Monday.com Alternative: 10 Better Options for Project Management in 2025

TL;DR: Mon​day​.com runs $16/​user month­ly and hon­est­ly gets over­whelm­ing fast if you’re a small­er team. I test­ed 10 alter­na­tives over three months — one’s 56% cheap­er, anoth­er has fea­tures Mon­day com­plete­ly ignores (built-in finan­cial stuff), and a cou­ple are just… sim­pler. Skip to the table if you’re in a hurry.

So you’re hunt­ing for a Mon­day alternative.

Wel­come to the club. There are like, thou­sands of teams using Mon​day​.com right now. It’s pop­u­lar for a rea­son. But per­fect? Not even close.

Maybe you’re star­ing at a $5,760 annu­al bill for your 30-per­son crew and think­ing ​“this seems exces­sive.” Or Mon­day’s got so many cus­tomiza­tion options that half your team gave up and went back to Google Sheets because ​“it’s sim­pler.” I get it.

Last quar­ter I test­ed Mon​day​.com com­peti­tors. Actu­al­ly used them — did­n’t just skim fea­ture com­par­i­son pages. Some were sur­pris­ing­ly good. Oth­ers dis­ap­point­ed hard. One saved a client $3,240/year while their pro­duc­tiv­i­ty went up.

This won’t be anoth­er cook­ie-cut­ter ​“here are 10 tools with bul­let points” arti­cle. We’re talk­ing real pric­ing (the hid­den costs too), actu­al lim­i­ta­tions nobody men­tions, and which tools work for which team types. You’ll walk away know­ing your Mon­day replace­ment — or maybe you’ll real­ize Mon­day’s actu­al­ly fine for you.

What’s Actu­al­ly Wrong with Mon​day​.com?

Let’s be real about why you’re here.

Price creep. Mon­day starts at $9/​seat/​month. Sounds rea­son­able until you real­ize the Basic plan is basi­cal­ly use­less. Need time track­ing? Automa­tions? Inte­gra­tions that mat­ter? You’re jump­ing to Stan­dard at $16/​seat. That’s $5,760 year­ly for a 30-per­son team.

Not exact­ly spare change.

Too much cus­tomiza­tion. Mon­day’s flex­i­bil­i­ty is great… until it isn’t. I’ve watched teams burn three weeks con­fig­ur­ing boards, set­ting up automa­tions, build­ing cus­tom dash­boards. Then what hap­pens? Half the team still uses spread­sheets because ​“Mon­day’s too com­pli­cat­ed.” The irony.

No finan­cial tools. Want project bud­gets? Client invoic­ing? Expense track­ing? Mon­day does­n’t do this native­ly. You’ll be adding Zapi­er con­nec­tions and third-par­ty tools (trans­la­tion: more month­ly fees).

Gets lag­gy at scale. Teams run­ning 100+ active projects com­plain about per­for­mance issues. Boards with heavy automa­tion load slow­ly. Not a deal­break­er, but annoy­ing when you’re rac­ing deadlines.

Don’t get me wrong — Mon­day works great for plen­ty of teams. If these pain points sound famil­iar though, let’s find some­thing better.

How to Actu­al­ly Choose the Right Mon​day​.com Alternative

Here’s what mat­ters when you’re eval­u­at­ing Mon­day com­peti­tors. And what’s just mar­ket­ing noise.

Price vs. Value

You need to cal­cu­late total cost of own­er­ship. Not just the stick­er price. That “$7/​seat” tool might require three paid inte­gra­tions to match what Mon­day does out of the box, and sud­den­ly you’re pay­ing the same amount.

For­mu­la I use:
(Base sub­scrip­tion + required add-ons + set­up time cost) ÷ active users = real month­ly cost per person

Fea­ture Par­i­ty (Do You Actu­al­ly Need It?)

Most teams use maybe 30% of Mon­day’s fea­tures. Seriously.

Make a list of what you actu­al­ly need:

• Task man­age­ment? (lit­er­al­ly every­one has this)
• Time track­ing? (not everyone)
• Client access? (rar­er than you’d think)
• Finan­cial man­age­ment? (almost nobody builds this in)
• Gantt charts? (pret­ty common)
• Automa­tion? (com­mon, but com­plex­i­ty varies like crazy)

Team Size Mat­ters More Than You Think

A tool built for 5‑person agen­cies won’t scale to 50-per­son prod­uct teams. And enter­prise plat­forms will absolute­ly crush small teams with fea­tures they’ll nev­er touch.

