monday.com has made a name for itself with its wide range of applications, providing value to organizations of all sizes. Despite its sterling reputation, there are some shortcomings in its CRM system.
It isn’t to say that monday.com is all bad. (No one else does data visualization better!)
While it is certainly powerful, deploying it for specific customer relationship management objectives, such as workflow automation or lead management, might reveal a few limitations.
This realization compelled me to explore other CRM options for my team, understanding that in the sales and customer relationships landscape, adaptability is key.
7 Best monday.com CRM Alternatives
When selecting these CRM alternatives, I considered several factors. These include must-have features such as user-friendliness, customization, and integration capabilities, good reviews reputation, popularity, as well as recommendations from peers and other industry professionals.
1. BIGContacts– Best Contact Management & Workflow Automation CRM for Small Businesses & Startups
Compared to monday.com, BIGContacts takes a more straightforward approach which, to me, simplifies the overall experience. Rather than trying to be everything at once, BIGContacts focuses on providing essential features but does those extremely well.
One major feature is contact management, which helps me keep client information organized and drive more personalized communication.
The task management capability is also noteworthy. It’s nimble, lets you assign, and follow up on tasks effortlessly, and the best part, it keeps your whole team in the loop! Plus, the automated reminders feature is your fail-safe against forgetting important activities or events.
And next, the workflow automation capabilities. You can create task dependencies, automate processes based on specific triggers, schedule personalized drip emails, and more, without any complexity.
The experience I personally gathered using BIGContacts specifically for smaller projects assures that it does bring great value for its cost. To sum up, where monday.com may be a bit overwhelming, BIGContacts provides a streamlined, feature-rich, and user-friendly alternative.
What You’ll Like:
- 360° view of contacts with custom fields, ensuring tailored insights
- Effective tracking of sales progression with a visual pipeline view
- Strategies for impactful customer reach with in-built email marketing tools
- Robust data analytics with CRM reports providing in-depth insights into business performance
- Task tracking with to-do lists and calendar views simplify project management and accountability
- 24/7 human customer support with dedicated success managers
What You May Not Like:
- You require a stable internet connection when dealing with large data volumes
- Regular updates may be required, which could be a minor inconvenience for users
Pricing:
- Forever free plan for startups with 100 contacts. Paid starts at $9.99/month with a 15-day free trial.
2. Nutshell– Best for Sales Automation & Team Collaboration
Image Source: Nutshell
If you’ve worked with Monday.com, you know how important automation is for optimizing your sales processes. Nutshell’s Sales Automation feature is its shining star. It is instrumental in improving workflow efficiency by automating time-consuming tasks.
During my time working with Nutshell, I found its team collaboration features to be quite valuable. It provides a shared platform to store customer interactions, making the sales process more coherent.
In contrast to monday.com, Nutshell offers a more intuitive and clutter-free collaborative experience. You can keep all customer details in one central location, schedule appointments easily, and enhance your understanding of sales performance with detailed reports.
Another highlight is its email marketing feature. It allows the creation of email lists, drip series, and funnel-based emails, helping improve business outreach.
What You’ll Like:
- Intuitive sales automation capabilities for emails and reminders
- Easy-to-customize reports help pinpoint areas for improvement
- Centralized contact and customer management system, featuring pinned notes to highlight crucial information
- Practical pipeline management with different views (List, Map, Chart, and Board) to track all leads
What You May Not Like:
- The CRM might seem too simplistic for larger enterprises
- Fewer customization options compared to monday.com
Pricing:
- Starts at $16/user/month.
3. Zoho CRM– Best Sales CRM Solution
Image Source: Boosted CRM
In my experience with Zoho CRM, it felt like a comprehensive toolbox designed to support my sales efforts. With features like lead, account, and contact management, it simplified the entire sales process.
Moreover, the process management feature was fantastic as it provided blueprinting and approval processes, which are missing in monday.com. Zoho follows a step-by-step process to automate routine sales, marketing, and support functions, making the team more productive.
The omnichannel capability, which allowed me to communicate with clients across various channels, was a feature that I found more integrated and streamlined compared to monday.com
Plus, comprehensive analytics with reports, KPIs, target meters, and dashboards provided valuable insights and helped me strategize better.
What You’ll Like:
- Advanced sales force automation streamlines your sales process from lead generation to deal closure
- Canvas Design Studio feature, offering a highly customizable CRM interface
- Zia, the AI-powered assistant, delivers precise sales predictions, automated lead scoring, and smart deal predictions
- Multi-channel communication capabilities – from email and telephony to live chat enable seamless client communication
What You May Not Like:
- The user interface may seem complex to some
- The onboarding process and customer support can be a bit fiddly
Pricing:
- Free for 3 users without features like forecasting, scoring rules, calendar booking, etc. Paid options start at $14/user/month.
