Monday.com vs. ClickUp vs. SmartSuite: Which Project Management Tool Wins?
We will review each tool's features, pros and cons, and reviews to help you make an informed decision.
Struggling to choose between Monday.com, ClickUp, and SmartSuite?
You're not alone.
These three tools dominate project management, but their strengths cater to different needs.
To save you hours of research, we’ve tested their features, use cases, and pricing. In this guide, we’ll help you uncover which tool will best elevate your team’s productivity and collaboration. Let’s find the perfect match for your workflow.
TL;DR
- Monday.com: Great for teams that prefer spreadsheet-focused task management combined with robust integration and automation capabilities. However, it lacks native communication tools and operates on group-based pricing, which can become expensive for smaller teams with fewer users.
- ClickUp: Ideal for teams looking to centralize everything from task management to document collaboration, with a strong emphasis on visual dashboards. The trade-off? High customizability often means a longer adoption period and lower-tier plans can feel restrictive, nudging you toward pricier upgrades.
- SmartSuite: An adaptable solution with built-in communication tools, powerful automation, and a competitive free plan. SmartSuite’s user-based pricing makes it an affordable and scalable option, especially for teams that need flexibility without breaking the bank.
Monday.com vs. ClickUp vs. SmartSuite
SmartSuite Features
SmartSuite is a comprehensive project management tool that lets you manage all your projects on a centralized platform with built-in automation and a communication center.
Comprehensive project management
SmartSuite’s project management feature helps you plan, track, and manage simple to complex projects.
To simplify the process, you get numerous built-in intuitive features to execute your tasks perfectly.
Here’s what we have in store for you.
- Smart task management: You can turn any item field into a task—a checklist item, comments, or sub-item. With this flexibility, you can easily build a solid task list and assign it to the right person with a due date and priority status.
- Project phases and milestones: Having milestones ensures your project stays on track and moves towards the objective. With SmartSuite, you can set them, monitor through your reporting dashboard, and flag issues.
- Files and project deliverables: With SmartSuite, you can manage and organize all your documents. Attach project-related files, share feedback with your team, and manage version history, all within your work context.
SmartSuite supports formats like PDF, GIF, CSV, PNG, and MP4. The tool also integrates with Dropbox, Google Drive, Box, and Microsoft OneDrive, making adding files to your workflows easy.
Also, you can add images directly in SmartSuite by connecting your social media and Unsplash accounts.
- Native time tracking: Monitor and evaluate task and project completion times. Built-in tracking helps group time entries see estimates, and segment billable and non-billable entries.
Team collaboration
SmartSuite outperforms Monday.com with its built-in communication and collaboration features. You can connect with peers in group chats or 1:1 conversations for quick feedback and keep stakeholders updated.
SmartSuite’s members’ directory provides a deep dive into each teammate’s details, such as availability status, job profile, and other relevant information, to give a holistic view of the project team.
Like the other two tools, you can use comments and @mentions to share updates, nudge teammates, or add new people to the conversation.
Comprehensive project reporting
SmartSuites offers a dynamic project analytics tool with configurable charts and graphs.
The reporting dashboard helps you track project performance, understand resource allocation, and identify slow-moving projects. Based on these insights, you can quickly develop plans to overcome roadblocks and get the project back on track.
You can visualize reporting in Grid, Card, Kanban, Timeline, Map, Calendar, or Dashboard views. Add as many as needed to build a visual storyboard for your project’s progress.
To share reports with stakeholders or clients, you can make the report public and share the necessary access. SmartSuite also supports printing or exporting PDF, Excel, Google Sheets, or CSV format.
Advanced workflow automation
SmartSuite's no-code automation builder is one of the most intuitive, giving a neck-to-neck competition in automation.
You can assemble automation at the task and project and automate repetitive tasks based on triggers like changing dates, sending notification emails, or updating statuses. There are six pre-defined triggers and 15+ actions, with options to build custom ones.
SmartSuite is the right choice if you:
✅ Need a user-friendly interface with drag-and-drop customization
✅ Need a platform that can adapt to various business processes
✅ Want to centralize team communication and collaboration
✅ Want affordable and feature-packed software
SmartSuite isn’t the best option if you:
❌ Need a well-established platform with a long track record, as SmartSuite is relatively new
❌ Need extensive third-party integrations, as SmartSuite is still building and offers fewer options than ClickUp and Monday.com
Monday.com Features
Monday.com is a robust project management software that helps you track, manage, plan, and organize multiple projects.
