The Best Free Monday.com Alternative

What Is monday.com?

Originally known as Dapulse, monday.com is a project management tool that was founded in 2012. It is a cloud-based software that allows teams to collaborate and get work done. Roy Mann, Eran Kampf, and Eran Zinman raised $1.5 million to develop the product which was launched to the public two years later in 2014.

In 2017, after receiving negative press about its name, Dapulse rebranded itself into monday.com. To date, after raising over $385 million in total funding, the company was publicly listed in June 2021 with a valuation of $1.9 billion. This made monday.com achieve unicorn status.

Monday.com is a project management tool that helps you and your team organize, plan, and manage work. Boards on the software are created in the form of a spreadsheet. The difference is that each block on your interface is fully customizable with advanced features to fit your needs. 

Sound familiar? That’s because it closely resembles Airtable.

Monday.com was created to help teams collaborate and get things done together. Aside from the multitude of ads that monday.com has on the internet, teams and individuals can use this project management software for just about anything. But this isn’t without its drawbacks which we will discuss in more detail below.

Today, monday.com has over 152,000 users and more than 1,100 employees.

What Features Does monday.com Have?

Think of monday.com as a fully customizable spreadsheet to help you create the ideal workflow for your team. Columns can be populated with data such as task status, the priority order for tasks, assignee, and more. The idea behind this design is to enable you to create the perfect management tool that you need to get work done.

Some of the boards that monday.com offers include the Main board which is visible to all of your team members, Shareable boards for you to share with people outside of your team, and Private boards which are only visible to people that you share it with.

Once you’ve created a board, you can choose between different views to help you visualize your tasks and projects. Being a project management application, you can break down large tasks into actionable sub-tasks that can be checked when they’ve been completed.

Monday lacks a few key features such as built-in communication and tackles this problem by integrating with other apps such as Slack. By utilizing monday’s integration feature, you can potentially centralize all of your work into one software. But that’s only if you manage to find the right integrations to fit your needs.

You can also automate your workflow on monday.com by creating custom trigger-based automations. If creating automation is something that you’re not too keen on doing, you can also try out pre-built automation from their range of templates.

If done right, you'll be able to use Monday as a centralized management software for collaborating with your team.

What Is monday.com used For?

Monday.com is usually used by project managers and individuals that are looking for a solution to better manage and plan projects. There is a wide range of uses for monday.com, and this is due to the fact that every board starts as a fully customizable blank sheet.

Starting as a clean slate means that project managers can be in full control of how they use Monday's software to manage their teams. Managing project timelines can be done by simply adding a timeline column in your project so that everyone in your team is aligned on deadlines.

Is monday.com a Good Project Management Software?

Monday.com can be used to manage projects due to its customizable nature and multiple board views to help you visualize your projects. Its built-in time tracker helps you to keep track of time more efficiently. This is similar to Taskade, which offers a built-in timer as well to allow you to perhaps try out a new productivity technique.

Monday also supports integrations so that teams can automate their workflows and more work done.

After sufficient onboarding, monday.com can be a useful tool to help you manage projects. However, there is a steep learning curve and most of its advanced features are locked behind a paywall.

Furthermore, Monday also has templates available so that you can get a headstart on your project.

What Are Some Drawbacks of monday.com?

Although monday.com can be a good tool to help you organize your work, there are some limitations that come with it. For example, being a fully customizable software, there is a steep onboarding required for users to get familiar with the interface. Without proper onboarding, you will most probably stumble your way around the tool.

One other important feature that monday.com lacks is a built-in communications feature. Every team project requires clear communication to see it come to fruition. Without this feature, it means that you’ll have to toggle between different applications to communicate and organize your work. This makes communication and collaboration clunkier if you intend to use Monday for collaboration with your team.

This is what makes Taskade a better free alternative to monday.com. Taskade has a free built-in chat and video call function in every project. This allows you to communicate and collaborate with your team members without the need to switch between different applications. Did we mention that this is included even on Taskade’s free plan?

