How are ClickUp and Dubsado different? | Side-by-Side Comparison

Hey everybody, Layla here. Recently in my Facebook group which if you're not in it, join it, we were talking about ClickUp and Dubsado and someone asked what's the difference between Dubsado and ClickUp? And actually a few people chimed in, they weren't sure what the difference was between these two tools. And I tried to summarize it in a few sentences and I was like, okay, I give up, I need to do a video. And that's what this video is. So today I'm going to talk about the differences between ClickUp and Dubsado, why I currently and many systems people are using both of these tools, why one can't really replace the other, and just how they are different categories, why there are different categories of tools that complement each other sort of, but do not can't really replace one another yet. So let's start by introducing ClickUp. If you're already familiar with this tool, feel free to fast forward a few minutes. If ClickUp isn't familiar to you, definitely watch this part. So first of all, let's give us a basic tour here. ClickUp is a task management tool based around, yep, you guessed it, tasks. Everything is built around this hub, which is this detail view. New Tasks Task Creation Task creation is everything from the main command here, the main keyword command, to the organization of everything. Lists of tasks, boards of tasks, schedules of tasks. Everything is about tasks at its core because tasks, you know, being tasks. Tasks can be filled in with almost any type of information, which makes ClickUp very customizable. You could track all sorts of things and the progress on them. Using ClickUp you can create custom fields like we have in here to help you organize things in different ways. It's just a very flexible tool, just like Airtable. You can use it in so many different ways. But don't be fooled by any of the they'll have templates and stuff for CRM, but really it's focused on tasks. Things you need to do that are done and go through different statuses. While there is an automation module in ClickUp right now, Click ClickUp's automations are focused on stuff inside ClickUp again helping you automate the record keeping of your tasks more so than actually doing your tasks. So for example, when the status changes, maybe you want to change who it's assigned to. When you know when a task is created, maybe you want a certain task template applied. It's all around helping you organize your tasks automatically. So that's tasks and automations. Every single feature in ClickUp pretty Much goes around this task hub. So can you. We've got notifications for tasks, we've got inbox for tasks, we've got dashboards to help you summarize tasks. We've got docs, which are more. So maybe these are a little bit extraneous, but they're information and context that you can then use to complete those tasks and attach to the tasks and then goals that kind of roll all of this up. Again, task, task, task. Because so many things can be considered a task and fall into the very flexible structure that ClickUp has. You can use this for so many things, but at its core, that is what ClickUp is all about, because ClickUp is very flexible. You might also see people using this for all sorts of things, like SOPs, which I might use, or to even, like, create client portals and things like that. But again, all of that is a modification using the flexibility of the tool. It's not what the tool was built for. Dubsado is a much less flexible tool, which I'm going to take you into right about now. All right, so here I am in a Dubsado account. Instantly, this feels a lot more dated. As you can see by just the main view. Dubsado is organized around kind of more business management, client management. Whereas ClickUp is centered on tasks, Dubsado is centered on clients or customers, making sure that you're getting paid by them, making sure that your appointments are happening, and making sure, like even just by this checklist here, that the notifications are all around making sure that your clients are moving through your process. They do include some basic tasks in Dubsada, which is where some of the confusion comes in about the difference. But when you compare this to ClickUp, there's no competition. These tasks are pretty much useless. Okay, so where is the hub of Dubsado? The hub and the main area of Dubsado is this. Projects. Projects are the equivalent of tasks in ClickUp in the sense that they are the hub, the basis around everything else which is formed. So everything in ClickUp. Sorry, excuse me. Everything in Dubsado centers around a project. A project, unlike in ClickUp, is not just a collection of tasks. It is basically a client engagement. So here we see that we've got a project called Wedding Shoot, which might be a service we sell. It's got dates for the project. We've got a contract for that, that project which goes through Dubsado. We've got tags we can apply just like ClickUp. We've got a status which is just like ClickUp. But all of this is centered around the client. There are features in here that are very. That hodgepodge together other tools that you might be familiar with. So, for example, we've got invoicing built in here, which is something that you might have in QuickBooks or Stripe or wherever else you might. And Doco, wherever you're doing your invoicing. We've got forms which include proposals, intake forms, questionnaires. I mean, I know it's called the same thing as ClickUp forms, but these forms just make ClickUp forms look like nothing. These are entirely customizable forms that you can use HTML to format into. Beautiful. Let's see if we have one in here. Anything pretty? Yeah. So here's an example. This questionnaire we can use to collect information and feed it into our project. Again, not a task, our project to collect information about our client. Do we have any other good ones here? A proposal. So here we have a proposal where we can have our logo, we can have all the information. We can actually allow people to select what services they want from us, fill out some questions and submit that proposal to again purchase our services. This is just a very different focus than what ClickUp is. This is focused on clients. ClickUp is focused on tasks. Appointments is kind of replacing a calendly kind of tool. I don't know if we have anything pending in here. Do we have any templates? But basically you can create a scheduler just like you would have in calendly or acuity, and have schedules get scheduled, schedules get scheduled, get appointments get scheduled, and all these things right now I've shown you are just kind of a hodgepodge of client service tools, not task management. You'll notice there's a task space down here which is so simple it's almost laughable. And there's boards which kind of look like handbands, but it's just not really like notes. And tasks here aren't really that powerful. They're just a place to put some text. They don't really do much of anything. However, the reason Dubsado has any teeth, the thing, I mean, forms are great and having the appointments, you know, in the same tool built into this very low