Jira Software vs ClickUp: Which Can Strengthen Agile Teams

Posted by
Tetiana Belevska

Updated October 13, 2023

Project management shimmers with its numerous facets like a diamond. So many efforts are needed to keep all of them shining and prospering. Stakeholders demand higher speed and efficiency while internal objectives are getting more complex. This is why 79% of project teams are coordinated using project management software. The choice of such tools is extremely wide, so we try to compare them in pairs for your better understanding of how they work. Today’s article we dedicate to Jira Software vs ClickUp.

What Is Jira Software?

Genuinely designed as a software developer issue-tracker, Atlassian Jira Software is now a fully-packaged project management tool. Jira is a perfect platform that supports any agile methodology – scrum, kanban, or your own specific approach. Inside you have agile boards, backlogs, roadmaps, reports, integrations, and add-ons that enhance planning, tracking, and managing your agile software development projects from a single product management tool.

What Are the Features of Jira Software?

• Agile project management. Jira combines Scrum and Kanban technologies that make a perfect tandem for a software development team. Plan sprints using scrum templates, prioritize issues with story points, and track progress in multiple views.

Source: Jira Software

• Roadmaps. Manage workflow within a project by breaking down work into epics and linking tasks based on their due dates. You can visualize task dependencies and the overall progress in a Gantt chart. This feature is especially advantageous for long-term projects.

Source: Jira Software

• Drag and drop automation. Jira offers no-coding automation of tedious tasks, so your team can focus on more valuable work. To set up the rules you need simply to drag and drop the triggers and conditions and vous à la.
• Advanced reporting. With agile reports like sprint charts and Kanban diagrams, you can make data-driven decisions and stay on top of your work. Jira offers a set of report templates to detect your pain points and forecast further performance.
• Project boards. There are three board types to tailor to your team: a simplified board for those who are newbies in agile, a Scrum board to plan workflow in sprints, and a Kanban board to manage and track work in progress.

Source: Jira Software

• Customizable issues. You can edit issue (task) fields such as change fields’ descriptions, make fields visible/hidden or required/optional, add custom fields, and more. This feature makes tasking more transparent and helps both project managers and teammates get the necessary information.
• Project management template. It’s a board to place your company-managed projects, break them into tasks, track their progress against time, and use the built-in reports.

Source: Jira Software

• Versions. In Jira Software, a version is a set of features and bug fixes released in your product update. You can assign issues to specific versions to plan your releases consistently and manage them in a Kanban board.
• Integrations. Jira supports integration with over 3000 apps, plugins, and add-ons to meet your project management needs. Besides, it provides REST APIs for common or specific features like issues and workflows.

What Is ClickUp?

With ClickUp, your project management to turns into a hierarchy of items like Spaces, Projects, Lists, Folders, Tasks, and Subtasks. This product management tool enhances rich-text Docs creating for marketing plans, reports, or strategies. Everything can be stored in a single place within ClickUp. Besides, you can edit and collaborate with your team members in real-time like in Google Docs.

What Are ClickUp Features?

• Spaces. These are alike Jira’s Projects, though more versatile. You can use Spaces for separate company departments and set up workflows within each Space in a different way and use suitable ClickUp apps. A Space can comprise Lists or Folders with Lists.

Source: ClickUp

• Lists are used to collect similar tasks into separate to-do lists and visualize them on a Kanban or Scrum board, a traditional list, or a calendar.
• Folders. You can group related lists into Folders or leave some lists out. This task layer is optional, so you can arrange your workload flexibly.
• Tasks. Each task has a parent List but can be shared with other Lists. Add task assignees, due dates, and priorities. To make tasks clear and straightforward, you can add custom fields with optional field types and data values.
• Subtasks are useful when you want to break a big task into smaller items. Such details as assignee, due date, and priority are available on the subtask level, too.
• Custom statuses. Set custom color-coded statuses at Space, Folder, and List levels. Besides, you can use status templates that are already tailored to specific purposes.
• Assigned comments. For minor tasks, simply comment on a task and assign this comment to your teammate. Thus, you don’t need to create a task and link it up to a List.
• Customizable templates. In the ClickUp Template Center, you can find templates for any purpose, be it agile sprints, event planning, Gantt chart, or task management. You can edit templates, create your own ones, save the views, or share them with others.
• Custom automations. You can use over 50 automation templates with pre-set triggers and actions and apply them to Spaces, Folders, or Lists, or create custom automation.

Source: ClickUp

• Reporting. Get insight into team performance within different Spaces. The report has several sections including completed tasks, overdue tasks, a time tracker, and the list with your teammates arranged by the amount of work done.
• Integrations. ClickUp provides over 1000 integrations that include Google, Slack, YouTube, Microsoft, and Zendesk. Also, you can use APIs to post tasks, list updates, and comments, or track time.

ClickUp vs Jira Software: Pricing Overview

How Much Does Jira Software Cost?

Jira offers Free, Standard, Premium, and Enterprise pricing plans. You can choose an annual or monthly subscription or make a one-time payment. Also, you can use a 7-day free trial of the Standard or Premium version.

Source: Jira Software

Free plan (monthly subscription only) is available for 10 users and offers unlimited project boards, backlog and basic roadmaps, reporting, community support, and 2GB of storage.

Standard costs $7.50 per user/month and includes everything from the Free plan, up to 20,000 users, user role & permissions, audit logs, data residency, business hours, and 250 GB of storage.

Premium includes everything from the Standard plan, advanced roadmaps, sandbox & release tracks, project archive, SLAs, unlimited storage, and 24/7 support.

