monday.com is a cloud-based open platform that allows businesses to create their own work management tools and applications. It started out as a work collaboration tool in 2014 and has expanded over the years to become a collaboration tool for many workflows, including customer relationship management (CRM), project management, software development, human resources, marketing and more. Depending upon your requirements, you can use the company’s existing templates for these workflows or build your own from scratch.
monday.com is excellent for small and midsized businesses because it has an intuitive and visually appealing interface with self-explanatory names given to different elements. Is this one-stop-shop platform right for your small business? Read on to find out.
Pros
- Forever free plan available for up to two seats
- Modern, intuitive and visual dashboard
- Highly customizable
- 200-plus templates for creating boards and automations
- Integrates with a ton of third-party apps
- Excellent customer support
- Its desktop app works great
- Animated fireworks any time you mark a task complete
Cons
- Confusing pricing plans because of per-seat (user) pricing
- Minimum team size of three for paid plans
- Free trial is only 14 days, whereas most project management platforms give 30
- Agile sprints are clunky
- Must have a Pro account for time tracking
What Is monday.com?
monday.com is a cloud-based work management platform that helps businesses automate their workflows and manage their projects, tasks and resources in one place. The beauty of monday.com lies in its flexibility—you can use it for any type of workflow, whether it’s project management, customer relationship management (CRM), software development or human resources.
The company was founded in 2012 with the aim of making work collaboration easier for teams. Since then, monday.com has expanded rapidly and now has over 152,000 paying customers and made its IPO in 2021 (NASDAQ: MNDY).
monday.com has an intuitive and modern spreadsheet-like interface that is super easy to understand, even for first-time users.
Its basic features such as file storage, activity log, embedded documents and integrated mobile apps are available for all plans, free or paid. As your team expands and your needs grow, you can opt for higher plans that have more features for:
- Team collaboration
- Views and reporting
- Customer support
- Security and privacy
- Administration and control
- Reporting and analytics
What Is monday.com Used For?
As we mentioned before, monday.com is an extremely versatile platform that can be used for a variety of workflows, including:
- Project management: You can use monday.com to plan and track your projects, set deadlines, assign tasks and resources, monitor progress and track metrics.
- Customer relationship management (CRM): monday.com’s CRM features help you track your leads and customers, manage your sales pipeline and close more deals.
- Software development: monday.com’s development tools help software teams to plan and track their sprints, manage their backlogs, collaborate on code and deploy their applications.
- Human resources: monday.com’s HR features help businesses to onboard new employees, manage employee records, monitor performance and implement training programs.
What Sets monday.com Apart
monday.com offers daily live webinars, a knowledge base, 24/7 customer support and a conversation panel for each task to collaborate with team members. These features allow organizations to collaborate and get the most out of this project management tool. However, pricing is based on a per-group seat model, which might not make sense for smaller teams. Additionally, each plan has a limit on the number of actions between two integrated apps per month.
While these features certainly set monday.com apart from its competitors, whether or not they make the product “better” depends on the specific needs of each team. For teams that require a high degree of customization and flexibility in their project management tools, monday.com is an invaluable asset. However, for teams that prioritize other factors, such as cost or simplicity, other project management tools may be a better fit.
Pros
In addition to a knowledge base and 24/7 live customer support, monday.com also has daily live webinars for all plans. These webinars dive deeper into more complex features to help your team get the most out of the software. The recordings of these live webinars are also available so that you can watch them at your convenience.
Each task has a conversation panel that you can use to discuss work with your team members. This helps you keep all your discussions pertaining to a task in the same place.
Cons
monday.com pricing is not per user but in groups of seats. The minimum user count is three. This per-group pricing can prove expensive for businesses with team sizes smaller than the maximum number of users in that tier. For example, if your team has 35 members, you will still need to pay for 40 users. Or, if you have eight members, you will be paying for ten users.
Each plan also limits the number of actions between two integrated apps per month. For instance, a Standard plan allows for 250 actions per month while a Pro plan allows 25,000 actions per month.
Monday.com Core Features
monday.com offers an enormous amount of features into one powerful tool. Here are some of its core features and what you can do with each.
Role Assignment
With monday.com, you can assign specific roles to team members, ensuring each individual has access to the features they need to accomplish their tasks. You can easily track who handles each assignment, keeping everyone accountable and helping to avoid confusion as to who is working on a project.
Timelines
monday.com provides a clear visual representation of project timelines, making it easy to see important dates, milestones and deadlines at a glance. You can adjust timelines, add or delete tasks and reorganize project schedules to fit changing circumstances.
Gantt Charts
Gantt charts are a project management staple, and monday.com has you covered with an easy-to-use Gantt chart view. This view allows you to see the entire project at a glance, including dependencies, timelines and task ownership.
