Is ClickUp or Monday.com the best project management platform for you? (Round 2)

All right, so we are back with the comparison between ClickUp and Monday.com in the last video in the part one we talked about pricing, aesthetics, and ease of use. The top three factors most people consider when they're deciding between these tools. But for myself and probably many of you, that wasn't enough of a deciding factor for me. I still felt torn by the end of getting through those three points of comparison. So in this Part two, we're going to be going into the weeds of the other things that you might use to help break the tie between these two awesome platforms. We're going to be talking today about standout features, most annoying features, community strength, as well as language coverage and the company itself. So I don't want to rush it for us. I don't want to rush it for you. Thanks for tuning in for this Part two or three. Watch the Part one if you haven't already. But let's dive into Layla from the past talking about our first point in Monday Power feature number one is how they handle subtasks, namely that they are separate entities. Now this could also be considered a minus depending on how you look at it. For a while there, Monday didn't have a great way to handle subitems or subtasks, and they have since implemented this system. What's nice about this is that your sub items can have different values than what your main tasks or main containers do, and they all kind of collapse into each other. This is very different than how ClickUp handles subtasks, because in ClickUp your subtasks have the exact same everything for the most part as your parent tasks. So remarkable feature number one in Monday are sub items or subtasks, and that's actually a perfect segue into the second standout feature in Monday, and that's the ability to define what your items actually are. So each of the rows in the spreadsheet that is Monday day, you can give it a different name. You can have it represent a lead creative, a task or something custom. So like maybe each of them represents a dog and you could have it show up in the respective area. So when you go to add something new, you can add a new dog rather than in ClickUp everything is a task. We actually have a whole video about that here. But everything in ClickUp is a task, a task, a task, even if that task represents something something else. So I really think it's a strong feature for Monday to have this item terminology feature beyond items and sub items. I want to talk about automations in Monday when you create a custom automation, it has a nice text based way for you to create your automation. Now one could argue it's a bit confusing when you first get used to it, but once you have your prompts identified, filling in the blanks are a really nice and easy to use way to get started on automating your workflow. To compare that briefly to ClickUp's automations, well, things are a little bit more rigid here and less intuitive. You kind of need to understand what conditions and triggers and actions are in order to understand your way around. So I would say the text based automation generator in Monday is both sleeker and a little bit more beginner friendly. The next standout feature with Monday would be around permissions and security. While both Monday and ClickUp have HIPAA compliance available on their enterprise plans, the security settings that are built into Monday on the lower plans I think is just more powerful than what you have seen in ClickUp. The ability to audit usage stats, review the usage of boards and data, and the ability to set a password policy are just a bit more restrictive and controlled in Monday than what you can in ClickUp. Especially when we compare enterprise plans to enterprise plans, we compare those two max levels together. Monday has a bit of an edge. However, despite our requests, Monday has refused to let us demo an enterprise account for the purposes of this video, so can't show you that. However, ClickUp has kindly granted us an enterprise account to demonstrate these features for you here. So let's just do a quick foray into the security and permissions of what you see on an enterprise plan in ClickUp. A lot of options here and the ability to define custom roles, which is really nice, but not as much around logging activity and monitoring passwords being used as we do inside Monday. So despite Monday being unwilling to show all of you and me what their enterprise plan actually looks like, we will still say that security and permissions are an edge for Monday. The next standout feature in Monday is its usage of charts and graphs and the ability to adjust those based on actual parameters that you would be used to seeing in things like Excel. So the ability to set x and Y axes and benchmark lines and other settings like that that just allow you to report on the actual data you have in the tool. On the flip side, when it comes to tools like ClickUp, your charts are a lot more stock and your options for editing them tend to be a lot more limited and not based on x and Y axes that we'd be used to thinking about. So charts and the ability to drag and Drop them onto each of these views is definitely a plus for Monday. The other feature I want to highlight in Monday, which I think is a standout, is their use of profile. The ability to have descriptive information on a per user basis in additional to personal information, and the ability to see what people are working on. You also have the ability to set working statuses, which is something people in ClickUp have been waiting for for a long time, where you can actually set