Be hon­est about where you are now. And where you’ll be in 18 months.

Migra­tion Isn’t Just ​“Export to CSV”

Switch­ing tools means:

• Train­ing every­one (bud­get 2 – 4 hours per per­son minimum)
• Rebuild­ing work­flows and automa­tions from scratch
• Con­nect­ing inte­gra­tions again
• Mov­ing his­tor­i­cal data (or decid­ing what to archive)

The best Mon­day alter­na­tive isn’t the one with the most fea­tures. It’s the one your team will actu­al­ly use. Remem­ber that.

Top 10 Mon​day​.com Alter­na­tives Compared

Alright, let’s get into it. I’ve orga­nized these by over­all val­ue first, then spe­cial­ized use cases.

1. Work­sec­tion — Best Over­all Mon­day Alternative

Pric­ing: $7/​user/​month (Busi­ness plan)
Best for: Teams who want Mon­day’s pow­er with­out the price tag
What makes it dif­fer­ent: Built-in finan­cial man­age­ment + way sim­pler interface

Work­sec­tion tops this list for good reasons.

The Price Thing
$7/​user/​month vs. Mon­day’s $16/​user for Stan­dard. That’s 56% cheap­er. For a 30-per­son team, you’re look­ing at $2,520/year instead of $5,760/year.

That’s $3,240 in sav­ings. Annually.

That’s not a typo — that’s a full-time junior devel­op­er salary in some mar­kets. Or a seri­ous mar­ket­ing bud­get. Or just… mon­ey you’re not light­ing on fire.

Built-in Finan­cial Stuff

This is where Work­sec­tion real­ly shines com­pared to alter­na­tives to Mon­day. Unlike Mon­day (which needs Zapi­er + account­ing tool con­nec­tions), you get:

• Project bud­get­ing with cost track­ing built in
• Time-based billing calculations
• Expense man­age­ment
• Invoice gen­er­a­tion
• Finan­cial reports per project and per client

I worked with a dig­i­tal agency last year that switched from Mon­day specif­i­cal­ly for this. They were jug­gling Mon­day + Quick­Books + man­u­al spread­sheets for rec­on­cil­i­a­tion. Night­mare. Now every­thing’s in one plat­form. Their finance direc­tor said it saves her team 6 hours week­ly. Just on reconciliation.

Inter­face Phi­los­o­phy Is Different

Mon­day gives you infi­nite cus­tomiza­tion options. Work­sec­tion gives you sen­si­ble defaults that actu­al­ly work.

Both approach­es have mer­it — depends on your team. Got a ded­i­cat­ed PM who loves tin­ker­ing with work­flows for hours? Mon­day’s flex­i­bil­i­ty is great. Need your team man­ag­ing projects instead of con­fig­ur­ing soft­ware? Work­sec­tion’s ​“it just works” approach is refreshing.

Three view modes come stan­dard: Gantt charts, Kan­ban boards, Cal­en­dar views. Switch between them instant­ly. Zero set­up. Your devel­op­ers can live in Kan­ban while your PM uses Gantt — same under­ly­ing data.

Real Results (Not Mar­ket­ing Fluff)

Gen­e­sis (devel­op­ment com­pa­ny) cut their dev cycle from 14 days to 9 days after switch­ing to Work­sec­tion. That’s a 35% improve­ment. Ban­da accel­er­at­ed their approval process by 40%.

These aren’t iso­lat­ed cas­es. Sim­pler inter­face = less time man­ag­ing tools, more time doing actu­al work.

Where It Falls Short

Being hon­est here:

• Few­er third-par­ty inte­gra­tions than Mon­day (though essen­tial ones are covered)
• Less visu­al cus­tomiza­tion (you can’t col­or-code everything)
• Small­er user com­mu­ni­ty (few­er tem­plates, few­er tuto­ri­als online)

Bot­tom line: If you’re on Mon­day Stan­dard or high­er and don’t need ultra-spe­cif­ic cus­tomiza­tion, Work­sec­tion saves mon­ey while deliv­er­ing core fea­tures that mat­ter. Not the flashiest Mon­day com­peti­tor, but prob­a­bly the smartest choice for most teams.

