The best ClickUp templates for most teams are the Agile Scrum Management template for dev work, a stripped-down Client Project Delivery template for agencies, and a Sales CRM template you gut down to five statuses. None of them work well imported as-is — every one needs custom fields removed and statuses cut before you hand it to a team.
Why most ClickUp template lists get this wrong
I’ve imported probably 200 templates into client workspaces over the past few years, and the pattern repeats. A template looks incredible in the preview — six custom fields, color-coded priorities, a dashboard with twelve widgets — and two weeks after rollout, half the team is ignoring the fields and typing status updates into task comments instead. The template didn’t fail because it was badly built. It failed because someone imported the whole thing into a live workspace without stripping anything out first.
That’s the piece most “best templates” roundups skip: they rank by feature count, not by what survives contact with a real team. Below are the templates I’d actually recommend, grouped by the situations I get hired to solve, with the edits I make before a client ever sees them.
What a template actually imports, and why that matters
ClickUp templates exist at four levels: Space, Folder, List, and task (Docs have their own separate template type). Each level pulls in more baggage than the one below it. A task template just brings a task structure and maybe subtasks. A List template brings statuses, custom fields, and views. A Folder or Space template brings all of that plus automations, ClickApps, Docs, and forms tied to that Space.
Import a Space-level template into a workspace with an established Space already in it, and ClickUp doesn’t merge things intelligently — it adds the template’s fields as new fields on top of whatever your team already built. Do this three or four times across different templates and the task detail panel ends up with eleven custom fields, six of them duplicates with slightly different names (“Priority” and “Task Priority,” both unused, forever). Cleaning that up later is a bigger job than building from scratch would have been.
My rule: import Space or Folder templates only into a brand-new Space with nothing else in it. Adding structure to an existing Space, import at the List level instead, or just build the one or two fields you actually need by hand.
Agency and client work: Client Project Delivery template
ClickUp’s official Client Project Delivery template covers proposal Docs, a project brief, a deliverable-tracking List, and a client approval workflow, and it’s free on every plan through the ClickUp Template Center.
Plan requirement: the structure imports on any plan. The built-in automations that send weekly status emails need Unlimited or above to actually fire, and time tracking against tasks needs it enabled at the workspace level.
What to strip before rollout: the template ships with a status list covering discovery, design, build, review, and handoff all in one List, which usually adds up to 10+ statuses. Agencies running multiple client engagements at once are better off with one List per client and a shorter status set — Not Started, In Progress, Client Review, Done covers 90% of agency work. Add client name as a custom field instead of a separate Space per client, unless you’re billing enough clients to justify managing permissions across dozens of Spaces.
Keep the weekly status update Doc, though. It’s the one piece clients actually notice, because it forces someone on your team to write a plain-English summary instead of just pointing the client at a task board.
Sprint and dev work: Agile Scrum Management template
The Agile Scrum Management template from ClickUp’s own library sets up a Product Backlog, Sprint Backlog, an active sprint Board, and a retrospective Doc, with custom fields for Story Points, Sprint, and Epic.
Plan requirement: the List structure and custom fields import free. Sprint Dashboards with automatic burndown charts require a paid plan with Dashboards enabled, and Sprint Points/Sprint automations that auto-roll incomplete work into the next sprint need Unlimited or higher.
What to strip before rollout: teams migrating from Jira tend to import this and then bolt on a Jira-style status list — To Do, In Progress, Code Review, QA, Staging, Blocked, Done, plus three more nobody remembers adding. Every task carries all of them whether it needs them or not. Cut it to five: Backlog, In Progress, In Review, Blocked, Done. Use a custom field for anything more granular, like QA status, rather than a full status — fields filter and group fine without forcing every task through a linear pipeline that doesn’t match how bugs actually move.
This is genuinely one of the stronger official templates, because the Epic and Story Points fields map to how agile teams already think. Don’t touch those.
Marketing calendar: Content Calendar template
The Content Calendar template lays out an Ideation to Published pipeline with a Calendar view, plus fields for Content Type, Target Keyword, Publish Date, Channel, and Author.
Plan requirement: free to import. The Calendar view itself is available on Free Forever; recurring task automations for evergreen content refreshes need a paid plan.
What to strip before rollout: this is one of the few templates I leave mostly intact, because a content pipeline genuinely moves in a linear sequence. The one change I always make is turning “Channel” into a multi-select field instead of a single dropdown, since most content gets repurposed across two or three channels and a single-select forces you to duplicate the task or lose channels from your reporting.
If your team publishes fewer than a handful of pieces a week, skip the Calendar view as primary and default to List view sorted by publish date — the calendar looks great in a screenshot but gets cluttered fast past about 15 live items a month.
CRM-lite: Sales CRM template
ClickUp’s Sales CRM template sets up a Lead to Closed Won/Lost pipeline with deal value, close probability, and last-contacted fields, plus an activity log view.
Plan requirement: the pipeline List imports free. The Gmail integration that auto-logs emails to a deal, and most of the reporting automations, require Unlimited or Business.
