ClickUp vs Trello: Ultimate Comparison

Trello has long been the go-to solution when it comes to basic task management and no-frills Kanban functionality. That being said, most of us who have used it in the past are more than familiar with its limitations.

In fact, over the years, we’ve helped dozens of agencies migrate their project management workflows from Trello to ClickUp. Today, we’re going to take a closer look at the key differences between the two platforms and help you find the right solution for your company’s needs.

Let’s get right into it!

Table of Contents

• What is ClickUp?
• What is Trello?
• ClickUp vs Trello: Direct Comparison
• Features
• Lists
• Views
• Team Communication
• Ease of Use
• ClickUp vs Trello: Pricing
• ClickUp Pricing
• Trello Pricing
• ClickUp vs Trello: Pros and Cons
• ClickUp Pros and Cons
• Trello Pros and Cons
• Which One is Best For You?

What is ClickUp?

ClickUp is a full-suite collaboration platform that helps teams share documents, create reports, manage tasks, and edit files with colleagues in real-time. ClickUp also has a team chat function and whiteboard capabilities to further aid with collaboration.

What is Trello?

Trello is a Kanban board web app and a subsidiary of Atlassian. The platform lets you create task cards, automate simple workflows, and easily attach files from Dropbox or Google Drive.

How Do ClickUp and Trello Compare?

Features

Top ClickUp features:

• Task management
• Recurring tasks
• Time tracking
• Dependencies
• Whiteboards
• Real-time team chat
• Custom views
• Custom fields
• Chrome extension
• Reporting and workload management
• Mobile apps (iOS and Android)
• Integrations and automations

Top Trello features: 

• Kanban task boards
• Checklists
• Custom fields
• Unlimited storage (5 MB to 250 MB per file, varies by plan)
• Trello Views (Premium plan or higher)
• Mobile apps (iOS and Android)
• Integrations and automations

Winner: ClickUp wins the battle of features since it’s a full-suite platform whereas Trello mostly centers around task management with Kanban boards.

Views

ClickUp, across its five subscription tiers, has quite a few views to choose from. You could use Kanban, Gantt, forms, timelines, or even create custom views. This makes it extremely flexible, if not a bit tricky to get the hang of at the start.

You’ll also be able to set default views for specific areas in your workspace. This means your content team could have their tasks set up as Kanban boards while your operations personnel can use Gantt charts to visualize the overarching schedules.

While Trello was initially known for its Kanban boards, the development team has introduced other view options over the years. Nowadays, you can view your projects as a timeline, table, calendar, dashboard, or even map depending on what’s most convenient for the task at hand.

The downside is that Trello Views is only available on the Premium tier or higher, meaning you’ll need to pay a minimum of $10/month for each user if you want to use anything other than Kanban boards on the platform.

Winner: both platforms have a diverse selection of views but ClickUp has more options on its Free and Unlimited plans, getting it the win.

Team Communication

ClickUp’s chat view lets you communicate with fellow team members in real-time and actually feels rather similar to using Slack. Don’t get us wrong, ClickUp won’t be competing with Slack on the team chat front anytime soon but there are a few benefits to using this view for projects.

First of all, you won’t have to get your entire team signed up to another platform just to be able to send real-time messages. Instead, you’ll essentially have a native version of almost-Slack that makes it possible to coordinate on projects without ever switching between tabs.

With ClickUp’s chat view, it’s possible to @mention any user on your workspace and they’ll automatically receive the message on their main notifications feed. Lastly, the chat view even has slash commands which are reminiscent of Notion and help you format messages quicker.

ClickUp has a chat view with real-time channels that feels quite similar to Slack. If most of your team is already on ClickUp then it’ll be a lot easier to reach them since you can just @mention any user on your workspace from the chat view.

Trello, on the other hand, tends to fall quite short on team communication. While you can integrate Trello with popular team chat solutions such as Slack or Google Hangouts, it doesn’t have any native real-time communication.