2. Asana — Best for Task-Focused Teams

Pric­ing: $10.99/user/month (Starter), $24.99/user/month (Advanced)
Best for: Teams who pri­or­i­tize task man­age­ment over com­plex workflows
What makes it dif­fer­ent: Clean inter­face with pow­er­ful task dependencies

Asana’s the Mon­day alter­na­tive most peo­ple try first. Makes sense — it’s been around for­ev­er and task man­age­ment is gen­uine­ly excellent.

What Asana Does Better

Task man­age­ment expe­ri­ence is clean­er than Mon­day. Cre­at­ing tasks, adding sub­tasks, set­ting depen­den­cies, assign­ing own­ers — every­thing feels more nat­ur­al. Mon­day can do the same stuff, but there’s more friction.

Asana’s Time­line view (their Gantt chart ver­sion) is gen­uine­ly beau­ti­ful. Unlike Mon­day’s some­times-lag­gy boards, Asana stays fast even with hun­dreds of tasks.

Pric­ing Gets Tricky Though

Asana Starter at $10.99/user looks cheap­er than Mon­day ini­tial­ly. Until you hit the lim­i­ta­tions — no Time­line view, no cus­tom fields, no reporting.

The Advanced plan ($24.99/user) has what you need… and costs more than Monday.

Where It Disappoints

• No built-in time track­ing (need Har­vest or Tog­gl integration)
• Client col­lab­o­ra­tion fea­tures are limited
• Report­ing exists but isn’t great
• Gets expen­sive scal­ing up

Best for: Small to mid-size teams (10−30 peo­ple) main­ly need­ing task man­age­ment. Don’t need exten­sive client access or time tracking.

3. Click­Up — Best for Teams Who Want Everything

Pric­ing: $7/​user/​month (Unlim­it­ed), $12/​user/​month (Busi­ness)
Best for: Pow­er users want­i­ng every fea­ture imaginable
What makes it dif­fer­ent: More fea­tures than any com­peti­tor. Literally.

Fea­ture Explosion

Click­Up has every­thing. I mean everything:

• Docs (like Notion)
• White­boards (like Miro)
• Goals and OKRs
• Time track­ing
• Work­load management
• Mind maps
• Forms
• Email in the app
• Chat
• Clip (screen recording)

At $7/​user/​month, you’re get­ting fea­tures that would nor­mal­ly cost 3 – 4 sep­a­rate subscriptions.

Gen­uine­ly impressive.

But Here’s the Catch

The inter­face is dense. New users get over­whelmed imme­di­ate­ly. I’ve seen teams spend a full month try­ing to con­fig­ure Click­Up ​“the right way” before giv­ing up and revert­ing to sim­pler tools.

If you’ve got a ded­i­cat­ed project man­ag­er who’ll invest time learn­ing Click­Up’s com­plex­i­ty, it’s incred­i­ble val­ue. If you’re a 10-per­son team where every­one wears mul­ti­ple hats? The learn­ing curve might not be worth it.

Per­for­mance Can Be Slow

Click­Up’s improved, but it’s still slow­er than most Mon​day​.com alter­na­tives here. Load­ing large projects takes notice­ably longer. Minor annoy­ance. Worth men­tion­ing though.

Best for: Tech-savvy teams (20−100 peo­ple) want­i­ng to con­sol­i­date tools. Need some­one ded­i­cat­ed to man­ag­ing the platform.

4. Trel­lo — Best for Visu­al Thinkers and Small Teams

Pric­ing: Free (sur­pris­ing­ly usable), $5/​user/​month (Stan­dard), $10/​user/​month (Pre­mi­um)
Best for: Small teams, agen­cies, cre­ative projects
What makes it dif­fer­ent: Dead sim­ple Kan­ban interface

Trel­lo is Click­Up’s oppo­site. Does one thing — Kan­ban boards — brilliantly.

Sim­plic­i­ty Is the Point

You can onboard your entire team on Trel­lo in 15 min­utes. It’s visu­al, intu­itive, famil­iar. Even non-tech peo­ple under­stand ​“move cards between columns.” If Mon­day feels like overkill, Trel­lo might be perfect.

