A work OS that powers teams to run projects and workflows with confidence
Monday.com is a cloud-based Work OS for project management. Trustpilot: 2.8/5 from 3,382 reviews. Complaints: 'VERY misleading' pricing with 3-seat minimums, constant upsells, 'inadequate for complex work'. Originally called Dapulse.
Patterns extracted from real user feedback — not raw reviews.
Monday.com requires a minimum of 3 users for all paid plans. Solo users or 2-person teams must pay for an extra seat they don't use. Users have complained 'Why pay for seats you don't even need?' and it's described as designed more for teams than individuals, leaving smaller operations paying for unused capacity.
Beyond the minimum, Monday.com forces you to add users in blocks of 5, not individually. A team of 6 pays for 10 seats. One Reddit user complained: 'If you're a team of 5 that needs 1 additional user to join, you're gonna pay for 10 seats.' This significantly increases costs for growing teams.
Standard plan includes only 250 automation actions per month. Complex workflows easily exceed this limit, forcing upgrades or additional purchases. Users report being 'nickel-and-dimed' by the need to pay extra for essential features. Some integrations are also capped at a certain number of actions.
While all paid plans include 500 AI credits per month, expanding this limit requires purchasing the AI add-on which starts at $200/month. This is a significant additional cost that's not obvious during initial signup, and only subscribers of the top 3 paid plans can even purchase it.
Users consistently report severe performance issues with large boards. A CRM user with 60-70 columns reported item cards taking 25+ seconds to load. Another user said dashboards pulling from 12-15 boards take 40+ seconds. The Monday.com community forum has multiple threads about boards consuming 1.5-1.6GB of memory and freezing.
Multiple Capterra reviewers report that 'the basic plan's level of customer support feels like the free version, as if you don't matter unless you're on the Pro package or higher.' One user put it plainly: 'The customer service could not be worse.' Users on lower tiers struggle to get help with setup and issues.
Monday.com is packed with features and menus which can be overwhelming for new users. G2 and Capterra reviews note that 'Monday doesn't work out of the box' and is best suited for teams with project management experience. Users report spending hours just figuring out customization options. Some found it 'too confusing' and weren't using most features.
Capterra reviewers note 'there is no real way to link a dependence from one task to another. If you need a full-fledged Gantt chart, you may need to stick with more traditional tools.' This makes Monday.com unsuitable for complex project scheduling where task dependencies are critical.
Multiple sources report the mobile app is 'clumsy' and hard to use. G2 reviews note occasional issues with mobile app performance. For teams needing to manage work on-the-go, this is a significant limitation as the mobile experience doesn't match the desktop.
When you cancel your plan, every team member sees a warning banner EVERY DAY saying 'Your plan's renewal has been cancelled and you will be blocked.' Capterra users describe this as a 'huge NO GO' and 'HORRIBLE' user experience, especially when migrating to another tool.
An enterprise user paying £50k/year reported terrible service where overnight, thousands of forms were reset - losing choices, drafts no longer saving, and forms having black backgrounds with black text. Enterprise-level bugs affecting critical data is particularly concerning for larger deployments.
Users report that automations 'would only sometimes work and as such, work got missed.' Capterra reviewers mentioned needing 'trial and error to fine-tune automations.' For teams relying on automated workflows, unreliable automation execution can lead to missed tasks and broken processes.
Visual, colorful interface
Monday.com's board-based visual interface is highly praised for being colorful, intuitive, and easy to understand at a glance. Users appreciate the ability to see project status through color-coded columns and the overall aesthetic appeal of the platform.
Highly customizable workflows
The platform is extremely configurable - users can create custom boards, columns, automations, and workflows to match almost any process. The template library (200+ templates) provides good starting points that can be adapted to specific needs.
Extensive integration ecosystem
Monday.com offers a large marketplace with integrations for popular tools like Slack, Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Salesforce, and many more. Setting up basic integrations is straightforward and doesn't require technical expertise.
Strong collaboration features
Real-time collaboration, @mentions, activity logs, and update threads make team communication seamless. Multiple team members can work on the same board simultaneously without conflicts.
Multiple product offerings for different use cases
Monday.com offers separate products for Work Management, CRM, Dev, and Service, allowing teams to use specialized tools while keeping everything in one ecosystem. This provides flexibility for organizations with diverse needs.