Software Integrations
monday.com offers a ton of software integrations, including Slack, Trello, Dropbox and Google Drive. This means you can incorporate your existing tools into your project management workflow, increasing productivity, expanding its functionality and streamlining your processes.
Dependencies
Dependencies are crucial to successful project management. You can set task dependencies so that one task cannot be started until another is completed. This ensures that tasks are completed in the proper order, helping to avoid confusion and delays.
Budgeting
monday.com offers budgeting tools that allow you to track project expenses, monitor resource usage and set budget limits. You can also set alerts to notify you when expenses exceed a certain threshold, helping you to stay on track and avoid going over budget.
| Feature | |
|---|---|
| Free trial | 14 days |
| Free plan | Yes |
| Paid plans start at | $24 per month (minimum three seats), paid annually |
| Pipeline management | Yes |
| Analytics tools | Yes |
| Third-party integrations | Yes |
| Mobile and desktop app | Yes |
| Custom dashboards | Yes |
| Document library | Yes |
| Email marketing | Yes |
| Multicurrency support | Yes |
| GetApp rating | 4.6/5 stars (2,724 reviews) |
| G2 rating | 4.7/5 stars (6,227 reviews) |
| TrustRadius rating | 8.5/10 stars (2,849 reviews) |
Project Management Features
monday.com offers a comprehensive set of project management features to help businesses plan, track and execute their projects. Some of the key features include:
- Project planning: You can use monday.com to create project plans, set deadlines, assign tasks and resources, and track progress.
- Project tracking: monday.com’s project tracking features help you track metrics, such as project budget, burn rate and project velocity.
- Project reporting: monday.com’s reporting tools give you visibility into your projects and help you identify issues and risks.
- Project templates: monday.com comes with a library of project templates that you can use to jump-start your projects.
CRM Features
monday.com’s CRM features help businesses track their leads and customers, manage their sales pipeline and close more deals. Some of these features include:
- Lead management: You can use monday.com to track your leads, assign them to sales reps and monitor their progress through the sales pipeline.
- Contact management: monday.com’s contact management features help you track your customers and manage their contact information and communication history.
- Deal management: Keep your deals organized, set deadlines and monitor your sales process with monday.com’s deal management features.
- Reporting and analytics: monday.com’s reporting and analytics tools give you visibility into your sales pipeline and help you identify trends and opportunities.
- Development tools: monday.com’s development tools streamline a software team’s sprint planning and backlog management, while also facilitating code collaboration and application deployment.
monday.com has a wide range of templates dedicated to different sales and CRM workflows. You can use them to create your own sales pipeline boards or you can build one from scratch. So, if you use monday.com for CRM, you might not need to switch to stand-alone platforms such as Salesforce or Pipedrive.
Content Marketing Features
monday.com’s content marketing features help businesses plan, track and execute their content marketing campaigns. Some of the key features include:
- Content planning: You can use monday.com to plan your content calendar, assign tasks and deadlines and track progress.
- Content creation: Team members can share their content for review and approval. Once approved, move the piece to the next step in the content pipeline.
- Content curation: Teammates can share links and add comments to help you curate the best content for your campaigns.
Monday.com Pricing and Plans
| Features | Individual Plan | Basic Plan | Standard Plan | Pro Plan | Enterprise Plan |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price per seat per month (if billed annually)* | Free | $8 | $10 | $16 | Custom |
| Number of seats | Up to two | Pay per seat | Pay per seat | Pay per seat | Pay per seat |
| Unlimited docs | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Unlimited free viewers | – | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Unlimited items | – | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Automations and integrations | – | – | 250 actions per month | 25,000 actions per month | 250,000 actions per month |
| Guest access | – | – | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Timeline, calendar and Gantt views | – | – | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Chart view | – | – | – | ✓ | ✓ |
| Time tracking | – | – | – | ✓ | ✓ |
| Formula and dependency column | – | – | – | ✓ | ✓ |
| Multilevel permissions | – | – | – | – | ✓ |
| Tailored onboarding | – | – | – | – | ✓ |
| Support type | None | Prioritized customer support | Prioritized customer support | Prioritized customer support | Premium support |
| *Must pay for at least three seats for any paid plans | |||||
monday.com’s pricing is unique in the sense that the cost is ultimately based on the number of seats you need in addition to the plan you choose. The minimum team size for paid plans is three seats. While this won’t be a problem for most established teams, this could put the platform out of reach for smaller startups. While there is a limited free version available for up to two seats, smaller outfits might want to look at other project management and CRM platforms on the market.