Dashboards with custom widgets
With Monday.com, you can build custom dashboards by fetching data from all your projects for a holistic view of progress. It offers 80+ widgets through integrations with apps like videos, calendars, clocks, and images, allowing flexibility in building project dashboards.
27+ task views
Monday.com offers over 27 task views to visualize task progress throughout the project lifecycle, including charts, Gantt charts, Calendars, Workloads, Timelines, Kanban boards, Tables, Forms, Cards, Files, and Blank views.
Such a wide range of task views offers flexibility and control over the project dashboard and caters to the team's different working styles.
Workflow automation
Monday.com offers triggers, conditions, and actions to build linear to multi-step sequences. With these automated workflows, you can eliminate repetitive tasks like status updates, delete processes, or schedule calls.
Monday is the right choice if you:
✅ Need robust automation features
✅ Need real-time data visualization and reporting
✅ Want a tool with solid integrations
✅ Use Monday.com’s CRM or dev tools
Monday isn’t the best option if you:
❌ Are a small team with a limited budget, as pricing scales up quickly due to the group-based structure
❌ Need advanced time-tracking features, which are only available on higher-tier plans
❌ Need robust native team communication features
ClickUp Features
Advanced reporting dashboards
ClickUp offers customizable dashboards to visualize project performance and give real-time insights. Dashboards act like a focal point, enabling you to centralize different spaces to get a holistic view easily and quickly. You can customize dashboards with 40+ cards, including charts, calendars, embeds, priority, chats, sprints, and custom.
Team collaboration
ClickUp offers a neck-to-neck competition with Smartsuite regarding team collaboration and communication features. It helps you loop in stakeholders through comments and @mentions, talk with the team in-app, and assign tasks to multiple team members.
Additionally, it offers native docs and whiteboard features centralizing knowledge management. You can brainstorm with your team, map out project priorities, or create detailed proposals to share with clients.
Versatile and flexible work views
ClickUp offers ten views to enable teams to focus on their priorities in the way they want.
- Timeline view: Let users see project schedules and deadlines at a glance
- List view: The most straightforward way to show tasks in a vertical list format
- Board view: Organizes tasks into columns, similar to a Kanban board
- Gantt chart view: Shows tasks as horizontal bars on a timeline, depicting schedules, dependencies, and progress
- Workload view: Visualizes team members' workloads, helping managers balance task distribution
- Calendar view: Showcase tasks, deadlines, and events on a traditional calendar interface
- Table view: Presents task data in a spreadsheet-like format
- Map view: Plots location-based tasks on a map
- Activity view: Shows a chronological feed of recent actions and updates
- Box view: Organizes tasks into customizable boxes or containers
The best part is that views aren’t limited to task levels. You can create views at folder level, space, or even for the entire workspace.
ClickUp is the ideal choice if you:
✅ Need a highly customizable project management tool
✅ Need multiple view options like Gantt charts, Kanban boards, and timelines
✅ Require integrated project management, time tracking, collaboration, and reporting features
ClickUp isn’t the best option if you:
❌ Prefer a simpler, more intuitive interface without a steep learning curve
❌ Have a limited budget and need a straightforward pricing model
❌ Require a tool with minimal downtime and fewer bugs
Integrations: Monday vs. ClickUp vs. SmartSuite
SmartSuite Integrations
SmartSuite integrates with major platforms, from communication to social media. It offers five connectors, including Zapier, Ply, Integrately, Relay, and Make, to connect with 1000s of apps to transfer data.
Some of the notable integrations are:
- Salesforce
- Slack
- Twilio
- Jira Cloud
- HubSpot
- Intercom
Monday.com Integrations
Monday.com offers 200+ integrations and apps across various categories. It provides native integrations with popular tools like Slack, Gmail, Microsoft Teams, and GitLab.
It excels in two-way synchronization with some integrations, enhancing data flow across apps, and has an open API for custom integrations.
Some standout Monday.com integrations are:
- QuickBooks
- Google Workspace
- Zendesk
- PandaDoc
- Jira
- Freshdesk
ClickUp Integrations
Despite being a powerful project management solution, ClickUp offers only 45 native integrations and public API to build custom integrations. It also connects with Zapier to let you connect with over 1000 apps, which comes at an additional cost for a Zapier subscription.
Some notable ClickUp integrations are:
- Tableau Web connector
- Microsoft teams
- GitHub
- Slack
- Discord
- Hubspot
Winner: Monday.com
Monday.com offers 200+ native integrations across various platforms, making it more versatile project management software than the rest.
