Monday.com

Monday.com was founded in 2012 and launched as an independent startup in 2014. Its mission is to help teams build a culture of transparency, and the company hopes to help everyone be happier and more productive at work.

• You can sign up for Monday.com here

The platform facilitates project management and encourages sharing knowledge with users. You can communicate, create a knowledgebase through Monday.com stories, share files, images and designs.

Monday.com integrates with various third-party applications and has its own mobile apps for iOS and Android.

Pricing

Monday.com offers four pricing tiers based on the number of users you have. Pricing starts at five users and goes up to 200+.

The lowest tier is for five users, with the ‘Basic’ plan running to £25 ($32) per month. This includes over 20 column types, Kanban view, embedded forms, basic activity log, iOS/Android mobile apps, two-factor authentication, 24/7 support and 5GB of storage. 

The ‘Standard’ plan, considered by Monday.com to be its most popular no matter the number of users, is £41 ($53) per month. It has all the ‘Basic’ plan has to offer plus timeline, calendar, map view, unlimited activity log, board sharing, form customization, advanced search, the ability to create templates, email integration, external integrations, a full API (Application Programming Interface) and 50GB of storage. 

The ‘Pro’ package is £62 ($79) per month. It includes all the features of the other two plans plus formula columns, time tracking, chart view, custom tags, unlimited guests, private boards, Google authentication and unlimited storage.

The ‘Enterprise’ tier costs £123 ($157) per month. Extra features included are a higher API rate limit, VIP support, one-on-one tracking, session management, audit log, 99.9% uptime SLA, single sign-on and 24/7 priority support.

There’s a free 14-day trial of the ‘Pro’ plan.

Setup

Monday.com walks you through setup, making it a fairly straightforward process. After you enter your email address, you are sent a confirmation code. Once you have entered this you are guided through a series of screens asking various questions.

These include detailing how many users you will have, what you will use the platform for, which tools are most useful to you, and you must also choose your workspace name and URL. The dashboard is then displayed, with this whole process only taking a matter of minutes.

You are immediately prompted to set up your first project. Again, Monday.com walks you through this. You can choose from a number of templates which include Marketing, Content Production, Project Management, Freelancers and Design amongst others. The platform’s featured templates include project level high plan, team tasks, sales process, job recruitment and social media schedule. We chose to sample the ‘project level high plan’ template.

Once you have chosen your template, a pop-up video loads showing you how to use it. You’re now ready to get started managing your project.

Interface

Monday.com’s interface is vibrant and catches the eye immediately. The inbox, ‘my week’, boards, shareable boards, private boards and various template options are displayed on the left-hand side of the dashboard.

You can access support from the bottom right of the screen. This comes in the form of instant help, webinars, support tickets and advice on getting started. We were particularly impressed by how easy the help section is to navigate.

Your profile and settings can be found on the top right of the dashboard. You can edit your personal information, password, notifications, and email integration options from here. You can also view keyboard shortcuts.

There is a search bar, the ability to manage team members, and a notifications icon along the top of the dashboard. You can also invite new team members.

Features

You can visualize your board’s information in multiple views with the Board View feature. The Add View button is located at the top right of your board.

The Views Center displays a variety of different board views. These include Files, Map, Calendar, Chart, Broadcast, Kanban and Timeline views.

Your chosen view is displayed along the top of the main dashboard screen. You can still see columns with tasks assigned for This Week underneath your new view.

Columns are the main focus of your board. Monday.com offers a huge range of columns that can be used to completely customize your board.

You can access columns and the Column Center via the ‘+’ icon on the right-hand side of the board you are working on. Users can add columns such as Status, Text, Person, Timeline, Date, Tags and Numbers from the drop-down list. There are more column types available in the Column Center. These include Checkbox, Link, World Clock, Phone, File and Location columns amongst others.

The Monday.com stories page allows users within the community to share knowledge and information. There are a variety of helpful categories, and users talk about how different aspects of the platform have helped them achieve goals and improve teamwork.

You can go to https://monday.com/stories and authorize access to your boards when you are uploading a story. Just click on the ‘Share your story’ button at the top right-hand side of the page when you find the category to which you want to share a board.

Monday.com integrates with a variety of applications. These include Excel, Trello, Google Calendar, Dropbox, Google Drive, Zapier, Integromat and Slack.

The Standard, Pro and Enterprise plans include API access so users with coding knowledge can integrate their own apps with the platform.

And on the mobile app front, the service has software for both iOS and Android. The mobile apps offer the same functionality as the web-based platform, and users can seamlessly switch between them.

Final verdict

Monday.com is a fun to use project management platform. Initial setup is straightforward, and while it may take some time to enter all the data needed for your first project, there is very little learning curve to negotiate. Each row/column is known as a pulse and typically contains a task in an easy to read layout.

There are a huge variety of templates to choose from so you are never bored. Each one is colorful and vibrant. However, the sheer number of options may be overwhelming for some users. If this is the case, you might want to check out simpler project management platforms such as Trello or Asana.

Monday.com is missing some features which are most commonly seen in more in-depth platforms such as Zoho Projects. There is no general discussion area that isn’t tied to individual projects. The lack of markup tools and recurring tools might also bother some users.

While Monday.com does have several price plans, it can be expensive compared to similar platforms like Trello.

All in all, though, Monday.com is an impressive task management platform to use. If you just want straight-up project collaboration and do not need in-depth tools, this is the right choice for you.

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