The difference between a good marketing team and a great one often comes down to people. But the difference between a team that runs like clockwork and one that’s always playing catch-up? That’s the tool they use to manage their work.
ClickUp used to be the tool that took the agency world by storm with its user friendliness, until it got packed with endless features and layers, and now even simple workflows feel like a mini adventure (not the fun kind).
It’s still an amazing project management tool in the market, but is it truly sustainable for growing teams? That’s up for debate.
5day.io, on the other hand, is quickly filling that space in making project management simpler and more efficient than ClickUp.
What differentiates one from the other? We’ll dive deep in the following sections.
How did ClickUp impress marketing teams?
There was a significant market gap that ClickUp nailed extremely well when it stepped into the project management space. Agencies were using spreadsheets and a mix of tools that were neither working synchronously nor giving the results teams wanted. It was an agreed-upon fact that if you’re managing projects, you have to be juggling at least 7-8 tools (with a few legacy tools in the mix).
The reason why marketers still have a soft spot for ClickUp is because of a radical change it brought to the marketing agency space upon its launch. People slowly realized chaos need not be an accepted state of things in the space, and that it was actually possible to bring several workspaces, projects, internal, external collaborators, and the entire village into one place.
The time and cost benefit was profound, and it drew the attention of agency founders and brands equally. It convinced marketers to boldly unsubscribe from heavy but futile tool subscriptions that were only draining budgets.
While marketers rode the ClickUp wave euphorically, what made their work easier gradually made it uncomfortable. The tool price rose, the pricing structure wasn’t as transparent as before, and a whole other load of issues came up.
Why do marketers want to move from ClickUp now?
At this point, almost everyone in marketing has touched ClickUp, whether as a freelancer, agency member, or client. But the reality is, ClickUp isn’t the same anymore.
Not the way it came into the market. Change is good, yes, but this change isn’t for the better.
The setup is a full-time job
The templates you create in the beginning are the crux of your operations. It needs to be rock-solid, so you need to spend hours setting up hierarchy, process library, templates, and automations for a long time.
Reddit users say it consumes two or more weeks of their working days.
For marketing teams that work fast, with multiple clients and marketing campaigns every few weeks, that setup time eats into precious billable hours.
You can’t sidestep or postpone the setup either, or it will wreak a different kind of havoc.
So, many marketers are now craving something that’s ready to go, with intuitive templates and structures that don’t need babysitting.
Glaring performance delays and system lags
Anyone who has used ClickUp even a few times knows this issue. Even while updating a few fields or viewing large sets of data, you need to refresh the screen every two minutes, and every refresh takes five minutes to load. The downtime is erratic and unreliable. This has been a legacy issue with ClickUp.
Pricing becomes very steep as you add users
ClickUp looks affordable at first glance. That’s part of its genius. The entry-level plan feels generous. ClickUp’s pricing model scales per user, and that’s where marketing agencies start to feel the squeeze.
Agencies don’t just have one or two power users. They have dozens, from writers, designers, account managers, freelancers, to clients who need access for approvals, and even interns who just track tasks. Suddenly, that ₹700–₹900 per seat (or $10–$12 per user) adds up fast.
Before you know it, a 15-person team — which is small by agency standards — is paying enterprise-level costs every month.
Consumes too much brain power
ClickUp makes you think too much. Every action requires a decision: which view to use, which folder to put something in, which list it belongs to, which status fits best. That mental juggling is the opposite of creative flow.
For marketers, whose brains already live in strategy and campaign planning for a wide variety of clients, that kind of interface fatigue becomes overwhelming. What should make your life easier now demands a big chunk of your brain power.
Not attuned to marketing needs
Anyone can use ClickUp, provided they set aside a few days for detailed setup. But that’s not always great, especially for marketing.
There are a lot of touchpoints, checklists, iterations, and subjective elements in marketing that a vanilla, all-encompassing tool can’t match. You need a marketing-specific tool to understand your needs intuitively.
Onboarding never ends
In theory, ClickUp can be customized to match your processes. But that also means every team uses it differently. There’s no single way to do ClickUp.
New hires often need lengthy training sessions just to understand how their agency’s ClickUp is set up. Client onboarding is worse; every time you share your workspace, you have to teach them how to use it. It’s extra overhead that adds zero value to the actual work.
