Trello vs ClickUp

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Our analysts compared Trello vs ClickUp based on data from our 400+ point analysis of Project Management Software, user reviews and our own crowdsourced data from our free software selection platform.

Trello Software Tool

Product Basics

Trello is a cloud-based visual collaboration solution that can be used by organizations of any size to plan tasks and projects. It helps users define projects, requirements and workflows to ensure they are completed in a planned and sequential manner. It organizes projects into boards and provides a peek into ongoing projects and tasks.

It helps administrators delegate tasks, set deadlines and define workflows while supporting a range of project types. Specific team use cases include marketing, engineering, product management, support, design and sales. It is also useful for remote teams and startups.
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ClickUp is an all-in-one cloud-based solution designed to help users streamline project cycles with collaboration, customization and visibility. It allows you to assign comments and tasks to specific team members or groups of team members and view time spent on those tasks. Other collaboration features include reminders, docs, calendars, goals, scheduling and an inbox.

An activity stream displays tasks in real time in the order of their creation and completion. Businesses can configure team-specific notifications while viewing projects on an Agile dashboard. It sends alerts to relevant employees in a discussion thread while allowing them to edit and post comments. You can create a personalized workspace with no-code automations, customizations for statuses, fields and views and ClickApps.

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$5/User, Monthly
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Tailored to your specific needs
$7/User, Monthly, Freemium
Get a free price quote
Tailored to your specific needs
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Product Assistance

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Email
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Knowledge Base
24/7 Live Support
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Product Insights

  • Visualize Project Workflows: Present projects visually using Kanban and Scrum layouts. Add list columns for team requirements and name them according to their workflow stages while keeping items organized and identifying bottlenecks. 
  • Hit Deadlines: Add due dates to cards and set reminders for everyone. Easily view due dates on cards, which turn red when past deadlines. 
  • Intuitive Interface: Move cards between columns with drag-and-drop capabilities or switch the order of columns. 
  • Centralized Collaboration: Facilitate communication within teams, add description boxes, attachments and comment threads to cards. Mention and add team members to cards to identify who’s responsible for each task. 
  • Track Details: Cards display relevant details about a task. Labels identify the card’s purpose, status or other specific information. Add a checklist to track items associated with a task and show or hide a card’s activity. 
  • Work With External Users: Invite guests to single or multiple boards to collaborate. Provide selective access without compromising boards that are for internal use only. 
  • Simplify Communication: Connects with email so users can comment on Trello cards and share attachments directly from their inbox. Each board is assigned a specific email address, which enables creating cards from email as well. 
  • Stay Updated: Change updates let users know when they are tagged, or a member is moved to another column. Set notifications for email, mobile, desktop and the app. 
  • Free Version: Create unlimited personal boards, cards and lists, along with one power-up per board for free. Include ten team boards, basic automation via integration with Butler and two-factor authentication. 
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  • Customize Your Workspace with ClickApps: Create a personalized environment for your business by enabling ClickApps for specific spaces or the entire organization. Enable apps like time tracking, custom fields, dependency warnings, time estimates and sprints. We loved the custom fields with multiple drop-downs for statuses and teams and the dependency warnings, so nothing slips through the cracks.
  • Create No-Code Automations and Workflows: Click on the Automations tab on the right-hand side of your screen to create your own custom automations using prebuilt templates with conditions, actions and triggers or build your own. We tested building our own workflow automation for status changes with more than one action and found it was simple to execute.
  • Collaborate Better via Various Channels: Communicate more efficiently via comment threads in the card, user mentions, screen recordings, native docs and group chats. We appreciated the accountability of comment threads and how you can assign comments to users that show up differently from a regular mention. The ability to link internal documents and add checklists to cards is a great way to enforce processes and brand guidelines — a big plus in our eyes.
  • View Projects in Multiple Ways: Set up multiple views for each of your spaces so you can zoom in a particular step in your project or get an overview of your progress. We liked the variety of views, including Kanban, list and calendar, and also that you can pin certain views, say urgent tasks, so it’s front and center for all team members.
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  • Boards: Create multiple boards for different projects, workflows or other needs. Keep all related information organized in a single location. 
  • Cards: Build processes, follow progress and manage all aspects of a project. Foster collaboration and organization within teams. 
  • Task Management: Represent tasks on each card and move them through the workflow. Set up and manage task dependencies by creating checklists and linking associated cards to one another. 
  • Templates: Create real-world boards from the inspiration section for teams. Use pre-built or custom templates to create boards, lists or cards. 
  • Power-Ups: Integrate it with apps like Slack, Zapier, Google Drive, MailChimp, Salesforce, Dropbox, SurveyMonkey and Zendesk to complete workflows. Choose from over 130 modules for file management, reporting, automation and developer tools.
  • Mobile Apps: Access it through iOS and Android devices, including smartphones, iPads, smart watches and Kindle fire tablets. 
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  • Multiple Views: Get a bird’s eye view of your business with the everything view. Check your project’s progress in over 15 ways, including Kanban, board, Gantt, calendar, chat and activity views.
  • Custom Workspaces: Create (work)spaces for each project with your own set of workflow rules, automations, statuses, fields and even assignees. Move tasks in-between spaces and change priority, receive pop-ups if statuses are different and control space accessibility.
  • Task Management: Keep track of tasks using cards that you can build from scratch or create using custom templates and fields. Assign tasks, post points, due dates, assignees and statuses. View and add comments, create alerts for overdue tasks, use custom checklists and add task dependencies.
  • Sprint Management: Create sprints using templates from ClickUp or your workspace. Manage your sprint cycles by setting custom sprint dates, priority levels and points to your work. Auto-add unfinished tasks to your next sprint, duplicate sprint views and integrate sprints with GitHub, GitLab and Bitbucket. Pace your sprints against a target using burndown charts and use burnup charts to see completed and pending work. Organize and manage sprint-specific settings via the sprint folder.
  • No-Code Automations: Create custom automations for tasks and processes without coding expertise. Use built-in recipes, ClickApps or build-your-own automations in each space using actions, triggers and conditions custom to your workflow and processes using drop-down menus.
  • Dashboards and Reporting: Click on the home icon to view a personalized dashboard of your recent projects, assigned tasks, reminders and comments. Create custom dashboards and reports from specific spaces using templates or by selecting the start from scratch option.
  • Time Tracking: Track time from multiple assignees using the built-in tracker in each card. Get an overview of user activity in your company and see when users are active using Pulse and the timesheets feature.
  • Document Creation: Create documents within the program’s word processor that are directly integrated into projects and tasks. Import documents from other word processors to add tags and use a robust tool library.
  • Goals and Targets: Set and organize goal trackers in folders to keep track of multiple projects at once. Set goal targets by monetary value, True/false conditions, or by number of units.
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Product Ranking

