Monday.com Reviews: An Honest, No-BS Assessment

Monday.com has become one of the most recognizable names in project management software. With over 186,000 customers across more than 200 industries and a colorful, visual interface that's hard to miss, it's clearly doing something right. But is it right for your team?

After digging through thousands of user reviews across Capterra, G2, Trustpilot, Reddit, and other platforms, comparing pricing tiers, analyzing automation limits, examining integrations, and looking at what real users love and hate about the platform, here's our comprehensive, honest take on monday.com.

This review goes deep into every aspect of the platform-from the restrictive free plan to the bucket pricing model that catches teams off guard, from the powerful automation features to the limitations that force you onto expensive tiers. Whether you're a small business evaluating your first project management tool or a mid-sized company looking to switch from a competitor, this guide will help you make an informed decision.

Monday.com at a Glance

Monday.com is a cloud-based work management platform that started as an internal tool at Wix back in 2012 (originally called dapulse). It's designed to help teams plan, track, and collaborate on projects using visual boards, automations, and integrations.

The platform offers multiple products: monday work management for general project management, monday CRM for sales teams, monday dev for software teams, and monday service for service desks. For this review, we're focusing primarily on the core work management product since that's what most teams are looking for.

What sets monday.com apart is its visual, spreadsheet-inspired interface combined with powerful customization options. You can view your work in over 27 different ways-from Kanban boards to Gantt charts, calendars to workload views. The platform connects with over 200 apps and offers pre-built automation recipes to eliminate repetitive tasks.

However, as we'll explore throughout this review, the platform's feature-gating, pricing structure, and some usability quirks have generated significant user frustration alongside the praise.

Monday.com Pricing Breakdown: The Complete Picture

Let's get straight to the numbers. Monday.com uses per-seat pricing with a minimum of 3 seats on paid plans, but there's more to the pricing story than what appears on the surface.

Official Pricing Tiers

The Bucket Pricing Reality

Here's where monday.com's pricing gets frustrating for many users. The platform uses what they call "bucket pricing" or "seat tiers." Plans start at 3 seats minimum, then jump to 5, 7, 10, 15, 20, 30, 40, and so on.

This means if you have 6 team members, you need to purchase 10 seats. If you have 16 users, you're paying for 20. One Trustpilot reviewer reported: "When we had 5 users and added a 6th one, we got billed for 10 onwards ($120 per month)." This bucket system can significantly inflate costs, especially for growing teams caught between tiers.

For a team of 10 on the Pro plan billed annually, you're looking at roughly $2,280/year. For 20 users on Pro, that's $4,560/year. If you pay monthly instead of annually, expect to pay approximately 18-20% more.

Hidden Costs and Limitations

Beyond the base subscription, several factors can increase your actual costs:

For a deeper dive into specific plan costs and feature comparisons, check out our monday.com pricing breakdown.

What Users Actually Like About Monday.com

Visual Interface That's Easy to Navigate

This is monday.com's biggest strength, and users consistently praise it across every review platform. The colorful boards, drag-and-drop functionality, and visual project tracking make it genuinely pleasant to use. Unlike some project management tools that feel like spreadsheets with extra steps, monday.com's interface is intuitive enough that most team members can start using it without extensive training.

As one Capterra reviewer noted: "It's been great for organizing my projects step by step, tracking progress, and visualizing my plans. The drag-and-drop boards and customizable workflow make it simple for me to track my progress."

The color-coded interface, progress bars, animations, and visual rewards make task management feel engaging rather than tedious. This gamification element helps with adoption rates-team members actually want to update their tasks.

Flexible Views and Customization

Monday.com offers over 27 different ways to view your projects-Gantt charts, Kanban boards, calendars, workload views, timelines, map views, chart views, and more. This flexibility lets different team members work in whatever format suits them best. Marketing might prefer Kanban while project managers stick with Gantt charts, and executives can view everything in dashboard format.

The workload view is particularly appreciated by managers for resource allocation and capacity planning. You can see at a glance who's overloaded and who has capacity to take on more work.

Users also appreciate the customization options for columns, statuses, labels, and workflows. You can create custom fields to track exactly the information your team needs, from budget tracking to client approval status.

