Monday CRM (a separate product from the company’s work management platform) offers an approachable, comprehensive set of sales management tools that accommodates both CRM newcomers at small organizations and members of more experienced teams at larger businesses. Its AI and automation capabilities are especially impressive, as they help you (regardless of your experience level) easily set up time-saving workflows, and the user interface is easy to grasp. That said, the platform is pricey, and you have to pay for a higher-end plan to unlock its full capabilities. Our Editors’ Choice winners for the category are Apptivo, which offers unbeatable flexibility; Bigin by Zoho, which targets small businesses with tighter budgets; and Freshsales, which provides better analytics and email tools.
Monday CRM offers three paid plans, starting with Basic ($12 per user per month, billed annually). This plan includes a single custom dashboard with templates for lead, contact, and deal management, as well as unlimited pipelines. It imposes a maximum of 1,000 active contacts and deals and limits you to 20 quotes and invoices per month. You don’t get advanced analytics tools, custom automation tools, the platform’s lead management and deal management hubs, or support for integrations. This plan includes a one-time allotment of 6,000 AI credits at this level, but you can’t purchase more. (The Standard and Pro tiers also get you 6,000 credits, but you can purchase more at the rate of $0.01 per credit (based on an annual plan). See the Monday CRM AI credits breakdown for more information.)
The Standard tier ($17 per user per month, billed annually) unlocks the centralized lead and deal management hubs, as well as Gmail and Outlook integrations. The active contact and deal limit increases to 10,000, and you can create five custom dashboards, 50 quotes or invoices per month, and 250 custom automations per month. Additionally, you get access to the AI Sidekick, which can answer questions about your interactions. Every user can send the AI sidekick a maximum of five messages per day (these don’t count toward your monthly AI credits). However, this level still doesn’t support the platform’s sales analytics tools or its full suite of integration options.
The Pro version ($28 per user per month, billed annually) lets you create unlimited contacts and deals, 50 custom dashboards, 250 quotes or invoices per month, and 25,000 custom automations per month. You also get sales forecasting and analytics, extensive email marketing tools, and integrations with a variety of marketing and business tools.
Finally, the Ultimate plan (custom pricing) removes most limits, introduces enterprise-grade security features, provides a dedicated customer support manager, and supports HIPAA compliance.
Monday CRM’s plans aren’t the priciest I’ve tested—Insightly CRM‘s start at $29 per user per month billed annually, for instance—but they are expensive for what you get. For comparison, Apptivo supports unlimited contacts and deals, along with extensive analytics tools, for just $15 per user per month, billed annually. Freshsales, meanwhile, offers more advanced reporting and email tools for as little as $9 per user per month, billed annually. Neither Apptivo nor Freshsales limits integration support to higher-tier plans either.
All you need to do to create a Monday CRM account is enter your email address or connect your Gmail account. From there, the platform guides you through the onboarding process, during which you answer numerous questions about your intended use case, professional role, and industry. Monday CRM uses your answers to configure the interface appropriately.
Initial setup step (Credit: Monday/PCMag)
The onboarding process also asks you to add team members, allowing you to enter individual email addresses and select a role for each. The default roles are Admin (who can add or modify team members’ accounts) and Member (who can add or modify content). You can modify the permissions of each role as well as create new ones in the Administration section once you fully activate the CRM.
After you add team members, Monday CRM prompts you to sync your contacts with Gmail and Outlook. Most CRMs make you manually find the tools for syncing contacts, so I appreciate this convenience. (Note that you must sign up for at least the Standard plan to keep using these past your initial trial period.) Similarly, I like that Monday CRM prompted me to add contacts before I opened the dashboard. However, you can add only names here, so this step isn’t particularly useful.
Team member invite setup step (Credit: Monday/PCMag)
After adding contacts, you can customize the data categories that appear in your contact table by adding common ones, such as contact type and priority level. You can also activate integrations with common tools, such as Gmail, Outlook, and Zoom (these require at least the Standard plan).
Monday CRM makes you go through a lot of screens before you actually start using the CRM, but the step-by-step process significantly simplifies the setup process and makes it accessible even to beginners.