#8

among all
Project Management Software

#14

among all
Project Management Software

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Analyst Rating Summary

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Analyst Ratings for Functional Requirements Customize This Data Customize This Data

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Customizations Dashboards And Reporting Mobile Capabilities Platform Features Project Planning And Scheduling Project Tracking Task Management Team Collaboration Time Tracking And Management 100 100 88 94 89 79 100 95 71 0 25 50 75 100
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Analyst Ratings for Technical Requirements Customize This Data Customize This Data

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User Sentiment Summary

Great User Sentiment 35053 reviews
Excellent User Sentiment 15441 reviews
89%
of users recommend this product

Trello has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 89% when considering 35053 user reviews from 5 recognized software review sites.

94%
of users recommend this product

ClickUp has a 'excellent' User Satisfaction Rating of 94% when considering 15441 user reviews from 5 recognized software review sites.

4.9 (22)
4.3 (15)
4.4 (12443)
4.7 (9774)
4.5 (20471)
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4.7 (4231)
4.3 (54)
4.5 (178)
4.2 (2063)
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Awards

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SelectHub research analysts have evaluated ClickUp and concluded it deserves the award for the Best Overall Project Management Software available today and earns best-in-class honors for Customizations, Dashboards and Reporting, Mobile Capabilities, Task Management and Platform Security. ClickUp stands above the rest by achieving an ‘Excellent’ rating as a User Favorite.