Users: Up to 2 users
Storage: 500MB
Limitations: 3 board limit makes it useless for teams, no way to upgrade individual features
Users: Minimum 3 users (3-seat minimum)
Storage: 5GB
Limitations: Still no automation capabilities, very limited views, must buy in increments of 5 users after minimum
Users: Minimum 3 users
Storage: 250GB (overages: $0.10/GB/month)
Limitations: Automation caps force upgrades, no time tracking, no formula columns, no workload view
Users: Minimum 3 users
Storage: 1TB
Limitations: Price jump from Standard is significant (58% increase), still missing enterprise governance features
Users: Custom
Storage: Custom
Limitations: Requires annual contract, pricing negotiation necessary, significant implementation investment
Mid-size teams (10-50) needing visual project management
Monday.com shines for teams that need visual, customizable workflows and can afford Pro pricing. The collaboration features, template library, and integration ecosystem work well at this scale if boards are kept manageable.
Marketing and creative teams
The visual board-based approach, creative templates, and integrations with design tools make it suitable for campaign tracking, content calendars, and creative workflows where visual status tracking is important.
Marketing teams
Excellent visual dashboards, campaign tracking, and content calendars. Marketing teams love the colorful interface and easy automation recipes.
Sales teams
Solid CRM features in higher tiers, pipeline management, and deal tracking. Sales teams use Monday as lightweight CRM alternative.
Engineering teams
Has dev features but not purpose-built for software. Lacks native Git integration, code review workflows. Engineers often prefer Linear or Jira.
Solo entrepreneurs and freelancers
The 3-seat minimum means paying for users you don't need. The free plan is too limited (3 boards, no automations). Better alternatives like Notion, Trello, or ClickUp have more generous free tiers or per-user pricing.
Small teams (2-4 people) on a budget
You'll pay for seats you don't use due to minimums and 5-user increment requirements. The price-per-actual-user becomes very high. Consider Asana, ClickUp, or Basecamp which have more flexible pricing.
Teams needing complex project scheduling with dependencies
Monday.com lacks proper task dependencies for Gantt charts. Users needing critical path analysis or complex scheduling should look at Microsoft Project, Smartsheet, or dedicated PM tools.
Organizations with large data sets (10,000+ items)
Performance degrades significantly with large boards. Users report 25+ second load times, memory consumption of 1.5GB+, and dashboard timeouts. Enterprise users have reported data loss from bugs.
Common buyer's remorse scenarios reported by users.
Teams start with 3-5 users and find value initially. As the team grows, the 5-seat increment requirement means adding one person costs as much as adding five. Many realize too late that their true per-user cost is much higher than advertised.
Teams build out automations during setup, then discover mid-month they've exhausted their 250-action limit. This happens at the worst time - when processes are running and suddenly stop working, forcing immediate tier upgrades.
Boards that worked well initially become unusably slow after accumulating thousands of items. Users report what started as snappy 1-2 second loads becoming 25+ second waits. Archiving and cleanup become necessary ongoing maintenance.
Teams chose Monday.com expecting Gantt chart functionality, only to discover the dependencies aren't properly linked. Critical path analysis and complex scheduling don't work as expected, requiring workarounds or tool changes.
Teams on lower tiers struggle to get help with setup and issues. Support response times are slow and quality feels like 'free tier.' Only after upgrading to Pro or Enterprise does support become responsive.
Scenarios where this product tends to fail users.
Performance dramatically degrades. Users report 25+ second load times, memory consumption of 1.5GB+, browser freezing, and dashboard timeouts. Monday.com recommends archiving old items but this means losing easy access to historical data.
Due to 5-user increment purchasing, adding the 6th team member requires paying for 10 seats. The per-user cost nearly doubles overnight, making scaling unexpectedly expensive.
Standard plan teams running multiple active workflows can exhaust their 250 automation actions mid-month. Automations stop working, processes break, and teams must either upgrade immediately or wait until next billing cycle.
Cancellation triggers daily warning banners for entire team. Data export options are limited. Historical data, attachments, and automation configurations are difficult to preserve when moving to another platform.
When a project needs critical path analysis, resource leveling, or proper dependency chains, Monday.com's limitation becomes apparent. Teams must either accept workarounds or move project scheduling to a dedicated tool.
Jira
Engineering teams switch to Jira for proper sprint management, better issue tracking, backlog management, and integration with developer tools. More rigorous for Agile processes.
Smartsheet
Users needing complex project scheduling, resource allocation, and enterprise features switch to Smartsheet for its Excel-like familiarity and advanced project management capabilities.
Basecamp
Teams frustrated with per-user pricing switch to Basecamp's flat-rate pricing. Simpler teams appreciate the less overwhelming, more opinionated approach.
Asana
Teams switch for cleaner interface and better task management. Gain: less cluttered UI, better mobile app, goals feature. Trade-off: less visual, fewer dashboard options.
ClickUp
Teams switch for more features and lower price. Gain: docs, whiteboards, time tracking all included. Trade-off: steeper learning curve, can feel bloated.
Notion
Teams wanting docs + PM switch to Notion. Gain: wikis, databases, docs in one place. Trade-off: less structured PM features, slower.
