Honest Review:
Monday.com

Project management app with robust tools but expensive and inconvenient pricing plans.

Written by Asim Qureshi
By Asim Qureshi, CEO Jibble

April 15th 2024

Do you love Mondays? For sure that question will divide readers, but let’s set that aside for a moment for this Monday.com review!

As a CEO of a time tracking software company, I need to know what my competitors are up to. That means I’m often researching about and/or playing around with their products… you know, it’s part of the job. Here, I share my findings from that research, giving credit to those competitors where credit is due and being honest about which products I believe you really need to avoid. And so, there you have it, this Monday.com review. And in it, I try to be honest, fair, and insightful.

This Review Covers:

Overview

Monday.com is a cloud-based platform where users can customize their own project management software and help businesses streamline their operations. Teams can collaborate more effectively through a wide range of tools that help with project tracking, data sharing, and information visualization. In addition, it can be used for a variety of workflows, including project management, CRM, software development, and HR management.

Generally, Monday.com is easy to use. It is user-friendly and suitable for a wide range of businesses, but it does have a bit of a learning curve. One of the things I like best about Monday.com is how flexible and adaptable it is, but it can be a bit overwhelming if your business doesn’t utilize all the tools on offer.

I really appreciate that Monday.com can be integrated with several of the most in-demand productivity apps, including Slack, Outlook, Microsoft Teams, GitHub, and Dropbox. It also allows you to make customized time-saving automations that eliminate repetitive tasks. However, one of the things I liked the least about Monday.com is that it charges per seat per month, but the grouped seat scheme means you can’t pay for fewer than three seats. Thus, if you want a premium plan for just one or two, you’ll have to shell out extra for that third seat even though you don’t actually need it. The free plan allows up to two seats, but it has limited features.

Additionally, if you want Monday.com’s time tracking feature, you’ll have to sign up for the Pro plan at $24 per seat per month, or $19 when billed annually. I personally don’t think that the time tracking feature should come at such a high price, and it should at least be available in the Basic plan.

An overview of the Monday.com interface. Photo credits: Monday.com

What do users like about Monday.com?

  • Flexible and customizable features and templates
  • Seamless integrations
  • Data-sharing tools for improved collaboration
  • Uncomplicated task assignment features

What don’t users like about Monday.com?

  • Pricing scheme
  • Integrating different boards can lead to confusion
  • The onboarding process can be difficult for new users
  • Useful features behind a paywall

What Pricing Plans does Monday.com offer?

Monday.com offers five iterations — one free plan and four paid plans at different price points with different features available per tier. And as previously mentioned, the paid plans come in grouped seats of at least three.

Let’s take a closer look:

Monday.com Free Plan

The Free plan is designed for individuals wanting to track their work and productivity. It can be used by up to two team members and supports up to three boards. It also has unlimited docs, over 200 templates, and eight column types. It works on both Android and iOS.

Monday.com Basic Plan

Designed to manage all teams’ work in one place, the Basic plan has all the Free plan features for three users and can be seen by unlimited free viewers. It includes 5 GB file storage, priority customer support, and gives users the ability to create a dashboard based on one board and add unlimited items. The Basic plan starts at $9 per seat per month billed annually, or $12 if billed monthly.

Monday.com Standard Plan

Intended for collaboration and the optimization of team processes, the Standard plan builds on the Free and Basic features by adding calendar view, timeline and Gantt views, and guest access. It also has 250 automation actions and integration actions per month, and the ability to create a dashboard for up to five combined boards at $12 per seat per month billed annually, or $14 if billed monthly.

Monday.com Pro Plan

Made for more complex operations, The Pro Plan helps streamline the workflows of multiple teams. This plan has all the features of the Free, Basic, and Standard Plans, as well as time tracking, chart view, private boards, a formula column, and a dependency column. It also has 25,000 automation actions and integration actions per month, and the ability to create a dashboard with up to ten boards at $19 per seat per month billed annually, or $24 if billed monthly.

Monday.com Enterprise Plan

The Enterprise Plan is for organizations that need enterprise-grade features. It has all of the previous tiers’ features plus advanced reporting and analytics, multi-level permissions, tailored onboarding, enterprise support, and the ability to create a 50-board dashboard. This plan also has enterprise-level automation and integration action counts, security, and governance. You’ll need to contact Monday.com to get a quote for this tier.

What are the Standout Features of Monday.com?

