Are you inter­est­ed in the best project man­age­ment sys­tem? In this arti­cle, we com­pare three tools to help you decide.

The end of emails and meetings?

There’s a rumour going around that project man­age­ment sys­tems are on the verge of replac­ing work emails and meet­ings. Sure, these tools are get­ting more pop­u­lar, but they haven’t tak­en over just yet. How­ev­er, many busi­ness­es are recog­nis­ing their val­ue and leav­ing out­dat­ed project man­age­ment process­es behind.

Arguably, emails are a poor busi­ness com­mu­ni­ca­tion chan­nel since they’re not designed for col­lab­o­ra­tion. Over­ly long email threads can be hard to track, you must make a big effort to search for a piece of infor­ma­tion, and emails are not “mobile-first”.

In fact, of 1000 US employ­ees, 20% said they were “swamped” by the num­ber of emails they receive every day. Beyond the sim­plest of projects, even peo­ple in small­er teams will strug­gle to keep on top of mul­ti­ple email threads.

Fur­ther­more, a 2019 study found that unnec­es­sary meet­ings were named the num­ber one cause of unpro­duc­tiv­i­ty in the work­place. Many work­ers are fre­quent­ly called for meet­ings that dis­cuss things that could have been in a sim­ple email or project man­age­ment system.

Despite this clear need for an improved project man­age­ment process, dig­i­tal tools aren’t as pop­u­lar as we thought. In 2020, a study found that just under 1 in 4 busi­ness organ­i­sa­tions use dig­i­tal project man­age­ment tools.

We must sur­mise then that the oth­er 75% are still using paper­work, Excel, emails, and meet­ings. Per­haps con­se­quent­ly, in organ­i­sa­tions where project man­age­ment is not a val­ued pri­or­i­ty, 67% of projects fail.

Clear­ly, many employ­ees, teams, and busi­ness­es will ben­e­fit from dig­i­tal project man­age­ment tools. But what are these exactly?

What are project management systems?

Project man­age­ment sys­tems are pieces of soft­ware devel­oped for the organ­is­ing and del­e­ga­tion of tasks with­in per­son­al and busi­ness realms. They will have sev­er­al key ele­ments: a hier­ar­chi­cal struc­ture from the del­e­ga­tors to del­e­ga­tees, plan­ning of projects such as cre­at­ing sub­tasks and work­flows, a space to dis­cuss process­es and pro­ce­dures required for the exe­cu­tion of projects, and an abil­i­ty to noti­fy rel­e­vant team mem­bers of projects, and changes, that affect them.

Project man­age­ment sys­tems offer many ben­e­fits to big and small teams alike:

• Smooth­ly-run­ning col­lab­o­ra­tion and improved teamwork
• Quick­er and eas­i­er planning
• Con­tin­u­ous mon­i­tor­ing of project progress
• Bud­get control
• Easy del­e­ga­tion and resource allocation
• Cen­tralised space for shar­ing work and resources
• Time track­ing

The tools on the mar­ket today offer var­i­ous com­bi­na­tions of fea­tures and degrees of cus­tomi­sa­tion. The only thing more impor­tant than hav­ing a project man­age­ment sys­tem is hav­ing one that works well for you and your needs.

So, which one is the best for you? Read on to learn the pros and cons of Asana, Click­Up, and Trel­lo. Plus, all their fea­tures, pric­ing plans, sim­i­lar­i­ties, and dif­fer­ences. First, we’ll dis­cuss the key things to look out for and how they vary between tools:

Features

One of the main things you’ll want to know about your cho­sen tool is the fea­tures it has to offer. These are all the things you can do with­in the plat­form to assist your work­flow, del­e­ga­tion, col­lab­o­ra­tion, team pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, and more.

In Asana, Click­Up, and Trel­lo, you can do what you’d expect: cre­ate tasks, due dates, and assign them to team mem­bers. Each one offers mul­ti­ple project views: boards, lists, and cal­en­dars, and each tool allows for the inte­gra­tion of oth­er use­ful apps. The com­bi­na­tion of fea­tures, though, is what will sway you.

Trel­lo also offers dash­board and map views, whilst Click­Up offers mind map and time­line views. In Asana’s free ver­sion, project views are lim­it­ed to lists.

If you’ve got a big team, you’re prob­a­bly expect­ing a vast num­ber of tasks to be cre­at­ed on your cho­sen tool.