Strong Automation Capabilities

The automation features let you eliminate repetitive tasks without writing code. Set up triggers like "when status changes to Done, notify the manager" or "when a due date arrives, send an email." Users report these automations save significant time once they're set up properly.

Monday.com offers over 200 pre-built automation recipes that cover common use cases. You can also create custom multi-step automations that chain multiple actions together. For example, when a task is marked complete, automatically move it to another board, notify stakeholders, update a connected spreadsheet, and create a follow-up task.

However, the automation limits become a significant pain point. The Standard plan's 250 actions per month can be consumed in days for active teams, forcing upgrades to Pro for the 25,000 action limit.

Extensive Integrations

Monday.com connects with over 200 apps including Slack, Microsoft Teams, Google Workspace, Zoom, Salesforce, HubSpot, Jira, Zendesk, and dozens of other tools. This helps centralize work and reduce context-switching between apps.

The integration ecosystem is one of the more robust options in the project management space. Popular integrations include:

Users particularly value the Outlook and Gmail integrations, which let you turn emails into tasks directly from your inbox. The Slack integration keeps teams updated on status changes, new tasks, and deadline changes without leaving their communication hub.

For advanced customization, monday.com provides a GraphQL API and webhooks for building custom integrations. Third-party tools like Zapier and Make.com can also bridge gaps when native integrations don't exist.

Templates Save Setup Time

Monday.com offers over 200 templates for different industries, teams, and use cases. Whether you're managing a marketing campaign, planning an event, tracking sales leads, or organizing HR processes, there's likely a template that gets you 80% of the way there.

These templates significantly reduce setup time compared to building boards from scratch. However, some users note that templates can take several minutes to load, and customizing them to your specific needs still requires time investment.

Dashboard and Reporting Capabilities

Users appreciate the ability to create dashboards that pull data from multiple boards, providing high-level overviews of project status, team workload, budget tracking, and other key metrics. The dashboards update in real-time, so you always have current information without manually generating reports.

The number of boards you can combine in a dashboard depends on your plan: 1 board on Free/Basic, 5 on Standard, 10 on Pro, and 50 on Enterprise. This limitation frustrates users who want comprehensive overviews but are on lower-tier plans.

What Users Hate About Monday.com

Pricing Gets Expensive Fast

This is the #1 complaint across all review platforms. The per-seat model with bucket pricing and minimum seat requirements means costs escalate quickly as your team grows.

Users consistently report sticker shock when they realize the true cost of monday.com at scale. A small business owner on Trustpilot called it "financially impractical to pay for 20 seats when they only needed 16." Another user noted: "The per-user pricing model can become costly as teams expand, which is a concern for budget-conscious users."

Essential features like time tracking, private boards, meaningful automation limits, and chart views are locked behind the Pro plan at $19/seat. Many users feel nickeled-and-dimed as they discover features they assumed were standard require expensive upgrades.

Compared to competitors, monday.com sits in the mid-to-high price range. ClickUp offers similar functionality at $12/user/month (comparable to monday.com's Pro plan at $19/seat). Asana's pricing is similar, but with more generous features at lower tiers. Trello and Notion offer free plans with significantly more functionality.

The Free Plan Is Basically Useless

Two users, three boards, 200 items, 500MB storage, and a 7-day activity log. No automations. No integrations. No calendar view. No time tracking. No dashboard capabilities beyond one board.

It's enough to test the interface and see if you like the visual design, but that's about it. If you need monday.com for real work, you're paying. Even the Basic plan at $9/seat doesn't include automations or integrations-the features that actually make the platform powerful.

Compare this to competitors like ClickUp (unlimited tasks and members on free plan), Trello (unlimited boards and cards), or Asana (unlimited tasks and up to 15 users). Monday.com's free plan feels deliberately crippled to force upgrades.

Automation Limits Are Restrictive

The Standard plan's 250 automation and 250 integration actions per month sounds reasonable until you realize how quickly they get consumed. Every time an automation triggers, it counts as an action. For active teams with dozens of recurring tasks and status updates, 250 actions can disappear in a week.

One Reddit user described hitting automation limits despite the account showing only 111 of 250 actions used, unable to create new automations. When you exceed your limit, monday.com deducts the overage from next month's allocation, creating a snowball effect where you're perpetually short on actions.