1. Monday.com Organization Boards

A board is where users can keep track of and manage tasks from the most simple single-step actions to the more complex multi-step operations with multiple dependencies. Boards are where teams can interact, collaborate, and share data to accomplish tasks and keep businesses up and running.

All users can access Monday.com’s organizational boards, which are available for both free and premium plans. Businesses can use these boards to organize all the information needed for a project, including docs, clients, processes, and more.

Premium plan users can combine multiple boards into one dashboard for easy access to project data. Thus, they are able to easily access all the materials for a project from one place.

A sample organization board created with Monday.com.

2. Monday.com Budgeting Templates

Some of the more interesting features of Monday.com are its budgeting templates. These help companies track their spending on projects to ensure maximum profitability. The budget tracking template can be customized according to business needs and is a great way to ensure that companies don’t overspend. With the ability to attach plans, create forms, and other helpful features, the budgeting tools keep data organized in easy-to-understand visuals that help businesses stay on track with financial goals.

Once a budget for a project is set, Monday.com will help maintain that budget and avoid going over it. Businesses can set the limits of your budget per project, and they can also set up the software so that it can send you alerts if you exceed these limits.

Budget breakdown pie chart on monday.com. Photo credits: Monday.com.

3. Monday.com Project Management Tools

In order to maximize productivity and profit, businesses need reliable project management tools such as those offered by Monday.com. The tools offered by this platform are unique in the sense that they cover almost everything that a project may need. These include tracking for progress, tasks, and budget, time tracking, project scheduling, work and resource management, task assigning, creative requests, and support ticket management. They are customizable and usable for any industry, no matter the size or sector.

Monday.com’s project management tools keep everyone in the loop by allowing access and collaboration to the project boards among team members. They also keep everyone in step with the rest of the team through helpful updates on project progress via visualized data shared across the workforce or personalized views of one’s own work.

The project management tools offered by Monday.com help businesses achieve project goals with streamlined workflows. They minimize wastage of company time and resources and ensure that projects are successfully completed within defined parameters of success.

A screenshot of a creative team planning Kanban board in monday work management. Credits: Monday.com

4. Monday.com Project Dependencies

Project dependencies are an important part of project planning, and may spell the difference between success and failure. Monday.com helps companies plan out the sequence of tasks needed to complete a project in order to maximize the usage of time and resources on any given project.

Using Monday.com’s project dependency column, businesses will be able to organize the steps of executing a project, ensuring that the essential foundational tasks are accomplished in order, and tasks dependent on the completion of other tasks are scheduled accordingly.  

This function takes the daunting bulk of a project and cuts it up into sequential, bite-sized chunks to help businesses create realistic timelines and stick to them. It also helps in identifying the best route to achieve the desired result, recognizing resource and manpower needs at every step, and ensuring on-time accomplishment and delivery.

An overview of the dependencies feature of Monday.com.

5. Monday.com Role Management Template

Assigning the right role to the right person is a quintessential aspect of project success. With Monday.com’s comprehensive role management template, businesses can clearly articulate individual team members’ roles to ensure clarity and understanding of their functions. This empowers them to efficiently follow the project trajectory.

The role management template of Monday.com gives users the power to visualize their responsibilities and duties in the project cycle through charts and dashboards. This allows everyone on the team to see where the project is going and provide updates on their tasks to everyone involved. It fosters flexibility with the ability to determine and edit project timelines, as well as roles, responsibilities, duties, and access among team members. 

monday-com roles

Selected Positive User Feedback: 