Reporting doesn’t speak marketing
ClickUp’s client reporting features focus heavily on task completion, timelines, and productivity metrics, perfect for software teams, but not for marketing. Agencies care about campaign performance, revision cycles, client delays, and turnaround times.
So teams end up using Sheets or Data Studio anyway, defeating the whole point of having an “all-in-one” tool.
Renewal and unsubscribing are a huge pain
For one, ClickUp’s per-user billing structure means even a small change, removing a few seats or shifting to a lower plan, can ripple through your entire setup. If you remove users too early, you risk breaking automations or losing access to data tied to those accounts.
But if you leave them in until renewal, you end up paying for seats you don’t need. It’s a lose-lose situation that drains both patience and budget.
And then comes the renewal cycle itself. ClickUp doesn’t exactly remind you when your subscription is about to renew. Many teams discover their plan has auto renewed for another year only after the charge hits their card.
For agencies managing multiple client projects or entities under one billing umbrella, this creates unexpected financial hits. If ClickUp started to feel like you were carrying the entire office on your back, 5day.io feels like setting that weight down and finally getting back to doing the work.
5day.io – A fitting alternative to ClickUp
5day.io was born from a simple, almost rebellious idea: work management shouldn’t feel like another full-time job. The creators of the tool came from environments where productivity tools were meant to help, but in reality, the tools had become the work. The tool was taking more energy than it gave back.
So 5day.io chose a different route.
Where ClickUp continued adding layers, more fields, and more everything, 5day.io intentionally subtracts.
It removes the clutter so teams don’t need a “ClickUp Champion,” or an entire onboarding month just to start using it. You open 5day.io and get to work. That’s the whole point.
The platform is shaped directly around the natural rhythm of marketing workflows: campaign cycles, content pipelines, approvals, feedback loops, handoffs, revisions, launches.
Nothing feels forced. You don’t have to retrofit your processes into a system built for software teams or general project management.
Where ClickUp tries to be the “everything app,” 5day.io is built around being just enough.
It’s designed for humans doing creative, and strategic work.
And structurally, that difference is clear.
ClickUp’s hierarchy looks powerful in theory, but it quickly becomes a maze, Spaces → Folders → Lists → Tasks → Subtasks → Custom Fields → Views → Automations.
In contrast, 5day.io uses a minimal, easy-to-understand structure where you always know where to look and where to put things. No remembering where something should live.
ClickUp vs 5day.io – Head-to-head feature comparison – The winner takes it all
Let’s go over every major feature in each of these marketing project management software and figure out which makes things richer and easier for people.
The setup — Hierarchy, and creating process libraries
ClickUp
ClickUp’s structure flows from Workspace to Spaces, Folders, Lists, Tasks, and Subtasks, supporting very deep and customizable organization. Setting this up requires an initial time investment to design the hierarchy thoughtfully.
Process libraries are created through Docs and Templates, allowing teams to tie documentation directly to workflows and automate recurring steps, making process adherence easier over time.
The best hack, when it comes to ClickUp, is to test with a small team first and iterate continuously for specific workflows.
5day.io
5day.io takes the opposite approach. Its hierarchy is intentionally flat and clear:
Workspace → Projects→ Sections → Tasks.
There are no nested layers to architect, no structural decisions to agonize over, and no setup phase that steals time from billable work. You open it, create a workspace, start a project, and get to work.
Each core element has its own library. Project templates are stored in the Template Library, statuses are stored in the Status Library, and workflow patterns are stored in their respective configuration libraries.
This means every reusable piece of your process has a clear home and can be applied instantly across teams and projects. Nothing sits off to the side or gets lost in documentation.
Best For
ClickUp works great for teams that need lots of layers, structure, and detailed process control. In other words, the kind of setup where everything has a rule, a workflow, and a subtask for every task. But that also means it takes more time (and patience) to get everything running smoothly.
5day.io is built for agencies, brand teams, creative studios, social/content teams, and freelancers working with clients. These teams juggle multiple deliverables at once and need clarity without a complex setup. The tool stays light, and easy, so work keeps moving.
