Monday.com Features: Everything You Get (And What's Missing on Each Plan)

Monday.com positions itself as a "Work OS" - which is marketing-speak for a highly flexible project management platform. But what features do you actually get? And more importantly, which ones are locked behind higher-priced plans?

I've dug through the feature list, tested the platform, and will break down exactly what monday.com offers so you can decide if it's worth your money. If you're still weighing your options, check out our monday.com review for a full assessment.

Board Views: How You'll Actually See Your Work

This is where monday.com genuinely shines. The platform offers 20+ different board views and dashboard widgets to visualize your data. You're not stuck with just one way of looking at your projects.

The core views include:

The catch? Gantt charts require at least the Standard plan ($12/seat/month). If you're on Basic or Free, you're limited to simpler views.

Workload View: Resource Management That Actually Works

The Workload View is a Pro-plan exclusive that deserves special attention. This visual tool shows how work is distributed across your team - day by day, week by week. It's designed to prevent the most common project management problem: some people drowning in work while others have capacity to spare.

Here's what makes it valuable:

The Workload View calculates effort distribution automatically. If a task requires 4 hours and spans 8 working days, it allocates 0.5 hours per day rather than cramming all 4 hours into one day. This makes capacity planning much more realistic than tools that don't account for task duration.

You can add Workload as both a board view and a dashboard widget, making it accessible across your entire account. For teams managing multiple boards, the dashboard widget combines workload data from different projects into a single view.

Chart and Battery Widgets for Visual Progress Tracking

Beyond the standard views, monday.com offers specialized widgets for dashboards:

Chart Widget - Create bar charts, line graphs, pie charts, and more to visualize your data. You can track budget spending, task completion rates, status distribution, or any metric you're capturing in columns. The widget updates in real-time as your board data changes.

Battery Widget - Shows progress toward completion using visual battery indicators. Perfect for tracking project milestones, sprint progress, or goal achievement. You can customize what counts as "complete" based on your status columns.

Numbers Widget - Displays key metrics as large, prominent numbers. Useful for executive dashboards where you want to highlight total revenue, open tickets, days until launch, or any critical number at a glance.

These visualization tools transform raw data into actionable insights, but remember the dashboard board limits - Basic can only pull from 1 board, Standard from 5, Pro from 20, and Enterprise from 50.

Automation Features

Monday.com's automation builder lets you create "if this, then that" workflows without coding. The AI-powered workflow generator can even build automations from plain English descriptions - just type what you need and it generates the workflow.

Examples of what you can automate:

The new Autopilot Hub gives you visibility into everything automated in your organization - useful for teams that have built up complex workflow rules over time.

Automation Limits by Plan

Here's where monday.com gets restrictive:

250 actions sounds like a lot until you realize a single automation might fire dozens of times daily. If your team uses automations heavily, you'll hit that cap fast on Standard.

Understanding What Counts as an "Action"

An action is triggered every time an automation runs. If you set up "When status changes to Done, notify the team," that's one action per status change. If you change 10 items to Done, you've used 10 actions.

Complex automations with multiple steps count as multiple actions. For example: "When status changes to something, create an item in another board and notify the person" counts as 2 actions each time it triggers (one for creating the item, one for the notification).

Here's the catch most people miss: If you exceed your monthly allocation, the overage is deducted from next month's limit. Use 280 actions on a 250-action plan? You'll only have 220 available the following month. Keep exceeding and you'll eventually hit zero, at which point you can't add or edit automations until you upgrade.

Teams typically underestimate automation usage. A team of 10 people running 5 automations that trigger 10 times per day equals 500 actions daily - that's 15,000 per month, requiring the Pro plan. The Standard plan's 250 actions works only for occasional automation use or very small teams.

Rate Limits: The Hidden Automation Restriction

Beyond monthly action limits, monday.com enforces rate limits on how many times an automation can trigger per minute. This prevents server overload but can cause issues for teams with high-volume workflows.

If an automation triggers too many times in one minute (through API calls, batch actions, or automation loops), it will be automatically deactivated. You'll receive a notification explaining the limit was reached. To reactivate, you need to identify why it fired so rapidly and adjust your workflow accordingly.

This particularly affects teams using integrations with external tools, as those rate limits are often set by the third-party service (like Outlook or Salesforce) rather than monday.com itself.

Integrations and Apps Marketplace

Monday.com connects with over 200 apps natively, and through Zapier, you can connect to 8,000+ additional tools. The built-in integrations include the usual suspects:

All integrations can be set up without coding - just click through the setup wizard. The Salesforce integration is particularly useful, offering two-way sync so new leads in Salesforce automatically create monday.com items and vice versa.

