monday.com Review: Still the Best PM Solution in 2024?

A Powerful, Attractive & Intuitive Project Management Software

1

Thanks to its appealing user interface and powerful tools, monday.com has emerged as one of the stars of project management software.

But is monday.com really the best of the best? Or is it just all style and no substance? Having put it through rigorous testing, I can say monday.com gives a solid performance – but it isn’t perfect.

monday.com has a good variety of features that will suit both newbies and advanced users. The features cover everything, from simple day-to-day planning to trickier tasks like column equations and complex filtering.

It’s also available in 15 languages, including English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Russian, Japanese, Polish, Dutch, Italian, Korean, Swedish, traditional Chinese, simplified Chinese, and Turkish.

That said, monday.com is unlikely to suit those looking for a free or budget project management software. Its free and basic plans lack most of the features that really make it shine.

Don’t get me wrong: it’ll be worth the investment for many. monday.com is undoubtedly one of the most well-packaged project management software around, and it’s still easy to use despite being so powerful. But before you get out your credit card and sign up for a plan, read on to find out whether this tool is right for you.

If you’re a smaller business, solopreneur, or consultant looking for a budget-friendly project management solution, you may want to consider Google Workspace. It offers impressive communication, collaboration, and productivity tools that can keep tasks on track and optimize workflow.

Larger firms may benefit with a monday.com and Workspace integration to take advantage of tools like Chat for real-time communication and Meet for virtual meetings. To link the two platforms, you’ll need to sign up for a Workspace plan and then add the monday.com app from Google’s marketplace, or you can integrate individual Workspace apps with your monday.com account to keep everything under one roof.

1

Get 10 % Off Google Workspace's Business Standard Plan*

Use our special coupon code when you sign up for a yearly subscription.

33 users used this coupon!

Show Coupon Code1

*The promotion code is only valid for new Google Workspace customers and the specified plan. The discount is valid for both flexible and annual payment options for the first 12 months of your subscription and applies to all users after your 14 day free trial ends. See additional terms and conditions here.

Get 10 % Off Google Workspace's Business Standard Plan

1. Select "Get Started" under the Business Standard plan.
2. Copy the unique promotion code below
3. Paste it during account creation on the Google Workspace website when prompted.

Missing this step may prevent the discount from being applied

CopyCopied

Copied!

Go to Google Workspace

Shame, we'll fix that - check other coupons

monday.com Has (Almost) Everything You Need

monday.com’s interface combines workspaces, teams, and boards so you can visualize ongoing projects and assignments.

Boards are composed of groups, columns, items, and subitems. Items are the individual tasks; groups help you segment information; and columns store and display the actual data. All of these are highly customizable.

Thanks to this set-up, you can: assign tasks; set priorities for deadlines, statuses, and dependencies; tag teammates and external guests; set permissions; add files; and send notifications.

You can also load various data dashboards to help you understand how your team is performing on key performance indicators (KPIs).

So overall, monday.com has no shortage of features. But let’s dive into some of the specifics.

A Template for Any Project

monday.com offers over 200 board templates to help you get started. These templates cover a number of business niches, like portfolio tracking, campaign planning, team tasks, or customer onboarding (for example).

You can make a board from scratch, but using a template will help you get a sense of the many ways you can use monday.com – plus it saves a lot of time. Templates are fully customizable, so you can always tweak things to suit your exact needs.

Multiple Ways to Track and View Projects

Once you’ve gotten started by adding your own data and customizing your dashboard, you can get to grips with one of monday.com’s standout features. “Views” are project visualization tools that let you understand your data in different ways.

There are several different types of views. As an account owner, you can set a default view, but other users can switch to the views they prefer – making this handy for satisfying all types of brains.

monday.com has more project visualization options than its competition. There are 16 options, which allows you to view project information in multiple ways, including:

• Files view: Shows all your files in one place
• Map view: Lets you see all your location and country columns on a map
• Timeline view: Gives a visual representation of the dates and timelines of your ongoing projects
• Gantt view: Turns your data into a Gantt-style chart, displaying milestones and dependencies
• Chart view: Lets you create reports for a specific board, using pie, bar, and line charts
• Calendar view: Shows you how tasks are distributed through the week, month, or year
• Kanban view: Lets you view your board’s information as a Kanban board
• Forms view: Allows you to convert your boards into forms, send them to your contacts, and convert the information received into new items
• Workload view: Gives you an overview of how your team’s work is divided
• Sales pipeline view: Arranges your deals by stage, so you can view progress at a glance
• Velocity view: Tracks work completed across sprints

However, one major drawback is that not all views are available on all plans. Indeed, some of the most useful ones, including the timeline, Gantt and calendar views, are only available on the Standard plan upwards.

