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The "Project Management" category is one that has been quite underwhelming for a while. Project management software was first created for engineering teams or large enterprise companies. If you've worked for an enterprise company, you'd be familiar with the software Smartsheet and/or Jira. Project management tools were reserved for highly complex technical projects and there weren't any tools available for the average small–medium sized teams.
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The project manager for large teams looking for an all-in-one task and documentation tool.
ClickUp is probably best categorized as an "all-in-one tool", even though it started off as more of a project manager, and is quite task management focused at the core.
Rating: C-
While an "all-in-one" tool may sound appealing because it sounds simple, here are the red flags with using any tool that tries to do too many things:
The main complaint we hear with ClickUp is that it's too complicated for its main use, and that it can be easy to get overwhelmed by all the features that are included. And this is the exact problem we have with this category. It does many things well, but it's consistently missing the last 10-15% in every category, which might not seem like a big deal, but I assure you that it'll frustrate the team.
With that, ClickUp isn't a tool we'd give positive differentiation points to. They are trying to do too many things, and with that comes a buggy experience and often feeling like you can't rely on the tool. While it does a decent job for many businesses in helping them with managing projects, it wouldn't be a tool we'd be quick to recommend if you're just beginning your search.
ClickUp overall is a tool that we have consistently considered on almost a yearly basis (and again with their recent launch of "ClickUp 3.0"). The problem is, is that the promise of what it is, and what it actually is upon using it just doesn't quite meet expectations.
Rating: B
ClickUp has a decent user interface, it's relatively clean and nice to look at.
Rating: C-
About 20% of our closest friends that run businesses, use ClickUp, so the "why" is a regular discussion that comes up whenever we hang out. The main consensus we've heard is:
"It does a lot but it's also incredibly buggy"
ClickUp does a good job at marketing features and functionality to intrigue you—we've literally signed up to re-evaluate it at least once a year because of exactly that. But when you begin actually using it, you start noticing the drawbacks. They come out in the experience, between slowness, overwhelm of where to find things and how to organize the information at hand.
It's a blank canvas, it claims to be able to do everything for your business, and that's why one of our friends literally runs an agency that just sets up ClickUp for other agencies, and charges mid-5-figures per year to do just that. Being convinced to sign up for ClickUp is easy. Using it well is not.
In general, if you're considering between ClickUp and Asana, we'd say stick with Asana and supplement it with a proper team knowledge base tool like Slite, or give our top pick in the category a shot (Motion) to see if it might work for you. 🤷
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When viewing it more as an all-in-one tool, you're starting to compare it more with apps like Notion and Coda, but what's also a bit strange is both of those tools were built more as documentation software, and have evolved more into the "all-in-one" category.
This is where things get difficult to prescribe without deeply understanding your specific use-cases. We believe that rarely are the "all-in-one" tools best for companies, as we strongly believe in using the best tool for the job. That said, ClickUp is definitely the most "Task Management" focused tool of the bunch. Meaning, if you want to rely on getting timely alerts for getting work done and project completed, ClickUp will handle that better than Notion on Coda.
Although, if documentation and almost a form of "no-code app" building is more important to you, that's where Coda or Notion will shine.
And this is the exact problem we have with this category. It does many things well, but it's consistently missing the last 5–10% in every category, which might not seem like a big deal, but I assure you that it'll frustrate the team.
So with all of that said, that's where we typically recommend using a tool like Motion as your Project Manager, and then Slite as your documentation/shared team collaboration tool (I would also say Notion, but it suffers from the all-in-one syndrome as well, that I fear you'll start trying turning Notion into your team's project management tool given enough time using it—which is not ideal), versus trying to just fit them all into a single product.
ClickUp has done a *phenomenal job* at marketing itself (literally the CEO on stage wearing a ClickUp suit kinda marketing). In the last few years, they've invested millions of dollars in their advertising, everywhere you looked you saw a ClickUp billboard. They have consistently hit their growth goals because of that. But is it just hype? For some, ClickUp fulfills their business needs, for others they see through the marketing. In terms of your project management software options, is it the best? We think not.
ClickUp does have a free version although it's very much for personal use so we wouldn't say its a free project management tool.
There is currently no promo code for this app but we are close partners, so if you use the link above to visit the site and then let their team know that Efficient App sent you, you may just get a little something... extra 😉
There is currently no promo code for this app—we'll update it here if that changes in the future!
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The digital daily planner that helps you feel calm and stay focused.
Sunsama fits into the day planner app category, acting as a digital planner helping with task management and time blocking.
It can help with planning your daily work, time blocking and scheduling your important tasks each day. It takes a zen-like approach to helping you intentionally plan your day, allowing you participate in the planning process of your day all while giving you a calendar view of your tasks. Many people that struggle with focusing claim that it helps them better schedule their day, allowing them to get more work done.
Start your 30 day free trial of Sunsama here.