The apps marketplace now has over 800 apps from third-party developers. Some are free, others require separate subscriptions. Monday.com reviews apps for functionality and security but doesn't certify them, so read the security section before installing anything sensitive.

Integration limits follow the same structure as automations - 250 actions on Standard, 25,000 on Pro, 250,000 on Enterprise. Heavy integration users will want Pro at minimum.

How Integrations Actually Work

Integration actions are separate from automation actions - you get quotas for both. An integration action occurs when data moves between monday.com and an external tool. For example, when a new Salesforce lead creates a monday.com item, that's one integration action.

Two-way syncs consume actions rapidly. If you're syncing Gmail or Outlook with monday.com and processing dozens of emails daily, each email that creates or updates an item counts as an action. Same for CRM integrations updating both systems simultaneously.

The Standard plan's 250 integration actions makes it suitable only for occasional, one-way syncs. Any integration you use daily - especially two-way syncs - will exhaust that limit quickly.

Building Custom Integrations

For teams with unique needs, monday.com offers an Apps Framework for building custom integrations. You can create private apps exclusive to your account or build public apps to sell in the marketplace.

The framework supports:

Building integrations requires developer skills (JavaScript/React primarily), but monday.com provides SDKs, documentation, and sample apps to get started. There's no fee for listing integrations in the marketplace, making it attractive for software vendors wanting to reach monday.com's 225,000+ businesses.

AI Features

Monday.com has been adding AI capabilities across the platform:

You get free AI credits to start exploring. Standard plan and above can purchase additional AI credits starting at $200/month - a significant add-on cost to consider.

AI Hub: Your Central Command for AI Features

The AI Hub is a new one-stop interface for discovering and implementing AI features across monday.com. It provides personalized recommendations based on your board structure and usage patterns.

Features include:

The AI assistant can also answer questions about how to use monday.com itself - think of it as an in-platform chatbot that understands the software's features and can guide you through setup. It's surprisingly responsive and actually useful for troubleshooting.

Keep in mind: AI features are only available from Standard plan upward. Basic and Free users can't access any AI capabilities, even the assistant.

AI Email Composition and Enhancement

For teams using monday CRM, AI-powered email composition helps draft messages faster. The feature can:

This is available on the Standard CRM plan and above, integrated directly into the email composition interface. It's particularly useful for sales teams sending similar outreach messages with slight customization.

Collaboration Features

Every plan includes basic collaboration tools:

Guest access lets you bring in clients or contractors without full account access - useful for agencies managing multiple clients. This feature has limitations on lower plans though.

Updates and Communication

The Updates section on each item functions like a mini-social feed. Team members can post comments, share files, and have threaded conversations about specific tasks. Everything is timestamped and archived, creating a searchable history of project communication.

You can now schedule updates to be delivered at specific times - perfect for async teams across time zones or when you want to batch communications rather than interrupt focus time.

Updates support rich formatting, embedded images, file attachments, and even polls for quick decision-making. They integrate with email notifications so team members can stay informed without constantly checking the platform.

Mobile Apps: Full Featured or Limited?

Monday.com offers native iOS and Android apps available on all plans including Free. The mobile experience is generally solid, though some users report that mobile functionality doesn't quite match the web version.

What works well on mobile:

What's more limited:

The mobile apps work best for field teams checking assignments, updating task status, and communicating on the go - not for administrative setup or complex workflow design.

Dashboard and Reporting

Dashboards aggregate data from your boards into visual widgets. You can track project progress, workload distribution, budget spending, and KPIs in one view.

Available widgets include:

The catch is dashboard board limits:

If you need to pull insights across multiple projects or departments, you'll need at least Standard, probably Pro.

Creating Effective Dashboards

Dashboards are free - you get unlimited dashboards on every plan. The limitation is how many boards each dashboard can pull data from.

Best practices for dashboard design:

Dashboards update in real-time as board data changes, so they're always showing current information. You can share dashboards with specific team members or make them visible to guests and external stakeholders.

For teams managing multiple clients or projects, the Enterprise plan's 50-board dashboard limit is often necessary to create comprehensive overview dashboards that span the entire account.

Workdocs

Monday Workdocs are collaborative documents that live inside your workspace. You can:

Available on all plans including Free - one of the few features that isn't gated.

Workdocs vs. Traditional Documentation Tools

Workdocs aren't trying to replace Google Docs or Notion. They're designed specifically for project-related documentation that needs tight integration with your boards.

Key advantages:

Custom-branded forms can only be created on Pro and Enterprise plans, but basic forms are available on all paid plans.

