Monday Review
Monday.com ranks #1 on our list of the best project management software because of its versatility, scalability, affordable price tag, and impressive feature set. In side-by-side comparisons with other top runners, it wins every time across just about every factor we care about. But is it right for you? Let’s find out!
Compare Monday to the Best Project Management Software
Monday.com continuously wins our #1 pick for project management software. In addition to its support for a wide range of use cases, the software is loaded with functionality. It comes with collaboration features, timeline views, calendar views, time tracking features, and dozens of integrations. Whether you’re a freelancer, an enterprise organization, or something in between, it’s versatile and flexible enough to work for just about everyone.
We did a side-by-side comparison of the top project management solutions based on our experience of trying dozens of the best options. Unsurprisingly, Monday.com comes out on top every time. But that doesn’t mean it’s the perfect choice for everyone. See all of our top picks here.
Monday: The Good and The Bad
Despite being our top pick across the board, Monday.com has its fair share of excellent… and not-so-excellent qualities. In our experiences, though, the great things significantly outweigh the negatives.
The Good
Multiple Project Views: Monday.com gives you everything you need to visualize projects based on your preferences, including Kanban, Gantt, timeline, and calendar views in one click. Whether you want a big-picture view or want to see daily tasks at-a-glance, you can easily switch views and drill down or zoom out as far as you need. The numerous number of views, including completely custom views, gives you all the data and information you need about project statuses at a glance. So, you can stop wasting time looking for what you need.
Built-in Time Tracking: Monday.com is one of the few project management tools on the market with built-in time tracking capabilities. Most project management tools only offer time tracking as an add-on, so getting it at no extra charge (on the Pro plan or above) is a steal. When our time tracking and project management tools play well together, you get a deeper look at how long tasks take, the entire timeline of your projects—down to the minute, and identify your most time-consuming tasks. Users can turn the tracker on or off with a click or enter time manually. You can even track time from anywhere using the mobile app and a few taps. And thanks to Monday.com’s automations, you can eliminate repetitive tasks, like notifying your team or moving a card from one column to the next.
Robust Integrations: Integrating Monday.com with the business tools and apps you already use supercharges your project management processes while helping your team get more done in less time. With the right integrations, you don’t have to bounce back and forth between platforms, you can build workflow automations to eliminate repetitive administrative tasks, and keep everyone in the loop on autopilot. Monday’s project management software syncs up with just about anything you’d need it to, including Slack, Dropbox, Zoom, Shopify, Google Calendar, Gmail, Todoist, and 40+ other tools.
Customizable Templates: Establishing processes and setting up project management systems from scratch is not only time-consuming but also unnecessary thanks to Monday.com’s wealth of customizable templates. Not only do templates save you time, but they also make it easy to get started. Monday.com offers dozens of free templates for project portfolio tracking, team tasks, campaign planning, contact management, customer onboarding, help desk tickets, event planning, PMO project planning, product roadmaps, and more. Whether you’re managing a single project or advanced projects with hundreds of users, Monday.com has a template to accommodate your needs.
Custom Automations: One of the most common reasons businesses invest in project management software is to automate repetitive tasks—most deliver that functionality and Monday.com is no different. But it does take things a step further by making automations entirely custom and easy for everyone on your team to use. In just a few clicks, you can automatically move a task from one phase to the next, assign the next team member to take it over, and alert them via email or Slack. While that’s just one example, it saves a ton of time and ensures processes are followed to a tee without the hassle of manually performing those actions every time. The automation builder follows basic logic, making it incredibly intuitive even if you’ve never built automations before.
Easy to Use: The idea behind project management software is that it makes your lives easier rather than adding yet another tool your team doesn’t know how to use. Monday.com isn’t the easiest PM software but it’s far from the hardest as well. In less than an hour, you and your team will know all you need to know—without relying on professional training. There’s an extensive knowledge base with hundreds of video tutorials to help you get started, troubleshoot problems, and get your crew up to speed. And if you do run into a problem, the support team is available via live chat 24/7.
Dashboard Reporting and Workload Management: Whether you’re a decision-maker looking for an easier way to get your hands on the data you need or a manager who needs to balance the workload across your team, Monday.com comes with a wide range of features designed to help with both. Dashboards are extremely customizable and they make it easy to see all of the most important data at a glance. Want to get a high-level view of a project’s budget? No problem. Want to see project statuses at a glance? Easy. There are 15 pre-built widgets you can use to build dashboards, including one specifically for workload management. The capacity planning widget gives managers real-time capacity updates, which allows them to allocate available resources in just a few seconds. On top of that, users can create private or public dashboards, depending on who they want to share them with.
The Bad
Limited Task Dependencies: Task dependencies are a common occurrence among project management tools, but we found Monday.com’s task dependencies limited in comparison. The only way to set them up is with dates, making them less than functional for many real-world applications. A dependant task won’t start until the first task is complete—task dependency 101. The included basic functionality ensures tasks are done in the right order, but there’s very little room for customizing beyond that. Dependencies are also only available on the two highest tiers, so they’re inaccessible to small businesses or those on a tighter budget.
Feature Limitations For Certain Plans: Monday.com is packed full of powerful features and is an incredibly versatile project management solution, but many of those essential capabilities are only available on higher tiers. For example, Gantt charts and calendar views aren’t available on the entry-level plan, even if you’re paying $24 per month. Other features you won’t find on the entry-level plan include time tracking, private boards, automations, dependencies, formulas, and even integrations. With other tools, those are standard features you don’t have to pay extra for, so feature limitations are certainly a downside of Monday.com’s entry-level plan.
