Wrike vs Monday: What’s Best in 2020

You can’t go wrong with Wrike or Monday.com for managing projects. Monday has a more customizable interface, but Wrike offers more standard options and integrations. Wrike features a free plan with limited tools whereas Monday’s plans vary by the number of users starting at $39 for five users (which may be cheaper over time).

When to Use Wrike

Wrike’s project management software offers time sheets and shareable reports, making it the best choice for businesses that work with clients like marketing or manufacturing firms. It’s easy to track billable hours and keep paying customers abreast of progress. It also allows unlimited free “collaborators”—clients, vendors, and freelancers who can view and contribute to projects.

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When to Use Monday.com

Monday.com’s ease of use and bright, intuitive interface makes it the best choice across industries like service or IT teams needing an adaptable task manager for a variety of initiatives. It offers templates, over 20 column types to help you keep information in one spot, and multiple display boards to manage and present project data in unique and customizable ways.

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Wrike vs Monday.com at a Glance

Wrike vs Monday.com offers similar project management tools with Wrike having client features while Monday.com is just easier to use—fun, almost. In order to best compare features and pricing, we looked at the most similar plans and gave per-user price ranges for Monday.com. Keep in mind that Monday.com’s fees are for groups of five, so the per month price is the same whether you have one user or five, six, or 10 users, and so on.

Wrike vs Monday Price & Features Comparison Chart

How We Evaluated Monday vs Wrike

Project management software should make your job easier. Therefore, we evaluated Monday vs Wrike on how easy they were to set up and learn, how well they let users record and find the tasks and support documents they need, and how adaptable they were across project methodologies as well as a team’s work style.

Based on what small businesses need to manage complex projects, we compared:

• Price: Monday and Wrike are both affordable for small business teams. Wrike charges per user, whereas Monday.com’s pricing tiers are based on by groups of users.
• Ease of set up and use: We compared Monday vs Wrike in terms of simplicity of installation plus how easy it was to learn, adapt and use.
• Project methodologies: We looked at how each tool supports projects and methodologies like Kanban, Lean, Agile, and Scrum. Both do.
• Collaboration: We compared how Monday.com and Wrike facilitate collaboration, from document storage and commenting to communication tools.
• Reports: We compared the Wrike vs Monday.com data visualization options—reports like Gantt charts, analytical reports, customization options, and data exports.
• Integrations: We compared the range of software these project management tools integrate with, from Google to Salesforce, and if it has an application interface (API).
• Resources and Support: We looked at Monday’s vs Wrike’s support tools, templates, user communities, and customer service options.
• Other: We compared tools unique to Wrike or Monday.com that may save you time or improve efficiency in ways beyond project management like document storage.

While both programs provide excellent collaborative tools, Wrike ekes out ahead of Monday.com for the depth and breadth of what it has to offer in terms of editing, security, and business tools. It also includes free access for external project contributors. However, with Monday.com, you can do much more than project management. You can use it across functions, from HR to sales.

Wrike vs Monday: Pricing & Features

When looked at per user, Wrike is the more expensive plan. However, Monday.com’s pricing scheme increases with each group of five users, making its per-user price vary. Wrike also offers a more robust system for project management with pre-built features and integrations. Plus, it has a free plan (limited feature) for your first five users.

Wrike Pricing & Features

Unlike Monday.com, Wrike prices its plans by features rather than the number of users. The Free Plan can only have five users at most, and the Professional Plan cuts off at 15. As a bonus, it does not charge for guest users (called collaborators). You can contact Wrike for pricing information on its Marketing and Enterprise plans for specific use-cases or more than 200 users.

Wrike Pricing & Features Comparison

Here are some of the top features you can expect from Wrike:

Templates and Data Fields

Wrike offers several ready-made templates for marketing, creative tasks, Agile and Kanban teams, HR, and customer support. You can also contact them for assistance in building custom templates. It offers 10 types of data fields, from text to numbers and dates, that you can customize to the kinds of data you need for your projects such as IT testing results or client approvals.