Adding users and sharing visibility
ClickUp
Adding users and managing sharing visibility in ClickUp involves inviting users to the Workspace and assigning them to specific spaces or projects based on roles and permissions. ClickUp supports granular permission levels at Workspace, Space, Folder, List, and Task levels, allowing precise control over who can view, edit, or comment on content.
But all this is only possible if you set up the hierarchy flawlessly.
5day.io
5day.io keeps user access simple because the structure itself is simple. Instead of ClickUp’s layered hierarchy, where permissions must be adjusted at multiple levels, 5day.io has roles and permissions same across the board.
So, when you add someone, you decide which area they should see, and that’s it.
Moreover, you can create custom roles and permissions that let you decide and implement exactly what level of visibility you want each role to have.
There’s no need to manage view-only access at Folder level, edit rules at List level, or restrict subtasks manually like in ClickUp. The system prevents over-sharing and clutter by design.
The whole process is clearer and much simpler.
Best for
ClickUp offers more flexibility and fine-tuning for sharing and user visibility, but it can be more complex to manage at scale. 5day.io’s role-based approach delivers a simpler, more streamlined user management experience with clear visibility boundaries.
Creating tasks, sub-tasks, folders, and nested folders
ClickUp
ClickUp does not support subfolders or nested folders within its hierarchy. Its folder structure is limited to a single level of folders inside Spaces, where these folders contain Lists, and Lists contain tasks and subtasks.
This means you cannot create folders within folders to further nest or group Lists, which can limit complexity management in very large or multi-project environments.
5day.io
5day.io solves this by introducing sections, a more flexible way to structure work inside a project.
Projects act like folders, but they can also expand into sections when a project grows, letting the structure evolve naturally without needing to redesign the workspace.
So instead of forcing everything into a single folder level, teams can organize work like they run campaigns. Tasks live inside these Sections, so each piece of work is always in context. Where ClickUp forces you to pre-plan hierarchy, 5day.io lets the structure grow as the work grows.
Best for
ClickUp is ideal for large, complex teams needing deep customization and granular task management without nested folders.
5day.io suits medium-sized teams or agencies that prefer quick setup and straightforward nested-like sections.
Dashboards and views
ClickUp
Users can create dashboards tailored to management, teams, or individual contributors, visualizing metrics like task status, project timelines, workload, and goals.
Views in ClickUp include List, Board, Calendar, Gantt, and Timeline, giving teams multiple ways to organize and review their work visually and contextually.
ClickUp’s dashboards are powerful, but they require you to build them from scratch.
None of the defaults match how marketing teams naturally work, so you end up configuring widgets, linking lists, and maintaining filters, and dashboards only stay accurate as long as the underlying structure never changes.
The same goes for ClickUp’s many views. They offer flexibility but require the whole team to align on which views to use and how to use them. If everyone works in different views, the workspace stops being a shared reality.
5day.io
5day.io approaches dashboards very differently.
Instead of making you build dashboards from scratch, each project comes pre-loaded with eight visual widgets that show the things marketing teams actually need to monitor: task progress, timelines, time logged, workload, and completion patterns.
Where ClickUp gives you many view options (which often leads to decision fatigue), 5day.io focuses on the views marketers really use:
- List View for detailed work tracking
- Board (Kanban) View for progress flow
- Structure View for campaign hierarchy
- Project View for big-picture oversight
- Calendar and timeline view for progress tracking
Best for
Both platforms cater to different user needs: ClickUp excels in depth and flexibility, while 5day.io focuses on speed, usability, and marketing-centric workflows.
User experience and learning curve
ClickUp
To get a good grip of the ClickUp platform, ClickUp offers courses for you to complete. This shows how complex and detailed the platform is. Anyone who has ever worked with the tool agrees that the setup and learning curve are rather difficult and take a lot of patience.
A lot of features and options are hidden deep in menus and need time to excavate them.
5day.io
5day.io is designed so that teams already understand it the moment they see it.
Teammates and clients can simply log in and start working, no training calls, manuals, or setup sessions. And since the structure is consistent across every project, people always know where to look and what to do next.
In ClickUp you need to set up different projects differently to go with the flow of work. 5day.io knows where your marketing brain will look for what information and it makes it easy to access it, without peeling layer after layer.