Monday.com has tons of features and capabilities. However, you’ll need to upgrade your plan to actually benefit the most from these tools. For example, Gantt charts and timeline views aren’t available with the entry-level plan. To access time tracking and private boards, you’ll need to upgrade to the third tier. This structure is fairly common in the project management software industry, though.
Slow Support: Even though Monday.com is easy to use and offers 24/7 support, some users complain that the response time is too slow. According to the website, Monday’s support reps will reply in less than an hour. But in today’s day and age, most of us expect a live chat representative to respond much faster. Waiting an hour for an answer can be a pain. You might have better luck turning to the knowledge base if you need a faster resolution.
Monday.com Project Management Pricing and Options
Monday.com Pricing
Monday.com offers a package for businesses of all sizes and project management needs. There are four different options to choose from—Basic, Standard, Pro, and Enterprise.
Here’s an overview of those starting rates for each plan:
Generally speaking, Monday.com is very affordable. We’ve seen project management tools on the market with entry-level pricing starting above $20. On average, most tools start below $10 per user per month. So Monday.com is right in that same ballpark.
To get the rates shown above, you’ll need to sign up for annual billing. The yearly billing cycle is 18% cheaper than the month-to-month rates.
Whether you’re just getting started or have advanced project management needs for a larger team, Monday.com has an option for everyone.
Just make sure you understand the available features at each tier. Some plans are more limiting than others. We’ll discuss each one in greater detail below to help you make a more informed decision.
Regardless of the plan you’re interested in, you can try Monday.com for project management for free with a 14-day trial. The free trial comes with unlimited boards and users—no credit card required.
Monday.com Basic
Monday Basic is an entry-level project management solution. It’s a starting point for smaller teams that are just getting their feet wet.
Starting at $8 per user per month, it’s a fair price for unlimited boards and over 200 templates. You’ll also benefit from unlimited free viewers—users with read-only access to the account.
The Basic package only lets you create a dashboard based on one board. Here’s an example of what that dashboard could look like:
But dashboards are typically better if you can pull information from multiple boards. So if your team is using more than one board to manage one or several projects, this feature is kind of useless.
The plan does offer whiteboard collaboration, embedded documents, shareable forms, custom notifications, and more. But it doesn’t support any integrations. You won’t have access to timelines, Gantt charts, calendar views, or time tracking either.
While it’s a good starting point, the Basic plan is more of a teaser. Most people will find it a bit limiting for business use. In terms of functionality, it’s not the best entry-level project management offering on the market today. You’ll need to upgrade to get the most out of Monday.com.
Monday.com Standard
The Standard plan is Monday.com’s most popular solution. It comes with additional tools and ways to visualize projects beyond basic use.
With the Standard plan, you’ll benefit from timeline views, Gantt chart views, and calendar views.
The package also supports third-party integrations with up to 250 actions per month and automation for up to 250 actions per month.
Monday.com Standard allows you to create a dashboard with data combined from five different boards. This is definitely an upgrade from the Basic level. The Standard package supports guest access as well. Four guests are billed as one seat. So you can use this to bring on users from outside your organization to manage projects.
This plan gets the job done for most people. But larger teams wanting to take full advantage of the integrations and automation will find the 250 actions per month limit for each restricting.
Monday.com Pro
Monday.com Pro is an excellent option for larger teams or anyone that needs to manage complex workflows. It’s far less limiting in terms of automation and integrations.
The actions per month for automation and integrations jump to 25,000 each. Most organizations won’t come anywhere near that number. It’s absolutely an upgrade from the 250 in the Standard package.
The Pro plan offers a chart view as well. With charts, you can see details related to the analytics of your workflow. Charts show project managers and executives how team members perform, how quickly tasks are being accomplished, and how this information changes over time. It’s a handy way to manage projects at a higher level using big-picture insights.
Another top feature of the Pro plan is managing your team’s workload with better precision.
This feature shows managers real-time data relating to the current capacity of each person on a team. You can easily see which users are at capacity and which ones have room to handle additional tasks.
The Pro package supports private boards as well. These are only visible to managers and whichever team members are invited. You can add board administrators, too, which isn’t an option with the Basic or Standard plans.
Monday.com Pro supports unlimited guests and maintains an activity log for one year.
Overall, it’s probably the best plan for most businesses. It’s the one that we can recommend with the most confidence. You likely won’t run into any limitations or restrictions at the Pro level. At $16 per user per month, it’s a great value, too.
Monday.com Enterprise
As the name implies, Monday.com Enterprise is built for larger organizations with complex needs. The plan comes with enterprise-grade integrations and automations, as well as enterprise-class security and governance.
The software supports multi-level permissions, advanced reporting, and advanced analytics as well. With an Enterprise subscription, you can create a dashboard combining data with up to 50 boards.
Monthly action limits for integrations and automation jump to 250,000 at this level.
Enterprise clients benefit from a tailored onboarding experience. You’ll be assigned a dedicated customer success manager and get Monday’s 99.9% uptime SLA.
Truthfully, the vast majority of teams don’t need these types of features. But it’s nice to know that they’re available for larger organizations with complex needs and advanced security requirements.
Contact the Monday.com sales team for a custom Enterprise quote to get started.
Monday’s project management tool is best known for its versatility. It’s one of the most popular project management options on the market today, and we can recommend it with confidence. Between the affordable plans and robust features, it’s tough to find a better solution for project management for sales teams and many others. Sign up today and try it for free with a 14-day trial.