Where Trel­lo Works

• Con­tent calendars
• Design work­flows
• Sales pipelines
• Sim­ple project tracking
• Per­son­al productivity

Where Trel­lo Does­n’t Work

The moment you need Gantt charts, depen­den­cies, resource man­age­ment, or advanced report­ing? Trel­lo falls apart. It’s not designed for com­plex project management.

Pow­er-Ups (Trel­lo’s inte­gra­tions) help some, but you’re basi­cal­ly rebuild­ing fea­tures Mon­day has natively.

Best for: Teams under 15 peo­ple with straight­for­ward work­flows. Also bril­liant for per­son­al productivity.

5. Smartsheet — Best for Spread­sheet Lovers

Pric­ing: $7/​user/​month (Pro), $25/​user/​month (Busi­ness)
Best for: Teams tran­si­tion­ing from Excel/​Google Sheets
What makes it dif­fer­ent: Looks like a spread­sheet, works like PM software

If your team lives in spread­sheets and resists any­thing with­out cells and rows, Smartsheet is your Mon­day replacement.

The Famil­iar Interface

Smartsheet lit­er­al­ly looks like Excel. But under­neath, it’s got PM fea­tures — Gantt charts, automa­tions, forms, dashboards.

It’s the gate­way drug from spread­sheets to actu­al project man­age­ment tools.

Who It’s For

• Con­struc­tion teams
• Oper­a­tions managers
• Any­one who built elab­o­rate project track­ers in Excel
• Indus­tries where ​“we’ve always done it in spread­sheets” is the default

The Lim­i­ta­tions

More expen­sive than it appears (the $7 Pro plan is very lim­it­ed). And while the spread­sheet inter­face feels famil­iar, it’s still… a spread­sheet interface.

If you’re try­ing to move your team away from spread­sheet think­ing, this won’t help.

Best for: Tra­di­tion­al indus­tries (con­struc­tion, man­u­fac­tur­ing, oper­a­tions) where teams are com­fort­able with spread­sheets but need col­lab­o­ra­tion and automation.

6. Airtable — Best for Data­base-Dri­ven Projects

Pric­ing: Free (lim­it­ed), $20/​user/​month (Team), $45/​user/​month (Busi­ness)
Best for: Teams man­ag­ing com­plex, inter­con­nect­ed data
What makes it dif­fer­ent: Data­base pre­tend­ing to be a PM tool (in the best way)

Where Airtable Excels

If your projects involve inter­con­nect­ed data — like track­ing prod­ucts across mul­ti­ple mar­kets with dif­fer­ent launch dates, pric­ing tiers, and stake­hold­ers — Airtable’s rela­tion­al data­base struc­ture is brilliant.

I’ve seen con­tent teams man­age edi­to­r­i­al cal­en­dars where arti­cles link to authors, top­ics, key­words, pub­li­ca­tion sched­ules. Try doing that clean­ly in Monday.

The Pric­ing Problem

Gets expen­sive fast. Free plan’s too lim­it­ed for real work. Team plan ($20/​user) is where it becomes use­ful. Larg­er teams? $45/​user/​month. That’s near­ly 3x Mon­day’s cost.

Best for: Mar­ket­ing teams, con­tent oper­a­tions, prod­uct man­agers deal­ing with com­plex inter­con­nect­ed work­flows. Not ide­al for straight­for­ward task management.

7. Base­camp — Best for Remote Teams Who Hate Meetings

Pric­ing: $15/​user/​month (or Pro Unlim­it­ed: $299/​month flat fee for unlim­it­ed users)
Best for: Remote-first com­pa­nies pri­or­i­tiz­ing async communication
What makes it dif­fer­ent: Designed to reduce meet­ings, not just man­age tasks

The Base­camp Philosophy

Instead of infi­nite cus­tomiza­tion, you get:

• To-dos (task lists)
• Mes­sage boards (thread­ed discussions)
• Sched­ules (cal­en­dar)
• Docs & Files
• Camp­fire (group chat)
• Auto­mat­ic check-ins (sched­uled ques­tions your team answers async)

That’s it. No com­plex work­flows. No automa­tions. No 47 dif­fer­ent views. Just straight­for­ward project com­mu­ni­ca­tion and task tracking.

Who This Works For

Ful­ly remote teams drown­ing in meet­ings and Slack mes­sages love Base­camp. Forces async com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Reduces real-time coor­di­na­tion chaos.