Save Time and Enhance Productivity With Automations

monday.com’s automations can help you save time on routine tasks – and minimize human error. Automations use a series of “if this, then that” (IFTTT) statements; for example, “if” a task is marked as complete, “then” it should be archived.

You can use dozens of automations, but some prominent (and common) examples include sending notifications, creating tasks, assigning owners, and updating statuses.

Don’t be intimidated: setting up these automations is very straightforward. Many automation options come with common triggers and actions already built in. You can also filter automations by type to find what you’re looking for. And of course, you can always build some from scratch.

With just a few clicks, I was able to set up a number of automations to take care of my more monotonous everyday tasks – like archiving tasks as soon as the status is set to “Published,” and sending reminder emails to collaborators the day before their tasks are due.

Hundreds of Integrations and Apps

monday.com offers seamless integrations with more than 70 different third-party tools – including Outlook, Gmail, Excel, Docs, Google Drive (two-way sync), Dropbox, Slack, Google Chat, Mailchimp, and Spotify.

When you add an integration, you can include it in your automations. For instance, via the Outlook and Gmail integrations, you can automatically convert emails into action items. Or you could use the Slack integration to turn updates into Slack messages, so everyone is in the loop.

With monday.com’s extensive marketplace, you can add additional capabilities from other popular software like QuickBooks, GitHub, HubSpot, and DocuSign. This makes it easy to consolidate everything into one platform.

It’s worth noting, however, that automations, integrations, and apps, are premium features on monday.com.

monday.com Is Easy Enough for the Whole Team to Get on Board

monday.com is far easier to use than competitors with similarly advanced features. And we actually tested and compared them all. Admittedly, it does take some trial and error to get things working exactly right at first.

But in my experience, this is common across all project management software: most are so customizable that it takes time to optimize them for your team’s workflow.

For the most part, learning how to use monday.com is easy, thanks to the app’s intuitive interface. Elements can simply be dragged-and-dropped to rearrange them, while the discussion tools are intuitive for anyone who’s ever used social media.

Getting Started With monday.com

Getting set up with monday.com is super simple. From the homepage, click on any of the Get Started buttons. You need to enter your email address to create an account, or you can sign up using your Google account. Add your name, and a few extra details about your business type and preferred features, and you’re in!

Everyone gets a 14-day free trial, no credit card required. Depending on the type of work you tell monday.com you’ll be managing, monday.com will match you with either its all-in-one work management tool or one of its specialized solutions.

Specialized products serve sales, development, and IT and service teams (currently in Beta) and come with features like sales pipelines, lead management, agile project tracking tools, and support ticket management.

In each case, monday.com signs you up for a Pro plan, but note that if you later opt for a Basic or Standard plan, you will lose some features you had in the trial.

A Beginner-Friendly User Interface

monday.com looks great, with colorful designs, big buttons, and easy-to-understand icons. All of the system’s core features (including your message inbox, tasks, and shared project boards) can be accessed via the panel on the left-hand side of the screen.

Creating, assigning, and organizing tasks is a simple matter of clicking, dragging, and dropping. Should you get confused, a clickable question mark icon and a blue Help button are always there to answer questions.

Despite never having used the platform prior to testing it, I was able to easily navigate my way through all of the functions I was looking for – with a little bit of help from the on-screen prompts and monday.com’s handy new AI tool.

Once you activate the optional AI feature, you’ll find it can speed up work and take over routine and even more complex processes. monday.com’s AI can assign tasks, summarize information, develop detailed project plans, quickly analyze data, and more.

Advanced Reporting and Analytics Tools

monday.com’s reports are a great way of learning how teams are performing and discovering ways of making improvements. monday.com offers both basic and advanced reporting.

Among other things, you can:

• Manage your budget with formulas and filters
• Drill down information with advanced filters
• Visualize your board’s data with charts
• Use a dashboard to get insights from all your boards
• Add benchmarks and cumulative data

So long as your boards are set up optimally, you can create reports with just a few clicks (although granted, this can take a bit of time to set up).

Plenty of Tools to Collaborate & Connect with Colleagues

As you’d expect, monday.com offers plenty of built-in tools to help you and your team collaborate – and cut down on email traffic.

Unlike some of its competitors though, monday.com lacks a direct messaging feature in its work management software, though the new WorkCanvas tool adds real-time video chat (more about this later).

While you can only send messages on threads related to specific “items” (individual rows or line items in a group) using monday.com’s PM software, you can incorporate direct messaging by integrating a third-party tool, such as Google Chat or Slack.

Team Dashboard & Communication

On monday.com, communication is primarily done via the discussion threads on items. You can comment, give thumbs up, and mention individuals and entire teams – or everyone who’s subscribed to a board – by tagging them with the ‘@’ sign. You can also invite clients to view information about their projects.

