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monday.com is a leading project management tool — delivering an intuitive, user-friendly interface, several templates, and impressive automations. It also offers a sales CRM platform, widely considered one of the best CRMs for small businesses. Read on for an in-depth monday.com review — I’ll cover pros and cons, pricing, use cases, features, and more.
What Is monday.com?
During hands-on testing, monday.com stood out for its customizable workflows, which will enable you to build automated processes to win back time spent on repetitive tasks. It’s also compatible with popular tools like Gmail, Slack, and Zoom, allowing seamless integration for communication and collaboration directly within your PM platform.
monday.com Pricing
monday.com is an affordable solution offering a free plan for two users and numerous affordable paid pricing plans. Here are your options compared:
| Free Plan | Basic Plan | Standard Plan | Pro Plan | Enterprise Plan | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starting Price | $0 | $9/user/month | $12/user/month | $19/user/month | Custom |
| User Limit | 2 | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Free Version | Yes | 14-day trial | 14-day trial | 14-day trial | 14-day trial |
| Task/Project Limit | 3 boards | 3 boards | 5 boards | 10 boards | Unlimited |
| Time Tracking | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Project Views | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Automation | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Custom Fields | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Approvals | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Templates | 200+ | 200+ | 200+ | 200+ | 200+ |
| Security | 2FA | 2FA | 2FA | 2FA and Google Authentication | Enterprise-level security |
| Integrations | ❌ | ❌ | 250 actions/month | 25k actions/month | Enterprise-level integrations |
monday.com Features
monday.com’s project management software offers a range of features — from the usable dashboard to automations. However, there are several stand-out features that you need to know about — including the new AI assistant.
Here are the key features I found when compiling my monday review.
Productivity Overviews
With monday, you can get detailed overviews of every aspect of your projects from a single centralized dashboard. You can use the visual dashboard to track a number of relevant elements.
This includes your team’s calendar, timelines, and files. Monday also offers several viewing options, including color-coded charts, calendar view, lists, and image-based files.
I love how easy it is to keep track of my projects and organize tasks with the color-coded tabs and images in the different views. That said, I also foundoffers more than just a bird’s eye view of your projects.
You can monitor progress on a very granular scale. For example, the Team Projects Lists show the assignee, a color-coded project status, and the due date. You can also add additional tabs to suit your teams’ needs.
Templates
To get you started, Monday provides a number of templates for different use cases, including team projects, recruitment tracking, sprints, production orders, and loads more.
This allows you to use Monday to track your projects and metrics across departments. The templates are fully customizable, too, so you can switch them up based on what you need.
I also like that Monday is constantly bringing out new templates. The latest ones include product development, contacts, and even content calendar templates.
Automations
69% of people say that automation reduces time spent on tasks. Monday offers several code-free automations, including notifications, task creation, and ready-made automations.
As a project management tool, Monday is an awesome piece of software to help you stay updated on where each of your projects are in the project lifecycle — all without a steep learning curve.
You can set up automated emails when due dates arrive and for any project updates or completions. Not only that, but you can also set up customizable automations based on your project workflows.
Advanced Dependencies is another time-saver, which is ongoing gradual release from now until September 2024. You can add lead or lag times, to automate any changes in delivery date caused by earlier delays in your project — so if one date changes, you don’t have to spend time updating all subsequent date in the timeline.
AI Assistant
What is great project management software without AI? Gartner notes that generative AI adoption is accelerating, and with monday, you can get access to an AI assistant to handle repetitive tasks and offer smart insights for improving workflows.
I was impressed with the scope of monday’s AI when it came to task automation in particular. It’s an invaluable asset that you can use across departments — including operations, product, sales, HR, and marketing.