Who It Does­n’t Work For

Need time track­ing, resource man­age­ment, Gantt charts, client billing, or advanced report­ing? Base­camp won’t cut it. It’s inten­tion­al­ly simple.

Best for: Remote agen­cies (10−50 peo­ple) valu­ing sim­plic­i­ty and async work over feature-richness.

8. Wrike — Best for Enter­prise Teams

Pric­ing: $9.80/user/month (Team), $24.80/user/month (Busi­ness)
Best for: Large orgs (100+ peo­ple) with com­plex approval workflows
What makes it dif­fer­ent: Enter­prise-grade secu­ri­ty, per­mis­sions, customization

Enter­prise Features

• Cus­tom work­flows with mul­ti-stage approvals
• Advanced per­mis­sions (gran­u­lar con­trol over who sees/​edits what)
• SOC 2 Type II compliance
• Cus­tom fields and request forms
• Resource man­age­ment across departments

The Com­plex­i­ty Tax

All that pow­er comes with com­plex­i­ty. Wrike has a steep learn­ing curve. Imple­men­ta­tion typ­i­cal­ly needs a con­sul­tant or ded­i­cat­ed admin. Not some­thing you set up over a weekend.

Pric­ing Reality

Team plan ($9.80/user) looks com­pet­i­tive. But you’ll need Busi­ness ($24.80/user) for most enter­prise fea­tures. For 100 users, that’s $29,760/year.

Make sure you actu­al­ly need enter­prise-grade fea­tures before committing.

Best for: Estab­lished com­pa­nies (100‑1000+ employ­ees) with ded­i­cat­ed PM teams and com­plex cross-func­tion­al workflows.

9. Notion — Best for Doc­u­men­ta­tion-Heavy Projects

Pric­ing: $8/​user/​month (Plus), $15/​user/​month (Busi­ness)
Best for: Teams where doc­u­men­ta­tion mat­ters as much as task management
What makes it dif­fer­ent: Wiki + data­base + tasks in one tool

What Makes Notion Different

Every­thing’s a doc­u­ment. Tasks live in doc­u­ments. Your roadmap’s a doc­u­ment (with a data­base view). Meet­ing notes link to projects which link to tasks.

Incred­i­bly flex­i­ble once you under­stand the doc­u­ment-based logic.

Where It Shines

• Prod­uct roadmaps
• Com­pa­ny wikis
• Meet­ing notes + action items
• Con­tent calendars
• Per­son­al pro­duc­tiv­i­ty systems

Where It Struggles

PM fea­tures feel like an after­thought com­pared to ded­i­cat­ed tools. No native time track­ing. Weak Gantt charts. Lim­it­ed reporting.

Great for plan­ning projects. Not ide­al for exe­cut­ing them.

Best for: Star­tups and small teams (5−20 peo­ple) need­ing doc­u­men­ta­tion, knowl­edge man­age­ment, and light­weight project track­ing in one place.

10. Jira — Best for Soft­ware Devel­op­ment Teams

Pric­ing: $7.75/user/month (Stan­dard), $15.25/user/month (Pre­mi­um)
Best for: Soft­ware teams using Agile methodologies
What makes it dif­fer­ent: Built specif­i­cal­ly for dev workflows

If you’re build­ing soft­ware, you’ve prob­a­bly used Jira already. It’s the 800-pound goril­la of dev project management.

Why Devel­op­ers Choose Jira

• Native inte­gra­tion with dev tools (GitHub, Bit­buck­et, Jenkins)
• Agile boards opti­mized for sprints and backlogs
• Advanced issue track­ing with cus­tom workflows
• Pow­er­ful report­ing (burn­down charts, veloc­i­ty track­ing, etc.)

Why Every­one Else Avoids It

Jira is deeply tech­ni­cal. Non-devel­op­ers find it con­fus­ing and over­whelm­ing. I’ve seen mar­ket­ing teams try using Jira because ​“the dev team uses it” and it nev­er goes well.

Best for: Soft­ware devel­op­ment teams (10 – 100+ peo­ple) run­ning Scrum or Kan­ban. Don’t use it for any­thing else.

Mon​day​.com vs. Alter­na­tives: Quick Com­par­i­son Table

How these Mon­day com­peti­tors stack up on fea­tures that actu­al­ly matter:

ROI Com­par­i­son: What You’ll Actu­al­ly Save

Let’s do the math for a typ­i­cal 30-per­son team over one year.