4. Copper– Best for Google Workspace Integration
Image Source: Copper Help Center
My experience with Copper CRM showed me that it is fundamentally designed to integrate with Google Workspace.
It comes up strong for businesses that wish to keep their CRM and email platforms in sync. The amazing part is, that you can add leads, update deals, and even create Calendar events directly from your Gmail inbox.
Additionally, it’s an excellent deal tracker, which lets you set up your pipeline and visually follow the progress of each deal. You can also create recurring tasks, set notifications, and automate processes to stay on top of everything.
Unlike monday.com, Copper CRM offers a more integrated and native experience for users deeply embedded in the Google ecosystem.
What You’ll Like:
- Automated data entry from email interactions and drip email sequences for effective follow-ups
- Task automation feature that creates recurring tasks and alerts about them
- Customizable sales pipelines, facilitating meaningful and effective deal tracking
- Performance tracking with custom reports, providing valuable insights into your business performance
What You May Not Like:
- The experience might be less satisfying for businesses working outside of Google Workspace
- Lacks advanced customization and contact deduplication features
Pricing:
- Starts at $25/user/month for up to 2,500 contacts.
5. Bitrix24– Best for Collaboration
Image Source: Bitrix24
If team collaboration is your top priority, I would recommend Bitrix24 as a reliable alternative to monday.com. The tool is perfect for small to medium-sized businesses that aim to improve collaboration within their organization and communication with clients.
It embodies the notion of a unified workspace, with a collaboration suite that allows for seamless interaction, fostering efficient team communication with project management tools and video calls.
I liked its ability to automate workflows, visualize the sales pipeline, track marketing and sales metrics, and run segmented email marketing campaigns.
Plus, Its robust mobile functionality ensures that clients and sales processes can be sufficiently managed right from your pocket.
What You’ll Like:
- Complete sales cycle management, handling everything from initial lead capture to final customer service touchpoints
- Effective customer management with multi-channel lead capture and intelligent lead scoring algorithms
- In-depth sales intelligence features that allow for precise tracking of marketing costs and accurate ROI calculations
- Centralized document management for better sharing and co-authoring
What You May Not Like:
- Some users mention performance issues such as slow loading times and occasional glitches, which can slow down work progress
- Lack of consistent customer support, making it challenging to get timely assistance
Pricing:
- Free plan available with limited storage, emails, etc. Paid options start at $49/month for up to 5 users.
Read More: 7 Best Bitrix24 CRM Alternatives
6. Trello– Best for Lightweight, Visually-Oriented CRM
Image Source: Atlassian Community
From my personal experience, Trello stands out as a flexible board-based tool that can be customized as a CRM to manage leads, sales pipelines, and customer accounts.
Trello uses card and column structures to organize leads, akin to a digital sticky-note board, which is an engaging, visual way to manage a sales process.
If you’re someone who loves Kanban boards to manage things, this is your go-to tool. Its main strength lies in the easy drag-and-drop functionality, allowing sales teams to smoothly move leads through stages of the sales pipeline. Cards can represent leads, with detailed information, attached files, due dates, and checklists.
While comparatively simpler than monday.com, Trello shines as a CRM tool primarily due to its simplicity and visual representation of tasks and pipelines.
What You’ll Like:
- High level of CRM tool customization tailored to your sales team’s needs
- Visually organized boards for a simplified and hastened lead management process
- Power-Ups connect various apps to your boards, expanding Trello’s core functionality
- Trello offers pre-built, customizable templates to quickly set up your CRM system
What You May Not Like:
- Primarily a project management tool that doubles up as a CRM, lacking advanced features like contact scoring and email marketing
- Minimal analytical reporting functionality
Pricing:
- Free for up to 10 boards. Paid options start at $5/user/month.
7. HubSpot– Best for Unifying Sales, Marketing & Support Efforts
Image Source: HubSpot
HubSpot CRM is perfect for businesses that want to harmonize their marketing, sales, and customer service activities while getting in-depth insight into their customers.
A major strength of HubSpot, in my experience, is the level of automation and integration it offers. The platform can automatically log interactions and enrich contact data, creating a comprehensive picture of the sales lifecycle. This makes it extremely useful for managing complex sales pipelines.
It excels in providing tools like email tracking, meeting scheduling, ad management, and analytics. It has a helpful feature that notifies you when a prospect opens an email, enabling you to follow up at the right time.
What’s unique about HubSpot is its seamless integration with marketing and service tools, comparing very favorably against segmented approaches like monday.com. This allows for a truly unified customer journey, from initial contact through to ongoing customer service.