If you’re suddenly asked to retrieve information from a different project or a workspace, you don’t have to fret or frantically pull your colleague into a call. Take one good look and you’ll be able to navigate easily, even with zero experience working on 5day.io.
5day.io cares about preserving your creative energy and helping you channelize it to the things that matter most. For deep-focus work, 5day.io will soon introduce Minimal Mode, a project view where everything except the task you’re working on fades away, so you can drop into flow without distraction.
Best for
ClickUp is fine for agencies and organizations that can take time to figure out each feature, experiment, and learn. But for marketing teams that are short on time and need to hit the ground running, 5day.io is the best bet.
Workflow flexibility vs simplicity
ClickUp
It’s built for teams that like to have full control over how they manage their projects.
You can have multiple project owners, set up custom fields, and create different types of tasks to match your team’s workflow. It also supports subitems, story points, and assignee-based estimations, making it ideal for teams that need detailed tracking and planning.
The platform lets you design your own workflows from the ground up. You can customize project statuses, automate repetitive actions, and even create separate work item status flows for different types of tasks. This makes ClickUp highly adaptable for teams with layered processes or unique internal systems.
That said, when you add or remove users, your entire workflow goes for a toss. You must also constantly tweak the workflows to keep them alive and running smoothly.
Workflows in ClickUp often include many stages, many subtasks, and many approvals, which is good in theory. But for marketing teams managing client reviews, creative revisions, and collaborators (freelancers, external partners), these workflows can become cumbersome.
5day.io
5day.io takes the same needs and solves them through structure.
Work moves through clear, familiar stages like Brief → Draft → Review → Publish, so new hires and clients understand the flow instantly, no training or guessing.
You can still tweak stages, but you’re not rebuilding your process every time. And because the workflow is built-in, adding automations on top of them takes minutes instead of hours.
Best for
ClickUp is best for software development teams and marketing agencies with complex projects. 5day.io is best for small to medium-sized teams or agencies focused on straightforward project execution and timesheet management.
Collaboration
ClickUp
Teams can comment on tasks, reply to each other, and even edit or delete messages to keep conversations tidy. You can tag teammates directly within comments or tasks, so no one ever misses an update.
You can upload, download, and manage all kinds of files from images and videos to creative briefs, right inside the platform. ClickUp’s activity stream keeps everyone in sync with real-time updates. And if your team relies on external tools like Microsoft Teams or Slack, ClickUp integrates smoothly with both.
On the other hand, creative project management with workflows and feedback at every round is very tricky to set up on ClickUp.
5day.io
5day.io starts from a different assumption: collaboration shouldn’t need managing.
5day.io has the same collaboration essentials, but the way they live in the platform is different.
The structure is flat — Workspace → Project → Section → Task — so all conversation, files, revisions, and decisions stay contained within the level of conversation itself. There is no second place where feedback can drift to, and no alternate view where context can get separated from the work.
If you want to address everyone in the project, your discussions are right there. If you want to talk to a team member about a task, task level discussion makes it possible.
Even as teams grow, bring in freelancers, or loop in clients, the collaboration stays in one consistent location.
Role and permission management in 5day.io is straightforward but powerful. You can define custom roles, and invite people based on their function, whether they’re core team members, freelancers, or clients.
And when communication needs to move outside the workspace, 5day.io integrates directly with Slack, Microsoft Teams, Zapier, and Google Calendar.
Best for
ClickUp is best for larger teams that need deep collaboration and complex coordination across multiple roles and departments. 5day.io, on the other hand, suits teams that prefer clarity and simplicity, offering focused, context-driven collaboration with minimal setup.
Pricing
ClickUp
It starts with a generous free plan that lets individuals and small teams explore the tool without spending upfront, though with limited storage and features.
As teams expand and their needs become more complex, ClickUp’s unlimited tiers also start putting limitations for a forced upgrade.
5day.io
The free version lets smaller teams or freelancers manage up to five active projects, giving them a solid taste of the platform. For growing teams, the plan 5day.io offers is super value-packed and upfront and gives a solid ROI.
5day.io focuses on simplicity and ease of use, ensuring you get a clean, capable system without the noise or steep learning curve.