This means that the majority of your communication inside Trello itself will consist of commenting on task cards and tagging your colleagues to ensure they see it – leaving much to be desired.

Winner: ClickUp gets the win for having native team communication features.

Ease of Use

Those who have used both platforms probably already know where this is going. That being the case, we’re gonna keep this short and say that Trello is clearly the easier product to use if you’re looking for a platform that can be up and running in minutes.

All you have to do is sign up for an account, create your workspace, add a couple of team members, and start assigning task cards. Conversely, ClickUp’s flexibility and breadth of features to choose from can make for a steep learning curve.

To be fair to ClickUp, it does have extensive documentation on its knowledge base and the UI is rather intuitive. Still, by the very nature of being a full-suite platform instead of a single-purpose product, it’s going to be harder to use for most new users when compared to Trello.

If you’re an agency, be sure to see this webinar on ClickUp for agencies.

Winner: Trello’s simplicity gets it a decisive victory in the ease of use category.

ClickUp vs Trello: Pricing

ClickUp Pricing

ClickUp’s free plan is rather feature-dense compared to some of its competitors. You’ll be able to add an unlimited number of team members, share files with 100 MB cloud storage capacity, and utilize most of the core features that bring people to the platform.

At the same time, ClickUp provides more than enough incentive to upgrade to one of the paid plans. The Unlimited plan will likely be the most appealing to SMBs and younger agencies since it grants unlimited storage, unlimited integrations, and reporting for only $9/month per user.

The Business plan, coming in at $19/month for each user or $12/month if you bill annually, includes features that would be highly valuable to bigger companies. Advanced automations, workload management, advanced time tracking, and Google SSO are just a few of these.

The Business Plus and Enterprise tiers will likely be overkill for most people. That said, power users may enjoy features like custom role creation, APIs, admin training, white labeling, and even a dedicated success manager. Here’s a summary table for all the plans:

Trello Pricing

Trello has three paid plans and a freemium tier that lets you have up to 10 boards in your workspace and create unlimited task cards. Unlike ClickUp that offers 100 MB worth of cloud storage on its free plan, Trello’s free plan offers unlimited storage for files smaller than 10 MB.

Similarly, you can add as many freemium users as you want to your workspace without upgrading to a paid plan. If you upgrade to the Standard (6/month per user) plan then your individual file size limit goes up to 250 MB.

You’ll also get other features on the Standard tier like custom fields, board guests, saved searches, advanced checklists, and unlimited boards. The Premium plan which costs $12.50/month per user or $10/month is perfect for large teams with multiple projects.

Not only will you unlock Trello’s other available views but you’ll also be able to use workspace templates, create collections, add observers, receive priority support, enable Google Apps sign-on, and more.

Finally, Trello’s Enterprise tier at $17.50/month per user (billed annually) lets you add multi-board guests, set custom attachment permissions, create unlimited workspaces, and enable SSO through Atlassian Access.

Here’s a summary table to help you compare the four plans that Trello currently offers:

ClickUp vs Trello: Pros and Cons

ClickUp Pros and Cons

If you’re not quite sure whether ClickUp is the right choice for your business then here are a few pros and cons that might be helpful.

Trello Pros and Cons

Which One is Best For You?

At the end of the day, it’s clear that these are two products built with very different use cases in mind. Trello is the go-to team when you just need a quick and easy tool that will help you assign tasks across an organization.

It doesn’t have nearly as many features as ClickUp but there’s power in simplicity and Trello definitely has a place in the tool stack of smaller agencies. ClickUp is the exact opposite since it’s an all-in-one platform that helps you manage everything in your workflow from tasks to chats.

Ultimately, your purchase decision will depend on how much you’re ready to pay, how tech-savvy your team is, and just how flexible you need your project management software of choice to be.

That’s all for now but be sure to share this article with a friend or two if you found it helpful – stay productive, pilots!

If you need help choosing between ClickUp and Asana or other project management platforms for your team, chat with our team. With a decade of experience and thousands of clients served, we can help you choose the right tool for your situation.