Project management software helps companies assign tasks, track progress and complete projects more efficiently. Monday.com is one of the more common solutions out there, but it isn’t ideal for every team.
There are plenty of other solutions offering similar features. Many tools have better connectivity (monday integrates with 50+ apps whereas Pipedrive, for example, connects with over 400) and more flexibility (e.g., more customizable reports).
To help you find the best platform for your organization, we’ve put together a list of the top eight monday.com alternatives. Below, we’ll compare these task management tools, project management tools and CRMs in terms of their features, pricing and reviews to help you make your decision.
8 best monday.com alternatives to consider
Monday.com is project management software aimed at small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs).
It has a versatile interface, but with a minimum of three users and many of its best features only available on higher plans (e.g., advanced reporting and analytics), you may find other options more suitable for your team.
Here are some of the best alternatives to consider if you aren’t sure about monday.com.
1. Best for sales and marketing tasks: Pipedrive
Pipedrive is a cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) tool designed by sales teams for sales teams.
It specializes in managing sales tasks, but with its broad range of features, you can use it as an all-in-one solution for project management and marketing too.
Pipedrive’s key features
Here are some of the features Pipedrive has when it comes to task and project management:
Project management. Track project progress, create custom fields and easily collaborate with team members in Projects by Pipedrive, an all-in-one CRM project management solution.
Sales pipeline management. Visualize your sales pipeline to see the status of your deals and which sales tasks to prioritize at a glance. It has an intuitive and customizable interface, so you can easily stay on top of pipeline management.
Contact and lead management. Get detailed contact and lead profiles to improve your lead management processes. You can use these profiles to add notes, schedule calls and plan tasks more effectively.
Activity calendar. Schedule activities related to a deal or contact and receive reminder notifications when a task is coming up with Pipedrive’s activity calendar.
Email integration and automation. Integrate Pipedrive with the top email providers, including Gmail, to send and receive emails directly from the platform. Use email marketing automation tools to quickly create and send personalized emails.
Customizable pipelines and fields. Using Pipedrive’s customizable CRM, you can tweak your sales pipelines, stages and fields based on the unique needs of your organization. These pipelines help you track your sales-related tasks or create custom pipelines to streamline project management.
Mobile CRM app. Access your Pipedrive dashboard from the mobile app for iOS and Android and manage your tasks from the field.
Reviews: How do people feel about Pipedrive?
Pipedrive is a highly rated CRM solution with an average of 4.6 out of 5 stars on Capterra. Most reviews focus on how easy it is to set up and use compared with other CRM solutions. The revenue-driving CRM has also won SaaS awards for its features, customer support and ease of use.
Further, Software Reviews recently ranked Pipedrive as the top solution for lead management based on its features, customer satisfaction levels and vendor experiences.
Where is Pipedrive headed?
Pipedrive has recently added more tools to help companies streamline task and sales management processes through features such as the AI sales assistant, automated lead distribution software and improved customization options.
The team at Pipedrive has plans to develop these key features, improving the already available AI-powered sales intelligence tools that reduce manual work.
How much does Pipedrive cost?
Pipedrive has five pricing tiers on the annual plan:
Essential. $14 per seat per month. Includes lead, deal, contact, calendar and pipeline management.
Advanced. $34 per seat per month. Includes everything in the Essential plan as well as full email sync, automations and scheduling capabilities.
Professional. $49 per seat per month. Includes everything in the Advanced plan, plus lead routing, document management, sales forecasting and additional customization options.
Power. $64 per seat per month. Includes everything in the Professional plan, plus phone support, project planning and additional features for large, complex teams.
Enterprise. $99 per seat per month. Includes everything in the Power plan as well as enhanced security, unlimited reports and increased automation capabilities.
Pipedrive also stands out from its competition with its add-ons, including Campaigns, Smart Docs, LeadBooster and Web Visitors. These add-ons provide a stack of extra features and many of them are priced per company rather than per user, helping companies scale with greater peace of mind.
Pipedrive: The bottom line
Pipedrive is an affordable and powerful tool that can help small to large businesses manage sales processes and tasks from a single dashboard.
ClickUp is a project management tool used by teams to manage tasks, documents and internal communications in one place.
It has a range of project management features, such as task assignments and time tracking. The app doesn’t offer many features specific to sales, like pipeline management or lead tracking.
For this reason, it’s more suitable for teams that primarily need a tool to manage clients and projects after the sale.
