Monday vs Shortcut

Monday is not truly innovative. They followed Asana and built a competitor, but there was nothing revolutionary about Monday. They always excelled in their marketing with their bright colors, but in terms of the actual user experience, many people have felt like Monday has fallen short. Users report having consistent performance issues. Monday has also gone down the path of trying to be an all-in-one tool, similar to ClickUp, But they have taken it to another level. They have so many features at this point that it feels like they don't even know themselves what they are and who they're for.

Monday's AI feels confusing, and ultimately not very useful. The AI features that exist feel like light automation layers tied to columns rather than anything that meaningfully speeds up real work. Combined with clunky workflows, a high learning curve, and a $2,400/year price tag if you go over free credits, the ROI simply isn’t there. A lot of users also complained that they will build out these robust workflows, and then if they go over the usage, you can only upgrade for the entire year rather than paying for the overage for that month. So you're basically faced with either not being able to rely on the AI for the rest of the month or paying $2,400 for the whole year.

Once Monday is configured, and the team is trained, it can help you stay on top of your work. However, when I previously used Monday with a previous company, we found that most of the team struggled to adopt it, which actually hurt productivity because one person (the project manager) ended up spending all day in meetings with the team and then updating the projects in Monday.

Monday has a very steep learning curve and is a tool you'd likely need a consultant to help you set up. Some teams have even reported spending over $20,000 on implementation, only to end up with a system that didn’t work as they imagined. This steep learning curve is especially important to keep in mind if you're a small team. Because of that, we typically recommend Monday more for enterprises or teams that have someone more technical who’s familiar with processes and software implementation. It's more for highly complex projects that require very deep customization.

Because Monday is very customizable, it requires proper team onboarding from the person setting up the account. If an implementation is not done right and there's no onboarding, you can expect that almost certainly the team will not adopt it. So if you go down the path of using Monday, you need to make sure that you invest in proper team training and hand-holding.