What to strip before rollout: this is the category I’d flag as “looks good in a demo, fails in practice.” The full version ships with seven pipeline stages and half a dozen fields tracking things like “lead source detail.” A small team using ClickUp as a lightweight CRM instead of paying for real CRM software doesn’t need seven stages — four will do (New, Contacted, Proposal Sent, Closed) with two fields (deal value, next action date). Every extra field is a field a rep won’t fill in, and a half-filled CRM is worse than none, since it gives false confidence in your pipeline numbers.
Past about 10 reps or a multi-step approval process, tell clients to use a real CRM and connect it to ClickUp for delivery handoff. ClickUp is a project tool wearing a CRM costume; fine for solo founders, not a real sales org.
Personal productivity and GTD
There’s no single official “GTD template” in the Template Center under that name, but several personal productivity templates in the Template Center (search “personal” or “productivity” in the department filter) replicate the core GTD structure: an Inbox List, a Next Actions List by context, and a Someday/Maybe List.
Plan requirement: free on any plan, since it’s just Lists and statuses with no automations required to function.
What to strip before rollout: people who try GTD in ClickUp usually over-build it with priority, energy-level, and time-estimate fields on day one, then abandon the system within a month because logging a two-minute task takes longer than doing it. Start with three Lists and nothing else. Add fields only after running the system for two weeks and knowing what’s actually missing.
Templates that look good and cause problems later
Two categories consistently cause trouble months after rollout. The first is anything built around a heavily widgeted dashboard — a dozen charts tracking metrics nobody reviews weekly. Dashboards need an owner who prunes stale widgets; without one, they just slow page load and get ignored. The second is any template with more than eight or nine statuses in a single List. Past seven or eight, people start skipping stages or picking the closest one instead of the accurate one, quietly corrupting your reporting. If a screenshot shows a status list you have to scroll to see fully, cut it down before import, not after.
How to apply a template to a List
- Open the List where you want the template applied.
- Click the + ellipsis (…) menu next to the List name, or click Add Template if it appears in your List options.
- Select Browse Templates to open the Template Center.
- Use the Departments filter or the search bar to find the template by name.
- Click the template card, then click Use Template in the preview panel.
- In the import options, uncheck any custom fields, statuses, or automations you don’t want brought in — do this now, not after import.
- Click Continue, choose whether to apply it to the current List or create a new one, then confirm.
How to save your own template
- Right-click the Space, Folder, or List you want to save.
- Select Templates from the context menu, then click Save as Template.
- Give the template a clear, specific name — not “Template 1” — so your team can find it again.
- In the Import Options panel, choose what to include: tasks, custom fields, automations, views, and Docs.
- Decide whether task dates should be remapped relative to the import date, which matters if the source List had real due dates you don’t want carried over literally.
- Click Save. The template now appears in your workspace’s Template Center for reuse.
When to skip templates and build from scratch
If your workflow has fewer than five stages and two or three fields you actually track, building from scratch takes 15 minutes and you avoid inheriting fields and automations you’ll spend the next month deleting. Templates earn their keep when the process is genuinely complex — sprint planning, multi-stage client delivery, event logistics — and even then, plan to spend as much time removing things as you spent importing them. For teams still deciding whether ClickUp’s structure fits at all, our complete ClickUp setup guide covers the Space/Folder/List hierarchy before you import anything.
Most of these templates lean on automations to move tasks between stages or notify people of changes — worth reviewing our guide to ClickUp automations before switching on the ones bundled into a template, since a few, especially auto-escalation rules, fire more aggressively than expected on a live workspace. And if a template’s dashboard doesn’t match how your team wants to see progress, it’s usually faster to rebuild it with our ClickUp dashboards setup guide than to fight the default widgets.
Frequently asked questions
Are ClickUp templates actually free?
Templates in ClickUp’s official Template Center are free on any plan, including Free Forever. What’s plan-gated isn’t the template but the features inside it — automations, Dashboards, and Goals all require Unlimited or higher to function once the structure is in place.
Should I import a template into my existing Space or a new one?
Into a new Space, almost always, if it’s a Space or Folder-level template. Importing into an existing Space adds custom fields and statuses on top of what’s already there, creating duplicates over time. List-level templates are safer to drop into existing structures since they carry less baggage.
Why does my imported template have statuses I don’t want?
Templates bring their original status list by default. During import, ClickUp lets you review and deselect statuses, fields, and automations before finalizing — most people click through without editing, then spend weeks manually deleting statuses no one uses.
Can I customize a template after importing it?
Yes. The template only sets your starting structure. Add, remove, or rename statuses and fields any time after import, and your changes won’t touch the original template unless you explicitly save your modified version as a new one.
What’s the difference between a Doc template and a List or Space template?
A Doc template saves formatting and placeholder text for a document, like a project brief. A List, Folder, or Space template saves structural elements — tasks, statuses, fields, views, automations. Several templates here bundle both, with a Doc template sitting inside a larger List or Folder template.
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