Here are some of the ways you can use Monday’s AI:
- Transform project ideas into actionable notes
- Calculate budgets
- Write blog briefs and translate content into different languages
- Write interview questions for prospective hires
- Summarize phone calls and analyze conversation sentiment
- Get template suggestions for emails
- Prepare GTM strategies
Monday’s AI is constantly developing, with new features being rolled out steadily, so stay tuned for exciting additions. Even in this comprehensive review, I’ve only touched on Monday’s potential; it’s easily one of the best project management software tools on the market right now.
CRM Features
monday also offers an affordable and highly competent sales CRM, separate from the project management solution. It lacks a free plan, but overall it offers excellent value for money.
The monday sales CRM allows you to send bulk, personalized emails, and the July 2024 update allows you to schedule mass email campaigns, so you can reach your customers at the most opportune moment for engagement. Then, you can use the built-in email tracking to check when these emails are delivered and even opened. If you don’t know where to start, you can pick one of monday’s email templates.
I liked how the monday sales CRM lets you embed contact forms on your site for lead generation, too. Once you have the lead, Monday’s lead scoring offers valuable insights into the chances of the deal being successful so your sales reps can better prioritize leads.
I found this all worked really well. It also integrates with Gmail and Outlook, so any email received will be reflected on your monday sales CRM account, and there’s pipeline management.
Plus, as with emails, you have ample templates for leads, contact, and deal management. Overall, monday sales CRM is easily one of the best small business CRM solutions.
This is especially true when you consider that many of these features are unlimited from the start. For instance, you get unlimited boards, custom pipelines, contacts, and free viewers.
You also get 200+ templates to fit your business’s unique needs. As such, some would argue that monday is also among the top enterprise CRMs.
monday.com Integrations
monday’s project management software offers over 200+ different integrations, including Slack, Excel, GitLab, and Microsoft Teams. It also never fails to disappoint when it comes to usability.
To set your integrations up, just click the ‘integrations’ button on the left-hand side of your current dashboard and select the integrations from the visual logos listed in monday’s integrations center.
Despite the many pros of monday’s integrations, it doesn’t offer as many integration options as rivals like ClickUp, for example, which offers 1,000+ integrations with their free and Unlimited plans.
monday.com vs Top Competitors
My monday.com review wouldn’t be complete without seeing how it compares to leading monday alternatives. It’s fantastic for task management and customer relationship management, but that doesn’t mean it’s the right choice for everyone.
Here’s how monday.com stacks up against rival work management tools:
| monday.com | Wrike | Smartsheet | ClickUp | Teamwork | Awork | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Best For | Any-sized company | Integrations | Spreadsheet project management | Free project management software | Client-service teams | Agencies, consultants, and tech teams |
| Starting Price | $9/user/month | $9.80/user/month | $7/user/month | $7/user/month | $5.99/user/month | $9.80/user/month |
| Free Version | Free plan | Free plan | Free plan | Free plan | Free plan | 14-day trial |
| Compatibility | Android, iOS, Mac, and Windows. | Android, iOS, Mac, and Windows | Android, iOS, Mac, and Windows | Android, iOS, Mac, and Windows | Android, iOS, Mac, and Windows | Android, iOS, Mac, and Windows |
| Top Features | AI assistant, 200+ templates, customer relationship management | Customizable dashboards, help centers, in-depth analytics | Fully customizable spreadsheets, build your own no-code apps, customizable dashboard and reports | Frequent checklist reminders, nested subtasks, 15+ project views | Impressive budget tracking, portfolio management, detailed client view | Track project times to the second, invite freelancers, clients, and partners, Kanban board |
monday.com vs Asana
Asana is a great tool and is one of Monday’s top competitors in the digital project management software space. To start with, Monday is the more affordable option — starting at just $9 per user per month vs $10.99 for Asana.
Both task management tools give you access to a number of views and automations. However, Monday’s dashboards are super visual and easy to use — slightly edging out Asana in this respect.
In comparison, Asana offers additional reporting features — allowing you to track the performance of team members. You can also view team members’ workloads from a central dashboard.