You can plan tasks and projects on monday.com, but that’s just about what you can do on the app. You can’t actually use it to do the work required for your project. In contrast, Taskade’s workspaces are designed for you to collaborate, plan projects, and actually get work done within the app.

You can fully automate tasks and simple projects on monday.com, but complex projects will get clunky especially if it consists of a lot of steps. Monday.com is probably good as a software to handle shorter sprints, whilst Taskade is equipped to help you tackle projects and tasks regardless of complexity.

How Much Does monday.com Cost?

Monday.com is more expensive compared to other project management tools in the market. They have a few plans available including a Free, Basic, Standard, Pro, and Enterprise plan.

Monday.com Free Plan

Monday.com’s Free Plan allows you to collaborate in teams of up to 2 people. It features unlimited boards, docs, templates, and limited column types. However, certain project views, integrations, and dashboards remain locked behind a paywall.

Monday.com Basic Plan Pricing

Monday’s Basic plan lets you create unlimited rows on your project board, which is an upgrade from the free plan’s 1000 item limit. You’ll also get 4.5GB more storage available and the ability to share your projects as a read-only document.

The Basic Plan starts at $8 per month for each user.

Monday.com Standard Plan Pricing

To get the recommended way of using monday.com, you would have to subscribe to its Standard plan. The Standard plan includes Timeline, Calendar, and Gantt views to help you visualize your work. You also get access to integrations and automations, though you are limited to only 250 iterations of each per month.

If you intend to use Monday as a software to help with collaboration, then this is the plan that you will need to sigh up for.

The Standard Plan starts at $10 per month for each user.

Monday.com Pro Plan Pricing

Monday’s Pro Plan unlocks private boards and docs that are only viewable to people you invite, and also includes a new Chart view to help you visualize data. Private boards are exclusive to the Pro plan, and can be used if you're working on sensitive information.

You also get access to time-tracking features and up to 25,000 automations and integrations per month.

The Pro Plan starts at $16 per month for each user, which is steep compared to project management tools such as Taskade, that offer more features for less.

What Is Taskade?

Taskade is an online productivity and collaboration tool that was founded by John Xie, Dionis Loire, and Stan Chang in 2017. The Y Combinator-backed startup aims to help remote teams and individuals get work done faster and smarter.

Taskade is where remote teams get work done. With Taskade, you can organize projects and tasks, change between multiple project views, automate repetitive workflows, collaborate via built-in video chat with your team, and more, via an all-in-one unified workspace. 

Get a headstart on your projects and find a suitable structure for your notes via Taskade’s versatile collection of templates. Simply choose from a wide variety of templates and add them to your projects to get started instantly!

Taskade is a supercharged productivity app that both individuals and teams can use to collaborate on projects in real time. Seamlessly toggle between multiple board views to make your project management process simpler.

Taskade is the best free monday.com alternative. Get started instantly for free today.

Key Features of Taskade

• Project Views. Taskade's interface allows you to visualize your projects via several different views. Cycle between the List, Mind Map, Org Chart, and Board views to work the way you want. 

  • List View. This is the default view on Taskade. Create new lists here.
  • Board View. This view lets you work horizontally like a Kanban board. Visualize your workflow and tasks in this full-width view.
  • Mind Map View. This view lets you work in a horizontal tree-structured manner and map out what you have in mind.
  • Action View. Work in table view and stay organized with your task due dates, and more.
  • Org Chart View. Break down larger tasks into smaller ones to help you get things done.

• Zoom In, Zoom Out. Get a bird’s-eye view of the workflow by zooming out on all project views, or zoom in to focus on a specific area.
• Fold/Unfold. Fold (collapse) a parent task/bullet element to hide its subtasks. Indent outline elements with ⌨️ Tab and unfold lists with ⌨️ Shift+Tab.
• Real-time Communication. Chat and video conference with your team while collaborating in real-time on the same page. 
• 500+ Templates. Choose from 500+ templates across 26 categories to improve your productivity and workflows. Customize existing templates or create new ones across your workspaces.
• Multi-Select. Select and format multiple blocks or bulk assign them as tasks to other team members. You can also copy, paste, or indent selected blocks.