As an account owner, you can set up a customizable Teams dashboard that contains useful widgets, like an overview of your team’s workload and upcoming tasks, or recent mentions.

File Sharing

monday.com has flexible file sharing: files can be attached to individual projects, and also viewed altogether in a centralized database. You can use an annotation feature to make comments and communicate on any document.

You can upload files (with a maximum size of 500MB each) from your computer, Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, or OneDrive. The files can go to:

• A task or project
• A status (for instance, if you wanted to attach proof that a client has approved their content, or that an invoice has been paid)
• The file column
• The files gallery

You can also search for files instead of browsing, with the Search Everything feature. Search Everything lets you filter results by Boards, Updates, Files, or Tags. You can even specify the type of file you want (like an image or Microsoft Word document).

Mobile App

monday.com has mobile apps for both iOS and Android, so you can manage your work on the go. The app lets you:

• View all of your dashboards
• Interact with widgets
• Drag and drop items
• Edit columns
• Reach your inbox and mark notifications as read
• Use four different board views (Calendar, Timeline, Kanban & Battery)

The app has been finely optimized to provide you with all the information from your monday.com boards on a smaller screen. You can utilize zooming in or out, scrolling, or rotating the screen to observe a greater or fewer number of columns and rows simultaneously.

Some users complain that the app can be a little slow-loading, but it performed just fine for me in testing. It’s also just as intuitive as the desktop interface.

Brainstorm and Collaborate With WorkCanvas

WorkCanvas is a versatile new tool designed to replace monday.com’s traditional whiteboard feature. It allows teams to plan, share ideas, and visualize workflows and projects on a shared canvas. You can use WorkCanvas to create mind maps, flowcharts, and other visual assets that enhance brainstorming sessions and keep everyone aligned.

When you link a project board to your canvas, two-way sync automatically updates the board to reflect changes made to tasks, due dates, priorities, other items on your canvas, and vice versa. You can also add comments, tag teammates, and leave feedback in real time. This helps centralize discussions and ensures all stakeholders have access to the most up-to-date information.

WorkCanvas has a free plan that includes three canvases and basic features, suitable for small teams and individuals. For larger teams, I’d suggest the free 14-day trial for the Pro plan so you can test all the platform’s impressive features.

Good Response Times and Multiple Support Options?

monday.com offers 24/7 live chat, email support, a helpful community, and an extensive knowledge base. Phone support is available for billing questions only – you submit a ticket with your question and request a call back.

But, if you should have a question you can’t find an answer to in the knowledge base, support agents are on hand 24/7 to assist you.

When testing, I found that most of my routine queries could be solved by the knowledge base alone. It has hundreds of articles and tutorials covering almost every topic imaginable, and it’s regularly updated.

But, if you should have a question you can’t find an answer to in the knowledge base or you’re facing a work emergency, support agents are on hand 24/7 via live chat to assist you. Simply click on the blue Help button in the lower right corner to be quickly connected with a support agent, as I was.

You can also email monday.com and you should receive a reply within 60 minutes or less.

I wanted to see if monday.com holds true to its promises, so I fired off a range of queries at several different times. The responses were… patchy.

The first time, I got a reply in just over half an hour, from a friendly support agent who directed me to a useful article.

The response to my second query took almost two hours to come in, but was much more detailed. It acknowledged that the feature I’d asked for wasn’t available, but offered a suitable workaround.

If I was having an emergency, I’d definitely recommend using the live chat option. But the quality of the responses to my email queries was fine, and overall, representatives were still pretty responsive.

Plenty for Larger Businesses, but Tricky For Those On Tight Budgets

In addition to offering the standard 14-day free trial, monday.com has a forever free plan. It supports up to two users and comes with all of the basic features, including up to 3 boards, unlimited docs, 200+ templates, two project views, and the mobile apps.

The Basic plan comes with up to 5 GB of file storage, the possibility to add (at cost) an unlimited number of seats, unlimited items (tasks, projects, and customers), and prioritized customer support. But compared to the competition, monday.com’s Basic plan is more limited.

monday.com’s most useful features come into play from the Standard plan upwards. With Standard, you unlock three extra views, as well as some automations and integrations, and guest access. All in all, this plan is probably the best balance between power and price.

But it’s only with the Pro plan that you get full access to monday.com’s stand-out features, including up to 25,000 automation and integration actions per month, all of the project views, time tracking, formula columns, and dependencies.

Starting at $57.00 per person per month, this is no small cost. But considering the wealth of features on offer, you may find it’s well worth it as long as it’s within your budget.

That said, there is one thing I don’t love about monday.com’s pricing. Unlike some of its competitors, all paid plans have a minimum of 3 users – you can’t pay for a single seat. You can, however, save money by taking out an annual subscription.