An Unbiased Review of Monday.com From A Digital Marketing Consultant
If you work for or own a business with any kind of online presence, you’ve undoubtedly seen the ads for Monday.com.
Monday.com brands itself as an all-in-one management app for businesses and teams to organize their workflows and store all their project information in one simple, easy-to-view space.
As one of the most popular work management platforms, Monday.com is currently used by tens of thousands of businesses to create clear communication across their teams and streamline projects.
But is Monday.com worth the monthly investment for your specific team? Well, that depends on a number of factors, including what marketplace your business operates in and the composition of your team.
First, let’s dive into just exactly what Monday.com has to offer.
What Does Monday.com Actually Provide For Your Business?
While many may think of Monday.com as a project management app, it's not exactly the best definition of this specific platform.
Monday.com is essentially an improved and aesthetic version of Google Sheets or other free collaborative spreadsheets application, with a few additional features thrown in.
Used as a desktop or mobile app, Monday.com provides a clear and concise user interface for teams to create interactive grids or sheets which can easily be viewed and read by other members of a team. This provides teams with a platform to view and manage all of their projects in one place.
While an evolved version of collaborative spreadsheets may not sound enticing at first, the clear user interface is a great way to cooperate between technical and non-technical teams, and may be more than worth the monthly investment for many businesses.
Monday.com also offers a kanban board, similar to apps like Asana or Atlassian, which can help simplify software development and clarify project roles and workflows.
While Monday may excel in having a clear and simple UI, its kanban boards lack the functionality and customization abilities of other more specialized kanban software.
However, for non-technical projects, Monday.com can be a great option for any team. You can easily manage and view each project and assign roles to team members. Priority levels and status notifications can be assigned which can help you communicate with your team and check the status of tasks all on one screen.
For many companies, Monday.com will expedite projects and ensure each member of the team has a clear vision of their specific role and duties.
For more on the specific features of Monday.com, jump to the specific features section.
Monday.com Pricing Plans
Like many of their competitors, Monday.com offers a free trial period to test their services without entering any credit card information.
However, with a trial period of only 14 days, many teams may find it hard to even learn the platform in that short timeframe.
After your trial period ends, you need to decode the complex pricing breakdown, which varies based on the size of your team, available features and the length of your contract,
The confusing pricing breakdown is one of Monday’s biggest downfalls, as it can be hard to determine which pricing bracket you fall into and the exact amount you will be paying every month.
Monday opted to create their pricing plans based on features, with each option offering increased accessibility and options. While this seems like a straightforward pricing breakdown, the price of each category can also increase based on your ream size. This can make determining the price for your team difficult to determine without getting a personalized quote from a representative at Monday.com.
Monday.com does offer a 30-day money-back guarantee, which is a great feature to have when testing new platforms for you and your team.
As for the features included in each pricing bracket, let’s quickly cover what is included in each section.
The Monday.com Basic Plan
Price: $29/month for 3 Users + Additional Costs for More Users
The Basic plan for Monday.com is the lowest tier of paid plans, but still offers many of the platform’s features and can be a great way to sample the tools before committing to a more premium package.
The Basic plan is $29 if you pay monthly, or $25 a month if you pay for the full year upfront.
What’s Included in The Monday.com Basic Plan?
The Monday.com basic plan is the cheapest of all plans, but the lack of timelines, calendar tracking, private boards and integrations makes it not worth the investment.
Management Boards
The Monday.com boards allow you to track user progress on all your projects, providing your team with a clear depiction of roles and assignments. These boards allow you to track the status and progress of each user across your assigned projects. The Monday.com basic plan does NOt give you access to private boards, which can be essential when working with large teams. You can create as many boards as you wish, but the inability to make boards private may be a dealbreaker for large teams or corporations.
Customizable Columns
The basic plan allows you to customize what indicators you would like to track on each board, giving you the ability to monitor things like: status, subitems, links and more. The basic plan does not give you access to time tracking and formula columns like some of the upgraded versions. The lack of time tracking is another big detractor for the basic plan, leaving fast paced teams wanting more.