Basic Plan
The Basic plan starts at $24 per month, billed annually for a minimum of three users (month-to-month options are available for all plans at a higher rate). It offers 5GB of file storage, prioritized customer support and a dashboard based on just one single board. This plan is limited in its features but could be a good starting point for teams that don’t quite know exactly what they want out of the platform just yet.
Standard Plan
monday.com’s Standard plan is the company’s most popular offering and starts at $30 per month, billed annually for a minimum of three users.
This is the plan where monday.com starts showing off its true potential, as it comes with features including Gantt chart view, calendar view, automations and integrations, guest access for external collaboration and a dashboard that can combine up to five different boards. The storage space is also increased to 20GB.
Pro Plan
The company’s Pro plan starts at $48 per month for three seats, billed annually. For this price, you get private boards and docs, chart views, formula columns, dependency columns, more automations and integrations and a dashboard that can combine up to 10 different boards. This could be an ideal fit for experienced users who find that they’ve grown out of the Standard tier.
Enterprise Plan
As with many software platforms, monday.com’s Enterprise plan uses custom pricing and includes all the features provided by monday.com, so you’ll need to get in touch with the company’s sales team for a quote. The plan includes premium support, enterprise-scale automation and integration, enterprise-scale security and governance, advanced reporting and analytics, tailored onboarding, multilevel permissions and a dashboard that combines up to 50 boards.
It also promises 99.9% uptime in its Service-Level Agreement (SLA).
monday.com Setup and Customization
Compared to some of its competition, monday.com has a bit of a learning curve. However, monday.com has tutorials and videos to show you how to customize your workspace. It also has templates, which allow you to have a head start on personalizing your dashboard and projects.
monday.com Ease of Use
monday.com’s drag-and-drop interface allows for easy task creation and management, team member assignment and customizable workflows to fit specific needs. Its visual approach to project management is a notable feature of the platform. With color-coded boards and charts and a variety of view formats, team members can easily see project status and their roles.
While some users may find some features challenging to navigate, monday.com offers a wealth of documentation, webinars and tutorials to assist users in quickly getting up to speed.
Some users may benefit from a more flexible pricing structure, as the current per-group seat model may not be cost-effective for smaller businesses. Additionally, some users may prefer more granular control over project permissions and access levels.
Overall, monday.com is a user-friendly project management platform that is adaptable for businesses of all sizes, though there are easier-to-use platforms out there that might be more suitable for businesses with simple needs.
monday.com Security
monday.com adheres to strict security standards, including multiple ISO protocols, HIPAA, SOC 1 Type II, SOC 2 Type II, Soc 3, OWASP Top 10 framework, GDPR and Cloud Security Alliance’s best practices. It encrypts your data with AES-256 (or better), and traffic is encrypted with, at minimum, TLS 1.2.
monday.com maintains multiple defense layers, such as firewalls, DDoS mitigation, rate limiting, NIDS sensors, advanced routing configuration and logging of network traffic. It also does vulnerability assessments, end-to-end testing, unit testing and static code analysis to ensure the application remains secure.
monday.com Customer Service and Support
monday.com customer support is available 24/7 via web form. Its support page directs you to self-help articles within its knowledge base, and if you still can’t find your answer, it gives you the form to submit your question. If you have an Enterprise plan, you’re given a customer success manager. And when you pay for 25 or more users on a yearly plan, you get tailored onboarding. Otherwise, attend any of the daily webinars to get to know monday.com’s features.
monday.com Additional Features
In addition to the core features mentioned earlier, monday.com also offers a range of additional features that can help streamline project management workflows. Here are some of the standout features:
Customizable Templates
monday.com offers a variety of customizable templates to help users get started quickly. These templates cover a wide assortment of industries and use cases, from marketing and HR to software development and event planning.
Milestone Tracking
With monday.com, it’s easy to track milestones and deadlines, ensuring that projects stay on schedule. Users can set up notifications for upcoming milestones and adjust timelines as needed.
Expense Tracking
Expense tracking is an essential component of project management, and monday.com makes it easy to monitor expenses and stay on budget. Users can set up alerts for overages and track expenses by project, team member or category.
Kanban Board
The Kanban board view is a popular feature of monday.com, providing a clear, visual representation of project progress. Users can move tasks between columns, assign owners and track deadlines with ease.
Billing and Invoicing
For businesses that require billing and invoicing capabilities, monday.com offers integrated tools to streamline these processes. Users can generate invoices, track payments and view financial reports all in one place.
Guest/Client Access
monday.com makes it simple to collaborate with guests and clients by providing controlled access to projects. Users can set up guest accounts with customized permissions, ensuring that sensitive information remains secure.
