monday.com CRM Review and Pricing

Why We Chose monday as the Best CRM for SMBs

SMBs rely on their marketing and sales teams to bring in quality leads and close sales. monday Sales CRM provides a wealth of features to help sales and marketing managers support and get more from their teams. For example, you can create customized workflows and automations to significantly reduce administrative tasks, enhance team collaboration and streamline client communication.

We were impressed by the interface’s user-friendly, drag-and-drop functionality, which makes it easier for sales managers with complex sales funnels to create workflows. You can create multiple pipelines for various products and campaigns, as well as customize on-screen dashboards to see real-time charts, graphs and tables to monitor the deals in your pipeline. 

Marketing teams can use monday to track campaigns and content marketing. The strategic planning tool is particularly useful, as it provides everyone with a clear roadmap for future campaigns and team responsibilities. There’s also a handy library of email marketing templates that sales and marketing teams can use to generate leads and close sales.

monday Sales CRM provides highly flexible CRM software and an intelligent platform with a thoughtful user interface. It offers a range of options for business owners who are looking to improve efficiency, performance and profitability. For these reasons and more, monday Sales CRM is our choice for the best CRM for SMBs. 

See all current deals in monday Sales CRM’s Kanban view. Source: monday.com

Ease of Use

A successful CRM implementation requires easy-to-use software. SMBs often operate with limited IT resources and don’t have time for extensive employee training on complex systems. Fortunately, monday Sales CRM offers ease of use right out of the box. 

Here are a few of the features that make monday Sales CRM easy to use:

• Customer data management: We found monday’s customer data management functionality excellent. Everything is neatly arranged into folders representing different departments or aspects of the sales process. Each folder contains customizable dashboards for tracking customers and leads, cross-departmental projects, campaigns, budgets, timelines and more. It can be challenging for SMBs to get a holistic view of business processes, so owners and managers will find this functionality particularly valuable.
• Customizable dashboards: Set up and customize dashboards to suit your business’s needs. 
• Template-based dashboards and pipelines: Alternatively, use templates to create new dashboards and sales pipelines quickly. (This feature is similar to rival Zendesk’s smart list templates. Read our Zendesk review to compare these features.) Template choices include project management, workflow tracking, customer onboarding, support ticket management, invoicing and billing tools, and marketing campaign management. 
• CRM-specific templates: We liked monday’s CRM-specific templates, which help team members organize contacts, manage leads and create optimized workflows. We also like that monday offers a dedicated CRM template for real estate agents, a sales enablement kit and a sales material repository. 
• Business app integrations: We appreciate that business app integrations are easy to set up with monday. Most can be added in a few clicks from the integration center;  no coding is required. In addition to popular choices such as Mailchimp, Slack and Zoom, you can connect to an extra set of apps through Zapier, find additional options in the connected marketplace, or use monday’s open API.
• Extensive online resources: We like that monday requires virtually no training. However, users who run into glitches or want to learn more can access the company’s extensive online resources, a community forum and a dedicated dashboard in the app. You can also find video tutorials and a monday Academy offering interactive courses and webinars. 

monday Sales CRM provides easily customizable email marketing templates. Source: monday.com

monday Features

monday offers a host of valuable CRM features and tools that help SMBs improve their organizational efficiency as well as their sales, marketing and customer service teams’ performance.

Workflow Automation

Automated workflows are an essential CRM feature that businesses use to ensure no details fall off the radar. They give teams more time to focus on their work rather than on updating CRM databases. We like how monday helps businesses use workflow automation to send emails and notifications, advance contacts and deals along the sales process, create reminders and tasks, and facilitate team management. For an SMB, these automations can significantly reduce the time spent on administrative tasks, thereby allowing teams to focus on improving customer relationships and closing deals.

You can choose from an extensive list of predefined automations or create your own using trigger-condition-action formulas. Each dashboard has a set of default automations. For example, you can decide to automatically send a custom email to a newly qualified lead or define the logic for moving deals between pipelines.

Users can access a handy pipeline management template to track progress and see their next actions. Source: monday.com

Full-Cycle Lead Management

Many CRMs stop helping after a sale is closed, forcing companies to deploy secondary software or other systems to manage post-sale activity. We appreciate that monday helps businesses manage the entire customer journey, including lead generation, invoicing, contracts and onboarding. You can mark a prospect’s or customer’s stage in the Status column — for example, “qualified,” “closing” or “follow-up.”

We like that you can create custom dashboards to reflect your business’s internal structure and set up custom automated workflows so contacts effortlessly advance through the stages. This functionality makes monday ideal for many business types and industries, from real estate to software development.