Pricing Monday vs. ClickUp vs. SmartSuite
SmartSuite Pricing
SmartSuite offers a forever-free plan, which is among the most generous. The free plan gives you 100 automated triggers, team collaboration tools, 7+ task views (Dashboard, table, boards, cards, list, calendar, and grid), time tracking, and more.
We offer four paid plans, each with a 14-day free trial.
- Team: Starts at $12/user/month, including 8+ dashboard views, 5000 automation runs, time tracking, and collaborative SmartDocs.
- Professional: Starts at $28/user/month, including two-factor authentication, Gmail & Outlook integrations, and unlimited editors.
- Enterprise: Starts at $35 per user/month, including audit logs, data loss prevention, and 50,000 API calls monthly.
- Signature: Customized plan tailored to your organization’s needs and team size.
Monday Pricing
Monday.com offers a free plan for up to 2 users, including shareable forms, 500MB storage, a 1-week activity history, and one board per dashboard.
Monday.com pricing plans have four tiers and require a minimum of 3 user seats:
- Basic: Starts at $17/user/month, including Kanban view, unlimited free viewers, and unlimited boards.
- Standard: Starts at $20/user/month, including 250 automated actions/month, 3+ dashboard views, and Zoom integration.
- Pro: Starts at $32/user/month, including all five dashboard views, time tracking, and 2-factor authentication.
- Enterprise: Includes dedicated customer success manager, cross-project analytics, and resource allocation insights. Contact sales for a quote.
ClickUp Pricing
ClickUp’s free plan offers unlimited task creation, 5 spaces; guest invites with full access, collaborative docs, Whiteboards, and sprint management.
Most of ClickUp’s advanced features are available on paid tiers, with a 14-day free trial for unlimited and business plans.
- Unlimited: Starts at $10 per user/month and offers unlimited space, custom views, and task creation. You also get Gantt charts, two-factor authentication, timesheet reporting, and 100 mind maps.
- Business: Starts at $19 per user/month, offers private docs, sprint reporting, and all dashboard views with unlimited whiteboards, docs, and mind maps.
- Enterprise: White labeling, top-notch security, Tableau web connector, and enterprise AI. Contact sales to get a quote.
Winner: SmartSuite
SmartSuite is the best contender due to its generous free plan and lower entry point for paid plans. Additionally, the price-to-feature ratio is well distributed across tiers compared to the other two tools.
Lastly, it offers flexible per-user pricing, not locking you in unused seats, unlike Monday.com and ClickUp. But ClickUp and Monday.com’s group-based pricing might reduce the average cost for many users.
What are Customers Saying about Monday.com, ClickUp, and SmartSuite?
SmartSuite Reviews
G2 rating: 4.8/5
What users love:
- Intuitive interface and quick setup
- Built-in communication features
- Flexible customization options
- Value for money compared to competitors
Common complaints:
- Limited integration options compared to established competitors
- Some advanced features are still in development
- Newer platform with a smaller user community
- Occasional performance issues with larger datasets
Monday.com Reviews
G2 rating: 4.7/5
What users love:
- A highly visual interface with multiple view options
- Extensive customization capabilities
- Strong automation features
- Large template library
Common complaints:
- Steep learning curve for new users
- Group-based pricing can be expensive for small teams.
- Interfaces sometimes feel cluttered and overwhelming due to loads of features
- Mobile app performance issues reported
ClickUp Reviews
G2 rating: 4.7/5
What users love:
- High customizable dashboards
- Integration with connective platforms like Zapier
- Built-in team communication (ClickUp Chat), time tracking, and document creation
Common complaints:
- Extensive range of features comes with a huge learning curve, especially for project management novices
- Slow loading speed for dashboard spaces, especially when multiple people are working
- Feature usage limitations often push users to jump to higher-tier plans
Each platform has great pros and cons. The best choice depends on your needs and budget:
- SmartSuite users value its all-in-one approach and pricing.
- ClickUp users recommend it for customizability and adaptability
- Monday.com users appreciate the visual customization and automation capabilities.
Final Verdict: Monday.com, ClickUp, or SmartSuite?
Each tool has strengths—your decision should hinge on what matters most to your team. Prioritize features like custom dashboards, native communication, budget, or advanced automation and match them to the right platform.
- Monday.com is dependable if you value strong visual management and don’t mind a higher price tag.
- ClickUp shines for creative teams and agencies with its robust goal-tracking and task-management tools.
- SmartSuite stands out as a budget-friendly, all-in-one solution. Its combination of project management, built-in communication tools, and customizable workflows makes it a strong contender, especially for growing teams seeking value without compromise.
And, you can start exploring SmartSuite with its free plan or dive deeper by scheduling a demo or signing up for a free trial today!