cost tool is great. But the reason Dubsado has such an edge and the reason people use it is this middle tab. So this tab is the singular reason that I recommend Dubsado, sorry, workflows. Because Dubsado has created each of the pieces of the puzzle that you need to run a client services business. Invoicing that integrates with QuickBooks and Xero, I think it's Xero, definitely QuickBooks. If you've got forms, proposals, invoices, subcontracts, contracts, forms are built in schedulers. If you need to schedule any appointment, that's built in. Because all of those things are built into dubsado. Dubsado has then mobilized them into a chain of automations which you can create from scratch on your own. And that's what, that's what workflows are in Dubsado. So here we see a sample workflow. This is called a sample lead workflow with approval. Basically each box is a step and this is just a linear process. Here we have an email sent, we create a to do, which is that task that I showed you before. We checked off that task. We can uncheck it, check it, we can then send a form. We can actually show you this form here. We're going to send this email which we can edit and click Approve, which is what that approve button is. When we approve it, it'll send off to our client, then we can send this form, then we can send this email, you see that just sent. Then, then we can create this task, then we can send this email, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We can change the status and build our entire client process to be automated using these workflows natively within Dubsado, which is a tool that costs like $30 a month, which is really, really low. This is the feature that makes Dubsado stand out. When we look at ClickUp Automations, just to jump back to those, ClickUp Automations do not do anything close to this level of detail. While we could maybe automate what task is create, none of it is interacting with our client, none of it is pushing to the outside world. Automations in ClickUp at this point in time are purely internal. And you know, for what it's worth, Dubsado has all of these native tools, this appointment scheduler, this form builder, which is actually a pretty decent form builder. All these things are built into the platform. So when we get to the point that ClickUp can automate externally, it's still you're going to need to have Calendar, you're going to need to have QuickBooks invoicing, you're going to need to have all these other pieces to then put on the ClickUp Automations, whereas Dubsado has them all built in. One of the main reasons I have not been able to give up dubsado, even though it's kind of clunky, it looks, I don't Know, it just feels very dated is because despite how dated it feels and how simple this interface is, the ability to be able to go through and automate your entire service using these workflows is absolutely incredible. So all these times I'm forcing all these emails to go out, all these emails are being recorded in here, any invoices we have are being tracked here. All of it is being kept under this project. When I go back to my main projects tab, I can see this project and any other projects I have in the process and where they are in my pipeline. It's not so much focused on task or project completion, it's focused on getting paid, serving clients and getting what you need done. Why these workflows are so powerful is because you can create tons of different unique processes that provide that one on one interaction based on the client. So what I love using workflows for is things like post project, follow up. You've worked with somebody, you want to follow up with them every three months for the next 18 months. You can do that by creating a workflow here in Dubsado. So we create a follow up, we can add our actions again. Clunky interface, very clunky. We write our email, require approval before sending and so on. So we can build out this whole chain of events that we send another email, Maybe it's the same follow up we require approval at seven days after previous actions complete. That works, click apply and we start building out this series of automations that we can manually approve or disapprove that or alter before they go out. They're going to one person at that pace. For that one person, we're not talking mass communication and we're doing all of this around client service. I hope by now it is clear the difference between Dubsado and ClickUp. The number one thing is the intent of the platform. I didn't even go through all the tabs here, but even just by those, I showed you the main standout features. I hope it's clear that Dubsado is really about getting that client through your process, whatever that is. There's no real tasks attached to it. Although they're there, they're not really doing much. Workflows are automating as much of that process as you feel comfortable automating and you can take your client through your world and get paid all through Dubsado. ClickUp is better for advanced task management. When you need to keep track of lots of things happening at once. You want to have that visual guide of workload, not just how much you're getting paid. But what you need to do, that's where ClickUp comes in. Myself and many others are using both of these tools right now because it makes sense, because it's worth it. Have the two separate places. When you have a new project in ClickUp, you can even automate the relationship between the two, I believe through Zapier. But you can create a list here called New List. What do we call that? Wedding Shoot. And just keep track of all the client tasks you shoot. Edit photos, for example. This degree of detail especially, we start adding all the things, do this, do that. It's hard to keep track of them all in Dubsado because Dubsado is not made for tasks. But if you use this as your internal processes, your internal tasks, and use Dubsado as your client, facing relationship management, whether that's sending them emails, keeping track of what they need to have, keeping track of all this stuff in Dubsado, there is that separation that can happen where these two kind of play together very nicely and complement each other. To help you manage a client services business, where you have client services, but you also need to keep track of things inside your business in terms of tasks and processes. I hope this made sense. I hope this helps you understand the difference. I know this is kind of all over the place. I was just trying to go off the cuff here to see if it would make some sense. If you have questions about this, if there's something I missed, please do not hesitate to leave a comment below. I do in no way suggest that this is an exhaustive comparison between the two, but I hope I can at least just instill the main difference. So if you want to see more videos like this, if you want me to expand on this a little bit more, please do leave a comment. If you like this video, if you think this made sense to you, definitely hit subscribe. See some of my other stuff about either of these two tools. I'm going to leave it at that for now. Thank you so much for watching and have a great rest of your day.