The CRM interface itself is modern and streamlined with a clear navigation sidebar on the left. It sorts contacts into groups, each with its own dedicated table. The user experience uses color wisely to draw your eyes to important areas of the screen (such as the priority level section of the contact tables. You can easily adjust the interface colors to match your brand, create or delete contact groups, and add new views (such as a Kanban view) to customize your experience. A guided tour is available the first time you log in, but Monday CRM is intuitive enough that you can likely skip this.
Board customization setup step (Credit: Monday/PCMag)
At no point in the setup process did Monday CRM offer a guided setup consultation—something Freshsales did in testing. Again, however, Monday CRM is straightforward enough that you can do without one. What is frustrating, however, is the inconsistency of the search function for the software’s help documentation; it rarely returned relevant answers. When I searched for how to turn leads into contacts, for example, the first result was an article about using the Monday CRM mobile app.
Both the AI Sidekick and live chat features provided better answers. These features are available 24/7 for all users and are easy to work with, but I still dislike not being able to find the correct documentationort, there is no phone support whatsoever. Both Apptivo and Freshsales offer 24/5 phone support on all plans
Monday CRM defines leads as anyone you’ve identified who might have an interest in your products or services. The default leads page uses a table format. You can create multiple groups if you wish, and then sort them into different tables. For example, you might create one group for qualified leads and another for disqualified leads. You can further organize leads by adding a chart or a Kanban view, which appears in a new tab so you can flip between views. To unlock more advanced views (such as Calendar, Chart, Map, or Timeline) here and elsewhere, you need one of the higher-end plans.
Most of the fields in the leads tables relate to standard contact information, with a couple of additions. Color-coded statuses help you quickly identify gaps in your lead generation pipeline. An activities timeline shows you whether your team is actively nurturing a lead. The leadso you can double down on the most effective sources and abandon those that aren’t working for you
Lead profile (Credit: Monday/PCMag)
My one frustration with this area is that clicking a lead’s name turns it into an editable text box rather than opening the profile. You have to click on the blank space surrounding the name to open the profile.
Importing Leads
You can add leads manually one at a time or import them from a CSV file. You don’t have the option to import leads from other CRMs or contact-organization tools, such as Google or Outlook. Apptivo (which lets you import from Google and Outlook) and Freshsales (which lets you import from Google, Outlook, and various CRMs) do better here.
The import process is straightforward, with Monday CRM automatically mapping most information to the correct categories and creating new ones for items that don’t easily fit into the CRM’s existing system. After I imported leads, the app added them to a new table. Although this might be helpful for some users, it left me with the task of moving imported leads into my main lead table. Thankfully, a bulk transport option lets you move multiple leads simultaneously.
Lead Profiles
Monday CRM’s lead profiles are highly attractive and easy to navigate. They open in a pop-up overlay rather than an entirely new page, which helps reduce loading times. However, the overlay is large enough to block the rest of the CRM, so it effectively behaves like a new page.
Tags, such as the lead’s job title, appear at the top, followed by a visual representation of where the lead is in your pipeline. Qualified and Unqualified buttons let you quickly change a lead’s status. A detailed activity log takes up most of the rest of the profile, with the lead’s basic contact information on the right. Another helpful part of the lead profile is the AI Summarize button, which generates a detailed summary of your interactions with the lead and action items to move the lead into the next stage of the pipeline.
Once a lead is qualified, you can convert it into a contact by clicking a button in the lead table. Converting a contact into a lead is more difficult, so make sure you’re confident that a lead is qualified before taking this step.
Monday CRM defines contacts as qualified leads—folks you’re actually making deals with. The contacts page uses a table view by default, displaying useful information about deals, contact type, and priority level. As with leads, you can split contacts into groups that appear in separate tables. This section starts you out with groups for active contacts and inactive contacts. You can add chart views and a Kanban display in separate tabs.
Contacts page (Credit: Monday/PCMag)
As with leads, you can import contacts only from a CSV file. If you’re using another CRM, you need to export your contacts into a CSV before you can move them into Monday CRM. Again, this is one of the few areas in which Monday CRM is more difficult to use than other CRMs; Zoho CRM, for example, lets you import from a variety of CRMs in just a couple of clicks.