Enterprise is billed annually and includes all Premium features, unlimited sites, centralized security controls and user subscriptions, and 24/7 Enterprise support. You need to contact the vendor to get the quote.

How Much Does It Cost to Use ClickUp?

ClickUp pricing tiers are adjusted to project management needs of different company sizes. It offers five plans that are Free Forever, Unlimited, Business, Business Plus, and Enterprise.

Source: Jira Software

Free Forever plan provides 100 MB storage, unlimited tasks and users, two-factor authentication, Whiteboards and Kanban boards, collaborative docs, sprint management, time tracker, and 24/7 support. You also get real-time chat, email, and in-app video recording.

Unlimited costs $5 per user/month and includes all features from the Free plan. Here’s what you get unlimited: storage, integrations, dashboards, Gantt charts, and custom fields. Also, it enables Guests with permissions, teams, goals & portfolios, form view, agile reporting, and resource management.

Business includes everything from the Unlimited plan plus Google singe sign-on, unlimited teams, workload management, timelines & mindmaps, advanced automations, dashboards, and time tracking.

Business Plus is designed for more complex workflows, so in addition to all Business features, it offers increased automations & API, subtasks in multiple lists, team sharing, custom roles & permissions, and priority support.

Which Product Management Tool Is Better: Jira Software vs ClickUp

Jira Software and ClickUp deliver multiple tools for planning and managing projects flexibly. While Jira allows you to consistently prepare and run releases, ClickUp focuses on facilitating task management. Let’s see how each tool can accommodate your needs.

What Are the Advantages of Jira Software?

• Agile workflows. Scrum teams can break complex workflows into smaller tasks and focus on their fast completion. Kanban teams can visualize their tasks in progress and make on-the-go updates.
• Work planning. With roadmaps, you can arrange workflows on different layers and track dependencies considering your team capacities.
• Insights & reporting. Keep your team up to date with real-time data dashboards, plan and track sprints, and optimize workflows based on analyzed blockers and pain points.
• Integrations. Extend Jira Software capabilities with numerous integrations best suited for your needs, so you don’t have to switch between different apps. Or you can build custom features using the REST APIs.

What Are the Drawbacks of Jira Software?

• Complex set-up. Setting up Jira can turn challenging for some users. Configuration options are a bit overwhelming even when it comes to setting up small projects.
• No communication tool. Jira is missing a team chat tool to send messages directly, so users can communicate only through comments or email notifications.
• Comes as a suite of products. Jira suite includes Jira Software for dev teams, Jira Work Management for business teams, and Jita Service Management for ITSM, and this is not it. Some users may consider it convenient and practical, while for teams with mixed purposes those options may be overwhelming.

What Are the ClickUp Benefits?

• Suitable for personal use or for teams. Unlike other project management solutions, ClickUp delivers tools not only for managing team workflows but also for solo use. You can choose the Free plan and avoid messing up with useless features for advanced management.
• Multiple views. You can get informative insights by switching ClickUp dashboard views and checking data from different perspectives.
• Customizations. The app makes a large contribution to flexibility with its numerous customization options. You can set custom fields, automation rules, statuses, and work templates.
• Keeps user in mind. ClickUp makes regular feature updates and improvements based on the customers’ needs and requests.

What Are the ClickUp Shortcomings?

• Excessive feature set. The variety of ClickUp features makes the learning curve quite steep for new users. Besides, it may be confusing to decide on the purpose of each feature and adjust it to specific needs.
• Too many customizations. Yes, you read it right. This feature has its cons too. Users can find it cumbersome to determine the optimal ways to manage projects by choosing from various custom options.
• UI is a bit messy. Some users detect empty panes and spaces. Besides, the colors are too faint making the boards unclear.

Jira Customers: Who Uses Jira Software?

Most Jira Software users settle within the Computer Software industry since it provides extensive tools for software developers. Other industries include financial services, high-tech, retail, and government. The dominant company size is 10-50 members (44%) while 15% of Jira customers are large companies with up to 1000 employees.

Jira Software is actively used for project management. Agile teams can adjust project boards, issue management, reporting, and automations to their specific needs.

Who Are ClickUp Users?

Since ClickUp is relatively new on the market, the amount of its users is much smaller compared to Jira. Still, it extremely gains popularity and already provides tools for teams inside Google, Nike, and Netflix. The top industry that uses ClickUp is Computer Software. Others include IT services, accounting, real estate, and law. The prevailing company size is 1-10 members.

Overall, ClickUp’s project management and collaboration tools can be used by teams of different sizes and industries.

How to Migrate Data to Jira Software or Import to ClickUp?

The first step in upgrading your project management with a new tool is data import. The process is complex so it requires appropriate preparation and high accuracy.

To avoid manual configuration and messing with import files, you can use Migration Wizard and move data to Jira Software or ClickUp automatically. The process consists of several steps that boil down to choosing your source and target platforms and simply mapping fields. At the Demo Migration step, you import a portion of data to detect errors and avoid them during the full migration.

Should You Choose Jira Software or ClickUp?

Jira Software is a scalable solution that is majorly focused on managing tasks of complex levels. So it better suits large or growing companies and can be overwhelming for small teams or for personal use.

ClickUp instead can appear advantageous for particular purposes like managing small-scale projects or integration with other apps. Considering its low price and fully-featured free version, it is worth trying, especially if you’re a start-up or a small business.

Rest on your needs and pick the winner in this Jira Software vs ClickUp comparison yourself.

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