  • “Great set of features for tracking tasks and due dates. The user interface is super flexible, intuitive and customizable.” – Natalie F. (Source Google Play Store)
  • “With more than enough tutorials and personal assistance you can create a perfect system for your work in less than a week or use a template that is customizable in less than a day. This program is worth it and will increase productivity.” – Edgar B. (Source Google Play Store)
  • “The user interface is clean, modern, and easy to navigate, making it a breeze to organize and track tasks. Whether you’re a small team or a large enterprise, Monday.com adapts seamlessly to your needs.” – Adnan B. (Source GetApp)
  • “This nifty little tool is like a chameleon. It fits into whatever role you want it to, be it tracking IT tickets, project management, or the world’s most organized to-do list.” – Nap B. (Source Capterra)
  • “I love the customization of Monday. We can set up our board to work exactly the way we need it to work. The board we’re using looks completely different than the way some other businesses are using it, because they have different needs than us.” – Josh T. (Source Capterra)
  • “The best thing about Monday is how flexible the software is, in our experience, we are able to build almost everything.” – Andre M. (Source TrustRadius)
  • “The colors are bright and aligned to the way that we talk about projects, status updates, and delays – so it’s a very easy to use system. The team can clearly understand who owns which piece of a project or task and we can collaborate simply across timezones, asynchronously, and maintain productivity.” – Verified Reviewer in Marketing and Advertising (Source GetApp)
  • “The support team is notably proactive and supportive, always ready to address any issues quickly.” – Robert H. (Source TrustRadius)
  • “Running a retail company with 5 stores spread across South Australia, Monday allows me and my Operations Manager to keep up with the daily operations and any extras. It cuts out the need for phone calls, which is sometimes impractical for our busy retail stores with only one staff member. It has also allowed us to smoothly transition all stock from 5 locations onto an online store.” – Amanda B. (Source G2)
  • “The ability to tailor our tracking fields based on the needs of our specific work is incredibly useful!” – Andrea M. (Source TrustRadius)

Selected Negative User Feedback:

  • “Sometimes a board has a lot of information, which makes it difficult to find the information a little faster. What bothers me is that some automations are more difficult to do, we have people responsible for dealing with Monday because it ends up being unintuitive at times.” – Thiago M. (Source G2)
  • “Some users have reported occasional performance issues, such as slow loading times when working with large datasets or complex projects.” – Patrick S. (Source GetApp)
  • “For new users, Monday.com can have a bit of a learning curve. The platform offers a wide range of features and customization options, which can be overwhelming initially.” – Sangeeth N. (Source GetApp)
  • “The worst thing about Monday.com can be its pricing, which may be a bit high compared to other similar project management tools, and its limited customization capabilities to meet the specific needs of some users.” – Cesar M. (Source Capterra)
  • “The customization options of the entire platform can be very overwhelming. I found myself, my team, and even clients experimenting with the options entirely too much, which eventually led me to lock the templates we were using.” – Blake C. (Source Capterra)
  • “The UI could use some better UX, lots of sideways scrolling. Does not support any of the filters we use in our views rendering the app almost pointless to me unfortunately.” – Erik K. (Source Google Play Sore)
  • “I am managing multiple projects at once and Monday does everything I need, but you won’t allow me to purchase a single user “seat”. I’m required to buy at least three which triples the price I thought I was going to have to pay. I’m now trying to find another tool to replace this one.” – Sheri E. (Source Google Play Store)
  • “There is no native integration with Google Calendar or any other similar platform. Some features which are provided freely in some other platforms are paid in Mondays.com, such as Gantt diagrams or charts.” – Evelyn F. (Source GetApp)
  • “I use the Monday.com app from the Apple App Store and occasionally, the app has some trouble refreshing from the servers. Overall, performance is a little sluggish, whether using the app or in a browser.” – Brandon G. (Source G2)
  • “The Monday.com API is limited, meaning that it can be difficult to integrate with other software systems. Monday.com does not offer many integrations with other software systems, so users may have to use third-party integration tools to connect Monday.com with other software.” – Ripon C. (Source Capterra)

What are Monday.com’s Review Ratings from Review Sites?

(As of April 2024)

  • Capterra: 4.6/5
  • G2: 4.7/5 
  • TrustRadius: 8.4/10 
  • GetApp: 4.6/5
  • Software Advice: 4.6/5
  • Google Play Store: 4.8/5
  • App Store: 4.8/5

What’s my Final Verdict on Monday.com?

We close our Monday.com review by declaring that indeed, it is an adaptable work and productivity tool that caters to businesses of any size and in any industry, effortlessly combining an attractive user interface with a wealth of highly useful tools and customizable choices. Its standout features such as the organizational boards, budgeting templates, project management tools, dependency column, and role management ensure tailored and efficient workflows for both startups and established businesses. Moreover, it provides features and integrations that seamlessly merge your current workflows with the platform.

Overall, I think Monday.com is an impressive project management software that has a treasure trove of reliable features. It’s best for companies that need to streamline their processes and improve efficiency, but businesses with less complex needs may find the plethora of tools to be overwhelming and unnecessary.

The pricing model also leaves a lot to be desired, especially for smaller companies. If you’re looking for a more cost-effective alternative, try checking out a completely free alternative to Monday.com!

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