With its easy-to-use, robust customer relationship management platform, Monday.com can help businesses effectively manage customer relationships and sales processes while maximizing growth opportunities. Its CRM software is also highly customizable, which makes it agile and appealing to the changing needs of a growing business.
Monday includes helpful features for managing sales processes and projects while providing strong customer support tools, but is it the best CRM for startups?
Read on for our Monday CRM review and a detailed look at Monday’s core features and capabilities, then decide if it’s right for your business in 2024.
Best CRM for Startups: Monday.com
Streamline your sales pipeline with Monday.com’s easy-to-use CRM.
Start NowPros and Cons of Monday CRM
Monday’s CRM platform offers a pleasantly appealing interface with a robust selection of features, like the ability to set up automations with “recipes” or simple commands like, “When items are overdue, send a notification.” In addition, you can integrate popular software and centralize your entire sales process. But there are some limitations.
Pros of Monday CRM Software
- Very user-friendly
- Simple automation recipes
- Real time Workload board
- Loads of popular integrations
Cons of Monday CRM Software
- Per-user pricing
- Limits on monthly actions
Monday CRM Pricing and Features
Monday CRM offers a variety of plans to meet the needs of different users, including a free plan. After that, the plan comes in four tiered platforms, with its pricing varying based on included features and number of users. Each paid plan has a three-seat minimum. As with most providers, selecting a yearly over monthly subscription will increase your savings.
Individual (Free)
Notable Features:
- Stores up to 1,000 contacts
- Allows for two team members
- Boards with over 200 free rows
- Web form for lead capturing
- 500 MB of storage
Basic ($10/Seat/Month)
Notable Features:
- Unlimited contacts and boards
- 200+ templates
- iOS and Android apps
- 250 custom actions per month
- 5 GB storage
Standard ($14/Seat/Month)
Notable Features:
- Activity management
- Quotes and invoices
- Create dashboards from multiple boards
- 250 integration actions per month
- 2-way email integration
Pro ($24/Seat/Month)
Notable Features:
- Facebook Ad campaign integration
- Formula creation
- Time management tracking
- Forecasting and Analytics
- Google Calendar sync
Enterprise (Pricing Varies)
Notable Features:
- Dashboards with up to 50 boards
- Account management
- Sales document library
- HIPAA Compliance
- High-level security features
Monday CRM Reviews
Now that we’ve looked at Monday CRM software’s pricing plans and top features, it’s time to consider how well it works for its customers. The best way to do that is to hear directly from its customers.
Here are some verified reviews from TrustRadius by people who used Monday CRM:
“I use the Monday sales CRM to manage a small team on our commercial projects. I can oversee my team’s work, chase them on accounts, stay up to date with my own pipeline, and create new boards when we enter new territories. I also use the Monday sales CRM for creating new task list boards and keeping a record of all inbound leads we get.”
“Monday sales are well suited for companies that generate a lot of leads from different sources. Being able to keep and manage who and where the leads belong is key. This is useful if your team has different members working on certain types of leads, as you can assign them to different parties. I do not believe it is appropriate in scenarios where they may only be one single lead manager or if leads come from one source only.”
“Monday.com CRM has been the best choice for a startup of our size, allowing us to efficiently manage the relationship with hundreds of organizations through our first year. As opposed to other CRM tools, the onboarding time was short, and the engagement metrics of our internal team were super high.”
Satisfied Monday CRM software customers consistently praise it as being highly user-friendly with a short learning curve. This is not surprising since Monday started as a project management platform — making complex systems easy to manage is what it does best.
Startups, in particular, appreciate the integration capabilities that allow Monday’s CRM offerings to grow alongside your business. They also praise the breadth of capabilities that allow for easy management of sales processes for multiple team members.
Some criticisms of the platform relate to action limits, user limits, and customization restrictions. At the same time, a high level of customers report positive experiences with Monday CRM software.
How Does Monday CRM Compare?
There are plenty of competitors out there that offer CRM software for startups. One of the more popular is Salesforce. We find that Monday.com compares to Salesforce in the following ways:
Pricing
Unlike Salesforce, Monday offers a free plan with limited features for up to two users. After that, plans are tiered based on features and priced per user, but because there is a three-seat minimum for all priced plans, the low prices can be deceiving. Some critics of Monday feel that the lower-tiered plans are too limited in their offerings and will be quickly outgrown.