• Customize Sub-Tasks. Customize the format of your sub-tasks at individual levels. Choose from headings, numbered lists, shapes, and more.
• Recurring Tasks. Add due dates with start and end times to tasks within your project and set them to repeat daily, weekly, monthly, or even yearly.
• Move Tasks. Move and copy selected tasks to other projects across any workspace. You’ll receive a pop-up notification on completion.
• User Roles & Permissions. Manage collaborators and assign user roles/editing privileges (Owner, Admin, Editor, Checker, Viewer).

• Sort Tasks. Sort sub-tasks/children elements by completed/uncompleted stats or the due date. Task sorting can be accessed from a convenient pop-up menu.
• Search. Search within projects or globally across workspaces and subspaces. Instantly browse and jump between projects anywhere in the Taskade.
• Keyboard Shortcuts. Navigate projects, create content blocks, reorder elements, and complete tasks using a set of handy keyboard shortcuts.

• Team Calendar. Aggregate all tasks and projects in a shared calendar. The Taskade calendar integrates with Google (two-way), Apple, and Outlook. 
• Reorder Tasks. Lists in Taskade aren’t set in stone. Reorder tasks and find them a new home with intuitive drag-and-drop mechanics.
• Project History. See all the changes made by you and other collaborators. Click on the entries to navigate to the edited items within the project.
• Version History. Taskade saves snapshots of your project so that you can restore a previous version of your project with a single click.

• Export and Print. You can export your projects as plain text or markdown files. Attach them to emails, presentations, or for print.

• Cloud File Upload. Share files directly from Google Drive, Dropbox, Instagram, and Box in your projects with our integrations.
• Breakdown Larger Tasks. Organize your thoughts with Taskade’s unlimited hierarchy to break down large projects into tasks.
• Quick Search. Use CMD / CTRL + K to jump between any projects within Taskade web and apps.

For an exhaustive list of Taskade’s features, click here.

Taskade Pros

• Free-forever plan is loaded with features
• Real-time collaboration within the same project 
• Free built-in video call and chat function in each project
• Customizable templates to give you a headstart
• Work and chat in the same window, in the same app
• Frequent updates based on user/your feedback and suggestions
• Tabbed workflow for working with multiple Projects

Taskade Cons

• No custom APIs (yet)

Taskade Pricing

Taskade Free Plan

• Unlimited Tasks & Projects
• Unlimited Members & Guests
• Unlimited Folders & Teams
• Templates, Calendar, Repeat Tasks
• Real-time Collaboration
• Built-in Free Chat and Video Call

Taskade Unlimited Plan - Starts from $5/month

• Everything in Free, plus:
• Version History
• Advanced Permission
• Cloud Upload Integration
• 2-Way Calendar Integration

Click here for more information.

Is Taskade Right for You?

Taskade can be used by individuals and teams working from anywhere. Use Taskade individually or collaborate with your team for weekly agendas, team meetings, note-taking, project management, product roadmaps, and more. 

Make use of customizable board views to visualize your projects into digestible smaller tasks. Multiple board views are available even on Taskade’s free plan, allowing you to get more work done the smarter way. 

Collaborate with your team in real-time with free and unlimited chat and video conferencing available on every project. Automatic syncing ensures that your data is always up to date across devices.

Our customizable templates are available even with our free plan. Find the perfect template to help you get started with your project, and customize it to fit your needs!

Taskade is the simplest way to create task lists, checklists, and workflows. Manage projects and get more work done the simple way with Taskade.

Taskade is the best free monday.com alternative. Try Taskade for free today.