boundaries, which is a feature set that is very popular in tools like Slack and teams. So if you are someone who's looking to set expectations between team members, this is one way that Monday will really help you do that. As well as out of office periods, which are fantastic to have in a tool as well. All of these features really point to Monday's ability to work better for teams. Where there is a larger team structure, there's more people to coordinate with, and you need to be courteous of things like people's working status. Whereas ClickUp and Comparable Tools are a little bit more work for work. You know, log out when you don't want to be here, but otherwise we're assuming you're working. Now that could also tell us more about the priorities of the relative teams relative to working all the time versus taking time off. But I do think this profile feature set is a powerful one, particularly if we eventually see messaging being incorporated into these profiles. But those are the power features for Monday. For ClickUp, the power features I'll highlight are the hierarchy. So as much as the hierarchy does make it more confusing to set up ClickUp for the first time, it does give you an opportunity to build overviews that Monday just doesn't. Monday is still very board centric of the likes of Asana, Trello and honestly all of the other project managers, whereas ClickUp's hierarchy usage allows us to summarize things in a really nice way to be able to see all of our order activity at one layer, all of our everything at one layer. So when it comes to the power features for ClickUp, I would say even though it makes the tool harder to use, ClickUp's hierarchy is definitely giving them a leg up. The next feature I want to highlight is a loved and hated feature of ClickUp, but that is notifications and and what I want to highlight here is while there are a lot of limitations around notifications, ClickUp's notifications allow you to get very granular, which is nice. You can say exactly what you want to see, how you want to hear about things, and where you want it to show up. That kind of adjustability is really valuable to ensure you're only getting notified about things that matter to you in a certain week, in a certain role, in a certain year. When we compare that to something like Monday, the options as to what we get notified about are much simpler than what we see in a tool like ClickUp. So when it comes to standout features, comparing these two together, I would say that the notifications and the adjustment of them in ClickUp has the edge. The next standout feature I want to highlight in ClickUp is the ability to version and comment on attachments. This includes images and videos where you can click add comment and add notes to a specific file, and even assign changes to individual people. For people collaborating about media, this paired with ClickUp's really generous storage allowances where you're allowed to store an unlimited amount of files in ClickUp on the paid plans. That's a pretty powerful duo. So for people collaborating on media, check this out when we compare this to Monday, Monday only includes this feature in their marketer plan, which we've already talked about how weird their whole products and plans thing are. So this definitely stands out to me as something included in every plan. The next feature I want to highlight is very related to that, and that's that ClickUp has a simpler pricing model. I know I probably should have talked about this in pricing, but I think it matters here when it comes to features, in the sense that ClickUp includes all of the features. When you were on a respective plan, you get all the features that would be relevant for that level of your journey. Whereas with Monday, you have to buy separate products to get certain features, which is just weird because most teams have a marketing team, have a project team, have maybe a development team. Whatever those pieces are, they're all part of your business. Well, with ClickUp you get all the tools and you can build it for whatever team you want to. So I think that flexibility of what features are included is a really good one to highlight. The next feature I want to highlight on ClickUp's end is the use of Clip, the ability to make Clip video recordings inside ClickUp directly. It allows you to record a section of your screen, record what's going on, stop that recording, and then share that recording with anybody. So that way you can send a quick note back and forth providing feedback about a given topic. Once you add that link anywhere, it becomes a playable video on the web. To me. Clip and similar features like they have around their screenshot tool are huge time savers and it reflects ClickUp's priority of being the app to replace them all. Last but not least, I would just say that the templating feature in ClickUp is quite powerful. The ability to remap and adjust due dates forward or backwards at the time of template creation and other kind of tiny details stuffed into that feature are quite powerful and make ClickUp stand out in that regard. ClickUp has a lot of integrations, either native or third party, and pairing those integrations with a bunch of templates can make your workflow quite a bit more automated, because you could say when we close a deal in HubSpot, create a folder in ClickUp. Those kinds of connections are pretty nice to have, and I feel like the features are just a bit stronger in ClickUp in that regard versus Monday now transitioning away from power features, I want to highlight three three issues or headaches that I've heard on either side of the aisle here. When it comes