What You’ll Like:
- New leads and contact details are automatically enriched and organized
- Versatile suite of tools from ad management to customer service support
- Instant alerts when a prospect opens your email or visits your website, helping follow up at the right time and strategically engage with clients
- Gives a comprehensive real-time view of your entire sales pipeline on a visual dashboard
What You May Not Like:
- While it offers a free starter plan, the cost of additional features and capabilities is steep
- Limited customization options, particularly related to data fields and pipelines
Pricing:
- Free plan available with limited dashboards, templates, etc. Paid options start at $18/month.
Which is the Best monday CRM Alternative?
Choosing the right CRM for your unique business needs is instrumental in boosting your revenue and enhancing customer relationships. The key to making the right choice lies in understanding your team’s workflow, budget, and specific needs.
Knowing this, I’ve pinpointed 3 top alternatives to monday.com sales CRM that could be your perfect fit.
Option A: BIGContacts
BIGContacts is an affordable and efficient contact management system, ideal for SMBs. It includes features like customizable contact records and automated tasks. From sales pipeline management to robust email marketing tools, BIGContacts provides an all-encompassing solution. It’s not just about managing contacts – it’s about streamlining your entire process and driving sales growth – and BIGContacts fits the bill without being too heavy on your pockets.
Option B: Copper
For those already working within the Google Workspace, Copper CRM might be your perfect match. Copper is especially unique for its native integration with G Suite, providing seamless workflow synchronization. With efficient tracking, intuitive project management, and features designed for collaboration, Copper creates a CRM experience that feels effortless.
Option C: Trello
Trello stands out when it comes to amplified project management. It employs a visual approach to task management, which is clear, flexible, and engaging. By enabling you to organize your deals in a Kanban layout, track task progress, and collaborate with team members within a card-based interface, Trello refines your sales CRM into a highly productive ecosystem.
Before you invest in any of these tools, make use of demos or free trials to compare them against your needs and expectations. This can save you from wasting time implementing a tool that won’t produce the results you desire.
Evaluation Criteria
The evaluation of products or tools chosen for this article follows an unbiased, systematic approach that ensures a fair, insightful, and well-rounded review. This method employs six key factors:
- User Reviews / Ratings: Direct experiences from users, including ratings and feedback from reputable sites, provide a ground-level perspective. This feedback is critical in understanding overall satisfaction and potential problems.
- Essential Features & Functionality: The value of a product is ascertained by its core features and overall functionality. Through an in-depth exploration of these aspects, the practical usefulness and effectiveness of the tools are carefully evaluated.
- Ease of Use: The user-friendliness of a product or service is assessed, focusing on the design, interface, and navigation. This ensures a positive experience for users of all levels of expertise.
- Customer Support: The quality of customer support is examined, taking into account its efficiency and how well it supports users in different phases – setting up, addressing concerns, and resolving operational issues.
- Value for Money: Value for money is evaluated by comparing the quality, performance, and features. The goal is to help the reader understand whether they would be getting their money’s worth.
- Personal Experience / Experts’ Opinions: This part of the evaluation criteria draws insightful observations from the personal experience of the writer and the opinions of industry experts.
Learn More About monday.com Alternatives
Why do you need a monday.com alternative?
While monday.com CRM works well for certain small to mid-businesses, the user interface can occasionally lag, which could affect productivity. It has also been noted for its difficulty in job prioritization and managing tasks related to a specific contact. Furthermore, its desktop version for Mac users has been reported to be less efficient than the online version. Lastly, like all software, the CRM might become complex or confusing for certain users as it attempts to serve multiple needs.
What are the features to consider when choosing monday.com alternatives?
- Look for tools that are intuitive and user-friendly, requiring little to no training for your team to get started. The simpler the onboarding and implementation process, the more efficient it is for your business.
- Effective team collaboration is key to productivity. Look for a CRM that enhances communication and accountability within your team.
- Look for CRMs that offer automation for various repetitive tasks, alerts, and notifications which can save valuable time.
- The ability to create detailed, insightful reports and visualizing data in a preferred format is essential for making better business decisions.
- Robust, efficient, and timely customer support is a must-have feature in any CRM tool.
- A CRM that can smoothly integrate with your existing software and tools is necessary to avoid workflow disruptions.
- Cost of CRM can be a major factor, evaluate whether the pricing matches the value and features provided.
For more on how to choose the right CRM software, watch:
How do I migrate data from monday.com to alternatives safely?
To migrate data safely from monday.com to an alternative CRM solution, first, export your data from Monday.com into CSV or Excel files. Then, organize these files according to the import requirements of your new CRM. If you choose a CRM like BIGContacts, you can use an import template to handle the data transfer smoothly. Finally, verify the imported data for accuracy and completeness. This process ensures a secure and error-free data migration.
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