We also like monday’s lead management features, including the ability to merge duplicates when you’re importing leads from two or more sources or working with colleagues on a shared board. Disjointed data in different files is a big problem for many SMBs, and monday solves this problem well.

monday Sales CRM’s lead-management dashboard is clear and intuitive. Source: monday.com

Data Visualization 

CRM software is great for capturing and managing customer information. However, its real value for SMBs is the ability to use that data to improve decision-making and develop actionable business strategies. 

We were pleased to see that monday offers several ways to view data and share it internally or publicly. 

• Kanban view: monday’s Kanban view is excellent for drag-and-drop deal management.
• Files view: The Files view organizes documents and images for easy access. 
• Gantt view: The Gantt view identifies timelines and dependencies at a glance.
• Cards view: The Cards view gives you a visual snapshot of key item information.

monday’s data visualization functions allow you to do the following: 

• Create charts for tracking specific key performance indicators (KPIs)
• Monitor your team’s workload for optimal performance
• Set up and display the information collected through custom-made forms 

You can add as many views and dashboards as you like, so you can visualize the data that matters most to your business’s success.

Capture and manage all of your leads in one central location. Source: monday.com

Team Collaboration

Teams and departments often rely on each other to accomplish their work, so everyone must have access to the same information. We were impressed by monday’s team collaboration features. For example, ready-made templates and customizable dashboards provide a single point of communication to keep everything on track and improve productivity. 

We also like that SMBs can provide guest access to specific boards and files, making monday a great choice for companies that work with freelancers, contractors or hands-on clients who want to collaborate in real time. Additionally, users can set a work status to indicate whether they’re working from home, out sick, on a break, or in a meeting. This visibility ensures smooth and uninterrupted employee collaboration.

monday Sales CRM’s mobile app features built-in collaboration tools. Source: monday.com

Customizable Sales Workspace

monday’s customization options help businesses create a CRM that reflects their sales process and fits their specific needs. Here are some of our favorite customization features:

• Custom dashboards: We were impressed that users can create custom dashboards for each team or sales stage. They can add as many as 10,000 rows and 200 columns per board. (For enterprise plans, the number rises to 20,000 and 300, respectively.) These custom dashboards neatly arrange all relevant data, such as leads, accounts, opportunities and activities. 
• Color-coded labels: Many CRMs we reviewed let you create custom labels for deal stages or opportunity priority levels. However, we like that monday lets you color-code these labels to make it easy to grasp key information at a glance.
• Custom widgets: We like that monday lets you populate dashboards with custom widgets that can display calendars and timelines, pending tasks, your sales team’s workload, KPIs and targets, and any other information that’s relevant to your business. For a sales manager who’s under pressure to perform, having live insight into forthcoming activities, sales pipelines and co-worker performance will make it much easier to spot improvement opportunities. 
• Lead scoring: monday’s customizable lead-scoring function is exceptionally useful, helping managers and reps identify the prospects who are most likely to become customers.

monday allows you to create custom dashboards to accommodate your key CRM data. Source: monday.com

Integrations

We really liked monday’s extensive library of integrations. Here are some examples of what the integrations allow you to do: 

• Connect the software to Slack, Zoom or Microsoft Teams to facilitate real-time communication and messaging
• Attach and share files from OneDrive, Box or Dropbox
• Integrate Google’s suite of business apps directly into your dashboards
• Access integrations with HubSpot, Mailchimp and Hootsuite.
• Use the Email & Activities app to track recent lead conversions and updates and set up custom activity triggers for smart workflow automations.

If you can’t find the app you need, use monday’s integrations with Zapier and Make, which act as gateways to thousands of additional options. 

monday Pricing

monday offers a range of affordable service plans. Its pricing is structured by the number of “seats,” or users, but there’s a three-user minimum across all tiers. You can choose monthly or annual billing; there’s an 18 percent discount when you opt for the annual plan.

The prices listed below represent three seats, billed annually. 

• Basic: This plan costs $30 per month and includes unlimited read-only viewers, contacts and customizable pipelines, as well as 5GB of file storage.
• Standard: For $42 per month, this plan includes everything in Basic, plus two-way email syncing with Gmail and Outlook; quotes and invoices; Gantt, timeline and calendar data views; guest access; up to 250 automations and 250 integrations per month; and 20GB of file storage.
• Pro: For $72 per month, this plan includes everything in Standard, plus private boards; sales forecasting and CRM metrics; time tracking; chart and workload views; email tracking; up to 25,000 automations and 25,000 integrations per month; and 100GB of file storage.
• Enterprise: This plan requires you to call for a quote. It includes everything in Pro, plus enterprise-grade security, advanced CRM reporting, lead scoring, team quotas, up to 250,000 automations and 250,000 integrations per month, and 1TB of file storage.