to Monday, one of the complaints that users have is that there are limits which comes with having a tool that's a bit simpler. But for example, sending emails from Monday does not allow you to have HTML formatting, whereas when we send certain things from ClickUp we do have that ability to edit that HTML. The next small complaint I'd log on the Monday side is the lack of a quick Create button. So when you are navigating the hierarchy to add a new dog, in this case we actually need to click in the respective space spot in order to add it or go up to the top. There's not a universal quick creation button like we see inside ClickUp, so if we go over to ClickUp and we click + task, we have the ability to add a task anywhere in our account from that one menu. Last but not least on the Monday side is that there is some frustration about the inability to get that big picture overview with Monday because everything is broken out individually into boards, and while you can incorporate dashboards that show you data from other places, it just still doesn't give you that big picture overview that many users are looking to get. So that's on the Monday side. On the ClickUp side of things, the biggest complaints I hear from users are around subtasks. So how subtasks are being handled. The fact that in ClickUp these aren't considered a relationship yet, these two things need to be exactly the same. Formatting with exactly the same options and custom fields, and so on. The handling of subtasks in this tool is something that people often get confused by or frustrated with. The second thing ClickUp users complain about are permissions and how on the lower plans below Enterprise, you don't have a lot of options around restricting people editing your hierarchy. Whether it's editing this or editing this, there's a lot of things that individual users can change. You have no audit log that they change them, and then all of a sudden your account looks different for everybody. Maintaining that ClickUp structure and avoiding people taking individual liberties is quite hard in ClickUp and becomes a challenge for larger teams. So that's definitely a big complaint for ClickUp users. Now, the third and probably biggest complaint that we hear on the ClickUp side of things is reliability. So ClickUp releases a lot of new features all the time. They update weekly, and by updating so quickly and trying so many new things, a lot of their features get buggy. Like there's glitches, things break, things aren't working. You know, features are released half done like the mobile app, and that tends to frustrate ClickUp users when it's extended over a long period of time. Overall, ClickUp users are a very patient bunch, but ClickUp lately has still kind of been behind on the update bandwagon and there have been a lot of persistent bugs in the platform that frustrate users. Now are these bugs workflow inhibiting? Mostly no, but they're annoying. And a lot of little buzzing flies around your head is basically the sensation that you get when you find yourself in a little corner of ClickUp that is buggy. Okay, just a few more categories to go. On the topic of languages, ClickUp is far more US centric with prioritizing English in both their interface and the support that they offer. So at this point, ClickUp's support, chat, support, help desk, all that stuff is in English. They do now offer French as well in the interface, which you can flip over to. Now that is very different than Monday, where we have a wide range of languages available for you to flip between, both in the interface and importantly in their support base. So beyond English, Monday also offers email based support in French, Spanish, Hebrew, Portuguese, Swedish, Arabic and Russian. So not only do you get the interface in a language you can actually understand, which is fantastic, you can also get help in that language, at least through the email based support channels, which is really nice to see. So if you have team members who are not comfortable working in English in at least some capacity, you're probably going to find Monday takes the cake on this one. Next up I want to talk about partners, support, resources. How can you find more help when it comes to Monday. They have a traditional partner based system where you can find other businesses that support specialize in working with Monday users. You can also find content creators on YouTube, although there aren't really a lot of resources around that area. But they do have a lot of partners on their directory which you can review and even contact from this page. ClickUp on the other hand has a much more hodgepodge approach to support if you're looking for help from somebody one on one. They do have their Vetted ClickUp consultants, of which I am one where you can contact a consultant for support on a given issue. Their directory is much more simple and the resources that they provide for these folks is very limited other than the registration. But ClickUp has since in this year evolved this program into various other forms where now ClickUp also has a partner program. The difference between partners and vetted consultants is unclear I think even to them, but these are here. They also have ClickUp Verified, which are people who use ClickUp a lot who may or may not necessarily be service providers. So you have three different avenues in order to vet people when it comes to helping you with your ClickUp account. Once I know the difference I will share with you guys. But the last and perhaps most confusing choice that ClickUp has made is they've also started offering in house ClickUp support in addition to guided