Best for
The choice really comes down to what matters more for your team: a tool that has every possible feature any team might ever need (ClickUp) or a curated experience just for marketing that keeps your focus on getting the work done (5day.io).
Time tracking
ClickUp
Time tracking is built directly into tasks and projects, which means you can log hours without having to switch between tools.
There’s even a built-in workflow for time approvals, overtime tracking, and timesheet submissions, so managers can review and verify hours before they’re finalized.
ClickUp does offer time tracking inside tasks, which sounds convenient at first, but in practice, time tracking in ClickUp often becomes another thing that needs managing. Teams have to remember to start the timer, stop it, categorize the entry, label it, attach it to the right task, and make sure it actually saved.
Timesheet approvals, detailed reporting, and clean breakdowns are available — but mostly on higher-tier plans — meaning many teams end up with time logs they can collect, but not confidently use for billing or internal resourcing decisions.
Some users report that tracked time entries don’t always save correctly or that the mobile experience (for time tracking on the go) is weaker.
5day.io
5day.io approaches time tracking from the reality of agency life: people switch tasks fast, collaboration happens constantly, and not every hour fits neatly inside a task.
So instead of making time tracking another system to babysit, 5day.io builds clarity into the flow itself. Time can be logged directly on tasks, but also at the Timesheet level, where teammates can submit daily, weekly, or monthly summaries.
Billable vs. non-billable hours are first-class fields instead of something you remember to add later.
Approvals are built in, so managers review once and not chase corrections later. And because all time data can be exported cleanly into spreadsheets or billing tools, teams don’t get stuck figuring out how to use the data.
It’s already organized in a way finance and project managers understand.
Best for
ClickUp’s time tracking works best for big teams that need detailed control over how time is tracked, approved, and reported.
5day.io, on the other hand, is better for teams or agencies that want an easy, straightforward way to track time and manage timesheets without getting lost in too many settings.
Task creation and management
ClickUp
On the positive side, it’s built to handle almost any kind of workflow. You can add as much detail as you need to each task: descriptions, start and end dates, priorities, tags, progress, and even overdue indicators.
Slowly, what began as “Let’s just get this done,” becomes, “Wait, how do we classify this again?” ClickUp gives you the power to define every angle of your workflow, but in fast-moving marketing work, that power often turns into cognitive drag.
Adding or updating tasks can feel like filling out a form rather than jotting down quick to-dos. And the more your work shifts, the more upkeep the system demands.
5day.io
In 5day.io, the fundamental philosophy is different, and it shows.
You write down a task, assign it, and the work continues.
Tasks are neatly organized within projects and sections, and you can easily create sub-items to break down larger pieces of work.
You can also use custom fields and tags to categorize and filter tasks quickly. Task dependencies and sprint management workflows are supported too. 5day.io also ties time tracking directly into tasks, so time logs and time-off reminders are part of the same flow.
When a task moves from “In Progress” to “Review,” the right person gets pinged, because the structure already reflects how campaigns move in the real world. When a client approves something, the work naturally shifts to the next hands without clicking through menus. When a deadline slips, the system adjusts what needs to adjust.
Wanna hear something interesting? Soon, 5day.io will go a step further and offer built-in AI assistance for blog drafting and keyword planning, so creative work begins here.
Best for
Your choice depends on whether you need deep task customization and automation (ClickUp) or ease-of-use with structured task management (5day.io).
Is 5day.io a better alternative to ClickUp than other legacy project management tools for marketing agencies?
Yes, for many teams, especially marketing agencies and creative professionals, 5day.io is a better alternative to ClickUp and other older project management tools.
Legacy tools tend to be packed with features and setups that take time to figure out. They’re built to serve every kind of business, which often makes them feel heavy and hard to use.
5day.io takes the opposite approach. It’s clean, fast, and easy to get started with. The focus is on helping teams collaborate and deliver work without getting stuck in technical details or endless customization.
That said, it depends on what your team needs.
If you manage very large projects that require complex automations or deep integrations, then ClickUp or a legacy tool might still fit better.
But if your team values clarity, simplicity, and a tool that “just works,” 5day.io is a great modern choice that makes project management feel effortless.
Sign up for 5day.io’s 30-day free trial to get a taste of the software in all its glory and decide if it’s the right fit for you!