Salesforce offers robust capabilities in its lower-tiered plans, with its plans starting at $25/month for up to 10 users. However, critics point out that Salesforce’s pricing can be confusing and pricey with its variety of products and add-on capabilities. So, while Monday offers a somewhat simpler, straightforward pricing plan with lower entry points, Salesforce offers more robust options for comparably priced plans.
Features
Both Salesforce and Monday include an impressive array of features for users. Each has a highly functional and customizable workflow platform. Monday offers an easier ability to automate process actions with its recipes feature. Salesforce, on the other hand, offers unlimited actions, unlike Monday.
So, while at their core, they both score high in features, Monday’s extra capabilities are geared more toward project management and marketing, while Salesforce offers loads of features outside the umbrella of CRM. These include ecommerce, software development, and specific products geared toward your industry and business size. Bottom-line, Monday will give you everything and need, while Salesforce will give you all that and more.
Ease of Use
Monday began its journey as a project management platform, so making complex systems user-friendly is in its blood. As a result, it boasts an appealing visual interface that is pleasant to use with cheerful colors and helpful organizational tools. It also offers one of the most simple action programming tools by forgoing any need for coding and using simple commands.
Salesforce, meanwhile, launched as a software-as-a-service (SaaS) business, so it offers unparalleled integration and customization capabilities. While it also has a user-oriented design, the complexity of its offerings means that users can sometimes find the customization requirements frustrating, particularly for smaller, low-growth businesses.
Integrations
Salesforce boasts powerful integration capabilities with over 2,500 integration and app add-ons available to customers. Because of this, Salesforce has the ability to both rapidly scale alongside a startup as well as provide a strong CRM platform for an established business.
While both Monday and Salesforce offer popular mail and application integrations, like Slack and Google Drive, Monday, as a newer CRM platform, currently offers only about 50+ integrations (though it plans to keep adding more). However, through its Zapier integration, you can access thousands more. Still, Salesforce’s breadth and ease of integration capabilities put it in the lead.
Customization
Monday offers a surprising array of customization capabilities. It allows you to view and assemble data in a variety of ways. It also collects information upfront that it uses to adapt its offerings to your particular business needs. As your business changes and grows, you can continue to customize these processes. When it comes to action customizations, the incredible ease of its simple command-based feature is impressive.
Salesforce, however, offers possibly the best customization capabilities of any CRM software platform. It is designed to be personally configured and can integrate and customize apps easily. So while Monday offers everything you need, especially if you are a smaller or medium-growth business, Salesforce’s wide and deep customization capabilities put it on top.
Reporting and Analytics
Forecasting and Analytics features come included with Monday’s Pro plan. A project management service at its core, Monday’s reporting and analytics features are helpful and easy to follow but lean more toward monitoring tasks and managing team members at an impressively detailed level.
It’s not much of a surprise that Salesforce excels in capturing sophisticated, real-time sales and sales lead data. It also offers more powerful forecasting capabilities.
Customer Support
Both Salesforce and Monday offer robust built-in tools and helpful add-ons that allow their users to manage their customer support processes all in one place. However, when it comes to supporting their own customers, some critics point to Monday’s lack of live chat, even with paid plans that provide priority customer service access.
By integrating Slack, you can access Monday’s customer support in a way that approaches live chat. Salesforce, however, offers 24/7 customer support via its live chat and toll-free support number.
Final Thoughts on Monday CRM
Monday.com has created a CRM platform with attractive entry pricing points and impressive ease of use and customization capabilities that will allow you to integrate the most popular applications to continue optimizing your customer relationship management and sales efficiencies as your business grows.
As a newer player in the CRM space, Monday does not yet offer the robust array of customization capabilities and features that makes Salesforce stand out in the CRM software space. At the same time, Monday is a highly capable CRM platform with pleasant usability that will work well for most small- to medium-sized businesses, as well as startups with a medium growth trajectory.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Monday CRM?
Monday CRM is a cloud-based, customizable web and mobile work management platform that helps businesses improve the way they capture leads, track sales pipelines, and manage contacts for smoother processes and improved customer experience.
How much does Monday CRM cost?
Monday offers a free plan for up to two users to get you started with light CRM capabilities. The paid, tiered plan costs $10/seat/month for a minimum of three seats. The most expensive plan, Enterprise, requires you to contact Monday.com, as pricing varies based on the needs of the business. Just behind Enterprise is the Pro plan, starting at $24/seat/month.
What CRM is better than Monday?
Being better depends on many factors, such as the specific needs of your business and your capabilities for managing and customizing your CRM software. For example, Salesforce is more mature, with incredible reporting capabilities, add-ons, and features that are hard to beat for growing startups and more established businesses.