ClickUp vs. Asana – Which Is Right For Your Agency?
When it comes to project management and the best practices for systems and processes for your agency, some of the most often asked questions are related to…TOOLS.
Everyone wants to know:
**What CRM to use?
**What project management tool to use?
**How should they be working together?
**How should they be working in them as a team?
**How can they access individuals’ tasks and team members’ tasks?
There’s a lot to know and a lot to learn – so it only makes sense that there are a lot of questions that come along with that.
Having the right tools is crucial to an agency that’s going to be able to grow sustainably, get to capacity, and stay there without experiencing burnout, overwhelm, and frustrating clients along the way.
And there is no shortage of tools out there, but two project management tools that agencies often use – and that I get a lot of questions around – are ClickUp and Asana.
Of course, the top FAQs about these two tools are:
1. Which one is better for my agency?
2. Which one do we need?
3. Which one makes the most sense for us?
With that in mind, it’s time to take a closer look at these two tools.
ClickUp is the newest of the popular project management tools and has continued to gain popularity among agencies over the last few years – and for a good reason. ClickUp is a very robust tool with lots of capabilities.
That doesn’t mean, however, that it is the tool that you need for your agency. There are several things that you should take into consideration before taking the ClickUp plunge.
When it comes to choosing a project management tool, there are three key things you need to consider: cost, the ability to track team tasks (and due dates), and ease of use.
Keeping those three things in mind, let’s look at how ClickUp and Asana stack up against each other.
COST
Obviously, we don’t want to break the bank with our project management tool. Remember, the goal is to help you increase profits and you don’t want a project management tool that’s going to be a financial drain.
When you look at ClickUp’s free version, you will see that it actually has a lot more features than Asana’s free version. Additionally, as you’re moving up to more premium and higher-tiered offerings, ClickUp costs less per user than Asana.
What does ClickUp’s free version offer that Asana’s doesn’t?
One key feature is privacy – and ClickUp has a lot more privacy functionality in general – and it’s included as part of their free plan.
Custom fields are also included in ClickUp’s free version. You can think of custom fields as a way to organize and categorize tasks within a group of tasks. Really handy for keeping your workspace neat and tidy.
Additionally, ClickUp has a timeline view, which is really nice if that’s how you like to visualize projects. This is useful for seeing on a calendar when projects are due and helps with capacity and workload.
This brings me to another feature that ClickUp includes for free, and that is the workload feature. It is very easy to see which team member has a lot of work on their plate and which one doesn’t. With this feature, workloads and projects can be balanced between team members, which ensures that everything’s not piling up – hopefully eliminating the dreaded workflow bottlenecks.
So, when it comes to price, ClickUp is edging out Asana. It just has more to offer with the free version than Asana does.
TEAM ACCOUNTABILITY
The second thing to look for in a project management tool is the ability to see not only your tasks but, as the business owner or as a project manager, the ability to see what your team members are working on.
**Are they getting behind on their due dates?
**Are they tracking?
**Do they have a lot on their plate?
**Can they take on more work?
**What’s their bandwidth look like?
Being able to quickly see the tasks as a whole across your business and who is working on what – and when – is very important for all agencies.
Both ClickUp and Asana do that.
They both have easy ways to view what the team is working on and look at when things are due. Is someone getting behind on work? Does someone have a lot of tasks? Does someone have less? Both have really good options for that.
ClickUp has the “Everything” feature, while Asana makes it easy to click on a team member’s icon, and all of their tasks show up, allowing you to quickly see which project they’re associated with and the due date. Both do an excellent job of giving you an idea of what’s going on with your team tasks and projects as a wholE.
ClickUp and Asana are pretty evenly matched with this.
EASE OF USE
The last thing I always look for is its ease of use. When you’re working with a team, you’ve got a lot of different people using your project management tool – and sometimes clients are getting involved. We don’t want the project management tool to be a stumbling block to getting work done. Your project management tool should not be a hurdle that team members have to work through or stress out about in order to get their work done. They should be able to quickly find their task due dates and execute on them.
When it comes to ease of use, I will say Asana takes the cake on this. Asana feels way more intuitive to many agency owners and their team members. It feels much easier to use than ClickUp.
As mentioned earlier, ClickUp is very robust. There is a lot that ClickUp can do, but that means it comes with a much higher learning curve than Asana does. So, it may or may not make sense for you to make the leap into ClickUp. If you’re not going to use all of those extra features that ClickUp has, the learning curve associated with it may not be worth the effort.
And again, if you’re finding clients are struggling with it, or team members are struggling with it, and it’s turning into a really big roadblock, then it doesn’t make sense.
So, in terms of ease of use, this one goes to Asana.
When it comes to choosing the right project management tool for your agency, you want to look at:
**Cost
**Team Accountability
**Ease of use
And when we look at those, for these two tools, it looks like:
Yes, they both have a lot of really great core features and both do them well. So, the answer to which is better for your agency is…it depends.
If you’re looking for ease of use, and you have a smaller team and getting tasks done and tracking things can be handled within the functionality of Asana, then go for Asana because it is much easier to use.
But if you’re continuing to find that Asana is just not giving you what you need to get the job done, or you have a growing team of 8-10 people, it’s going to start getting expensive to have Asana. It would make more sense to start taking a much closer look at ClickUp and see if it’s a better fit for your business.
If you have more questions about tools, I’ve put together a tool inventory worksheet for you. In it, I’ve outlined the six tools you need to grow and scale your agency, and I give you examples of tools that fit into each bucket. You can get it at: melissavmorris.com/tools