ClickUp’s key features
Here are some of ClickUp’s best features:
Task assignments. Assign comments and tasks to key users (with dependencies) to ensure everything gets done on time.
Custom fields and dashboards. Create customizable fields and dashboards to display and track key tasks and performance indicators.
Templates. Use ClickUp’s pre-created project management templates to track project progress and ensure timely completion.
Automation. Complete basic tasks through custom actions and triggers using ClickUp’s workflow automations.
Integrations. Add over 1,000 integrations to ClickUp for free. ClickUp also integrates with Pipedrive so that you can automatically sync tasks between platforms.
Reviews: How do people feel about ClickUp?
ClickUp has an average rating of 4.7 out of 5 stars on Capterra. Users like that you can track a project and internal communications in one place, as well as the availability of a free trial.
Reviews also mention a steep learning curve to get the platform working optimally.
What’s next for ClickUp?
Like many tools, ClickUp has recently released an AI project management tool that can help summarize projects, generate content and plan tasks. Along with the recent release of ClickUp 3.0, the company’s priorities appear to be intuitiveness and ease of use.
How much does ClickUp cost?
ClickUp offers four pricing tiers:
Free. ClickUp’s free plan offers unlimited tasks and members, collaborative docs, real-time chat, a basic custom field manager and more.
Unlimited. $7 per user per month if you pay annually and $10 per user if you pay monthly. Offers everything in the free plan, along with unlimited storage, dashboards, integrations, custom fields and more. Salespeople using ClickUp may need to start on the Unlimited plan to get the features they need to manage leads.
Business. $12 per user per month on the annual plan and $19 per user on the monthly plan. Includes everything in Unlimited, as well as advanced tools for larger teams (like automations and time tracking).
Enterprise. Contact ClickUp to discuss pricing. Includes everything in Business, plus advanced tools to help companies manage multiple teams and compliance.
ClickUp: The bottom line
ClickUp offers a range of customizable project management features but you’ll need to dedicate some time to learn it for full functionality.
Asana, another Monday alternative, is a web-based project and task management tool that helps teams create workflows and collaborate more effectively.
Like monday.com, Asana provides several options to increase flexibility and lets teams tailor the platform to their unique requirements.
Note: Pipedrive has an Asana CRM integration that helps teams get the benefits of Asana from their Pipedrive dashboard, enabling them to streamline tasks and enhance communications.
Asana’s key features
Here are some of the features that set Asana apart:
Timeline view. Get a live view of overlapping tasks and deadlines in Asana’s Timeline, helping you see how the different parts of your projects fit together.
Project breakdown. Break down projects into tasks and subtasks, so you can visualize your project baseline in list view, Kanban boards or Gantt Charts.
Automations. Use AI tools that help you draft content, get real-time updates and find quick answers to questions about your projects.
Workspaces. Get a 360-degree view of multiple projects at once, with an overview of task dependencies and project progress.
Reviews: How do people feel about Asana?
Asana has an average rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars on Capterra. Reviews mention the collaborative features that help teams track tasks more effectively and the intuitive interface.
Some customers find that Asana produces too many notifications, making important alerts hard to notice.
What’s next for Asana?
Asana is planning to release more powerful artificial intelligence features that help users get updates and automatically perform key tasks. It also states it will improve reports and add new integrations.
How much does Asana cost?
Asana has three pricing tiers:
Personal. The Personal plan is the free version of Asana. It includes unlimited tasks, projects and file storage for up to 10 users.
Starter. $10.99 per user per month annually and $13.49 per user per month if paid monthly. It includes everything in Personal for up to 500 users, as well as different project views and dashboards.
Advanced. $24.99 per user per month annually and $30.49 per user if paid monthly. It includes everything in Starter, plus advanced features that help teams who need to manage a large portfolio of projects across different departments.
Asana: The bottom line
Asana is a collaborative project management tool and can integrate with a CRM to add workflows for sales processes.
Trello is another web-based project management app, well-known for its simplicity and usability.
Where monday.com includes advanced features for complex projects, Trello focuses on a user-friendly interface for small teams.
Note: The Trello CRM integration for Pipedrive lets you move information between the two apps and seamlessly control your Trello cards from within Pipedrive.
Trello’s key features
Trello has most of the key project management features, including:
Boards, lists and cards. Each project has a board with lists of tasks. Each task has its own card, showing all of the relevant information.
Collaboration features. Users can leave comments and attachments on key tasks as they move between lists.
Power-Ups. Trello calls its integrations “Power-Ups” which can improve the functionality of your Trello boards.
