ClickUp has an extremely robust free version. It’s like a multi-layered version of Jira, Trello, or Microsoft Planner, with many ways to run projects and (fortunately) a good set of tutorials. Using it to run things in my personal and professional life, I haven’t ever wished to upgrade to the paid version.
This is not a complete review of ClickUp, because you can do so many different things with it. (2025 update: even after using it for several years, I haven’t learned all the features.)
Here are a few things you can easily do with ClickUp:
Project management Similar to Monday.com, ClickUp allows you to create different “boards” or “workspaces” for different areas of your life. For my side hustle design business, I have one “Projects” board, a column for each client, and a ticket for each project. (If the business were full-time and I had a large client roster I’d have to organize it differently).
Reading / viewing list I’ve got three buckets: “Fun,” “Professional,” and “Done.” When I hear a recommendation or find something I want to read later, I put it into the right bucket.
Content calendar For Friday Goody Bag, I have three “buckets,” one for un-written posts, one for drafts, and one for posts that have already been published. When I come up with an idea for a post, I open ClickUp on the web or on my phone app and jot it down.
Time tracking If you bill your work by the hour, you can start a timesheet clock running right within a project “ticket” while you’re working on that project. (You do have to remember to stop the clock, otherwise you’ll notice later in the week that you supposedly spent 78 hours on one client’s project).
File storage This is one use case for the paid version. I got tired of paying a storage company like Dropbox, Box, or even Google to store files from clients who have forgotten my name, so now I store files in ClickUp right with the project ticket. I wouldn’t recommend this as a super-robust solution, but it does work for me. A little more than ten bucks a month gets me 2TB of storage, and it’s organized in the same place as my projects are.