Forms: Data Collection That Feeds Your Boards

Monday.com forms let you collect information from people outside your organization and pipe it directly into your workflows. This is particularly valuable for:

The AI-powered form builder (Standard plan and up) can generate complete forms from simple descriptions. Just describe what information you need and it creates appropriate questions, help text, and required field designations.

Forms support various question types: text, multiple choice, dropdowns, file uploads, and more. You can set up conditional logic so questions appear based on previous answers, and trigger automations based on form submissions.

Time Tracking

Built-in time tracking lets you log hours directly on tasks. This is useful for billing clients, tracking project costs, or understanding where time goes.

However, the Time Tracking column is only available on Pro and Enterprise plans. Basic and Standard users are stuck using third-party time tracking apps from the marketplace.

How Time Tracking Integrates with Workload

For Pro and Enterprise users, time tracking data can feed into the Workload View, giving you both planned capacity and actual time spent. This creates a powerful feedback loop:

The time tracking column can be set to manual entry or use a timer that tracks hours in real-time. Some teams prefer the timer for accuracy; others prefer manual entry for flexibility.

For teams that need time tracking but are on Standard plan or lower, integration with dedicated time tracking tools like Everhour or Clockify provides similar functionality through the apps marketplace.

Resource Management: Enterprise-Level Planning

Enterprise plan users get access to advanced resource management tools that go beyond the standard Workload View:

Resource Directory - A centralized database of all team members, their skills, availability, and roles. This takes up to 24 hours to sync when first set up but provides the foundation for sophisticated resource planning.

Resource Planner - Allocate team members to projects with specific effort amounts (hours per day, hours per week, days per month, or FTE). You can use actual team members or placeholders for roles you haven't hired yet.

Capacity Manager - Connects up to 50 Resource Planners (or 200 when created from a portfolio) to give a comprehensive view of utilization across the entire organization. It shows which team members are overloaded and which have capacity, making it easy to rebalance work.

These tools are specifically designed for organizations with 50+ people managing complex, multi-project resource allocation. Smaller teams will find the standard Workload View sufficient.

Formula Column: Spreadsheet Power Inside Boards

The Formula column (Pro and Enterprise only) brings spreadsheet-like calculations to your boards. You can:

Formulas update automatically as source data changes, making them perfect for dynamic dashboards and real-time reporting. The formula syntax is similar to Excel/Google Sheets, so there's minimal learning curve for users familiar with spreadsheets.

Common use cases include:

Column Types: The Building Blocks of Your Boards

Monday.com offers 30+ column types to capture different kinds of information. The basics are available on all plans, but advanced columns require higher tiers:

Available on all plans:

Pro and Enterprise only:

The limitation on Formula and Time Tracking columns means Standard plan users can't do advanced calculations or track billable hours natively - significant restrictions for many business workflows.

Subitems: Breaking Down Complex Tasks

Subitems let you break large tasks into smaller components. For example, a "Website Redesign" item might have subitems for "Design Homepage," "Build Template," "Write Copy," etc.

Available on Standard plan and above, subitems support most column types and can have their own assignments, due dates, and status updates. However, they have limitations compared to regular items:

Despite these limitations, subitems are valuable for teams managing projects with clear hierarchies or checklists of tasks that roll up to larger deliverables.

Dependencies: Managing Task Relationships

The Dependency column (Pro and Enterprise) lets you link items that must complete in sequence. Mark one task as dependent on another, and monday.com will:

This is essential for complex projects where tasks have specific order requirements. Construction projects, software releases, event planning - anywhere task order matters, dependencies provide structure and prevent scheduling conflicts.

What's Missing on Each Plan

Let me be direct about the limitations:

Free Plan

Basic Plan ($9/seat/month annually, $12 monthly)

Honestly, Basic feels like a trap. You're paying but still missing the features that make monday.com actually useful.

Standard Plan ($12/seat/month annually, $14 monthly)

The 250 action limit is the biggest issue - adequate for small teams with light automation use, but easy to exceed.

Pro Plan ($19/seat/month annually, $24 monthly)

This is where most mid-size teams land. The 25,000 automation actions, time tracking, formula columns, and workload view make it the first truly full-featured tier.

Enterprise Plan (custom pricing)

For a full feature comparison and what each tier actually costs, see our monday.com cost guide.

Security Features

All plans include basic security: data encryption, ISO/IEC 27001 compliance, and regular security audits.

Pro adds private boards and docs - content only visible to invited members.

Enterprise includes the heavy-duty stuff:

If you're in healthcare, finance, or government, you probably need Enterprise.