Note that monday used to offer a free plan that allowed two users and limited functionality, but the company discontinued this option. However, monday does offer a 14-day free trial. 

Pricing Considerations

As mentioned, pricing is determined by seat per month. However, you must purchase seats in specific increments: three seats, five seats, and then increments of five up to 30. You can then choose 40, 50, 100 or 200+ users. So, if you have 110 users, you must decide which 10 people won’t get access or pay for 200 to have access. 

Businesses with more than 100 or 200 team members may do better with an enterprise-targeted platform. Check out our review of Oracle NetSuite CRM to learn about a suitable enterprise platform. 

Onboarding and Implementation

monday makes CRM implementation straightforward. You can use the cloud-based software anywhere with internet access. All of the technical heavy lifting is done behind the scenes, so new users can log in, create new boards from scratch or with a template, and begin adding tasks. 

Customers who prefer a computer-based work environment can download monday’s desktop app for Mac or Windows and follow the same setup process to get started. We like that SMBs don’t have to invest in an expensive server to host the platform and service user requests; everything happens in monday’s cloud. 

We also like that data migration is simple. You can upload Excel or CSV files, or use the import wizard to get data from platforms such as Basecamp, Jira, Trello and Asana. 

monday offers a video-driven Getting Started course that you can access via the CRM. Paid assistance is available through monday’s partnership program for businesses that need additional setup support or training. Pricing varies by the services needed, team size and other factors. Contact monday for a quote. Companies can also pay for staff to take specific monday training courses on topics such as core usage, API, sales CRM and admin certification.

Customer Support

monday’s customer support is comparable to the service from many CRM competitors we reviewed. It offers the following: 

• 24/7 email customer support with all plans
• A self-service resource center filled with tutorials, guides and other reference materials
• Blogs
• A community forum 

You can request a callback from a service rep. However, only the billing team is available to speak with you over the phone. monday is currently a long way from the 24/7 phone support that impressed us in our review of Salesforce CRM and Salesforce comparison.

Additionally, monday offers daily live webinars on how to use the software and optimize its features. Live and on-demand webinars are currently offered in English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese and Hebrew. The company is in the process of rolling out a chat support option.

monday’s Enterprise plan also includes a dedicated customer success manager to assist with onboarding and training. The plan includes continued personalized support for the duration of the subscription.

The customer service department was helpful and friendly when we contacted monday to learn more about onboarding and training options. A representative responded immediately with detailed information on how to get a quote and learn more about the company’s partnership training program.

Limitations 

There’s much to like about monday Sales CRM’s SMB features and functionality. However, we identified a few limitations to consider: 

• Complex pricing: While monday’s software is easy to understand, the company’s pricing structure is surprisingly complex. It changes based on the number of seats, which is fairly standard for CRM software — but instead of calculating pricing based on precise user numbers, the company makes customers choose in increments of three, five, 10, 15, 20 and so on. Those tiers change the price of individual plans accordingly, making it a bit challenging to select a plan that aligns with your budget and accommodates enough team members.
• Potential customization overload: monday is extremely customizable, allowing users to shape every aspect of the CRM to their needs. However, the product’s greatest strength can be a downside; some users may spend more time tweaking settings than actually using the software. Some businesses may be better served by a CRM system designed for a specific purpose. As an example, see our review of Pipedrive and Pipedrive comparison, which is designed specifically for sales automation.
• Required understanding of functions and formulas: A big part of customization is dependent on the use of IF-THEN formulas. While monday offers support materials to facilitate the process, newcomers who are unfamiliar with functions and formulas might find this aspect of the CRM somewhat challenging.

Methodology

When evaluating the top CRM solutions, we conducted extensive comparative research of dozens of software solutions in the CRM category. Our product review process included viewing software demos, corresponding with customer support teams, conducting hands-on feature evaluations, and assessing numerous on-demand webinars, tutorials and support materials. When looking for the best CRM system for SMBs specifically, we assessed scalability and flexibility and focused on features such as contact and deal management, sales enablement, workflow automation, team collaboration, data analytics and available integrations. Our goal is to help you find the right CRM for your business.

Bottom Line

We recommend monday Sales CRM for …

• Small and midsize businesses that are looking for an inexpensive and effective way to manage marketing and sales pipelines.
• Sales teams that are looking to manage the entire customer journey in one place.
• Companies that want greater visibility into the performance of their sales, marketing and customer service teams.

We don’t recommend monday Sales CRM for …

• Businesses that don’t want to deal with formulas and functions when customizing their CRM.
• Solopreneurs and business owners who need a CRM for a set number of seats.

Nadia Reckmann contributed to this review.