onboarding on enterprise plans. They have also thrown some of their raised funds behind building an in house consulting team to help with different steps in the ClickUp process, including the ongoing management of your ClickUp account. This is a strange choice and one that we haven't really seen before in startups of this size, so it'll be really interesting to see how this plays out. This is only recently introduced and historically has not been a strength of ClickUp, but it does make the landscape a little more confusing. If you're looking for help with your ClickUp account, any of these four tabs or four options could help you. You also have YouTubers like myself out there to help you as well. But when it comes to finding out who can help you, I would say Monday takes the cake here just because it is clearer, it is focused and they are not trying to also become service providers in addition to creating a product. That's just my opinion, but we'll see what happens with ClickUp's various different programs and maybe that volume will actually have them take the cake in the future. Now, last but not least, I want to talk a little bit about the company of Monday versus ClickUp. I do think they are in a kind of a different position. So so Monday.com is an older company. They've been around since 2012, which is weird. That's considered old, but they've been around since 2012. They are founded and based in Israel. They are post ipo, meaning they are now publicly trading. At the time of their IPO they were valued at 7.5 billion, which is a whole lot of zeros. They have raised 384 million to date in investment funds. They have 12 separate investors, notably including Zoom and Salesforce, and their team is between 501 and 8,000 employees. So that's Monday. If we contrast this with ClickUp, ClickUp is much younger company. It has a smaller investor base but it has raised significantly more money rather than the 384 we saw with Monday. ClickUp has raised 537.5 million, making it the largest Series C round in the productivity space. That is a lot of money and that is a lot of financial pressure and debt from investors. However, ClickUp has chosen to have a smaller investor base of just six investors and they are currently in their Series C phase. So not yet a public company, but I think it's reasonable to say we'll expect that to happen soon. ClickUp is at the same size bracket as Monday in terms of their team in that 500 to 1000 employee size. ClickUp only raised that Series C in 2021, so seeing how they're investing, that is going to be an interesting journey. But most notably, ClickUp has invested in an in house creative agency resulting in some pretty novel ad. They've also invested more resources into their engineering and at the same time of all of this, we've seen ClickUp raise their pricing pretty significantly and introduce new pricing plans this year, making it feel closer to Monday. As we've already talked about, some articles have also stated that ClickUp is looking to cement its position in the European market, so hopefully we'll see some language coverage expand as well with that move in 2022 and beyond. So this was a mammoth video to wrap this up. Which tool should you choose given all that information? Well, I would say if you are willing to go on a higher plan, meaning towards those higher brackets of the pricing ranges that we saw. If you have a larger team, if you value aesthetics over variety of features, and if you're looking for something a bit more flexible like a database, I would say you're probably going to find Monday.com the better fit. It's more of a traditional choice. You it's stable it's esthetically pleasing and it has a lot of permissions and structures that make it really conducive for more people working together. On the other hand, if you have a smaller team and you don't necessarily need three users, ClickUp is going to be a better option. If you are looking to stay on the smaller the left side of the pricing bracket, the smaller plans, and you still want powerful features, ClickUp will give you more features for your money. If you are fascinated by the variety of features ClickUp includes and don't want to have a simple experience experience, take that for what you will. ClickUp is going to be the better choice. And if you enjoy experimenting and trying new features and being able to play with everything all in one kind of price bracket, ClickUp is going to be the better choice because it does not have those weird products that we've already talked about that Monday has. At the end of the day, the choice is yours, but I don't think you'll go wrong with either option. And for my own decision here of deciding what our YouTube channel should cover, I still think ClickUp has a powerful leg for that small business market. But I completely see the need for those larger teams for people who value stability to incorporate Monday into their workflow. But for me, I think we're going to stick with ClickUp for the time being. What about you? Please do let me know in the comments below which tool you chose and why. What was the deciding factor for you? And if you have any feedback on this video, I would welcome it. While you're down there, please do like and subscribe. It costs you nothing and helps this video reach more people. And until next time, don't forget, enjoy the process. Thank you guys so much for your patience with a two part video. When I say this was a lot to jot down, I'm talking about hours of content and we've gotten it down to two videos but oh my gosh, I. I feel relieved being able to put it into parts. So thank you. I'll see you in the next one.