com. With ClickUp, you get great planning and organizational abilities with task management, including a lot of customizable options, team collaboration on tasks, priorities, tags, and recurring tasks. Monday.com does almost all of these things as well, however. 
 

Time tracking

There are many ways a company can optimize time management with time tracking. It can be manually done or automated, depending on what kind of work the project demands. ClickUp has a powerful time tracking feature that even has a Chrome extension. Monday.com gets you real-time visibility on work activity too.

Winner: ClickUp

ClickUp is once again the winner when it comes to time tracking, which is closely associated with task management as well as to track progress and things like budgeting and invoicing. But the truth is, if you have the pro version of Monday.com, the time tracking is just as fine.
 

Views

There are more than one or two ways to visualize a project, to see all the moving parts in some sort of order, and even to get these visual representations to be updated in real-time as the project progresses. 

ClickUp offers list views, board views, calendar views, Gantt views, activity timelines, workload views, table spreadsheets and mind maps. Monday.com has activity logs, Kanban board, timeline views, calendar views, map views, graphs and chart views. 

Winner: Monday.com

While it might seem that ClickUp offers a larger number of views and dashboards than Monday.com does, Monday.com is the winner here because their views are just a bit more aesthetically pleasing and are more effective at highlighting the most crucial data, especially those Gantt charts.
 

Templates

Monday.com has a template library of over 200 templates, however, ClickUp has a great many templates too. ClickUp project management templates include things like single project, project portfolio, and project request approvals templates. Monday.com’s templates for PM get you lots of great options.

Winner: Monday.com

Monday.com’s templates look fantastic and will help kickstart your project planning and execution immediately. Some great examples are action plans, agile PM templates, Scrum, block diagrams, and change management plans.
 

Team member tools

Project management SaaS lives and dies on team communication and team collaboration, and for this purpose both Monday.com and ClickUp have many features in this category. 

Team members can communicate using messaging directly with each other or use notifications to alert each other to an update on a task. Other collaboration tools include being able to set roles and permissions for certain tasks, and guest visibility for outside stakeholders.

Winner: ClickUp

Overall, ClickUp is the slightly better project management software for its collaboration tools and other team communication features. They have smart notifications, solid guest permissions, and other teamwork tools that are hard to beat, although you won’t suffer from Monday.com’s teamwork suite.
 

Document management

As a project management tool, document management is all about building a shared space where team members can create, edit and save their documents and other media files. Being able to collaborate on docs is another important aspect, as is the amount of file storage the platform offers you to keep your files.

Winner: ClickUp

ClickUp offers only 100 MBs of file storage in their free version, but after that it is unlimited file storage. Monday.com offers 500 MBs in the free plan, but after that there are still limits, going up to 5 GBs in the basic plan and 20 GBs in the standard plan. 

Both Monday.com and ClickUp have similar document features, including multiple editors, tagging, and autosave. ClickUp also lets you connect docs directly to workflows, which is cool.
 

Analytics and reporting

The first thing about analytics and reporting is to be able to understand the reporting dashboards, and it’s also great when you have lots of options to add custom fields. Monday.com and ClickUp generate and analyze real-time data from your workspace and activities, and both platforms turn these into useful dashboard business insights.

Winner: Monday.com

Monday.com has excellent overview dashboards of all your ongoing work and projects, and it also lets you zoom in for more specific details about tasks or other project elements. Monday.com’s premium plan has very robust analytics. ClickUp is not too far behind, however, with great productivity analysis widgets.
 

Automation workflow

Automation and workflows have become as essential to all business SaaS as having an internet connection or a wireless mouse and keyboard. Great PM systems can either learn from your activities, or can be taught with simple algorithmic logic, to automatically run tasks based on triggers. 

Monday.com and ClickUp both offer extensive workflow tools, where you don't even need to know much code to build, modify and share workflows.

Winner: Tie

After very careful consideration, testing out the workflow builders of both software solutions, it’s been determined by the judges of SaaS that the automation capabilities of Monday.com and ClickUp are about as equal with one another as any two things have ever been equal in the history of equivalencies. 

It’s a tie. Both are great for status updates, task routing, priority settings, email notifications, due date alerts, and other progress updates.
 

Integrations

PM SaaS doesn’t need to do everything on its own, and for that reason integrations are a key aspect of any software stack. ClickUp gets you an open API, and connects with apps like Slack, Google Drive, Dropbox, Microsoft OneDrive, Google Calendar, Zendesk and with Zapier you can connect with things like Salesforce and Microsoft Excel. 

There is also an Asana import,  Trello import and Jira and Basecamp imports. Monday.com gets you a lot of Microsoft integrations like Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Excel, as well as Dropbox, Slack, Gmail, LinkedIn, and Adobe Creative Cloud.

Winner: ClickUp

ClickUp has a slightly more robust native integrations library, as well as having an open API and import tools for other PM SaaS like Asana. But if you prefer Monday.com, then you can connect it with virtually any other app via Zapier.
 

Mobile app

Projects move, and project teams are always on the go. Mobile apps for project management are no longer a luxury, they are a necessary tool. Both Monday.com and ClickUp have full mobile apps for iOS and Android. 

Monday.com’s mobile app has a gorgeous design, lovely colors, and is quite easy to navigate. ClickUp’s mobile app also isn’t too shabby. Both have a variety of productivity and collaboration tools. 

Winner: Monday.com

It seems when it comes to anything design related, Monday.com keeps coming out numero uno. While ClickUp wins more categories for specific features, Monday.com’s mobile app is among the most incredible project management iOS or Android tools ever, hands down.
 

Security

ClickUp and Monday.com are web-based software applications. This means that your data is going to be hosted on their servers. This is ideal because you do not have to worry about saving and securing your own data, and it is accessible from anywhere and regularly backed up. 

However, you do want to know that your data is private and secure, and for this purpose, both systems have you taken care of.

Winner: Tie

ClickUp offers two-factor authentication, so nobody can log in with your password without your mobile phone too. Monday.com also does this. ClickUp has session management, HIPAA compliance, contract and legal reviews and restricted public sharing. Monday.com has SOC 2 Type II compliance, HIPAA compliance, IP restrictions, and integration permissions.

Is ClickUp better than Monday? Our conclusion

Now that you have reached the finale of this Clickup vs Monday comparison review, you understand why ClickUp has won the day. In the end, simplicity beats out aesthetics. 

However, we do not want you thinking that our opinion is like a testament handed down by the gods of SaaS. Everything is subjective, and what some consider an advantage others might see as a drawback. There’s little doubt that Monday.com can also be an easy system to use, while ClickUp’s look and feel certainly do not leave one thinking they have skimped out on the design aspect of their platform.

No doubt, both are very worthy of being among the best project management software for small teams or small businesses. Indeed, we are very sure that either ClickUp or Monday.com can help the small business become the medium-sized business, and then the large company, and eventually a global enterprise behemoth. This is the power of digital project management tools.

Just remember, if you are still unsure, consider taking the free plan out for a test drive. The problem is, though, for it to really work, you need to bring in a lot of your data from other apps like a CRM. It’s not fair if you do not take the time and effort to truly try out everything these platforms have to offer.

And that about does it for this humble software review writer. We all hope you've enjoyed your time reading about Monday vs ClickUp, pros and cons, pricing and free plans, integrations and mobile apps, and so very much more in the exciting and competitive world of project management software solutions.