What if I need more than projects in ClickUp?
ClickUp is a project management tool that has been finding increasing popularity with PMs across the world. The reasons for that are quite simple: it’s a great tool. Think of it as a spreadsheet specifically designed for project management: each row is a task or subtask, you can view things as Gantt charts or kanbans, and even see workload on team members to guarantee no one is getting the short end of the stick when assigning tasks.
It’s an all-around great tool to have around for project management. However, you may find that while it’s probably one of the best out there for this purpose, this sort of specific nature may have some issues and even halt productivity if you wish to use it for other activities, such as keeping track of finance or even as a CRM. That’s because, while ClickUp is a very customizable PM tool, its customizations are PM oriented.
Here are some reasons ClickUp may not be the best tool for you, and how jestor can help you .
First, a brief summary:
Automations are predefined
ClickUp has a ton of automations and integrations out-of-the-box. It’s really easy to build a useful workflow by using the nocode tool on the interface (it even comes with handy suggestions of the most used automations).
However, while this tool is flexible enough to provide you with an initial boost of productivity, you may find that, as your operations grows more and more complex, those triggers and actions don’t provide enough control for you to take your workflow to the next level.
Jestor, in turn, has both nocode and lowcode means of creating automations and integrations. So, while you can use Tricks to create nocode automations, such as sending a Slack message when a record reaches a certain stage:
You can also use the Developer area to create unique automations with the highest level of control: as you can code it to do specifically what you want it to, there’s really no limits to what you can achieve through the Developer area. No matter how complex or intricate the solution you’re trying to build is, with a bit of code you can do it on jestor.
Not only can you create customized automations and integrations, you can also create webhooks for specific tables or functions. You can even create customized pages coding your own back-end and front-end if you need a more specific interface. For example, you could create a page with a button to scan a QR Code: all of this without leaving jestor.
Nocode automations can get you far and fast: low code automations can bring your company to a whole new level.
To find out more about why integrations and automations can boost your company to the next level, check out this article.
Permissioning is not fully flexible
ClickUp has a spreadsheet-like approach to access levels:
- You can choose predetermined access levels that are akin to the three level structure of View/Comment/Edit permissions of spreadsheets;
- Additionally, you can have “Guests” that may have custom fields hidden from them.
This is a standard way of setting up permissions, one that you’re probably familiar with.
While it can work for simple operations, you may find that for complex processes the three level structure will not be able to contemplate every possible scenario, and you’ll probably need some workarounds for those cases (such as creating copies of a list with less data).
For a practical example of why complex access levels are useful, think of the following scenario: should you need that a specific user have full access to a board except being able to edit, or even see, a specific field, there’s no way to do this. Or maybe you want a shared board between you and your clients, but unless you want a client to see other clients’ data, you’ll have to create a separate board for each one. In this scenario, your team would have to juggle between dozens of different boards instead of having a centralized one.
In jestor, you can create access levels with whatever rules you want to. A specific access level may have access to the Projects board, for example, but not be able to see certain fields (such as Budget), edit others (such as changing the Deadline) and even have a filtered view of the information (like only seeing cards attributed to them, or that are marked in the status “In Progress”).
Jestor allows full customization of access levels, ditching the three level access for full control over permissions. You can set up an access level that sees a table, but doesn’t have access to some fields and is able to see but not edit others. Or even, a user may have structural powers (such as creating fields) in a table, but not others. You can even set up filtered access, such as a user only being able to see a record they have created.
Practically, while one user may see this:
The other may only see this:
This means you won’t be limited by how you can set permissions on a list or table. If you want a specific rule, you can create it. This elevates the way you use the platform to a mindset in which you’re not building your tables taking access levels into account, but rather creating the best possible structures and then sharing data as you see fit.
To find out more about why permissioning is so important, you can check out this article.
User-based pricing may hinder usage
ClickUp uses a standard user-based pricing model, that is: you’re charged per number of users/per month.
The problem with this traditional model is that it can become costly very fast depending on how you want to use it. It is mostly oriented towards internal teams, but even then its price can scale faster than actual usage. For example, sometimes a team member may need access to use the platform once or twice a month. But, even at this low level of usage, it will cost the same as a heavy user.
This can be an even greater problem if you want to do something like giving a full user to your clients or suppliers. Not only will you run into the permission problems we’ve mentioned before, but this idea will probably be too costly to be worth it.
Jestor’s pricing model, however, is designed around usage. It doesn’t matter which plan you have, you can add as many users as you want to (even on the Free plan). As the plans are tiered into actions per month, low-usage users won’t make much of a difference on your budget. By adopting usage based pricing, jestor charges you by how much it helps you, not how big your team is or for how much you deviate from internal usage.
It doesn’t matter if you’re building an internal tool for the Marketing department, or if you’re inviting clients, consultants or suppliers to use your jestor. This model encourages you to have a lot of users and build a better solution together.
To find out more about why usage based models are the way to go for growth oriented companies, you can check out this article.
It’s a task-driven platform
As we’ve said before, ClickUp is a project management tool. As such, tasks are the most fundamental piece of the platform: a task is to ClickUp what a row is to spreadsheets. That’s the smallest group of the data you can have on it, and it is tailored specifically to driving projects forward.
This means the default structure is exactly what you would expect from tasks: due dates, assignees, status and so on. Not only that, you can also customize those tasks to have different fields, such as referencing another task or even a formula akin to Excel.
As you can see from the screenshot above, ClickUp comes packed with project-centric features.
While this means you can create an account and start managing your projects almost immediately, it also means anything that is not task-driven will have very awkward structures.
For example, if you wanted to create a CRM or even a list of Clients, each record will still be treated as a task, with the default structure and views. While it’s possible to largely ignore those, you’ll still have a structure that’s not quite suitable for what you’re intended.
In jestor, everything starts as a simple table. You can then add more fields to that table and create connections between them so they are as complex as you need them to be, but they’ll always have a flexible structure: they could be tasks, finance, or client records. It ‘s up to you.
This means jestor doesn’t need to be a task or project oriented platform, but rather a company-wide tool to be used anyway you like it.
Verdict
ClickUp is a wonderful tool for project management, probably one of the best out there. We wholeheartedly recommend this if all you’re looking for is a PM tool.
However, if you’re going to need more than a task and project oriented platform, jestor is flexible enough that you can create similar structures and still have a company-wide platform used to manage anything, from finance to a full fledged CRM. By using the power of nocode/lowcode, connected tables and flexible permissioning, jestor can become anything you want and still be scalable when processes start to become more and more complex.
If you want the best of both worlds, you can use ClickUp for project management and workload distribution, and use jestor for all of your back office needs. Then, you can integrate them so jestor has all your information centralized and becomes your single source of truth.
If you need a full back office platform, jestor is the tool you need.
Specific software is great, but information silos aren’t scalable. If you need centralized data and scalable processes, why don’t you give jestor a spin?