Audit Logs and Compliance

Monday.com holds several important security certifications:

Audit log retention is 90 days by default, but Enterprise customers can negotiate longer retention periods. For organizations with regulatory requirements, confirming audit log duration before signing is important.

Enterprise customers can also negotiate data residency - if you're EU-based and need to ensure data stays in EU data centers with no US transfers, this must be explicitly confirmed and documented in your contract.

Templates: Starting Points for Common Workflows

Monday.com offers 200+ templates for various industries and use cases. These aren't just empty boards - they're pre-configured workflows with appropriate columns, views, and suggested automations.

Template categories include:

Templates are available on all plans including Free. You can use them as-is or customize to fit your specific needs. Many teams find starting with a template faster than building boards from scratch, even if significant customization follows.

You can also save your own boards as custom templates, making it easy to replicate successful workflows across projects or clients.

Monday Products: Work Management, CRM, Dev, and Service

Monday.com now offers four standalone products, each built on the same Work OS platform but tailored for specific use cases:

Monday Work Management

The core product for managing projects, tasks, and workflows. This is what most people mean when they say "monday.com." It's flexible enough to handle marketing campaigns, product development, operations management, or general project coordination.

Monday CRM

Customer relationship management with pricing separate from Work Management:

Monday CRM competes with Salesforce, HubSpot, and Pipedrive but with monday.com's visual interface and flexibility. The Standard plan's 2-way email integration is particularly valuable, syncing Gmail/Outlook to automatically log communications.

Monday Dev

Built specifically for software development teams managing sprints, roadmaps, bugs, and product feedback. It includes developer-specific features like:

Monday Dev competes with Jira but aims for a more user-friendly experience that non-developers can actually navigate.

Monday Service

Service desk and operations management connecting ticketing with cross-functional workflows. Features include:

Designed for IT teams, customer support, and facility management - anywhere you need to track and resolve incoming requests.

Each product has separate pricing, so if you need both Work Management and CRM, you'll pay for both (though bundled discounts may be available for Enterprise customers).

Bucket Pricing: Understanding Monday.com's Unusual Model

Monday.com uses "bucket pricing" - you don't pay per exact user count. Instead, pricing tiers work in groups:

If you have 4 users, you pay for 5. If you have 7 users, you pay for 10. This means you're often paying for seats you don't use.

For a team of 12, you'd need to purchase the 15-seat tier. At $19/month per seat on the Pro plan (annual billing), that's $285/month or $3,420/year - even though 3 seats are unused.

The bucket pricing becomes more frustrating when you're just over a threshold. Having 16 users means paying for 20 - four unused seats costing $76/month.

This pricing model favors teams at the exact bucket sizes (5, 10, 15, 20, etc.) and penalizes those slightly above. When planning team size, consider whether staying under the next threshold is feasible.

Storage Limits Across Plans

Storage allocations vary significantly by plan:

Storage overages cost approximately $10 per 10GB per month. For teams sharing lots of design files, videos, or large documents, storage can become a hidden cost driver.

The Free plan's 500MB is barely sufficient for a couple users' basic documentation. Teams handling visual assets or client files will exhaust Basic's 5GB quickly. Standard's 50GB is adequate for many small teams, but agencies managing multiple clients often need Pro or Enterprise storage tiers.

Guest Access: Collaborating with External Stakeholders

Guest users can access monday.com without being full members. This is useful for:

Guest seats are free on Standard plan and above, but with limitations. Guests can view and edit items they're assigned to but can't see private boards, access admin settings, or create new boards.

If guests need full editing capabilities across multiple boards, they require paid seats. The "free guest" designation works for limited, controlled access - not for external team members who need broad platform usage.

Guest limitations by plan:

Who Monday.com Features Actually Work For

Based on the feature breakdown:

Freelancers/Solo users: Free plan is fine for basic task tracking. Don't bother paying for Basic.

Small teams (3-10 people): Standard is the minimum viable option if you need any automations or integrations. Pro if you need time tracking or private boards.

Medium companies (10-50): Pro makes sense here. The automation limits on Standard will frustrate you, and you'll want the additional views and features.

Enterprise (50+): If you need serious security, compliance, or have complex resource management needs, you'll need custom pricing.

Comparing alternatives? Check our monday.com vs Asana comparison or our roundup of best project management software.

Common Pain Points and Limitations

Based on real user feedback, here are the issues teams most frequently encounter:

Performance with Large Boards

Boards with thousands of items or heavy data can experience lag. Pages taking 10-20 seconds to load frustrates teams, especially when multiple people need quick access. The platform performs best with boards under 1,000 items; beyond that, consider splitting into multiple boards.