Sce­nario: You’re cur­rent­ly on Mon​day​.com Standard

Key thing to notice: Cheap­est per-seat price does­n’t always win. Work­sec­tion saves the most because it includes fea­tures (finan­cial man­age­ment, time track­ing) that ​“cheap­er” tools make you add via paid integrations.

How to Migrate from Mon​day​.com (Step-by-Step)

Switch­ing tools is annoy­ing. Here’s how to min­i­mize pain.

Phase 1: Prepa­ra­tion (Week 1)

1. Audit Mon­day usage — Which boards are active? Which haven’t been touched in months? Don’t migrate dead projects.
2. List crit­i­cal work­flows — Doc­u­ment automa­tions and inte­gra­tions you absolute­ly need. Not every­thing you have. Every­thing you need.
3. Export data — Mon­day lets you export to Excel. Do this for all active boards as backup.

Phase 2: Set­up (Week 2)

1. Set up new tool — Start with one pilot project. Not your entire workspace.
2. Rebuild crit­i­cal work­flows — Focus on the 20% of work­flows han­dling 80% of work.
3. Con­fig­ure inte­gra­tions — Con­nect Slack, email, cal­en­dars, etc.

Phase 3: Pilot (Week 3 – 4)

1. Run par­al­lel sys­tems — Keep Mon­day run­ning while test­ing the alter­na­tive with one team/​project.
2. Gath­er feed­back — What works? What’s con­fus­ing? Fix issues now, before full migration.
3. Cre­ate inter­nal docs — Record how your team should use the new tool.

Phase 4: Migra­tion (Week 5 – 6)

1. Migrate remain­ing projects — Move one team/​department at a time. Not every­one at once.
2. Train users — Hold short ses­sions (30−45 min­utes max). Record them.
3. Set Mon­day sun­set date — Give two weeks notice, then turn it off. If you don’t kill Mon­day, peo­ple keep using it.

Pro tip: Don’t try recre­at­ing Mon­day exact­ly in your new tool. Use this as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to sim­pli­fy workflows.

Fre­quent­ly Asked Questions

What is the best free alter­na­tive to Mon​day​.com?

Trel­lo has the most usable free plan — unlim­it­ed cards and boards with up to 10 boards per work­space. Click­Up’s free plan is fea­ture-rich but lim­it­ed to 100MB stor­age (fills up stu­pid­ly fast).

If you need some­thing more pow­er­ful than Trel­lo with­out pay­ing, Click­Up Free is worth try­ing despite stor­age limits.

For actu­al teams doing real work though? Free plans typ­i­cal­ly don’t cut it. You’ll hit lim­i­ta­tions with­in a month.

Can I get Mon​day​.com fea­tures at a low­er price?

Yeah — Work­sec­tion offers like 80% of Mon­day’s core func­tion­al­i­ty at $7/​user/​month (vs. Mon­day’s $16/​user for Stan­dard). You get Gantt charts, Kan­ban boards, time track­ing, automa­tions, client access.

You lose some visu­al cus­tomiza­tion and Mon­day’s exten­sive inte­gra­tion mar­ket­place. But you gain built-in finan­cial man­age­ment (which Mon­day does­n’t have at any price).

For teams pri­or­i­tiz­ing cost over infi­nite cus­tomiza­tion, it’s the best val­ue available.

Which Mon­day alter­na­tive has the best mobile app?

Asana and Click­Up have the best mobile expe­ri­ences. Both apps are fast, intu­itive, include most desk­top fea­tures. Mon­day’s mobile app is fine but feels like a com­pressed desk­top ver­sion. Base­cam­p’s mobile app is sim­ple and works well for async com­mu­ni­ca­tion (its core strength).

Worst mobile expe­ri­ence? Smartsheet. Spread­sheet inter­face does­n’t trans­late well to small screens.

How do I con­vince my team to switch from Monday?

Focus on spe­cif­ic pain points. Not abstract benefits.

Switch­ing to save mon­ey? Show exact­ly what that $3,200/year sav­ings means. Hire a free­lancer? Bet­ter tools? Team retreat? Switch­ing for sim­plic­i­ty? Demon­strate how much faster com­mon tasks are in the new tool.