The jump from 250 actions on Standard to 25,000 on Pro is massive-and expensive. There's no middle tier for teams that need more than 250 but don't require 25,000. This forces many teams to upgrade to Pro earlier than they'd like, often tripling their monthly cost.

Furthermore, integration limits are separate from automation limits on Standard, but combined on Pro and Enterprise, which can create confusion when monitoring usage.

Customer Support Is Hit or Miss

Reviews are polarized here. Some users report excellent support, especially on Enterprise plans with dedicated success managers. But others describe frustrating experiences with slow responses, getting passed between departments, and difficulties resolving billing issues.

Common complaints include:

One Trustpilot user wrote: "I have tried for the past 2 days to talk to somebody but you cannot get past email communications." Another mentioned: "There has been no response through national complaint channels or customer service."

On the positive side, users on higher-tier plans with dedicated account managers report responsive, helpful support. The disparity suggests monday.com prioritizes enterprise customers while smaller accounts receive basic support.

Learning Curve for Advanced Features

While basic task management is intuitive, setting up complex automations, building dashboards that pull from multiple boards, configuring advanced workflows, and using formula columns takes significant time to master.

Users report needing to "set time aside to learn how the system works" before getting full value. The platform's flexibility becomes a double-edged sword-you can customize almost anything, but figuring out the best way to structure your boards, workflows, and automations requires experimentation and learning.

Some users note that monday.com's help documentation and tutorial videos are useful, but there's still a gap between understanding individual features and architecting an efficient system for your team.

Mobile App Limitations

The mobile app handles basic tasks but doesn't match the web experience. Users consistently describe it as slow, lacking features for advanced task creation and automation management, and less intuitive than the desktop version.

The app is fine for quick check-ins-viewing task status, adding comments, updating a field-but you can't effectively build boards, configure automations, or work with dashboards on mobile. For teams with field workers or executives who need full functionality on the go, this is a significant limitation.

Performance Issues at Scale

Several users report that boards with hundreds of items can load slowly, especially when viewing complex dashboards or switching between views. Templates can take several minutes to load. These performance issues, while not universal, become more common as your data grows.

Feature-Gating and Upselling

Users express frustration with how many features are locked behind higher-tier plans. Time tracking, private boards, chart views, dependency columns, formula columns, and workload views-features many consider standard in project management software-all require the Pro plan.

Even basic functionality like integrations and automations require at least the Standard plan. The Salesforce integration, critical for many sales teams, is Enterprise-only. This aggressive feature-gating feels like constant upselling, with teams discovering they need expensive upgrades to access functionality they assumed was included.

Deep Dive: Monday.com's Key Features

Board Views and Visualization

Monday.com excels at providing multiple ways to visualize your work. The platform offers:

The ability to switch between views without changing underlying data is powerful. A project manager can use Gantt view to see dependencies, a team member can use Kanban to focus on their tasks, and an executive can use chart view to see progress metrics-all looking at the same board.

Automations: Power and Limitations

Monday.com's automation builder is visual and relatively intuitive. You select a trigger ("when status changes to X"), add conditions ("and only if owner is Y"), and define actions ("then notify Z and move to another board").

The 200+ pre-built automation recipes cover common scenarios:

You can also build custom automations, though the interface lacks some logical operators (like OR conditions) that users request. Complex conditional logic often requires workarounds or multiple separate automations.

The action limits remain the biggest automation frustration. At 250 actions per month on Standard, even moderate automation use consumes your budget quickly. A single recurring daily task uses 30 actions per month. Status update notifications for a 20-person team can burn through hundreds of actions weekly.

Integrations: Connecting Your Tech Stack

With 200+ native integrations plus Zapier/Make.com compatibility, monday.com can connect to most tools in your tech stack. However, integration depth varies significantly.

Some integrations offer deep two-way sync (like the HubSpot integration that syncs contacts, deals, and companies), while others provide only basic triggers and actions. The quality of integrations often depends on whether they're built by monday.com, the third-party vendor, or the community.

Power users appreciate the GraphQL API and webhooks for building custom integrations. The API is well-documented and flexible, though it requires development resources to leverage fully.

Integration actions count against your monthly limits on Standard plan (250 integration actions separate from 250 automation actions), but are combined on Pro and above (25,000 total actions for both automations and integrations).