However, Monday takes the edge when it comes to their customer support — offering premium support through phone, email, and online chat support vs Asana’s email and chat-based support.
Read More: A full Asana Review.
monday.com vs ClickUp
Both Monday and ClickUp are go-to cloud-based project management tools. In terms of functionality, both offer an intuitive dashboard, time-tracking feature, templates, and a number of integrations.
When it comes to UX, monday shines. It offers a dynamic, visual dashboard that covers every aspect of your projects, fine-tuning the way you handle task management—from timelines to file sharing.
However, unlike ClickUp, monday limits the use of some features — only allowing 250 integration and automation actions each month with their standard plan.
Both providers offer free plans and trials, though. However, ClickUp is better for running multiple projects as it gives unlimited users access to unlimited features compared to 2 users for 200 tasks on Monday’s free plan.
This makes ClickUp a great option if you’re after the best free project management tool.
Read more: A Full ClickUp Review for 2024
monday.com vs Trello
Trello is another powerful tool for task management. Both are affordable, easy to use, and come with a host of cool features — making them ideal picks for tech pros and beginners alike.
While both user interfaces are intuitive and easy to navigate, some users note that Trello’s task card system is overwhelming for larger projects. It’s best for basic task management needs.
One feature I loved in Trello? The community-designed templates from other users and brands — including Buffer’s marketing team, globally-recognized academics, and UNICEF.
Both offer free plans and 14-day free trials. However, they’re generous in different ways — Trello offers unlimited storage space and custom backgrounds, while Monday offers unlimited boards and docs.
Read More: A Comprehensive Trello Review for 2024
monday.com Customer Reviews
monday has favorable reviews across the net. Over 4k reviewers give monday.com a 8.4/10 rating on TrustRadius, for example. In terms of monday sales CRM, it’s rated 4.7/5 on GetApp and 8.5/10 on TrustRadius.
The monday sales CRM offers also has high praise for its ease of use, and the value for money on offer is something many mention — you’d really need to nitpick to find flaws.
Many users of monday’s project management boast how easy it is to use and love the visual dashboards. Reviewers also note that the automated updates to project changes are helpful.
Reviews say project collaboration is a huge plus, too. They add that they can easily use the tool to assign colleagues to tasks and automate project notifications to help keep everyone on the same page.
Several add how it saves time with creating tasks too, and that they’ve saved money tracking project progress. However, some highlight that the app isn’t as easy to use as the desktop solution.
Many noted that monday’s app lacks several features offered on desktop — such as user management. After reviewing the app, I agree that it’s not as user-friendly as the desktop version.
How to Use monday.com – Quick Guide
In this demonstration, I will guide you through the process of setting up my project management system on monday.com. While I won’t be able to cover every detail, you will get a good sense of the interface and hopefully see how user-friendly monday.com is.
Step 1: Set up your workspace
After signing up with your email, which takes minutes, you’ll be able to start creating your own workspace and project boards. A workspace houses your individual boards, which will be used to track individual projects on a more granular level.
Simply click ‘Add new workspace’ in the left-hand sidebar and give it a name. You can also choose whether this will be an open or closed workspace for other team members.
Step 2: Choose a board template
Once your workspace is created, you can begin adding boards to manage individual projects, tasks, and subtasks. While you can create custom project boards from scratch, it can be time-consuming to do so manually.
Instead, I opted for one of the preset templates, of which there are many. I filtered the options to offer specific templates for content production and selected the one I liked the look of for my needs.
Step 3: Customize your board
Even if you use a template, you still have the chance to personalize your board. You can customize it by adding features such as a time-tracking column or color-coded status updates.
To add new columns, simply scroll to the right-hand side of the spreadsheet and use the provided button. I found it easy to use because it allows for click-to-edit functionality. I also liked that the template generates a board with some example items in it as you can see exactly how it works.
Step 4: Switch views
At the top of the screen, under your board title you’ll find a range of options to switch between different board views.