If you were com­par­ing the free plans of Trel­lo vs Click­Up or even Trel­lo vs Asana, Trel­lo would­n’t come first in this regard. In both Asana and Click­Up’s free plans, you can cre­ate an unlim­it­ed num­ber of dash­boards and tasks. How­ev­er, in Trel­lo’s free ver­sion, users are lim­it­ed to cre­at­ing 10 task boards per Work­space, so it’s not nec­es­sar­i­ly ide­al for big­ger teams. Fur­ther­more, its free ver­sion lacks advanced fea­tures, which grow in price with more team members.

You can cre­ate recur­ring list items in all three tools, eas­ing off the pres­sure caused by many rou­tine tasks.

Inte­gra­tions will be very impor­tant to some. Asana has many more inte­gra­tions than Trel­lo, and Click­Up has more than 35 Click­Apps that allow you to cus­tomise your teams’ experiences.

You’ll be able to inte­grate time track­ing in both Asana and Click­Up, but with Trel­lo, it’s built-in. When it comes to employ­ee invoic­es in Click­Up, tracked time can be aligned with invoic­es to ensure con­ti­nu­ity and cor­rect pay.

Cost

When it comes to the cost of your cho­sen project man­age­ment sys­tem, it will vary depend­ing on what you want. Two main fac­tors will influ­ence the plan you go for: the num­ber of employ­ees on your team and your stor­age requirements.

With Asana, you can use up to 100MB per file but unlim­it­ed over­all stor­age – even on the free plan. You can have up to 15 team mem­bers on the free ver­sion; how­ev­er, this becomes unlim­it­ed even with the cheap­est plan.

Click­Up’s sys­tem suits teams of all sizes and wel­comes an unlim­it­ed num­ber of users even in its free plan. Its free plan also has 100MB of stor­age and unlim­it­ed stor­age from the cheap­est plan.

Trel­lo costs slight­ly less than Asana and Click­Up but not by much. Trel­lo’s free ver­sion allows unlim­it­ed mem­bers per team, but each team is lim­it­ed to 10 Boards. The free plan lim­its files to 10MB, which increas­es to 250MB for Stan­dard, Pre­mi­um, and Enter­prise plans.

If you have a small team and want to com­pare the free plans of Asana vs Trel­lo, Asana will like­ly take the title for the best free plan. It’s uncom­pli­cat­ed and offers many bril­liant features.

Customisation and ease-of-use

When it comes to Asana vs Click­Up, Click­Up is the much more cus­tomis­able option.

Both Asana and Trel­lo are high­ly user-friend­ly and intu­itive to engage with. They’d both trump Click­Up in terms of ease of use. How­ev­er, this might not be most impor­tant to you.

Click­Up is a high­ly cus­tomis­able project man­age­ment sys­tem that gives its users com­plete cre­ative con­trol. Its vast num­ber of cus­tomi­sa­tion options might be over­whelm­ing to some new users, but it cer­tain­ly caters to com­pa­nies with larg­er or com­pli­cat­ed operations.

In com­par­i­son, Trel­lo’s sim­ple lay­out makes it an ide­al tool for small­er teams and projects. It has lim­it­ed cus­tomi­sa­tion but offers cus­tom back­grounds and stickers.

Goals and organisation

The Click­Up Hier­ar­chy allows for many Work­spaces and Spaces to be cre­at­ed for a well-organ­ised oper­a­tion and sim­ple mon­i­tor­ing of project progress. Click­Up allows you to auto­mate cer­tain pro­ce­dures, so you don’t have to focus on rou­tine tasks.

You can set Goals in Click­Up and track them in var­i­ous ways. These might be numer­i­cal or go by a true/false sys­tem. You’ll be able to see all your Goals in one place and attach projects and tasks to each of them.

Trel­lo has inter­est­ing organ­i­sa­tion fea­tures such as the abil­i­ty to alpha­be­tise boards. Fur­ther­more, its colour-cod­ed sys­tem makes tasks change colour when it gets clos­er to their deadlines.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, you can’t make glob­al labels with Trel­lo or cre­ate roadmaps or link cards with objec­tives. So, if you want to track objec­tives and goals, you’re prob­a­bly bet­ter off with ClickUp.

On Click­Up, you can cre­ate dif­fer­ent loca­tions for dif­fer­ent depart­ments, so every­thing’s in the right place. With Trel­lo, there’s no uni­fied high-lev­el view of team mem­bers’ work which isn’t the case for the oth­er tools. Asana’s Admin Con­sole allows admins to see insights into the organ­i­sa­tion, such as user performance.