Time Tracking

Time tracking is a Pro-tier feature, frustrating many users who consider it basic functionality. The time tracking column lets users log hours against tasks, either manually entering time or using a built-in timer.

However, the time tracking implementation is basic compared to specialized tools. There's no built-in timesheet view, no automatic time tracking from apps, and limited reporting. Many teams use integrations with dedicated time tracking tools like Everhour, Harvest, or Toggl for more robust functionality.

Dashboards and Reporting

Dashboards can combine data from multiple boards (1 on Free/Basic, 5 on Standard, 10 on Pro, 50 on Enterprise) using customizable widgets:

Users appreciate real-time updating dashboards that eliminate manual report generation. However, building effective dashboards requires understanding how to structure your boards and data, which has a learning curve.

The board limits per dashboard frustrate users managing many projects. Combining data from 50+ boards requires an Enterprise plan or using external business intelligence tools.

Collaboration Features

Monday.com includes several collaboration tools:

While functional, the collaboration features feel basic compared to dedicated tools. There's no built-in chat, real-time co-editing is limited, and the commenting interface lacks threading depth.

Who Monday.com Is Actually For

Good Fit:

Not a Good Fit:

Monday.com vs. Top Competitors

Monday.com vs. Asana

Asana and monday.com are often compared as they target similar audiences and price points.

Asana strengths:

Monday.com strengths:

Pricing comparison: Very similar at higher tiers. Asana's Starter plan is $10.99/user/month vs. monday.com's Standard at $12/user/month. Both platforms have similar pricing at Pro/Advanced tiers.

Bottom line: Choose Asana if you want stronger free plan, better task dependencies, and goal tracking. Choose monday.com if you prefer visual customization and spreadsheet-style layouts.

For a detailed comparison, see our monday.com vs Asana breakdown.

Monday.com vs. ClickUp

ClickUp positions itself as the "one app to replace them all" with aggressive pricing and features.

ClickUp strengths:

Monday.com strengths:

Pricing comparison: ClickUp is significantly cheaper. Free plan much more functional. Unlimited plan at $12/user/month compares favorably to monday.com Pro at $19/user/month.

Bottom line: Choose ClickUp if you want maximum features at lowest cost and don't mind complexity. Choose monday.com if you prioritize clean interface and ease of use over feature density.

Monday.com vs. Trello

Trello is a simpler, Kanban-focused project management tool.

Trello strengths:

Monday.com strengths:

Bottom line: Choose Trello if you want simple, affordable Kanban boards. Choose monday.com if you need comprehensive project management with multiple views and workflows.

Monday.com vs. Smartsheet

Smartsheet takes a spreadsheet-first approach to project management.

Smartsheet strengths:

Monday.com strengths:

Bottom line: Choose Smartsheet if you need spreadsheet power with project management. Choose monday.com if you want visual project management with spreadsheet elements.

Monday.com vs. Jira

Jira is specialized for software development teams using Agile methodologies.

Jira strengths:

Monday.com strengths:

Bottom line: Choose Jira if you're a software development team. Choose monday.com for general project management or cross-functional teams.

For more options, explore our comprehensive guide to monday.com alternatives.

Real User Review Scores Across Platforms

Here's how monday.com rates across major review platforms:

The pattern is remarkably consistent: users love the interface and core functionality but have serious concerns about pricing structure, feature-gating, and customer support quality. The significantly lower Trustpilot rating (3.1 vs. 4.6-4.7 elsewhere) suggests that users with billing issues or support problems are particularly frustrated.

What G2 Reviewers Say

G2 reviews tend to be more detailed and business-focused. Common themes include:

Positive:

Negative:

What Reddit Users Say

Reddit tends to be more candid and critical. A highly upvoted post from r/mondaydotcom titled "My honest thoughts after using their service for one year" highlighted:

Positive aspects:

Major concerns:

Another Reddit horror story described a company spending $20,000 on monday.com setup and customization, with the project taking 6 months instead of the promised 2. This highlights that while monday.com is flexible, leveraging that flexibility for complex use cases often requires significant professional services investment.

Industry-Specific Use Cases

Marketing Teams

Monday.com works well for marketing teams managing campaigns, content calendars, social media scheduling, and creative workflows. The visual boards help track campaign assets through approval processes, and automations can handle routine status updates.

