Considering Missive is a fully established email client and ClickUp Email is only a small part of ClickUp which is primarily a task management software, comparing the two based on email features alone might seem unfair.
Yet, it makes sense if you’re already using ClickUp (and/ or Missive) and you want to:
- Cut down costs by using only ClickUp for work and email management
- Streamline your workflow with one software instead of two
I came up with five questions to help you decide, based on your business needs, whether you should only use ClickUp Email or Missive.
Bonus: Later in the article, I’ll be discussing RogerRoger, a hybrid SaaS product that bridges the gap between project management and email collaboration software.
RogerRoger allows you to view, assign, and collaborate on both your emails and tasks in one platform which keeps everything organized, saves time, and increases productivity.
1. What features are you giving up when you shift your email management from Missive to ClickUp Email?
Dynamic Variables in Email Templates
Missive allows you to use dynamic variables when creating email responses (or templates in ClickUp). A variable can be a first name, last name, date, or any other information concerning the sender or recipient of the email.
Missive takes it even further with its ‘default’ option which ClickUp does not have. It comes in handy if you forget to log in a relevant piece of information into Missive, for instance, a client’s first name.
When building a response, you can give Missive another option to use in case your client’s first name is not available. If your default value is ‘there’, your email will now read ‘Hello there’.
In ClickUp, if the first name is not available, the variable will remain blank and the email will simply read “Hello.”
In ClickUp, dynamic variables are only available for automated emails.
To use them, you first need to set a task to trigger an email. Common triggers include when the status of a task changes, and when a deadline arrives.
You’ll then build your email template and set the values for dynamic variables like [task name], [name of assignee], and [due date].
When you manually create a template in ClickUp, you can’t use dynamic variables, you’ll have to use text placeholders and replace them when sending an email.
Dynamic Variables Also Let You Create Uniform Email Signatures
You can set email signatures in both Missive and ClickUp, but because it uses dynamic variables, Missive allows you to build email signature templates that can be used across your entire organization, making it easier to set up signatures for new team members.
You can use dynamic variables to pull in names as well as images into your Missive email signature.
ClickUp only allows you to customize signatures for every email address you use, as long as you’re on the business plan or higher. You can add multiple signatures for each email address.
Centralized Inbox in Missive
Missive has three features to help you organize your inbox:
- Team Inbox: Shared inbox that sorts conversations into unique piles for different teams. You can have an inbox called “Customer Service” where all support emails go.
- Inbox: Easily manage all the conversations that need your personal attention.
- Labels: Can be applied to any conversation as a way to identify it for future reference. When you receive an email from someone interested in your product or service, you can label it as “Potential Client’
In ClickUp, emails are primarily linked to tasks, they don’t have a centralized inbox (yet).
Missive also allows you to merge conversations manually as well as define rules to merge the messages you want, it saves you a lot of time.
In ClickUp, the closest you can come to merging conversations is by forwarding relevant emails to appear as comments on a task. You can also forward the conversations to a list so they appear as new tasks in ClickUp.
To do this, open the task or list and locate its unique email address. Copy the email into your Gmail, Outlook, Office 365, or IMAP account. You should save the task or list name into your contacts so it’s easier to find.
Next, you need to set up filters in your email inbox so that, for example, all emails that contain the words price, pricing, or how much get forwarded to the unique list or task email you copied from ClickUp.
Another stand-out Missive feature is their ability to automatically assign emails to employees using the Round-Robin Assignment feature that distributes conversations evenly among team members. If there are two sales employees, the first sales conversation goes to employee A, the second to employee B, the third to employee A, and so forth.
There is no way to automatically assign emails to members in ClickUp.
Powerful Automation Options in Missive
If you’re on Missive’s Productive Plan or higher, you can use the Rules feature to automate your emails by setting rules that trigger action for different scenarios.
If an email arrives on the weekend, send an autoresponder.
If an email hasn’t been opened after 3 hours on a weekday, send a notification.
Missive also allows you to schedule emails to be sent at a later date.
Missive’s rules are not just based on tasks, you can build so many complex conditions that allow you to automate almost anything; sending emails on specific dates, days of the week, at specific times, as well as specific time zones. This works best for workflows that involve a lot of back-and-forth communication, particularly between team members and customers.
