Monday CRM often catches the eye of small businesses, especially those already using Monday.com for project management.
The platform advertises itself as a CRM with countless customization options.
But is Monday CRM really worth it for small businesses?
We tested Monday CRM thoroughly to see how well it works for small businesses.
Monday CRM is an offshoot of Monday.com, a work management platform. Rather than building a dedicated CRM software from scratch, Monday adapted their existing app to handle customer data. This means you’re getting a work management tool dressed up as a CRM.
You get unlimited pipelines, tons of dashboard options with different widgets, and the ability to build your CRM using no-code building blocks. They even include over 200 templates, so you don’t have to start from scratch.
That being said, Monday CRM does have several downsides.
Basic features like email sync, task tracking, duplicate management, and more aren’t available on the lowest plan. If you’re working alone or with just one partner, you still have to pay for at least three seats. And since there’s no central place to see everything, you’ll be jumping between tabs and screens to get work done.
If you love building and customizing, Monday gives you the tools. However, if you want to start selling immediately, you’ll be disappointed.
Monday CRM has several benefits, but the drawbacks are more dominant. Letโs take a look at them below.
Monday spreads its features across different pricing tiers in ways that might surprise you.
Here’s the table showing Monday CRM’s features starting from the lowest plan.
Below, let’s examine the key features in detail.
On the lowest tier (Basic), Monday CRM gives you a template to organize your contacts. You can add or import new contacts and view all of them in a list on the โContactโ tab (or board, as it is referred to in Monday).
The contact list displays information about each contact, including their personal info, associated account, deals, and deal value. Click on a contact name to view all their information, activities, emails, documents, and moreโfrom one place.
Monday CRM allows you to create multiple contact lists. That is, you can create new pages within the Contact tab and fill them with contacts.
When creating new contact lists, you can choose views with which to organize and display them. For instance, you can visualize contacts in a table, chart, Gantt, Kanban, and more.
Monday CRM allows you to create an activity and set the activity owner, type, deadline, status, and associated record, and more.
Click on an activity to open the full page where you can manage its details, view all related emails and documents, and share updates with members of your team.
Keep in mind that this activity management capability is not available on the Basic plan. This is quite alarming, as task management is a vital, yet basic functionality that all small business CRMs should ordinarily possess on their lowest tier.
The Activity feature is accessible from the Standard subscription, which starts from $51 per month. However, the functionality is nowhere close to proper follow-up tracking.
It doesn’t prioritize creating follow-up actions for each contact, lead, or deal. It also doesn’t order activities according to their deadlines. Neither does it automatically prioritize what’s most urgent today or prompt you to add a new action when you complete one.
From the lowest plan ($36+ per month), you get an unlimited number of pipelines. There’s no dedicated pipeline tab, but since Monday CRM is fully customizable, it’s possible to create one on your own.
In the default pipeline, deals are organized in a Kanban board where you can see their details and value, and also move them to the next stage via drag and drop.
However, useful pipeline features like sales forecasting and quotas (or team goals) are not accessible unless you’re on the Pro plan (starting from $84 per month) or the Enterprise plan.
Clicking on a deal in your pipeline opens up its 360ยฐ page. There, you’ll find all the information about that deal, including the basic details like associated contacts and accounts, deal value, close probability, and forecast value, amongst others.
Moreover, the deal page displays all activities, notes, quotes and invoices, files, and email history associated with the deal. It also lets you collaborate with your team, and it keeps a log of all actions taken in relation to the deal.
You can connect your email account to send, receive, and keep a record of all emails right inside your Monday CRM account.
The 2-way email sync is available for Gmail and Outlook, but it cannot be accessed on the lowest plan; you’ll need to upgrade to Standard or higher.
In Monday CRM, you can add an unlimited number of team members to the tool and collaborate.
Put them in charge of a contact, deal, or lead, assign them activities, or leave them a note. You can also share files, collaborate on documents in the CRM, and communicateโall via the updates tab.
Additionally, Monday makes it possible to grant read-only access to viewers outside your organization. And if you’re on the Standard tier, you can share your workflow with guests โ like clients or freelancers โ and collaborate without giving them access to the whole CRM.
Monday CRM does not offer any duplication management feature on its lowest subscription. For that, you’ll need to be at least on the Standard plan.
With this feature, you can search for duplicates in any module โ whether it’s contacts, leads, accounts, deals, etc โ and merge them into one master record.
Monday CRM also features a duplicate warning functionality, but it’s only accessible on the highest-tier subscription.
Monday CRM allows you to create an unlimited number of dashboards and customize each one. You can add various widgets to visualize your business health in different ways. You can also drag and drop these widgets to change the overall look of your dashboard.
There’s a wide range of widgets to choose from, including gauges, charts, batteries, tables, calendars, gantts, and so much more.
You can automate repetitive tasks in Monday CRM by building automation rules from scratch or using the available templates.
However, there are no workflow automations on Monday CRM’s cheapest subscription. If automated workflows are important to you, you’ll have to upgrade to the Standard plan.
However, this small business CRM does offer free web forms for automatically capturing leads from your websiteโeven if you’re on the Basic plan.
Likewise, there’s a browser extension for automatically capturing contacts and leads from your Gmail.
Monday CRM also allows you to create and automate a flow of emails to be sent to contacts or leads, based on criteria you set. However, this feature is only accessible from the Pro plan.