Marketing teams appreciate being able to assign tasks to writers, designers, and reviewers while maintaining visibility into where each piece of content stands. The calendar view helps visualize publishing schedules, and integrations with tools like Mailchimp and HubSpot centralize marketing operations.

Agency Project Management

Agencies juggling multiple clients benefit from monday.com's ability to create separate boards for each client while maintaining overview dashboards. The guest access feature (Standard and above) lets clients view project status without full platform access.

However, agencies note that the per-seat pricing becomes expensive when managing many projects with large internal teams. The lack of native budget tracking and profitability analysis also means agencies often pair monday.com with other financial management tools.

Construction and Field Services

The mobile app limitations hurt monday.com's effectiveness for construction and field service teams. While the platform can track projects, schedule tasks, and manage resources, field workers find the mobile experience lacking for real-time updates and documentation.

Construction teams needing robust site documentation, photo management, and offline access often find specialized construction management software more suitable.

Software Development

While monday.com can be configured for software development workflows, it lacks the depth of specialized tools like Jira. Sprint planning, backlog grooming, and agile ceremonies are possible but feel like workarounds rather than native functionality.

Development teams often use monday dev (a separate monday.com product with different pricing) or stick with Jira/Azure DevOps for core development work while using monday work management for cross-functional project coordination.

HR and Recruiting

HR teams use monday.com for recruiting pipelines, onboarding workflows, and employee request management. The form feature works well for collecting information from candidates or employees, and automated workflows can route approvals through appropriate managers.

The visual pipeline view helps recruiting teams track candidates through interview stages, and dashboard widgets can display hiring metrics for leadership.

Common Implementation Challenges

Board Structure Planning

One of the biggest challenges teams face is determining how to structure boards effectively. Should each project be a board? Should each client be a board? Should there be one master board with everything?

There's no universal right answer, and the decision impacts automation effectiveness, reporting capabilities, and user experience. Many teams restructure their boards multiple times before finding what works, which consumes time and can create confusion.

Automation Strategy

Teams often create too many automations initially, burning through action limits quickly. Or they create too few, missing out on efficiency gains. Finding the right balance requires understanding which repetitive tasks truly need automation versus which are better handled manually.

The separate automation and integration limits on Standard plan add complexity. Teams hit one limit while having plenty of the other unused, forcing them to optimize carefully or upgrade.

Data Migration

Moving data from existing systems into monday.com can be challenging. While CSV import exists, maintaining relationships between items, preserving history, and restructuring data to fit monday.com's format takes significant effort.

Teams switching from tools like Asana, Trello, or Microsoft Project often discover that their existing workflow patterns don't translate directly, requiring process redesign alongside the technical migration.

User Adoption

While monday.com's interface is generally praised, getting entire teams to adopt new software always has challenges. Team members accustomed to email-based project management or other tools may resist change.

The learning curve for advanced features means power users (usually project managers) become bottlenecks for setting up new boards, automations, and workflows. Organizations need to invest in training and designate monday.com champions to drive adoption.

Integration Limitations

Despite 200+ integrations, teams often discover that the specific integration they need doesn't exist or doesn't work as deeply as required. Building custom integrations via API requires development resources many small teams don't have.

Integration actions counting against monthly limits also surprises teams. A two-way sync with another system can consume hundreds of actions daily, forcing upgrade decisions.

Security and Compliance Considerations

Monday.com provides standard security features including:

However, healthcare organizations needing HIPAA compliance must purchase Enterprise plans with specific security configurations. The lack of HIPAA compliance on lower tiers eliminates monday.com as an option for many healthcare providers.

Financial services organizations with strict data residency requirements should verify that monday.com's data centers align with their compliance needs. Enterprise plans offer more control over data location.

One Reddit user identified a security loophole where data could be accessed inappropriately, raising concerns about security implementation beyond what's advertised on paper. While monday.com has addressed reported issues, teams handling sensitive data should conduct thorough security reviews.

Tips for Getting Maximum Value from Monday.com

Start with Templates

Don't build from scratch. Use monday.com's 200+ templates as starting points, even if you customize heavily. Templates embody best practices and save hours of setup time.

