Most small agencies don't choose to run on Slack and ClickUp together. It happens. Someone sets up Slack for chat in year one. Projects get messy, so someone adds ClickUp in year two. Now there are two places where work is discussed, two places where decisions get lost, and two per-seat bills that grow with every hire.
At some point the founder asks the obvious question: can one tool do both? The honest answer is "yes, with trade-offs". This post is about whether those trade-offs are worth it for you.
Signs it's time to consolidate
You don't need to switch just because two tools feel inelegant. These are the signs that the split is actually costing you:
- Decisions live in chat, tasks live elsewhere. The client approved the new scope in a Slack thread. The ClickUp task still says the old scope. Three weeks later nobody can find the approval.
- You ask for status in chat about work tracked in the PM tool. Because the PM tool isn't updated, so the only way to know is to ask. (If this sounds familiar, see how to get status updates without chasing.)
- People pick one and ignore the other. Half the team lives in Slack and rarely opens ClickUp. The other half comments on tasks and misses channel messages.
- The bill grows with every hire. At current list prices, Slack Pro plus ClickUp Business is about $24 per person per month billed annually. For 20 people that's about $5,800 a year, before add-ons. The full stack arithmetic is worth a look.
- Contractors need seats in both. Every freelancer means two more seats, or a guest setup in two tools.
If two or more of these are true, consolidating is probably worth exploring. If none are, your current setup is working; leave it alone.
Your options
There are roughly three ways to get to one tool.
1. Use ClickUp's built-in chat and drop Slack
ClickUp includes chat. If your team already lives in ClickUp, this is the smallest change. The risk is that people find it less pleasant for conversation than Slack and drift back to DMs or WhatsApp, which is worse than where you started.
2. Use Slack and a lightweight task list, drop ClickUp
Some small teams find they never used most of ClickUp. A simple board plus Slack covers it. This works when projects are short and simple. It breaks when you need time tracking, estimates and a view of who's overloaded.
3. Move to a workspace that does both
Tools like Basecamp, and workspaces built for service businesses, put chat and projects together from the start. Suprwork is one of these: team chat with channels, threads and voice notes, and projects, tickets and time tracking in the same app, at a flat monthly price with everyone on the team included.
What you give up
Be clear-eyed about this. Slack and ClickUp are each very good at their own job, and an all-in-one tool will usually be thinner in places.
| You might lose | Why it matters | Who should care |
|---|---|---|
| Slack's integration library | Alerts from GitHub, CRM, monitoring, forms | Teams whose work runs through bots and alerts |
| ClickUp's custom fields and views | Highly customised workflows | Teams that built their process inside ClickUp |
| Familiarity | Everyone already knows Slack | Teams with low appetite for change |
To be specific about Suprwork: Team Chat doesn't have built-in calling. Huddles create a meeting in your own Google Meet, Zoom or Teams account. Its integration list is also far shorter than Slack's, so if your work runs on bots and alerts from a dozen tools, weigh that before you move.
The upside of a single tool is mostly about where information lives. When the discussion about a task sits in the same app as the task, fewer things get lost between them.
How to switch without losing history
The fear that stops most switches is losing years of conversations and tasks. You can bring most of it with you if you plan.
Week one: prepare
- Export Slack. Workspace owners can export from Workspace settings → Import/Export data → Export. Public channels are included; private channels and DMs depend on your Slack plan. Download the .zip.
- Decide what moves. You probably don't need every channel. Pick active client and project channels; leave dead ones behind.
- Save files. In many imports, Slack files come across as links, which stop working once the Slack workspace is closed. Download anything you need to keep.
- List your integrations. Write down every Slack bot and ClickUp automation, and decide which you still need. This is where surprises usually hide.
Week two: move and run in parallel
- Import projects first. Tasks, assignees and logged time are the history you'll most regret losing.
- Import chat channels. Check that threads and names came through correctly.
- Run both for a week, with one rule: new work and new conversations happen only in the new tool. The old tools become read-only.
- Cancel at renewal, not before. Keep the old workspaces readable until you're sure nothing's missing.
In Suprwork, the migration assistant under settings takes a Slack export and brings public channels in with their messages, threads, reactions and mentions at their original times, without notifying anyone. Direct messages stay behind, and files come across as links. From ClickUp it uses an API token and brings spaces over as projects, with tasks keeping their status, assignees, dates, tags, checklists, subtasks, comments and logged time. Custom fields, docs and whiteboards don't move.
Getting the team to actually switch
Tools don't fail technically; they fail socially. A few things that help:
- Pick a date and say it out loud. "From Monday the 17th, all project talk happens in the new tool."
- Move the founder first. If you keep messaging people in the old tool, so will they.
- Set up the channels before people arrive. An empty tool feels like homework. One with their projects and channels already there feels like a move.
- Accept a week of grumbling. Every switch has one. Fix the specific complaints quickly.
When to stay where you are
Stay on Slack and ClickUp if:
- Your workflows depend heavily on integrations you can't replace.
- You've built detailed custom fields, automations and views in ClickUp that your process relies on.
- Your team is small enough that per-seat costs are trivial and stable.
- Everyone actually uses both tools well, and nothing gets lost.
Being honest about that is better than a switch that half the team resents.
This week
Count how many times in the last week a decision, file or status was in one tool when you looked for it in the other. If it's more than a handful, export your Slack workspace this week (it takes a while to generate) and list your integrations. Those two steps tell you whether a switch is easy or hard before you commit to anything.