When it comes to project management solutions, ClickUp and Jira are certainly well known in the market. But which one is the better pick?
David Daniel, a strategy and performance coach who runs Everyday Design, says that in a battle of ClickUp vs Jira, neither solution is generally better — it really depends on your needs and the type of business you operate. He should know — he used Jira for three years before switching to ClickUp about a year ago. Plus, while he currently does consulting work for mission-driven organizations, he used to be a project manager for a large nonprofit.
Daniel was never completely satisfied with Jira, noting it was built for software developers. He felt like he had to “hack” it to use it for non-software–related projects, but he made it work. The final straw in letting the platform go was when Jira retired its desktop app.
“Neither my clients nor I cared for the UI of the web app,” he says, “so I sought out an alternative. After trying Asana for a bit, I found ClickUp — it was a better fit and worked with my tight budget.”
After using both solutions for some time, here’s Daniel’s assessment of ClickUp vs Jira as it relates to three important project management software features: work views, automation, and customization.
ClickUp vs Jira: A comparison of features
1. Work views
“Both platforms have a multitude of ways to view work — board, list, calendar, Gantt chart, and so on. But ClickUp has more built-in views that feel more developed for a variety of use cases,” Daniel explains. “Jira’s views were clearly made for software development needs. This is the main area where I felt I needed to hack things to fit my needs.”
Daniel does note that Jira has improved in the views department since he made the switch to ClickUp.
2. Automation
Daniel says both ClickUp and Jira are strong contenders when it comes to automation, though he gives a slight edge to Jira. “But this may stem from my additional years of using Jira. ClickUp definitely stacks up closely from my usage so far,” he adds.
According to Daniel, Jira truly shines in automating the management of scrum projects. Jira has more trigger options for its automations in this context.
“For example,” he says, “when a sprint completes, you can set it up so that your unfinished tasks are automatically moved to the backlog, where you can tag them for reprioritization in the next sprint. I haven’t figured out how to automate in this same manner in ClickUp.”
3. Customization
“ClickUp’s hierarchy makes it easy for lower levels to inherit whatever custom fields you create at higher levels,” says Daniel. “In addition, you can create unique custom fields at lower levels that aren’t inherited. This flexibility puts ClickUp over Jira for me.”
As an example, Daniel puts the customization capabilities in the context of content production. You might have a list for podcasts, a list for articles, a list for social media posts, and so on. “You can create custom fields that are only applicable to the items in each of those respective lists to capture different aspects of the various content types you produce.”
ClickUp vs Jira: Another user’s take
Alice Eve, marketing director at Cicinia France, echoes much of what Daniel lays out above. She agrees that Jira is built for developers to plan, track, and release software. ClickUp, on the other hand, is a straightforward, cloud-based collaboration and project management tool designed for all user types.
But Eve also had issues with ClickUp: “Unlike ClickUp, you can tailor Jira to your team’s specific requirements by combining flexible workflows with tons of apps and integrations. Furthermore, Jira’s free plan provides unrestricted access to almost all features for up to 10 users and doesn’t overly compel you to upgrade.”
An enhanced ClickUp experience with Jotform
If you choose to go with ClickUp, you can leverage Jotform, a powerful form builder, to increase efficiency. When you integrate ClickUp with Jotform, you can easily gather task requests and project information through customizable online forms and have these elements appear in your ClickUp account automatically as new tasks.
For example, say a salesperson has just closed a deal with a new client, and now they need to draw up a proposal to send to the client to review and approve. In Jotform, you can set up a form that enables the salesperson to submit a request for a sales support team member to address, along with a desired due date and proposal details. Once the salesperson submits the request, it automatically shows up as a task in ClickUp assigned to the indicated support person. Jotform can handle tons of similar scenarios. Get started with one of these project management form templates or try out the ClickUp integration today.
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