Butler. Butler is Trello’s AI automation feature which lets users automate simple tasks (like moving a card from one list to another and adding new assigned members).
Reviews: How do people feel about Trello?
Trello has an average review of 4.5 out of 5 stars on Capterra. Many Trello reviews focus on how the tool is ideal for handling simple projects.
What’s next for Trello?
While Trello hasn’t released a roadmap of specific features, the tool has recently focused on adding AI capabilities and tools that help admins manage their teams more effectively.
How much does Trello cost?
Trello offers four plans:
Free. Completely free with up to 10 boards per workspace, unlimited Power-Ups, assignees and due dates.
Standard. $5 per user per month if you pay annually, or $6 if you pay monthly. It includes everything in the Free plan, plus unlimited boards, advanced checklists, custom fields and more.
Premium. $10 per user per month annually, or $12.50 per user per month when you pay monthly. It includes everything in Standard as well as different views, advanced admin and security features and tools that help teams manage multiple projects at once.
Enterprise. Starts at $17.50 per user per month, paid annually. It includes everything in the Premium plan, plus unlimited workspaces and features designed with large teams in mind.
Trello: The bottom line
Trello is a project management solution that’s best for freelancers or small teams and simple projects.
Airtable is a database and resource management system that helps companies organize their data and manage projects more efficiently. Teams can use Airtable to manage large amounts of data and improve operational efficiency.
Note: Airtable integrates with Pipedrive to enable real-time workflow management between the apps
Airtable’s key features
Airtable’s main features include:
Different views. Organize and categorize stored information in different views, including grid, Kanban, gallery and form views.
Powerful custom fields. Add a variety of field types and include long text, attachments, checkboxes and more.
Workflow automations. Set up automatic actions that occur whenever something triggers key conditions.
Inventory and vendor management. Keep track of your vendors and inventory with a fully customizable database.
Reviews: How do people feel about Airtable?
Airtable has an average rating of 4.7 out of 5 stars. Reviewers speak highly of Airtable when it comes to managing and visualizing data flexibly, but some users express concern about the pricing structure for teams that want to scale.
What’s next for Airtable?
Following a big update in 2023, Airtable appears to now be working on additional AI features (including AI-powered workflow automations), new integration capabilities and security and governance features for large enterprises.
How much does Airtable cost?
Airtable has four pricing plans:
Free. The free forever plan includes unlimited databases for up to five users, with 1,000 records and 1GB of storage per database.
Team. $20 per user per month after a free trial if you pay annually, or $24 on the monthly plan. It includes everything in the Free plan with 50,000 records, automations, integrations and a handful of different formatting and view options.
Business. $45 per user per month annually, or $54 per user when billed monthly. It includes everything in the Team plan, with vastly increased records and automations. Also includes an admin panel and features aimed at managing larger teams and databases.
Enterprise. Contact Airtable to get a quote. It includes advanced enterprise-scale features like security, admin controls and custom APIs.
Airtable: The bottom line
Airtable is first and foremost a database tool but it does integrate with some CRMs for more robust task management functionality.
Wrike is a project management and collaboration tool that’s similar to Asana. It has many of the same features as monday.com.
Wrike’s key features
Some of Wrike’s key features include:
Built-in time-tracking. Wrike has a time-tracking feature that allows precise tracking of how many hours of work each project has taken.
Report customization. In Wrike, you can create real-time reports as line, bar or pie graphs and easily visualize your KPIs.
Collaborative editing. Wrike includes tools that let team members edit documents simultaneously.
Approval process control. The Wrike platform lets you manage request and approval processes which is especially useful for teams who require many stages and hand-offs.
Reviews: How do people feel about Wrike?
Wrike has an average rating of 4.3 out of 5 stars on Capterra. Reviews focus on the platform’s usability, simple interface and deep functionality. Smaller teams and companies express some concern about affordability (e.g., features like time-tracking are only available on higher plans).
What’s next for Wrike?
Recently, Wrike has released several updates introducing new views, conditional forms and automations to its platform. Like other project management platforms, one of its major future focuses is on artificial intelligence.
How much does Wrike cost?
Wrike offers five pricing tiers, all of which are billed annually:
Free. Wrike’s free plan includes access to the web, desktop and mobile apps, AI content generation and limited view options.
Team. $9.80 per user per month. It includes everything in the free plan for up to 25 users, plus unlimited projects, tasks, custom fields and forms.