If your organization uses a full project management tool like Asana, ClickUp, or Trello and you want another tool to help you schedule tasks onto your calendar view and plan when you'll do each specific task, then Sunsama can be a great addition to your productivity tools.
If you don't have a need for a full project management tool and are more so looking for a task management app to get your daily work done, then Sunsama is a great choice. Just keep in mind that Sunsama only allows you to plan your schedule a few weeks in advance so if you have larger projects at hand, it might be a bit frustrating since you'll need to backlog most of your tasks until the time to actually work on them gets closer.
If you like to take an intentional, zen-like approach to planning your day, and can see yourself carving out 15-20 minutes a day for planning, then Sunsama could be the best day planner app for you.
Start your 30 day free trial of Sunsama here.
Sunsama is not a project management tool, it's very much a task management software. It allows you to only plan only up to two weeks in advance. So if you are looking for a way to manage larger projects or collaborate with team members then you might find yourself looking for 2 tools to accomplish what one tool should be able to do (e.g. Motion vs Sunsama). So re-iternating again, if you are in the market for a new project management tool, and are considering Sunsama, you will be disappointed as this is not what it was made to do.
You should also not use Sunsama if you don't think you'd be good at keeping up with the planning process of your tasks. Sunsama doesn't automatically schedule or prioritize your tasks for you, YOU need to do that each day, so if you forget or it falls to the wayside, you might end up paying for a tool that is sitting dormant. There are other productivity tools (Motion) that use AI to schedule your day that might be better for you in this case.
Let's dive in deeper ⤵
Rating: B
Sunsama has invested a lot of time into their ke features such as their daily review, weekly review, and weekly objective functionality. All features that try to get you to plan daily, what tasks need to get done, and how they tie to the actual goals and objectives of the week.
That said, people have complained that they wish there was more of a monthly and quarterly objectives, since weekly is often too short of a time to plan for larger goals.
Sunsama is also a calendar app that integrates deeply with tools like Asana, allowing you to pull tasks from Asana and put them onto your calendar for daily planning. It's a clever idea, especially if you're already using and loving Asana, but just frustrated by the lack of integration with a calendar. Something that Motion actually does out of the box as it's an all-in-one task and time management tool.
Start your 30 day free trial of Sunsama here.
Rating: A-
This is one of the areas that Sunsama totally excels. They have a super minimal and beautiful interface. They also have calming features like focus mode and daily shutdown, which allow you to take a deep breath, removing all other distractions, allowing you to focus your attention.
Rating: B-
With such a stellar UI, you'd expect the UX to be fantastic. And it is, in many areas. For example, things function the way you'd expect them to, and they have keyboard shortcuts for most things.
That said, it does feel like there's many missed opportunities to automate some of the things you need to do during your daily review (and yes, you need to review your Sunsama daily so that it doesn't fall behind). Why not have an option to automatically reschedule your day for you, why is it such a manual process? The same frustration that we have with a tool like Asana.
Start your 30 day free trial of Sunsama here.
Rating: C-
Sunsama has an iOS and Android app that is relatively basic, and they refer to it as a "companion to the web app". So this means you can add basic tasks to Sunsama while on-the-go, and see what's on your calendar/schedule for the day, but you're not going to actually be planning any work while on-the-go.
You're also not going to have any actual calendar scheduling functionality while on-the-go. The truth of the matter is that it feels a bit rushed. We also experienced a pretty buggy mobile app experience with the app randomly crashing. There's only day view for the calendar for example, and the back gestures on Android don't even seem to work when backing out of tasks.
Let's just say that it's fair in that they are referring to it as a companion (for expectation setting), and you're not going to be replacing your calendar of choice or your primary project management app on mobile anytime soon.
With all of that said, you're going to want to use their desktop app or web app for planning your day and getting actual work done.
Start your 30 day free trial of Sunsama here.
Rating: C-
Sunsama does not currently have an API. As it's more focused on native integrations with tools like that of with Asana, ClickUp, or Trello. So with that, you can see that their focus isn't actually on extending Sunsama into a flexible tool outside of what they've decided to integrate deeply with.
If you're using one of the main tools they integrate with, this might be a good thing, but for now, with no API, you cannot integrate it with your team's CRM for example, which leads us to feel they are more focused on being an individual daily planner application instead of a team project manager.
Start your 30 day free trial of Sunsama here.
Is Sunsama worth it? If you need a daily planner application or task management software and are willing to intentionally take the 15-20 minutes to plan your daily work, then we think it's worth giving a shot. Their daily review and weekly review features are meant to help you reflect and better help you with managing your time overall.
Start your 30 day free trial of Sunsama here.
If you're not already using and loving another project manager like Asana, we'd recommend simply using Motion, as when you compare Motion vs Sunsama, you really need Sunsama and Asana together (2 separate tools) to get what Motion gives you out of the box.
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There is currently no promo code for this app but we are close partners, so if you use the link above to visit the site and then let their team know that Efficient App sent you, you may just get a little something... extra 😉
There is currently no promo code for this app—we'll update it here if that changes in the future!
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