In contrast, ClickUp automations are much more structured, they only happen within tasks and can’t be customized or nested into sub-groups. ClickUp’s email automation works best for rigid workflows involving things like help desk tickets, IT tickets, or onboarding emails.
Alias Email Addresses in Missive
Missive allows you to add any number of aliases for each of your email accounts, and each alias can have a unique signature.
This means that you can use Missive’s free account and add all the different variations of your business’s aliases—[email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] —which you can also get for free from your email provider.
In ClickUp, you can only integrate Google, Outlook, or IMAP email accounts. To connect an alias email address, you’ll need to create an email account for your alias email address, and then add it to ClickUp—which may cost you an additional $6 per account per month. Keep in mind that you are limited to only two email accounts per workspace if you’re on the Business plan or higher in ClickUp, and any additional email accounts cost $2 per month, each.
ClickUp doesn’t allow users to send emails from the mobile app, but Missive does.
2. How much can you get done with ClickUp Email?
Considering all the features lacking in ClickUp Email, using it may impair your team’s collaboration. You’ll always need to manually forward emails to ClickUp, which can be a waste of time.
It’s also easy for emails to fall through the cracks in ClickUp, especially when they don’t have replies (replies trigger notifications and make it easier to find your emails. If no one replies to your email in ClickUp, you’ll have to manually search through all your tasks to find the email you sent.)
Additionally, you can’t merge similar conversations in ClickUp, which may lead to a messy inbox. If your customer service team receives two emails with the same request on the same day, you can easily pair them in Missive and have the same person work on both. You can't do this on ClickUp.
Missive has integrations with Whatsapp, SMS, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Missive Live Chat.
ClickUp communication is limited to email, comments, and ClickUp forms. ClickUp comments are only for users with access to ClickUp workspaces, and ClickUp forms only allow for one-way communication.
On the contrary, ClickUp is more integrated into your daily task list and therefore better at creating tasks from email. For instance, ClickUp’s Chrome extension can track time, take screenshots, act as a notepad, add websites to tasks, and quickly convert emails to tasks.
ClickUp’s email automation depends on a task to be triggered for an email to be sent. It works best if you have a structured/ sequential workflow that is very task-centric, follows a series of steps, and doesn’t have a lot of variation.
An example is the process of assigning customer complaints to team members. You simply set your inbox filters to forward all the emails coming into [email protected] to a specified task or list in ClickUp.
Missive works best if you have a conversation-centric/ rules-driven workflow that includes more complex tasks with conditions attached. When onboarding a new client, a rules-driven workflow allows you to customize questionnaires within this process.
You can also trigger email notifications based on different events (as opposed to changing task status in ClickUp) such as an email not being opened after 24 hours, a task nearing its deadline, or every third Friday of the month.
3. ClickUp Email vs Missive: Which is Cheaper?
ClickUp’s Free Forever Plan gives you one free email account, but it’s limited to 100 automation actions per month.
The ClickUp Unlimited Plan ($9 per member per month) lets you send an unlimited number of emails, and gives you one free account per workspace. Any additional accounts will cost $2 per month per account.
You need to be on the ClickUp Business Plan ($19 monthly per user) or higher to access 2 free accounts per workspace, email templates, and signatures. Just like in the Unlimited Plan, any additional accounts will cost an extra $2 per account per month. Being on the Business Plan or higher also allows you to remove a sent using ClickUp watermark attached to every email.
ClickUp Business Plus ($29 per month) and ClickUp Enterprise Plans (custom pricing) have custom email permissions like being able to select which users can send emails and add email accounts to ClickUp.
By contrast, Missive’s Free Plan lets you create email templates, signatures, add up to three members, and use two personal accounts per member. You can use up to two shared accounts, and add an unlimited number of aliases for free. If you’re a small team, you can get away with using just the free plan.
With Missive’s Starter Plan at $14 per month per user, you can add up to 5 members from your organization and link 5 shared accounts. It will cost you an extra $15 per month to add 5 extra accounts.
With their $18 per month Productive Plan, you can add up to 50 members, 5 shared accounts, and have access to Rules to help you automate your workflow.
You can get more control over your inbox for less in Missive.
If you have ten email addresses shared across five teams, and nine of the addresses are aliases, you can easily use the free plan on Missive. This is the cost breakdown you’ll be looking at in ClickUp vs the paid plans in Missive:
ClickUp’s Unlimited Plan: $63 per month, but you won’t be able to create email templates or signatures.