Mirror Column Limitations

Mirror columns display data from connected boards, but they're view-only. You can't trigger automations based on mirror column changes, include them in formulas, or use them for calculations. This limitation affects teams trying to build complex cross-board workflows.

Workarounds exist (using third-party apps or complex automation chains to copy mirror data into regular columns), but they consume automation actions and add complexity.

Subitem Automation Support

Subitems have less automation support than main items. Many automation templates that work on regular items don't work on subitems, forcing teams to use less elegant workarounds or abandon subitem-based organization.

Learning Curve for Advanced Features

While monday.com markets itself as intuitive, advanced features like custom automations, complex formulas, and cross-board workflows have a meaningful learning curve. Teams report spending weeks learning the platform's full capabilities.

The AI assistant helps, as does extensive documentation, but don't expect to unlock advanced functionality immediately.

Mobile App Gaps

The mobile experience is good for basic updates but can't handle complex configuration. Building automations, designing boards, or creating detailed reports requires the web app. Field teams can execute work on mobile; managers typically need desktops for planning.

Hidden Costs to Consider

Beyond the published plan prices, several factors can increase your actual cost:

AI Add-on: After consuming free AI credits, the AI add-on starts at $200/month. For teams using AI features extensively, this becomes mandatory.

Storage Overages: At ~$10 per 10GB per month, storage costs accumulate for asset-heavy teams.

Premium Integrations: While native integrations are included, heavy Zapier/Make usage can add $50-300/month for those platforms' fees.

Training and Onboarding: Professional services from monday.com cost $150-250/hour. Third-party consultants run $100-200/hour. For complex implementations, budget several thousand dollars for proper setup.

Migration Services: Moving data from existing tools (Asana, Trello, Excel) to monday.com can require paid assistance, especially for large datasets with complex relationships.

Comparing with Competitors

How do monday.com's features stack up against alternatives?

vs. Asana

Asana offers similar visual planning and workflows but tends to be stronger in task dependencies and workflow rules. Asana's free plan is more generous (unlimited tasks and projects), but monday.com offers better customization and visual flexibility.

Pricing is comparable - monday.com typically runs 15-25% higher than Asana for equivalent features.

vs. ClickUp

ClickUp offers more features in lower-priced tiers. Their free plan supports unlimited users (vs. monday.com's 2), and advanced features appear earlier in the pricing structure. However, ClickUp's interface is more cluttered, and some users find monday.com cleaner and more intuitive.

vs. Wrike

Wrike targets enterprise users with robust project management, resource planning, and budgeting. It scales well for complex, cross-functional projects but costs more than monday.com and has a steeper learning curve.

vs. Trello

Trello is simpler and cheaper, excellent for basic Kanban boards. But it lacks monday.com's advanced views, automations, and reporting. Teams outgrow Trello faster than monday.com.

Is Monday.com Worth It?

Monday.com has genuinely useful features - the board views are excellent, automations are powerful (when you can access them), and the interface is clean.

The problem is pricing. The Basic plan is borderline useless for teams that need productivity tools. Standard caps you at 250 automation actions which runs out fast. You kind of need Pro to get the full experience, and at $24/seat/month ($19 if billed annually), costs add up quickly for larger teams.

The bucket pricing model adds another complication - you're often paying for more seats than you need.

If the features fit your workflow and budget, monday.com is a solid choice. Just go in knowing exactly which plan you need - don't expect to start cheap and upgrade later without significant cost jumps.

Key decision factors:

Try monday.com free to test the features yourself. The 14-day trial gives you access to Pro features so you can see what you're actually getting before committing.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I switch between plans easily?

Yes, you can upgrade at any time and the change takes effect immediately. Downgrading is possible but requires reducing your seat count or features first, and you may lose access to data in premium features.

What happens if I exceed automation limits?

Overages are deducted from next month's allocation. Consistently exceed limits and you'll eventually have zero actions available, blocking new automations until you upgrade.

Can I use monday.com offline?

No, monday.com requires internet connection. The mobile apps have limited offline viewing of cached data, but you can't make changes offline.

Is there a limit to the number of boards?

Free plan allows 3 boards. All paid plans offer unlimited boards.

How does monday.com pricing compare to competitors?

Monday.com typically prices 10-25% higher than Asana and ClickUp for comparable features. However, pricing varies based on specific needs - some users find monday.com's visual interface and customization worth the premium.

Can I cancel anytime?

Yes for monthly plans. Annual plans are paid upfront but you can cancel to prevent renewal. No refunds for unused time on annual subscriptions.

Do I get a discount for annual billing?

Yes, annual billing provides approximately 18-25% discount compared to monthly pricing across all plans.