Security

In terms of secu­ri­ty, both Asana and Trel­lo are com­pli­ant with SOC and GDPR pri­va­cy rules; how­ev­er, Trel­lo offers ele­ment authen­ti­ca­tion on all its plans for an extra lay­er of security.

Click­Up offers guest and user per­mis­sions and pri­vate, pro­tect­ed and default views for fur­ther pri­va­cy lev­els with­in com­pa­nies and across departments.

Miscellaneous features

There are a few extra fea­tures that come with project man­age­ment sys­tems. They won’t be what you expect, but some will be sur­pris­ing­ly pleas­ant, and you’ll won­der how you lived with­out them!

There’s no way you’d need some­thing as com­pli­cat­ed as Click­Up for per­son­al tasks. If we think about Click­Up vs Trel­lo, Trel­lo def­i­nite­ly wins in terms of per­son­al use:

For exam­ple, you can cre­ate read­ing lists with Trel­lo. You can even cat­e­gorise your books in var­i­ous ways – from to-read, read­ing, and com­plet­ed, or by genre. This goes to show that project man­age­ment tools have val­ue beyond busi­ness. They can help organ­ise our per­son­al lives too.

Trel­lo also sets itself apart from oth­ers with its abil­i­ty to track your finances and expens­es. With this fea­ture, you can organ­ise your ven­tures beyond the work­load ele­ment but the cost aspect too.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, Trel­lo’s fea­tures become lim­it­ed when you’re offline, where­as Asana and Click­Up aren’t as hin­dered in this regard.

Asana, Click­Up, and Trel­lo are all com­pat­i­ble with iOS and Android systems.

If you’re torn between Click­Up vs Asana, and your pri­or­i­ty is task­ing detailed briefs to your team with­out the need for emails and meet­ings, Asana can help. In Asana, you can make tem­plates for task briefs. This way, when any­one in your team cre­ates a task, they can refer to the tem­plate to out­line their expec­ta­tions thor­ough­ly. In your tem­plate, you can include all the aspects of the task that any assignee needs to know.

Plus, Asana has a cus­tom rules builder with its Pre­mi­um plan so you can stream­line rou­tine tasks. For exam­ple, you can make a “rule” that a task is cre­at­ed and assigned on a cho­sen due date, so you don’t have to think about it on the day.

Click­Up has a new approach to enhanc­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion with­in teams: users can see when oth­ers are typ­ing com­ments or edit­ing doc­u­ments at the same time as oth­ers. This, com­bined with instant noti­fi­ca­tions of sta­tus updates or new com­ments, enhances team collaboration.

Pros and cons

Asana

Launched com­mer­cial­ly in 2012, Asana has over 100,000 pay­ing organ­i­sa­tions and mil­lions of teams that use it. It’s renowned for its ease of use, par­tic­u­lar­ly for new users. Its free plan has every­thing a sin­gle per­son or small team would want, so it’s def­i­nite­ly a cost-effec­tive option.

ClickUp

Found­ed in 2017, Click­Up is a project man­age­ment sys­tem that offers com­plete indi­vid­u­al­i­sa­tion for each team using it. This char­ac­ter­is­tic makes it high­ly attrac­tive to com­pa­nies with many or com­pli­cat­ed work­flows and projects.

Trello

Trel­lo is a Kan­ban-style task man­age­ment tool cre­at­ed in 2011. Many peo­ple are fans of this tool for its visu­al approach to over­see­ing projects. Trel­lo is also ide­al for per­son­al use as well as for businesses.

Final Thoughts

There’s no doubt­ing that a project man­age­ment sys­tem is a must-have when car­ry­ing out the many tasks and projects involved in run­ning a busi­ness. The ques­tion is: which one will you choose?

If you’re still unsure and would like to tri­al each of these before you choose, there’s no harm in try­ing all of them for free before decid­ing which one you like best. All three have valu­able fea­tures for all kinds of businesses.

To sum up, project man­age­ment tools help busi­ness­es keep all their tasks in one place, coor­di­nate teams, and track the progress of each task. These dig­i­tal tools might be what the future of project man­age­ment looks like – so, what are you wait­ing for? Stream­line your busi­ness’s work­flows with your favourite tool today.