Contact profile (Credit: Monday/PCMag)
Contact profiles are almost identical to lead profiles. The key differences are the addition of tabs for things like invoices at the top and the removal of the pipeline status visualizer. There’s also an Accounts area under the activity log where you can view information you’ve collected about the company your contact works for.
Monday CRM handles deals similarly to leads and contacts, grouping them in tables that include detailed information on the deal stage, forecasted value, related contacts, and more. Color coding helps you quickly gauge whether you’re moving deals through your sales pipeline at a healthy rate.
Pipelines view (Credit: Monday/PCMag)
The Pipeline tab is a Kanban board where you can easily move deals from one stage to the next. You can modify the stage names and colors to suit your unique processes. It’s also possible to create additional pipelines by adding more Kanban tabs. There’s no limit to the number of pipelines created, regardless of your plan.
Sales dashboard (Credit: Monday/PCMag)
The Sales Report tab shows detailed analytics for your deals, including the total revenue from closed deals and the expected funds from upcoming deals. These analytics are presented as basic numbers and visualizations, such as bar graphs and pie charts.
Monday CRM integrates with Gmail and Outlook, letting you automatically log all outgoing emails in the CRM or only log emails CC’d to the Monday CRM email address that the app automatically creates for you. Once you connect an email address, you can access it from a drop-down menu when sending emails from a contact or lead profile, ensuring that all your emails originate from the correct address.
What you don’t get is a fully integrated email inbox like those available in Apptivo and Freshsales, which let you view all incoming emails and conduct all customer communicationorganization of the Zoho CRM inbox, which lets you filter emails by tags and priority levels. I would also have liked the option to connect to Yahoo or a custom email solution
Monday CRM offers a few bulk emailing tools. For example, you can send an immediate bulk email by going to the Contacts area, selecting multiple contacts, and clicking the Mass Email button at the bottom of the screen. You can also use the Sequences tool (which I explain later) to create multi-email campaigns.
Unfortunately, these options offer only rich-text editing capabilities, similar to those in a regular email client. You have to spring for the Monday Campaigns add-on (starting at $50 per month for 2,000 contacts) or work with a third-party tool, such as Mailchimp, if you want a visual campaign designer. Some CRMs, including Freshsales, offer a bit more flexible email marketing tools, but I generally recommend paying for separate email marketing software if you aim to create dynamic email campaigns.
Monday CRM offers two types of automation tools: Sequences and Autopilot. Sequences are multi-step processes that send things, such as premade emails and reminders to create manual emails or make phone calls, to specific people. You can connect sequences to specific boards or choose to manually enroll people in them.
Automation sequence editor (Credit: Monday/PCMag)
The Sequence editor is visual rather than code-based, making it easy to pick up. You can add as many steps as you like to each Sequence. The Rules tab here gives you further control over aspects, such as time zones and when a sequence drops certain people. For example, you might choose to remove people who have responded to an email, assuming that their reply confirms their interest in what the Sequence offers; then, Monday CRM moves them to a different pipeline.
AutoPilot is a more comprehensive automation tool that lets you create workflows using a mind map-style visual editor similar to Zoho CRM’s workflow creator. You can use this to do pretty much anything, such as assigning a new contact to a specific team member or sending an email to a lead when their status changes. Like Sequences, workflows can have an unlimited number of steps. However, the number of workflows you can create depends on your plan, with Basic subscribers limited to just five.
Monday CRM offers robust AI tools, including the aforementioned AI Summarizer. You can also generate emails for individual contacts in the Monday CRM email composer using AI. The quality and level of detail in these emails pleasantly surprised me in testing. I still recommend editing them to add personality and ensure accuracy, but they’re better than what AI tools in other CRMs like Freshsales produce. Notably, these actions don’t use AI credits, so you can perform them as often as you need.
