Item: monday.com
Rating: 10
Author: Margaret Pickard

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

My workflow consists of daily tasks (some ongoing/recurring, some one-time only) that my clients request I do for them. Then I also work on large projects at the same time. I am not a project manager by any means and it's just me, myself and I here -- except now I have a virtual assistant who helps keep me organized and on track, and is starting to take over some of the daily tasks. I was dropping the ball on all sorts of tasks, before monday.com, and my projects were never on schedule. With monday.com, we made a board with groups for each day of the week, and that's where tasks go. We made boards for each project, and whichever project-task I'm working on gets copied to the Weekday board. So now in the morning I log in and if it's Tuesday, I look at Tuesday and I know I have 5 minor tasks and then the rest of the day for working on my project. No more dropped balls. Additionally, we can forward the emailed requests from clients to a board or a task, which makes it super easy to add to monday.com. It's really slick.

Pros and Cons

Extremely flexible setup. No need to fit your workflow to the app, the app will not only conform to your workflow, but make it easier than you thought possible, and free up time you can use to get more work done or have a life!
Automation. Being able to forward emails to boards & tasks keeps me out of my inbox which makes me soooo productive. My VA forwards the emails and I just look at monday.com to know all I need to be doing that day, and the files/info I need for a task are right there, from the email. We also made a "DONE" action that when I mark a task DONE (and I love the little fireworks animation) mondaycom then moves it to a Completed Tasks board. So it's available if I need to reference it at some point. Additionally, I frequently have tasks that aren't done until I get more info from the client, or the client reviews and signs off. So we made a status "Waiting for Client" and then an automation moves it to the Waiting for Client board. AND, when the client emails back, that email goes to the task as a status update --which triggers an automation to move it back to my daily tasks board. Sweet!
The video onboarding. We encountered a huge learning curve because we are not project managers and didn't even know how to set up any kind of management system, via an app or not. But after watching all the videos, we got a feel for how it could be done. I found videos on YouTube where actual monday.com users show how they are using the app, what their boards look like, how they set it up. That was hugely helpful. Between all the video help and my VA being super smart, we set it up so I didn't have to change my workflow at all -- it just started actually working. Folks, I get sh*t DONE now!
I love, love LOVE the desktop app.

I would have happily paid for a monday.com staff person to help me get set up. Offering that service on a fee basis would be good I think. It would have saved time watching all the videos and figuring things out ourselves, and time is money! I know there are freelance monday.com consultants but I didn't want to mess with interviewing them. I would have simply trusted someone who actually works for monday.com.
Time tracking. I use Paymo for one reason, and one reason only. They have an app that runs in the background and logs what I'm doing at all times. So when I forget to start the timer -- which I do pretty often lol -- I can refer to that log to see what times I should enter manually. If you guys had that app, I could get rid of Paymo and just use monday.com all the way, since you now have the ability to generate invoices from time logged.

Return on Investment

Keeps me organized.
Saves me a ton of time.
Reduces stress.
Clients have noticed the faster turnaround times and the way I'm staying on top of their requests.

Usability

Gotta say, the little animation when I change a task status to DONE is really fun. I enjoy that immensely. The drag-and-drop to move things around, the ability to clone and synchronize tasks and run them on another board is crazy awesome. It just works. We had no trouble learning how to use the interface at all.

Support Rating

I don't think we've needed any support, so I can't actually speak to this.

Reliability & Availability

I don't think monday.com has been down the entire time I've been using it. I use the desktop app mainly, and it runs great on my Windows machine and my Mac. Everything just works. Easy peasy.

Key Insights

Do you think monday.com delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with monday.com's feature set?

Yes

Did monday.com live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of monday.com go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy monday.com again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Paymo, QuickBooks Online, Microsoft 365 Business Premium, Microsoft Visual Studio Code

Likelihood to Recommend

monday.com is suitable for everyone who works. Period. Whatever you do, however you do it, if you're having trouble keeping yourself organized and you're dropping the ball now and then, monday.com will solve your problems. And with all the automations, it doesn't cost you MORE time to use it like many other project management apps. In fact, it will free up some time.

How have I stayed in business for 16 years without monday.com???

Overall Satisfaction with monday.com