Missive Starter Plan: $70 per month to add 5 team members and nine alias accounts, but you won’t have access to rules.
ClickUp’s Business Plan: $111 per month, but you won’t have dynamic variables, powerful automation rules, or be able to send emails from your mobile app.
4. Can you integrate ClickUp with Missive?
Missive includes a ClickUp integration which allows you to create, assign, and update tasks within your inbox.
Once you finish setting up the integration, data from the two apps will sync, giving you access to all your ClickUp workspaces, folders, team members, deadlines, and lists in Missive. ClickUp’s SOP Docs will be embedded into Missive’s sidebar, enabling you to use both tools side by side.
5. What advancements can we expect in the future from both ClickUp Email and Missive?
ClickUp plans to introduce a centralized inbox that lets you view, send, reply, and organize your emails. This feature will bring ClickUp Email closer to Missive’s levels in terms of functionality.
Yet, it may be a while before ClickUp Email advances its features to include a collaborative inbox, dynamic variables, alias email addresses, mobile app accessibility, and more automation options.
Until then, it makes sense to integrate Missive and Clickup, especially if you deal with a high volume of emails daily. At its current capacity, ClickUp is valuable as a task management software, but it may not be ready to meet all your email collaboration needs just yet.
Even when you integrate ClickUp and Missive, switching between tasks and email all day can still be a productivity killer, especially when dealing with a high volume of emails daily.
But if I told you that there’s a tool that perfectly blends email collaboration and project management so you don't have to keep switching between tools? I go into more detail on RogerRoger below.
Bonus: RogerRoger - Bridging the Gap Between Email Collaboration and Project Management Tools
Here’s a high-level overview of some of the features that stand out in RogerRoger and make it the ideal software for both project management and email collaboration:
Shared Inbox
RogerRoger transforms your regular inbox into a productivity tool by allowing you to merge conversations, assign emails, and convert emails to tasks on the same page.
When you open an email, you can immediately see what tasks were created from it, who was assigned the tasks, and the contact information of the client in question. RogerRoger consolidates everything into your inbox and gives you full context on your clients, tasks, emails, comments, and notes -- making it impossible to overlook any critical information.
Team and Private Workspaces
You can easily manage your team’s tasks using visual Kanban boards and custom workspaces in RogerRoger -- it will feel like you’re handling tasks in a regular project management tool like Trello or Monday.com.
CRM to Manage Customer Information
RogerRoger’s CRM allows you to centralize customer contact information so it’s easier to find. You can access your client’s information directly from your inbox or from your task workspaces which gives you full context on the projects you’re working on.
The in-built CRM also logs all activities related to your clients. For instance, opening a client’s contact shows you a complete history of all their emails, tasks, comments, notes, and attachments. It saves so much time and prevents the inbox clutter that comes with forwarding emails to team members.
Best of all, you can add multiple email addresses to the same contact, allowing you to instantly communicate with different departments in your client’s organization.
Final Verdict: ClickUp Email vs Missive vs RogerRoger
Missive is inefficient for internal collaboration because it does not prioritize tasks, and ClickUp Email is terrible for external communication because it’s primarily a project management software - RogerRoger bridges this gap by providing you with a shared inbox, private and team workspaces, powerful workflow automations, and an in-built customer relationship management (CRM) system on one platform.
RogerRoger integrates email and project management capabilities into one unified workspace, but it isn't necessarily a complete replacement for stand-alone email or project management tools.
While RogerRoger has strong email-to-task functionalities, shared inbox features, CRM integration, and some project management tools like Kanban boards and task delegation, it might not house every single feature that stand-alone project management software like ClickUp or task-oriented email platforms like Missive can offer.
Instead, RogerRoger bridges these two types of platforms, filling in the gap where communication and task management intersect. It enhances the collaboration and productivity potential of both email and project management tools, creating a streamlined workflow.
However, depending on a team's specific requirements and workflow complexity, they may still need to use a specialized project management or email tool alongside RogerRoger. This would help them leverage the best of both worlds - the advanced, specific functionalities of standalone tools and the integrated, collaborative features of RogerRoger.
Learn more about how to use RogerRoger to improve productivity in your company.