The Whiteboard
This feature is honestly a bit of a joke, as it lets you and your team draw on a virtual whiteboard during meetings. The applications of this seem limited, as screenshare and other virtual meetings tools are likely to be more useful. One nice feature is that it does record your interactions during a meeting if you choose to use Monday’s digital whiteboard.
Monday.com Basic Plan Rating: â…–
The Monday.com Standard Plan
The Monday.com standard plan offers more tools and features than the Basic plan, but again the lack of private boards may leave larger teams wanting more.
All features included in the Basic plan
The Monday.com Calendar and Timeline
The timeline provides an automatically updating calendar, which can track all your projects for the month. The fact that this feature is not included in the Basic plan seems odd, as it is a necessary feature for project tracking and management. Without this tool, organizing all your individual projects may prove quite difficult, so it’s recommended to at least invest in the standard plan.
Integrations
The Monday/com Standard plan allows you to integrate all the other apps and tools your team utilizes for project management, like Gmail, Slack, Dropbox and more. Integrating your other tools is absolutely necessary when tracking teams and streamlining your projects, so the Standard plan provides the minimum of what your team will want out of the platform.
Automations
Automations will be a useful tool in your arsenal when organizing and tracking projects, allowing you to program automatic messages or emails to users when they do things like complete a task or move from one phase to another.
Monday.com Basic Plan Rating: 3.5/5
The Monday.com Pro Plan
The Pro Plan is my personal recommendation for any team wanting to sample the usefulness of Monday’s platform in their workspace. The earlier plans leave a lot to be desired, which are finally offered at the Pro price point.
All features of the Basic and Standard Plans
Private Boards
Finally, after 2 different price points, the private boards feature is now available. If you are working with a large team, private boards are absolutely essential for project management. Setting up things like executive-level boards or assigning different project to each team is going to be your bread and butter when streamlining your projects, so the Pro plan’s private board feature
Time Tracking
The fact that a time tracking column is not available on previous price points leads me to believe Monday wants users to purchase the Pro version. Not including the ability to track the amount of time on each project seems absurd, and will be necessary when trying to gather data on how long each project takes your team. Without knowing the time frame you are completing each project, it is impossible to know your progress from month to month.
Monday.com Pro Plan Rating: 4.7/5
Which Monday.com Pricing Plan is Right For My Team?
Unless you operate in a small team of fewer than 5 people, my recommendation would be to at least purchase the Pro level. Without access to things like private boards, timeframe tracking and unlimited automations and integrations, you will find Monday.com to be lacking in aspects you need.
The Pro version can be a useful tool for numerous teams when attempting to streamline their project management, with many of my clients finding the platform to be an invaluable resource.
However, you may find the Basic and Standard plans to be lacking in essential areas and for that reason, large teams may want to invest in the more advanced version.
If your team is larger than 50 people, it may also be recommended to utilize the Enterprise version, which can only be purchased by contacting an agent from Monday.com.
Try the Monday.com Pro or Enterprise version here
Is Monday.com a CRM (Customer Relations Management) Platform?
While many use Monday.com primarily for its project management features, the company also brands itself as a CRM platform.
For the price, Monday is a great budget CRM for smaller companies and can be a useful option for businesses without a dedicated CRM tool.
However, Monday’s platform is focused more on your team than customers, which makes its CRM less powerful than a customer and pipeline-focused CRM like Salesforce.
If it is your first time using a CRM and you already plan to use Monday.com for its project management abilities, then this platform can be very useful.
If you are a large business with a budget to match, then we recommend using a more specialized CRM likes Salesforce.
How Does Monday.com Stack Up Against the Competition?
As a project management tool, Monday.com is undoubtedly one of the most popular in the marketplace. Being used by high-end companies like Adobe, Coca-Cola and Hulu lends credibility to the usefulness and applicational prowess of the platform. Although when purchasing any tool for your business, it's always best to compare all available options.
Teamwork is one of Monday.com’s most direct competitors, branding itself as a comprehensive project management solution.
Similar to Monday, Teamwork provides a simple, easy-to-use interface to track and manage all your projects in one space.
The Teamwork pricing plan is more clear than Monday, opting to charge per user and each different price point. This can make it easier to determine just how much your team will need to pay when signing up for the platform.
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