Run a 2‑week pilot with a small team before forc­ing every­one to switch. Let ear­ly adopters become inter­nal cham­pi­ons. Top-down man­dates cre­ate resistance.

Is there a Mon​day​.com alter­na­tive that includes CRM features?

Click­Up includes basic CRM func­tion­al­i­ty in high­er-tier plans. Airtable can be con­fig­ured as a CRM (many sales teams use it this way).

But hon­est­ly? If you need real CRM fea­tures, use a real CRM (Hub­Spot, Pipedrive) and inte­grate it with your PM tool.

Tools try­ing to be both PM and CRM typ­i­cal­ly do nei­ther par­tic­u­lar­ly well.

What’s bet­ter than Mon­day for soft­ware devel­op­ment teams?

Jira. Not even close.

Jira’s built specif­i­cal­ly for dev teams — native GitHub inte­gra­tion, sprint plan­ning, burn­down charts, agile work­flows. Mon­day can work for dev teams, but you’ll fight it. Lin­ear’s anoth­er excel­lent option if you want some­thing more mod­ern and less enterprise‑y than Jira.

For non-dev teams, avoid Jira. It’s overkill and con­fus­ing for gen­er­al PM.

Can these alter­na­tives han­dle enter­prise-lev­el needs?

Wrike and Click­Up (Enter­prise plan) can han­dle large-scale deploy­ments with advanced per­mis­sions, SSO, cus­tom secu­ri­ty poli­cies, ded­i­cat­ed sup­port. Work­sec­tion and Asana scale rea­son­ably well to 100 – 200 users but lack some enter­prise gov­er­nance features.

If you’re For­tune 500, you’ll prob­a­bly end up with Wrike, Mon­day, or a cus­tom solu­tion. If you’re a 200-per­son com­pa­ny that does­n’t need com­pli­ance the­ater, most tools here work fine.

Final Ver­dict: Which Mon­day Alter­na­tive Should You Choose?

Here’s my hon­est take based on team size and priorities.

Choose Work­sec­tion if: You want Mon­day’s core fea­tures at half the price AND need built-in finan­cial man­age­ment. Best all-around val­ue for teams of 10 – 100 peo­ple. Start with a free trial →

Choose Asana if: Task man­age­ment is your pri­ma­ry need and you’re will­ing to pay $11 – 25/​user for a clean, intu­itive inter­face. Great for mar­ket­ing and oper­a­tions teams.

Choose Click­Up if: You’re tech-savvy, want max­i­mum fea­tures, have some­one who’ll invest time mas­ter­ing the plat­form. Best ROI if you actu­al­ly use its exten­sive fea­ture set.

Choose Trel­lo if: You’re a small team (under 10 peo­ple) with sim­ple work­flows. Also per­fect as a per­son­al pro­duc­tiv­i­ty tool.

Choose Base­camp if: You’re remote-first and meet­ings are killing your team. Won’t replace Mon­day’s fea­tures, but might fix your com­mu­ni­ca­tion problems.

Stay with Mon­day if: You need exten­sive third-par­ty inte­gra­tions, love visu­al cus­tomiza­tion, have the bud­get. Mon­day isn’t bad — just expensive.

Ready to Make the Switch?

Best way to find your Mon­day replace­ment is actu­al­ly try­ing the tools. Most offer 14 – 30 day free tri­als (no cred­it card required).

Test­ing process I recommend:

1. Pick 2 – 3 tools from this list based on priorities
2. Set up one active project in each
3. Have your team use them for 2 weeks (not just you)
4. Choose based on what your team actu­al­ly adopts — not what looks best in screenshots

Tools live and die on adop­tion. The ​“best” alter­na­tive is whichev­er one your team con­sis­tent­ly uses. 

Start with Work­sec­tion if you want the safest bet — best price-to-fea­ture ratio and requires least behav­ior change from Mon­day. You can always switch to some­thing else lat­er, but you’ll prob­a­bly find you don’t need to.

Join 1,000+ teams who’ve already made the switch. Get start­ed with Work­sec­tion’s free tri­al — no cred­it card required, full fea­ture access. If you decide it’s not for you, you’ve lost noth­ing but a few hours test­ing time.

Real ques­tion isn’t whether there’s a bet­ter Mon­day alter­na­tive. It’s whether you’re ready to stop over­pay­ing for fea­tures you don’t use.