Business. $24.80 per user per month. It includes everything in Team for up to 200 users. Also includes additional automations, project templates and features for larger teams.
Enterprise. Contact Wrike to get a quote. It includes everything in the Business plan, plus several features to help admin manage large teams.
Pinnacle. Contact Wrike to get a quote. It includes everything in the Enterprise plan as well as advanced reporting dashboards, budgeting and time planning features.
Wrike: The bottom line
Wrike is a project management solution for mid-sized or large organizations that need team collaboration features and may work as a simple CRM.
Basecamp is project management software focused on communication. It’s suited to small teams with relatively simple projects.
Basecamp’s key features
Basecamp’s key features include:
To-do lists. Assign tasks, set due dates and track milestone progress with simple task lists.
Message boards. Keep discussions in the app, eliminating the need for email lists or alternative apps.
Document sharing. Store and share project-related documents and files.
Campfires. Use Basecamp’s in-app messaging platform, known as Campfires, to enable real-time discussions about projects and tasks.
Reviews: How do people feel about Basecamp?
Basecamp’s average rating on Capterra is 4.3 out of 5 stars. Basecamp’s reviews focus on its communication features and ease of use, with the platform standing out for small teams with straightforward projects.
What’s next for Basecamp?
Basecamp has recently released Basecamp 4.0 with new formatting and customization options, including Kanban-style and timeline views. The tool doesn’t offer a roadmap but focuses most updates on increasing the usability, intuitiveness and overall functionality of the app.
How much does Basecamp cost?
Basecamp only offers two paid plans:
Basecamp. $15 per user per month, with a free trial. This plan includes features targeted at small teams.
Basecamp Pro Unlimited. $299 per month, billed annually (regardless of the number of users). The Pro Unlimited plan includes unlimited users and every feature available on the Basecamp platform.
Basecamp: The bottom line
Basecamp is a platform for freelancers, small businesses and startups where the main need is transparent client communication.
Jira is a project management solution designed primarily for bug and issue tracking in software development contexts. In comparison with the more generalized monday.com, Jira is built on the Agile methodology and provides several tools specific to software development.
Jira’s key features
Some of Jira’s main features include:
Bug and issue tracking. Jira provides extensive issues tracking tools that enable teams to capture, assign and track bugs throughout the development process.
Agile method functionality. The Jira platform is built on the Agile methodology, using frameworks like Scrum and Kanban as well as sprint planning tools.
Developer tool integration. Jira provides deep integrations with software development tools like Confluence.
Advanced reporting features. Jira offers detailed, built-in reports to track project status, productivity and timelines.
Reviews: How do people feel about Jira?
Jira has an average rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars. The majority of users speak highly of its software development features, while others find that the platform’s steep learning curve can increase onboarding and training time for new users.
What’s next for Jira?
Upcoming updates for Jira include APIs that will help admins manage users, boost security and utilize AI.
How much does Jira cost?
Jira provides four plans:
Free. The free plan is available for up to 10 users and includes unlimited project boards, project timelines and reporting and insights.
Standard. $8.15 per user per month or $850 for up to 10 users per year, with a free trial. Pricing goes up depending on the number of team members who need access. The most expensive is for 34,001 to 35,000 users, costing $1,282,000 per year. The Standard plan includes everything in the Free plan for up to 35,000 users, with user roles, permissions and data residency choices.
Premium. $16 per user per month or $1,600 per year for up to 10 users. The price increases depending on how many people need access, with 34,001-35,000 users costing $2,102,000 annually. It includes everything in Standard, plus Atlassian Intelligence (AI) and advanced software development features.
Enterprise. For companies that need over 35,000 users. Contact Atlassian to get a quote. It includes everything in the Premium plan as well as centralized security controls and 24/7 customer support.
Jira: The bottom line
Jira is a work management tool designed primarily for software development teams.
Final thoughts
There are many project management tools on the market today but they often offer features you don’t want or need. Some work as a CRM while others require significant setup so that you can get the most from them. There’s also the risk that the project management software isn’t powerful enough or doesn’t offer the functionality to scale as your business grows, meaning it ends up inhibiting teamwork and productivity instead of boosting them.
Create a checklist of features you need now (e.g., sales automation) and those you’d like to have in the future (e.g., email marketing). With this information, you can see which tools suit you today while offering affordable scalability.
Pipedrive can help you better manage your sales pipeline and increase efficiencies, even with a large volume of leads. It’s full of customizable features with transparent pricing that can scale with your team.
Considering Pipedrive? Try it free for 14 days.