Monday CRM has a robust app marketplace. There, you’ll find hundreds of apps across various categories, including productivity, marketing, project management, team management, reporting, finance, and a lot more.
However, if you’re on the lowest subscription, you won’t be able to integrate with any of these business apps; you’ll need to be on the Standard plan or higher.
The app marketplace aside, Monday CRM comes with several business apps built in. But access to these apps will depend on what plan you’re on.
For email (Gmail & Outlook), Zoom, DocuSign, PandaDoc, and Aircall, you’ll need at least the Standard plan. On the other hand, Mailchimp, Hubspot, and Facebook Ads integrations require the Pro plan, which is more expensive. And if you’d like to access the built-in Salesforce integration, you’ll need the highest subscription tier (Enterprise).
That being said, it’s quite concerning that you can’t sync your Google Calendar on the lowest tier or even the one after that. This is a very basic functionality that most small business CRMs include on their lowest plans.
There are mobile apps for Monday CRM available on Android and iOS devices.
This mobile CRM allows you to manage leads, deals, contacts, and activities on the go. If you’re on the Standard plan or higher, you’ll also be able to reply to emails.
Monday CRM has a non-distracting color scheme and a well-organized design, but the layout isn’t very user-friendly. There are so many modules, subtabs, and buttons within each tab that it can be difficult for beginners to navigate.
Since Monday gives you the freedom to create more tabs, your CRM can quickly become cluttered. For instance, each new dashboard you create becomes a tab of its own.
Monday CRM also has a lot of functionalities and deep customization options. This makes the CRM not just overwhelming, but also difficult and time-consuming to learn.
In fact, it has an average rating of 4.6/5 on G2, from over 1,008 users, many of whom admit that the software does have a steep learning curve.
Customer support is equal across all plans on Monday CRM. It comes in the form of self-help articles and tutorials, as well as 24/7 assistance.
The bad news is that the so-called support begins with a chatbot and peaks at live chat with a real person. No phone calls. No emails.
Only the Enterprise plan has a bit of an advantage, as you can get a dedicated customer success manager for personalized onboarding, training, and ongoing support.
But a small business doesn’t have the resources to purchase that plan, nor does it have a need for its overly robust offerings.
The only other option besides the Enterprise plan is to pay for Premium Support. You’ll get:
However, the price is not expressly listed on any part of Monday’s website or inside the CRM tool. You’ll need to contact their sales department for a quote.
The three-user minimum requirement defines Monday’s entire pricing approach. Every plan, regardless of features, starts with this multiplier that transforms advertised rates into actual costs most small businesses weren’t expecting.
Beyond this structural issue, Monday gates fundamental CRM capabilities behind successive paywall jumps, and turns what should be standard features into premium add-ons.
The lowest tier plan (Basic) costs $12 per user/month. However, it lacks several features that small businesses need:
With all these limits, most businesses will need to upgrade their plan to Standard, which costs $17 per user/month (if billed annually).
But even this has limits:
Since most small businesses might need mass emailing, support via phone or email, activity history spanning 6+ months, and sales email sequences, their best bet is the Pro plan. Anything less will be very limiting, but the Pro plan costs $28 per seat/month, which is too pricey for a small business.
This software is quite pricey, especially since Monday CRM has a minimum seat requirement of 3 for its paid plans. So, all the prices we just mentioned will be multiplied by 3.
And although Monday CRM does give you a 14-day free trial, itโs always for the Pro plan โ regardless of which planโs โtry for freeโ button you click.
Monday CRM’s pricing doesn’t work well for small businesses.
The $12 starting price for the Basic plan looks good until you remember you’re forced to buy three seats minimum. Suddenly, you’re paying at least $36 per month for a CRM that doesn’t even sync your emails, manage tasks, automate repetitive work, offer email sequences, integrate with other apps, and more.
Similarly, advertised with a $17 price tag, the Standard plan really starts at $51/month. Yet, it keeps email sequences out of reach. And with a minimum cost of $84/month, the Pro subscription finally unlocks what should be basic features.
For context, $84 monthly could buy you premium tiers from many affordable CRMs on the market. But in Monday CRM, you just get features that competitors include at half the price.
Mondayโs pricing architecture punishes small operations while pretending to offer competitive rates.
Monday CRM makes sense in exactly one scenario: you’re already deep in the Monday.com ecosystem and need to keep everything under one roof. The unlimited pipelines and widget playground are genuinely impressive if you have time to build your perfect system.
For everyone else, Monday CRM is a project management tool wearing a CRM costume. The three-seat minimum excludes solo businesses from day one. Essential features hidden in expensive tiers force constant compromises. And the learning curve means you’ll spend more time building your CRM than using it.
According to our evaluation criteria (Value, Impact, and Speed), Monday CRMโs fit for small businesses is Moderate.
Between the pricing games and feature restrictions, it might be better for small businesses to invest their CRM budget elsewhere.
If Monday’s forced three-seat minimum and missing features don’t work for your small business, OnePageCRM is worth a look.
Value: High
Impact: High
Speed: High
Pricing starts from: $9.95
Unlike Monday, OnePageCRM gives you everything you need from day oneโemail sync, follow-up tracking, task management, and automation. And you only pay for the users you actually have.
At less than half Monday’s starting price, with no forced minimums and all the core features included, OnePageCRM gives small businesses the simple, affordable CRM they need to grow sales.