Plan Your Automation Strategy

Before creating automations, map out which repetitive tasks truly need automation. Prioritize high-frequency, low-complexity tasks. Monitor your automation usage regularly to avoid hitting limits unexpectedly.

Use Integrations Strategically

Connect monday.com to your 3-5 most important tools rather than trying to integrate everything. Focus on tools where bidirectional data flow provides clear value, like Slack for notifications or Google Drive for file management.

Invest in Training

Monday.com offers free training resources, webinars, and certification courses. Investing time in training for your team's monday.com champions pays dividends in adoption and effective use.

Regular Board Audits

Quarterly, review your boards, automations, and workflows. Delete outdated automations consuming actions. Consolidate boards that could be combined. Clean up old items clogging up views.

Leverage the API for Advanced Needs

If you have development resources, monday.com's GraphQL API and webhooks enable powerful custom integrations and automations beyond what the visual builder offers.

Consider Professional Services

For complex implementations, professional services from monday.com or certified partners can accelerate setup and avoid costly mistakes. While expensive upfront ($14,000-$20,000 is common), it may be cheaper than months of trial and error.

The Bottom Line: Is Monday.com Worth It?

Monday.com is a genuinely capable project management tool with a polished interface, strong feature set, and extensive integration ecosystem. The visual boards, flexible views, and automation capabilities can legitimately improve how teams work together.

But here's the honest truth: you need to be on at least the Standard plan ($12/seat) to get basic utility with automations and integrations, and realistically the Pro plan ($19/seat) to access features like time tracking, private boards, chart views, and meaningful automation capacity that most teams expect as standard.

Factor in the minimum 3-seat requirement, the bucket pricing that forces you to buy more seats than you need, and the feature-gating that pushes teams toward expensive upgrades, and costs add up faster than the initial pricing page suggests.

You should choose monday.com if:

You should skip monday.com if:

Monday.com occupies an interesting middle ground-more powerful than simple tools like Trello, more accessible than complex enterprise platforms like Microsoft Project, but more expensive than feature-rich alternatives like ClickUp. Whether that middle ground is right for you depends on your specific priorities around interface quality, feature needs, and budget constraints.

Try monday.com free for 14 days (Pro plan trial) to evaluate whether the interface and features justify the cost for your team. Pay particular attention to how quickly you'll hit automation limits and whether your must-have features are available on your target pricing tier.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is monday.com really free?

Yes, monday.com offers a free plan for up to 2 users with 3 boards and 200 items. However, the free plan lacks automations, integrations, and advanced views, making it suitable only for testing the platform. For real work, you'll need at least the Standard plan at $12/user/month.

Why is monday.com so expensive?

Monday.com's pricing reflects several factors: per-seat pricing with minimum requirements, bucket pricing that forces you to buy more seats than needed, and aggressive feature-gating that pushes teams toward Pro tier. Costs for a 20-person team on Pro can exceed $4,500/year.

Can I use monday.com for free with a team?

The free plan limits you to 2 users, so no. For team use, you need a paid plan starting at $9/user/month for Basic (without automations/integrations) or $12/user/month for Standard (with limited automations/integrations).

What happens if I exceed automation limits?

If you exceed your monthly automation action limit, monday.com deducts the overage from next month's allocation. If you consistently exceed limits, you'll need to upgrade to a higher tier or optimize your automation usage.

Does monday.com work offline?

No, monday.com requires an internet connection. The mobile app has limited offline functionality but is primarily designed for online use.

Can I cancel monday.com anytime?

If you pay monthly, you can cancel anytime. If you pay annually for the discount, you're committed to the full year. Some users report difficulties getting refunds for unused portions of annual subscriptions.

Is monday.com HIPAA compliant?

HIPAA compliance is available only on Enterprise plans with specific security configurations. The feature is not available on Free, Basic, Standard, or Pro plans.

How long does it take to implement monday.com?

Basic implementation can be done in days, but complex customization often takes weeks or months. Professional services projects reportedly take 2-6 months depending on complexity.

Can I migrate data from another project management tool?

Monday.com supports CSV import and offers some migration tools. Complex migrations from tools like Asana or Jira may require manual restructuring or professional services assistance.

What's the difference between monday work management and monday CRM?

They're separate products with separate pricing. Monday work management is for general project management. Monday CRM is specifically designed for sales pipeline management. This review focuses on monday work management.

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