The AI Sidekick can provide summaries or generate emails for you from anywhere in the CRM, without using AI credits. It can also help you complete other tasks, such as sending messages via Slack or tagging teammates. Additionally, you can use the AI Sidekick as a support bot. However, I recommend sticking with the regular live chat support, since it doesn’t use AI credits. You can even use it to analyze data within your CRM or conduct research on the wider web, though I caution against that latter use case, given the propensity for AIs to hallucinate. Moreover, some of these analysis tasks do use AI credits.
Autopilot feature (Credit: Monday/PCMag)
Monday CRM’s AI Notetaker promises to compile the most important points from your meetings into easy-to-read documents, but I was unable to fully test this feature and determine whether it’s worth the 120 AI credits it uses per hour. Vibes is Monday CRM’s AI app builder, which you can use to build apps for internal CRM-related tasks, such as sales forecasting. It suggests several app ideas you can click to import and deploy. I’d rather Monday CRM simply build all the tools I am likely to need, but this feature might still be handy if your CRM requirements are highly specific.
Monday CRM also supports AI workflows. You use prompts to create automations similar to what you can build in AutoPilot. Once you create these workflows, you can modify them using a visual editor. Again, I’d rather just use AutoPilot to work with existing workflow templates, but I can see the value of this feature if you need to create complex systems.
AI lead agents can find new leads for you and enter them into your database for the cost of 10 AI credits per lead (with a limit of 10 leads per day). The company is expanding this functionality to create fully customizable AI agents that can handle everything from generating leads to onboarding new hires, though these will cost 150 AI credits per five-minute call. None of the other CRMs I’ve tested offer this level of AI integration, but it’s not likely to be alone in this pursuit for long.
Monday CRM has two analytics areas: the aforementioned Sales Report tab in the Deals area and a separate Sales Dashboard. The Sales Report focuses entirely on deal metrics, such as the number of deals in each stage of your pipeline. The Sales Dashboard provides broader metrics, including your team members’ activity levels and success rates. Both use various visual tools, such as pie charts and line graphs, to make this information easier to digest. However, the Sales Dashboard can pull information from only one area if you’re on the Basic or Standard plan; you need to subscribe to the Pro tier to access full analytics.
Deals analytics (Credit: Monday/PCMag)
The app doesn’t offer a quick way to create custom reports like you can in Apptivo or Freshsales, but you can customize both analytics dashboards by adding, moving, or editing widgets. You can also export both the Sales Report and the Sales Dashboard as PDFs.
Monday CRM integrates with the full suite of Monday products, including Campaigns, Service, and Work Management. You can further customize your Monday suite with advanced AI tools, including marketing agents and a vibe coding platform.
Monday CRM also offers several third-party integrations. Beyond the integrations with Facebook ads, Gmail, Google Calendar, Hubspot, Outlook, and Outlook Calendar, the Monday CRM Marketplace provides options in the accounting, email marketing, invoice management, and social media marketing categories, among others. Monday CRM has more integrations than most CRMs I’ve tested, except for Zoho CRM—though many of its options are unofficial and potentially lower quality.
Just keep in mind that you must pay for the Pro plan to use most of these integrations. If you’re looking for a low-cost tool that fits into your existing workflow, I recommend Bigin by Zoho or Freshsales.
Final Thoughts
Monday CRM
Monday CRM provides a comprehensive onboarding process and an intuitive interface that should appeal to beginners, while still offering the advanced tools that larger businesses need. It handles leads, contacts, deals, and pipelines consistently and competently, while its advanced automation and AI tools can save you and your team significant amounts of time. That said, businesses on tighter budgets should carefully consider the limitations of the lower-tier plans, particularly the restrictions on integrations and reporting features. While Monday CRM is a strong option, Apptivo, Bigin by Zoho CRM, and Freshsales remain our Editors’ Choice picks for their outstanding customization, exceptional value, and user-friendly design, respectively.
STILL ON THE FENCE?
Monday CRM
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About Our Expert
Dianna Gunn
Contributor
Experience
I’ve been building websites and marketing campaigns for small businesses since 2010. I also run two businesses of my own: Hired Gunn Writing & Consulting and the Weeknight Writers group. I’m obsessed with testing new tools to improve and expand these businesses, and I’ve written about those I’ve tried for sites like CNET, CodeinWP/WPShout, and WinningWP.
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