Analysts' Pick Award
User Favorite Award
Customizations Award
Dashboards and Reporting Award
Mobile Capabilities Award
Task Management Award
Platform Security Award

Synopsis of User Ratings and Reviews

Functionality: Trello offers robust organizational tools that simplify task delegation and streamline workflows, as reported by nearly 88% of the users who mention the product’s functionality.
Easy to Use: The system is intuitive, user friendly and doesn’t require a steep learning curve to understand its features, as noted by approximately 82% of users who referred to its usability.
Collaborative: Approximately 79% of users who talked about collaboration noted that project collaborations are a breeze with Trello as it shares information with team members and clients in an organized manner while adding specific members to project cards.
Customizable: The system is highly customizable with numerous display choices and features to adapt to users’ requirements, as reported by nearly 74% of reviewers who referred to customization.
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Easy To Use: Reviewers appreciated how easy the solution was to use and set up, even without extensive training or customer support.
Customization: Extensive customization options like task views, priority levels, color coding, and automations to create a unique product for their specific team were a plus for many users.
Collaboration: Users liked how easy it is to collaborate by assigning tasks, subtasks, comments and due dates with automated email notifications.
What Users Like
Versatility: “ClickUp lets you tailor tasks, projects, and views down to the smallest detail, which was perfect for our team since each project can look totally different. For example, we used its automation features to auto-assign tasks when certain stages were reached, which cut down on a ton of back-and-forth and kept everyone aligned.” - Victor André Enselmann, Founder of digital marketing firm Modeva
Centralization and Collaboration: “With offices across major U.S. cities, aligning everyone can be challenging. However, ClickUp’s customizable dashboards allow each team to organize tasks based on project demands while keeping a high-level view of overall progress. This flexibility has significantly reduced the back-and-forth between teams, saving time and ensuring that our large-scale projects stay on track.” - Steve Morris, Founder and CEO of NEW MEDIA
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Scalability: Nearly 75% of reviewers who mention scalability note that it is cumbersome to scale the system to a company’s growing needs and cannot manage complex projects.
Cost: Trello offers limited functional and storage capabilities in its basic version, and advanced version requires per-user licensing, making it expensive for large teams, reported nearly 83% of users who mentioned cost.
Mobile Application: The system doesn’t perform well on mobile platforms, and its mobile application cannot perform all the functions of the desktop version, as reported by nearly 71% of users who mentioned mobile accessibility.
Installation: Trello is challenging to install and can overwhelm new users with its host of features, as reported by nearly 69% of users who talked about product set-up.
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Cost: Reviewers mentioned expensive renewal fees after the free trial and upselling.
Learning Curve: Users noted it takes time for new users to get familiarized with so many features and how its navigation and customization work.
Notifications: An influx of email notifications for every change can cause some important alerts to get lost, according to some users.
What Users Dislike
Too Many Features: “We ended up with a cluttered dashboard full of features we didn’t need, and it actually slowed us down. Once we simplified and focused on just the core tools, it was a lot smoother. So, with ClickUp, the trick is to use what you need and ignore the rest, or it can overwhelm more than it helps." - Victor André Enselmann, Founder of digital marketing firm Modeva
Time-Based Automations: “Initially, the learning curve was steep, which led to some confusion and delays as we adapted. To address this, we created a custom onboarding process for new hires that guides them through the platform’s essentials before diving into more advanced functions.” - Steve Morris, Founder and CEO of NEW MEDIA
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Trello includes robust workflow management and organizational capabilities for users to efficiently manage a project lifecycle. Its intuitive UI and clean dashboards simplify task delegation and monitoring, along with streamlining workflows. Its collaborative tools foster team communication and information sharing, while flexible integration capabilities help complete workflows. However, it lacks enterprise-grade project management abilities and is not suitable to handle large projects that require bulk movements. Additionally, the system provides limited features in its basic plan, and its mobile application lacks several functionalities offered by the desktop version.

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ClickUp is an all-in-one project management solution designed to help businesses in any industry optimize project cycles with a highly customizable interface, robust automation capabilities and extensive collaboration features. It helps you visualize tasks and project optimally with over 15 views including options like Kanban boards, Gantt charts, and calendars.No-code automation with templates and drop-down menus for increased personalization mean you can build effective workflows. Other notable features include in-card comments, custom dashboards, sprint management, in-built documents and time tracking.However, ClickUp’s feature-rich platform can also be a pitfall with some reviewers noting a steep learning curve associated with mastering its various functionalities. Additionally, the platform's tiered pricing structure might be a concern for smaller teams or organizations with limited budgets.During our test run, ClickUp scored points for its easy automation, customization to the nth level, reporting views and collaborative tools. We found it incredibly easy to build custom workflows, implement templates for a new space and keep assignees accountable with the activity stream in each card. Overall, we think ClickUp is a fantastic option for businesses of all sizes, especially if you’re looking for a highly customizable and collaborative project management platform.

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