Monday.com describes itself as a Work Operating System. The metaphor is quite a good one. A bit like Android or iOS for phones, the idea is that the system helps organisations to run everything that goes on in the workplace (or remotely, but related to work). The list of options on the home page of the company’s website include marketing, project management, sales and customer relationship management (CRM), creative and design, HR and recruitment, IT and “200+ workflows”.
Monday.com therefore has some serious ambitions, but should you consider it as a way to manage workflows within your organisation? Here’s what you need to know.
Frictionless onboarding
Monday.com is flexible and has a free 14-day trial period. It is doing more or less everything it can to make sure that customers are happy—up to and including a 14-day free trial, with 24/7 customer support. This means that you can try the platform out to see if it will work for you, without any commitment. You can also test it first in just one area of your operations, and scale up if it works for you. The company suggests that the nature of the platform means that it is a good way to future-proof requirements.
Getting started is quick and easy, with no training required. Monday.com offers a wide selection of more than 200 templates for different use cases, all of which are customisable. These include, for example, a template specifically designed for CRM. However, if none of those works, you can also create your own. The company boasts that anyone can get started with Monday.com, with no training needed, because of the simple user-friendly interface.
Extending functionality
There is plenty of functionality and good integration options. You can integrate a huge range of existing tools with Monday.com. These include office basics like Excel, collaboration software like Dropbox, Google Drive and Slack, and video-conferencing tools such as Microsoft Teams and Zoom. Within the platform, you can also choose different ways to visualise your workflows, including Gantt charts, Kanban, calendars and timelines. Finally, you can even automate particular functions to make everyone’s life easier.
Monday.com also offers its own apps marketplace. It launched its own apps marketplace back in October 2020, and it seems to have been embraced by users. The company’s own tweets support this. The top five apps for 2021 were Aircall, an app running call centre software, Miro, a virtual whiteboard, Vlookup, General Caster and DocuGen, but there are plenty of others to consider.
Project management strength
Monday.com seems to be particularly good as a project management tool. Reviews on Capterra suggest that the majority of users see Monday.com as a project management tool—and that they like it for that purpose. The general sense of the reviews is that the system is still fairly basic, but no worse for that. Indeed, the simplicity is viewed as one of the system’s strengths because it makes it relatively easy to use.
The main disadvantage to Monday.com seems to be reporting options. Several users cite reporting as a disadvantage. In particular, the lack of options seems to hold users back. One review suggests that users can create their own reporting templates—but also notes that if you can do that, you might be better off just using Excel.
Monday.com is seen as a good alternative to Trello and Asana. Most users seem to have considered Monday.com as an alternative to Trello or Asana. Many had moved from Trello after considering both Monday.com and Asana. It therefore does not seem unreasonable to suggest that if this sounds familiar, Monday.com could be worth exploring.