Top monday.com CRM Alternatives
| monday.com | HubSpot CRM | Zendesk Sell | Pipedrive | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Star rating |  |  | | |
| Forever free plan available | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| Timeline views | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Automations | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Paid plan starting price | $24 per month, billed annually for three seats | $30 per month, billed annually for two seats | $19 per user per month, billed annually | $14.90 per user per month, billed annually |
| Support | Knowledge base, 24/7 customer support, daily live webinars | Email, chat, knowledge base, community forum | Email, webinar, phone, 24/7 chat support (in-app) | Phone, knowledge base, community forum, email and chat |
| Learn More | On monday.com’s Website | On HubSpot CRM’s Website | On Zendesk Sell’s Website | – |
| Read Reviews | – | Read HubSpot CRM Review | Read Zendesk Review | Read Pipedrive Review |
monday.com holds its own against its competitors thanks to its solid pricing and strong feature set. This is especially true compared to HubSpot, which has a substantially higher starting price than monday.com, especially considering HubSpot’s cost is for just two seats. We also love the fact that monday.com offers webinars to help you learn more about the platform.
monday.com vs. HubSpot CRM
Unlike HubSpot, which has a much higher starting price and only offers two seats, monday.com offers a forever-free plan and starts at just $24 per month for three seats. Additionally, monday.com offers daily live webinars, providing users with valuable resources for getting the most out of the platform.
monday.com vs. Zendesk Sell
When comparing monday.com to Zendesk Sell, both platforms offer timeline views, automations and strong customer support options. However, Zendesk Sell lacks a free plan, making it less accessible to smaller businesses. Meanwhile, monday.com offers a forever-free plan and an affordable starting price of $24 per month, making it a more accessible option for businesses of all sizes.
monday.com vs. Pipedrive
Pipedrive offers a similar feature set to monday.com, with timeline views and automations available on both platforms. However, Pipedrive has a lower star rating in our ranking and a slightly higher starting price, which may make it less appealing to some businesses. On the other hand, monday.com’s customizable templates, guest/client access and billing/invoicing features may make it a more attractive option for businesses with unique needs.
Top monday.com Project Management Alternatives
| monday.com | Trello | Asana | ClickUp | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Star rating | | | | |
| Forever free plan available | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Paid plan starting price | $24 per month, billed annually for three seats | $5 per user per month, billed annually | $10.99 per user per month, billed annually | $5 per user per month, billed annually |
| Software integrations | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Automations | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Support | Knowledge base, 24/7 customer support, daily live webinars | Knowledge base, community, ticket | Community forum, knowledge base, Academy, AI bot, ticket | Knowledge base, ticket |
| Learn More | On monday.com’s Website | – | – | On ClickUp’s Website |
| Read Reviews | – | Read Trello Review | Read Asana Review | Read About ClickUp Plans |
monday.com vs. Trello
Compared to Trello, which starts at just $5 per user per month, monday.com has a higher starting price point of $24 per month for three seats. However, monday.com offers a forever-free plan and a range of features such as customizable templates, billing/invoicing and guest/client access, making it a more comprehensive option for businesses with unique needs. Trello is arguably much easier to use than monday.com, but that could be attributed to its limited view (it’s essentially one Kanban board).
monday.com vs. Asana
In comparison to Asana, monday.com offers similar features such as timeline views, automations and integrations. However, Asana has a higher starting price point of $10.99 per user per month, making it less accessible to smaller businesses. Additionally, monday.com’s daily live webinars and 24/7 customer support provide valuable resources for users to learn and troubleshoot the platform.
monday.com vs. ClickUp
ClickUp offers a similar feature set to monday.com, including integrations, automations and an even lower starting price point of $5 per user per month. However, ClickUp does not offer the same level of support as monday.com, which may make it less appealing to some businesses.
Who Is monday.com Best For?
monday.com is suitable for teams of all sizes and functions for a wide variety of industries. Whether you are a startup trying to gain traction or an established business with cross-functional tightly knit teams, monday.com’s visually appealing intuitive interface and customization capabilities will empower you and your teams to manage work efficiently.
Its features and integrations also enable you to integrate your existing workflows with monday.com smoothly.
Our Expert Take
There’s no doubt that monday.com is a powerful project management tool. It offers a ton of project management features, such as task management, project tracking and resource management. It also provides powerful collaboration features such as file sharing, messaging and even Gantt chart creation. However, for the occasional user, it may prove too advanced for simple needs.
That being said, monday.com’s customizable templates and automation features make it a great option for businesses needing to streamline their project management workflows. While the per-group pricing model may be a drawback for smaller organizations, the platform’s feature set and integrations make it a valuable asset for teams of all sizes.