Monday.com is a common project management tool for organizations. It gives structure to project workflows, assigns tasks, and track due dates within one platform.
As popular as Monday.com is for management, their platform isn’t necessarily the best solution for every organization.
Before adding any tool to your workflow, be sure to consider your options to make sure you find the best fit for your needs and your team’s workflow.
<a href="#common-management" class="anchor-link">Monday.com is a common project management tool for organizations</a>
<a href="#not-right-for-you" class="anchor-link">Why would Monday.com not be right for you?</a>
<a href="#choosing-competitor" class="anchor-link">Choosing a Monday.com competitor</a>
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Sure, Monday.com has the common tools available to help you regulate how and when you work. They have a standard (and rather colorful) interface, a simple design, and easy-to-use features.
However, just like all management systems, Monday has some limitations that could matter more than you think. Reviews indicate that their mobile app is buggy and glitchy. Some users have complain about their price, available data space, and document integration, just to name a few.
If you have a small business that requires a one-stop shop at a budgeted price, you might want to consider these Monday.com competitors.
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OK, we're obviously biased, but we promise to give an honest review.
Streak allows you to track project milestones and tasks through pipelines in your Gmail inbox. It’s a cloud-based browser extension that also adds email tools like mail merge, email tracking, and snippets to Gmail. That means you don't have to be running multiple browser tabs or apps to manage your process. It all goes down right in your Gmail inbox.
Pipelines are completely customizable, so you can create a workflow specifically for your project’s needs in minutes. Add emails from your inbox, share them with your team, and scrape email data to help you make informed decisions and keep things moving through your pipelines.
Streak’s also has collaboration features that allow you to:
Streak is great for a variety of different organizations, especially smaller and medium-sized ones. It's a great option for teams who use email to communicate both internally and externally. Because pipelines are so customizable, Streak can be used across various parts of your business, from project management to sales to fundraising.
Solo entrepreneurs can benefit greatly from the free version.
There aren’t many tools out there that can automatically capture data from contacts and emails, but Streak can. Being right in Gmail keeps you from toggling back and forth between different apps throughout the day.
Many project managers like using a Kanban board view, which Streak does not offer. However, once a project or workflow has hundreds of items, Kanban boards tend to get cluttered and most project managers migrate to a pipeline style view.
Streak offers a free version for individual users looking for a basic CRM in Gmail along with mail merge and email tracking features. Streak users also have access to a free mobile app on iOS and Android devices.
To collaborate in Streak and have more advanced features, you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan. Streak offers a free 14-day trial for their most popular plan type.
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Notion has become increasingly popular lately for its flexible workspace and ability to create many different views for projects. It has a clean user interface that allows you to create individual and shared workspaces, making it a great tool to manage multiple processes at your company.
Notion is great for teams and individuals who need to organize information in a visual manner. Though it can feel a bit cluttered as operations scale - prompting "Chief Notion Officer" roles to manage the tool at some companies - it can be a great flexible tool for small to medium-sized businesses.
Notion has an incredibly intuitive workspace that takes very little time to learn. It feels like a supercharged Google Doc that allows you to insert various data types, from calendars to dynamic tables to Kanban boards. Notion allows you to view one dataset in multiple different ways by flipping from view to view, which can be a valuable tool for project managers.
Notion may take a more generalist approach to multiple different workflows, meaning that it's a great tool to get started with managing projects, budgets, tasks, etc. As team needs get more complex, some teams may outgrow Notion's feature set.
Notion has a very approachable pricing structure, with a free personal plan available and personal and team plans from $4-$10 per month. Enterprise plans offer custom pricing for more advanced features and support.
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Asana is a great tool for collaboration and workflow management. The user interface is simple to use, with timelines that allow you to drag and drop tasks and keep up with schedules and project plans.
Asana is best suited for small to medium businesses, startups, and even some smaller corporations. Sales and marketing teams of 15 people or less might even find that the free version will work for them.
Asana competes with Monday.com with the huge number of integrations it can handle. This comes in handy for businesses that use multiple apps to gather data and manage their workflow. Their free plan lets you have up to 15 users too, whereas Monday only gives you 2. Plus, you can upload as many files under 100MB each as you need to.
Asana has 3 plans available. The first one is free and has more helpful features than the free version of Monday.com. Next is the Premium plan for $10.99 per user/month, and last is the Business plan for $24.99 per user/month.
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Wrike is a great Monday.com competitor because it’s a lot like Monday.com with better free features and task-managing capabilities. It’s cheaper, it’s great for small agencies, and it works nicely for collaboration.
Wrike could be a great Monday.com alternative for complicated projects that require many different teams to be hands-on. They’re very task-oriented, focusing on sub-tasks and relationships. This could be a great system for marketing, creative, and technical teams.
Wrike’s free plan allows you to have 3 more users than Monday’s does. Wrike is a little more versatile too, leaving room for the management of a multitude of projects and teams.
A commonly-mentioned problem with Wrike is the cluttered interface. It appears more chaotic, requiring more time to get familiarized with the tool and making it less user-friendly than some others. As such, Wrike might be a little more confusing for those who haven’t used a project management system before, and could present a bit of a learning curve.
Wrike comes with 4 plans, including the free one. There’s the Professional plan, starting at $9.80 per user/month, and the Business plan for $24.80 per user/month. The Enterprise plan is customizable depending on the features you choose.
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Trello is another pretty common Monday.com competitor and is similar in look and feel. With Trello, you can keep track of deadlines and prioritize all your tasks with calendars and collaboration features. It’s great for teams that are not as tech-savvy, and it even lets you extend your use with add-ons and extra features.
Since it lacks the heavy-duty features to manage a massive team, Trello is best for smaller businesses with limited projects. This could be great for solo entrepreneurs looking to get a grip on their tasks, or startup companies trying to get their feet wet.
Trello is cheaper than Monday.com but still has some of the same features. Unlike Monday.com, automation is available in the free version, which is a major plus if affordable automation is what you’re into.
Depending on how you see it, simpler project management may be a pro or a con. Trello is built to help businesses organize more clear-cut projects. How clear-cut, you ask? Like “10MB of attachment upload in the free version” clear-cut.
Trello has a free plan, like some other great project management systems. They have a Standard plan for $5 per user/month, a Premium plan for $10 per user/month, and an Enterprise plan starting at $17.50 per user/month.
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Jira allows teams to work together in real-time using a ticketing system. They are built for teams of up to 20,000, gradually making room for growing businesses.
Jira is perfect for software development teams. Its ticket-forward atmosphere focuses on bug fixes and problem tracking, which is more commonly seen in software building projects.
Jira can be customized to suit your project methods. You can create reports and dashboards using Jira, which means you can visually see how, when, and why certain tasks are completed, and by whom.
The most ideal users of Jira are those who are rather technical, like information technology departments or Agile teams. It wouldn’t really work well for a sales team, for example.
There are three options available with Jira with different features available. There’s a free version, which is a plus. Then comes $7 per user/month, which is the Standard package, and the Premium package is $14 per user/month.
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Choosing the right project management tool might start making your eyes cross after a while. To help with your evaluation process, be sure to consider the following criteria:
To learn more about how you can use Streak pipelines to manage your workflow in Gmail, check out our Streak University video lessons.
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