There are so many work management solutions on the market today, it can be overwhelming to parse through all of their features and choose the best one for your team. But since every team across every industry works a little bit differently, it’s best to focus your search on finding a tool that’s easily customizable to your exact needs — while also being intuitive and easy to use. The more versatile and user friendly the solution, the more it can adapt to how your team works best.
So let’s compare the seven leading work management solutions to answer the big question: Which one is the most configurable on the market while still being easy to use?
Let’s explore our top three findings.
1. Only Wrike supports intelligence behind Custom Item Types
Work is complex and can no longer be categorized by simple building blocks like tasks, projects, and folders. That’s why we introduced Custom Item Types. Custom Item Types enable teams to rename or redefine their own types of work beyond a solution’s standard task and project naming conventions to reflect their internal language. Very quickly and easily, Wrike users can create Custom Item Types, power them through item-specific automation, and report against them in Wrike’s advanced analytics and BI tools.
Other solutions may claim to offer custom item types, but Wrike is the only work management platform that supports intelligence behind them. This makes the item unique not only by name, but by functionality as well. Wrike's Custom Item Types empower users to create an intuitive terminology that optimizes and clarifies teams' processes while storing relevant data.
What about the competition?
Jira, Monday.com, and ClickUp all have limited capabilities in their custom item type features, and they don’t offer item-specific automations. Neither Monday.com nor ClickUp let users rename projects or report against custom item types. And there are no custom item types available for Asana, Smartsheet, or Workfront.
2. Wrike enables more space-level configuration than any other work management solution
Wrike empowers teams and departments to leverage space-level permissions to customize their own workspace. Each space can be configured with its own folder structures, custom fields, request processes, automated workflows, templates, dashboards, Custom Item Types, and more without having to route through centralized account admins or IT. This makes getting started with Wrike faster and simpler for both admins and users alike.
Wrike is the only platform on the market that provides space-level automations and workflows. This allows teams and departments to tailor the Wrike account to their required use cases and unique processes, so they can work the way they need to while still collaborating effortlessly with other functions in the organization. Without space-level automation and workflows, every team within an account must use the same workflow options, risking the possibility of unfamiliar statuses or processes.
What about the competition?
There are no space-level configurations available for Asana, ClickUp, Jira, Smartsheet, or Workfront. And Jira doesn’t even offer spaces as a hierarchical level. Monday.com does offer some space-level permissions, but there are no space-level automations or workflows available.
3. Wrike offers the best-in-class custom access functionality
Sometimes you need to provide certain access to select team members. This usually happens when you deal with sensitive information. For example, what should you do when team members need full viewing rights to the entire account, but only some of them should be able to add or change data in certain sections? For those kinds of scenarios, Wrike has the best access roles functionality on the market.
Wrike admins can easily create their own Custom Access Roles and Custom User Types to enhance account security. Custom Access Roles grant rights like “Editor” or “View-Only” access to work within an account, personalizing each user’s experience with specific permissions across 50+ criteria.
Custom User Types permits certain actions, such as adding files or deleting folders, empowering admins with greater control over the activity performed in their account. Combined with space-level configurations, Wrike provides best-in-class security that makes it easy for all types of teams to collaborate at the right levels with the right access.
What about the competition?
Monday.com does offer custom access roles, but users can only relinquish permission from a standard access role and cannot enhance the access. Workfront also offers custom access roles, but this article by their parent company Adobe notes that they “strongly recommend that you leave the built-in access levels unchanged so that you can refer to them after you set up your users.” And Asana, ClickUp, Jira, and Smartsheet don’t offer custom access roles at all.
Why does configuration matter?
Configuring your work management solution brings many benefits for teams and departments, including:
- Promoting adoption through a personalized user experience
- Aligning teams through centralized, familiar terminology
- Improving efficiency through tailored automation
- Enhancing and customizing security to your users' needs
But overall, customizing your work management solution empowers teams to work exactly how they want to — enhancing and centralizing their current processes rather than forcing users to adjust to a platform’s limitations. The easier to use and more configurable the platform, the more it can adapt to how your team works best.
Ready to learn more?
Dive deeper into the other ways Wrike outperforms the competition by reviewing these comparison pages: Asana, Monday.com, ClickUp, Jira, Workfront, Smartsheet. Or see Wrike’s configurability for yourself today by signing up for a free two-week trial.
Already a Wrike customer? Talk to your account manager about more ways to customize Wrike for your team — so you can work better together.
