Teamwork vs ClickUp: Which One Is Best in 2024?

If you’re looking for some of the best project management tools, you’re in the right place.

Teamwork vs ClickUp are both fair options for supporting project managers and their teams with day-to-day management. However, there are some things these tools could be doing better.

We’ll be discussing their benefits and downsides and taking a look at some user reviews to help you make the right choice.

To spice things up, we’re also introducing an interesting third alternative. Productive is an all-in-one PSA platform that can be the ultimate solution for agencies, with everything from resource management to robust financials gathered in a single platform.

Keep reading to learn more!

Teamwork is a project planning management software with some advanced features for handling your overall business operations.

Users usually enjoy the fact that Teamwork allows them to have more complete control over their business processes. However, this also comes with its downsides:

Source: Paraphrased from Reddit

You can check out our Asana vs. Monday comparison if you want to find some more streamlined solutions for projects and tasks.

The most common downsides mentioned by Teamwork users include the user interface, which many find overwhelming and difficult to learn. Some state that the onboarding experience and customer service could be more efficient, though other reviewers have reported positive interactions with Teamwork’s support team (so take this with a grain of salt).

While Teamwork is more comprehensive than ClickUp, it still lacks certain features in comparison to a comprehensive project management platform like Productive.

For example, there is no integrated time-off management, which can impact the accuracy of your employee availability management and resource scheduling. Additionally:

Finally, a G2 review states that: “The ability to establish a set of permissions for each position or project type would be useful”.

For example, Productive also covers this with its Permission Builder, which allows users to set up custom roles and permissions to control who can see and do what across the platform.

We have a comparison between Teamwork and some of the most popular Teamwork.com alternatives, so check out that article to learn more.

ClickUp is a solid tool for managing your task lists, creating templates for projects, and monitoring progress on active projects.

One of the biggest benefits of ClickUp is its customizability — if you’re working in a business with very specific workflows that change from project to project, this might appeal to you especially. Additionally, ClickUp can also be used outside of professional services agencies for more generalized work management.

Source: G2

Some specific features, such as sprint management and agile reporting, can also appeal to development companies (though consider whether Jira is the better choice for that particular niche — you can also check out some specialized engineering project management software).

By far, the most commonly reported downside of ClickUp relates to its performance.

Although the devs are rolling out ClickUp 3.0, touted to be an improved version of the platform, certain users report that issues are still pervasive: “The improvement points for ClickUp are still related to performance, as even after the update to version 3.0, I still encounter issues and instabilities” (G2).

Alongside that, some have been waiting to be accepted onto the 3.0 version fo a while.

Barring issues with performance and user-friendliness, agencies interested in a true end-to-end platform might find ClickUp disappointing. The lack of integrated budgeting and invoicing affects many other features on the platform, such as resource allocation and reporting.

Source: Teamwork vs ClickUp

Compared to Teamwork, ClickUp features are more limited, outside of its solid task management tools and core project management tools. What is there, such as the workload view for resource management, is also handled by more robust replacements to ClickUp.

For example, Productive’s Workload view helps managers visualize and manage task distribution across projects, with visual capacity indicators and comprehensive availability insights (including weekends, national holidays, and personal time off).

This feature is separate from resourcing, which you set up to add a financial component to your planning (more on that in Productive pros&cons).

Simply put, by using ClickUp, you’re not getting all of the support and data you could on a comparable solution. For more info, you can also check out our exhaustive resource on Trello vs Asana vs Monday vs ClickUp.

Productive is a comprehensive platform for agency management. It was created by industry veterans to improve performance and streamline workflows for businesses of all shapes and sizes (marketing, design, consultancy, development, and more).

Productive’s most notable benefit is its robust finance in project management capabilities. If you’re looking for a tool that can help you build and manage budgets and expenses more efficiently, Productive is the best pick.

Source: Reddit

One of its most powerful features is financial forecasting, which gives you a real-time overview of your project budget, revenue, and profit margins across time.

If you update or change your scheduling, this will be reflected immediately in your metrics. This lets you eliminate guesswork by providing real insights into how changes to project scope and allocation truly impact your finances.

Learn how Productive helps a software development agency reliably predict future work.

Productive can be a bit more complex to learn compared to streamlined team collaboration solutions, but its highly-rated customer support team is there to facilitate implementation and business-wide adoption.

When comparing ClickUp vs Teamwork to Productive, the biggest differentiator is that Productive doesn’t offer a free version. However, user reviews have stated that Teamwork’s free option isn’t too generous (only up to five users), so this is not a huge downside for most mid-sized to larger businesses.

Additionally, Productive is best used as a solution for professional services agencies. While it can be useful for generalized work management, the tool achieves its full potential as an end-to-end management platform for agencies.

For collaboration purposes, the three tools are roughly equivalent, so it will mostly come down to preference. For example, Teamwork doesn’t offer to-dos, which can impact how granular you can go with task management.

ClickUp offers additional features for agile workflows, such as sprint and backlog management, and widgets for agile-based reports. However, it suffers from frequent bugs that can make parts of the platform crash and lose progress: “At this point, it’s more efficient to use Google Docs because that doesn’t crash every 10 minutes” (Source: Capterra).

The only major differentiating factor is Productive’s built-in CRM or sales management feature, which can be great for managing your sales team in a cross-functional environment. You can set up your funnel with custom stages, schedule team capacity, send quotes, manage performance insights, and more.

While Teamwork does offer Teamwork CRM, it’s a separate app, which increases your costs.

For budgeting, Teamwork offers a basic solution for setting up cost rates and managing billable hours. However, when we compare Productive vs Teamwork, Teamwork features for creating a budget are fairly limited, including only minimal information.

Whereas, in Productive, you have the option to specify various additional categories, such as:

You can also use a simplified version of the editor if you don’t need to use the extra parameters — the choice is yours.

All of this makes your financial management and data more reliable and flexible, leading to improved decision-making and streamlined workflows. Additionally, Teamwork provides a QuickBooks integration for accounting, while Productive offers Xero, QuickBooks, and Exact.

ClickUp is the least suitable option in this category, as it has no built-in budgeting and financial management.
 

Teamwork and Productive are fairly stable and intuitive platforms. Some users might prefer the one, others the other. However, ClickUp performs the worst in this category, as users largely report issues with bugs, slow loading times, crashes, and more: “I wish ClickUp wasn’t as buggy, and had smoother integration and quicker live updates” (Source: Paraphrased from Capterra).

To summarize our software comparison, each of these tools can be suitable for a certain level of business needs.

If you need to keep track of your project updates and make routine tasks easier to manage, ClickUp is a fair choice. For more advanced options, you can consider Teamwork, as its range of tools includes improved resourcing and budgeting.

Finally, for a true end-to-end solution to business management, consider Productive. It provides comprehensive financial management and forecasting to help you predict and plan out your agency’s future.