This includes a Kanban board, as shown, as well as a calendar view, team workload, and timeline view. This flexibility allows you to map your project in a way that makes sense for your priorities.
Step 5: Add new items
Adding new items to your board is simple. Just click the blue “New Item” button, and a box will appear where you can enter details such as the title, due date, task owner, and more.
After adding the item, you can continue to edit the fields, providing flexibility throughout the project process.
Step 6: Set up and manage automations
Lastly, I’ll touch upon automations, as it is one of the most valuable features of using project management software and can save you significant amounts of time while standardizing your workflows. You’ll find monday’s automation center in the top right corner of the board.
After opening it, you’ll be met with the below screen. As you can see, the board template has already set up three suggested automations to help support the flow of tasks through my project plan such as notifying me of upcoming deadlines and initiating time tracking when tasks are in progress.
Overall, I find that monday is extremely easy and intuitive to use. It helps you set up a fully functioning project management system in minutes, thanks to its templates and automations. There’s so much more to explore on monday.com that I can’t show you here, so I suggest starting the 14-day free trial to experience it for yourself.
How We Review And Test Project Management Software
We base our recommendations on first-hand testing. All the project management software products we feature, have been tested based on the following criteria.
For more detailed information, feel free to visit our dedicated page on how we review project management software.
- Features: We ensure the provider offers the basic functionality we’d expect, like task management and scheduling, resource management, built-in communication and collaboration capabilities, and reporting.
- Integrations: We check what platforms the software supports for integration, looking for common business tools like CRM software, email marketing platforms, and document management tools.
- Collaboration Capabilities: We assess and test the extent of collaboration on offer, including built-in chat, comment threads, mind mapping, and whiteboard capabilities.
- Pricing and Scalability: We evaluate the value for money on offer based on the functionality, and we factor in the ease and price of scaling.
- Customization: We check whether the platform offers things like custom fields, customizable dashboards, reports, and templates to check how easily the platform can be tailored to different businesses.
- Security: During testing, we note what security measures are in place, including authentication protocols, access controls, data encryption, data backups, and compliance with regulations like GDPR.
- Ease of Use: We assess how easy the platform is to navigate (across mobile and desktop), and we look for things like easy drag-and-drop functionality.
- Reputation: To add to our own analysis of the tools we review, we also factor in feedback from other users to ensure we offer our readers a complete overview.
- Support and Training: Some of the best project management tools do have learning curves. As such, we assess the level and quality of support on offer, including any online documentation.
How to Choose the Best Project Management Solution
Here’s what you need to consider when looking into buying the best project management app for your needs:
First up, you need to consider pricing. Does the solution you want offer a plan at the right price with all the features you need to successfully manage your projects?
Try to consider both value and cost — cheaper solutions may not deliver the functionality you need.
Do the features you’re looking for come with the plan you can afford? Factor in features like automations, integrations, AI, customization options, and similar features. Note that some features, like customizable workflows, may be restricted to the higher-tier plans.
How easy is it to scale with your chosen provider? And how much does it cost to scale with them? These are some of the other factors you should consider. While some solutions may be great options for small business needs, they may not accommodate your needs well as you grow.
You should also consider how usable the platform is for different team members. Does it have an intuitive, user-friendly interface? Does it require extensive onboarding and training to use? What’s the mobile version like? Make use of any free trials to test for usability.
How many integrations do you get with each platform and plan? Some tools offer 200 integrations, while others offer thousands. How many you need and will actually use will depend on the size of your team.
Customer support is another factor to consider. Does your solution offer free, accessible customer support? How is support delivered — via email, chat, or phone? Does your solution also offer an in-person support team?
FAQs
Is monday com really that good?
Who is monday.com best suited for?
Is monday good for personal use?
How much does monday sales CRM cost?
Is it safe to use monday.com?
Is the free version of monday.com worth it?
References
- Automation in the Workplace (Smartsheet)
- What’s New in Artificial Intelligence? (Gartner)