Wrike Project Views

Wrike’s project boards offer five view types: List, Board, Gantt Chart, Files View, and Workload. Workload is especially useful for managers as it allows them to quickly see someone’s bandwidth and reassign tasks to balance assignments. The Professional account has a Files View, so you can see attached files, while Business and more premium accounts provide robust analytics.

Document Storage and Editing

Wrike offers 15GB of storage in its Professional, Business, and Marketer plans. All plans include file sharing, document collaboration within the application, and tools allowing users to comment directly on an image. For example, it’s fully integrated with Microsoft Office, Google Drive, and other file-sharing programs. With the Marketing tier, you also get Wrike Proof and Wrike Publish.

Team Communication with Wrike

Wrike gives you excellent collaboration tools. Tasks allow communication, individual call-outs via @mention, live editing, and text quoting. You can proof and comment on images like screenshots and marketing deliverables. You can run and share reports with teammates via a dashboard. Best of all, you can set up unique work groups and invite clients as collaborators with limited access so they can follow along with the progress of their projects.

Forms

Wrike offers a highly customizable request form, which can include conditional follow-up questions and rules for who should see the completed form and what project(s) the form should post to on Wrike. Through forms, you can create projects or sub-projects on Wrike.

Wrike Integration

With over 30 integrations, Wrike offers a lot of flexibility for small businesses that want their software to support their employees’ need to work as a team. In addition to the document and collaborative programs, it integrates with Salesforce and Marketo. Its API further lets you make custom integrations with over 400 cloud and on-premise apps.

Security

Wrike has 38 security certifications from around the world in industries from retail to healthcare. Premium plans, from the Business level and up, allow you to set user groups and permissions with advanced privacy settings. To take advantage of Single Sign-on (SSO), you need to sign up for the Enterprise Plan.

Monday.com Pricing & Features

Monday.com prices its plans by groups of five users, so the fewer there are in the group, the more expensive they are per user. For example, with five users, the basic plan costs $7.80 per user per month, but it’s $39 per user per month for the same plan if you have only one user. This table shows pricing for one to five users. What’s nice is Monday.com offers discounted plans for nonprofit organizations and educational institutions.

Monday.com Pricing Tiers for 1-5 Users

Regardless of the number of users, the project management features remain the same. Once you choose your plan, the only change you’ll have to deal with is pricing—and that’s only if the number of users on your plan increases or decreases.

Monday.com’s Customizable Templates and Data Fields

Monday.com’s customizable templates highlight its versatility. It offers over 20 ready-made templates, covering everything from video production and employee onboarding to scheduling surgeries. In addition, it gives you a library of user-shared templates you can adapt and customize. The software provides 20 customizable data fields (twice what Wrike offers), so you can track the exact project data you need.

Project Views

Within a project, Monday.com offers eight view types: Table, Timeline, Kanban, Calendar, Chart, Map, Form, and Broadcast. The Map features lets you view locations and is good for planning travel and events, while Broadcast lets you post boards or elements to your website. That’s handy for sharing IT software road maps or posting photos of a construction project’s progress.

Document Storage and Editing

Monday.com offers 5GB of file storage on its Basic Plan, 50GB on its Standard Plan, and unlimited storage on its Pro and Enterprise Plans. You can upload files in multiple places on the program, pin it, and add multiple files. It integrates with file-sharing programs like Dropbox, Microsoft Office, and Google Drive. It does not allow file editing on the program, however.

Team Communication

Monday.com is highly collaborative within tasks but does not allow image or document commenting as Wrike does. Instead, you can provide comments within the task. However, it lets you set up automated workflows for processes like sending out emails when a task reaches a certain goalpost. That saves time and ensures the right people stay informed of key milestones.

Forms

Monday.com offers a Forms function to let you request tasks or gather information from outside sources or team members, unlike Write which gives external users limited access to the software itself. Forms are made based on which data columns you choose and are customizable. You can change wording and hide sections. Its automation allows you to send a thank-you message and redirect the user after they complete the form.

Monday.com’s Integrations

Monday.com’s integrations are geared toward making project management easier. It even integrates with other project management and task tools like Basecamp and ToDoist. If you have an online store with Shopify, Monday lets you track inventory and orders. With Mailchimp integration, you can plan email campaigns in Monday.com and also see its results.

Monday.com’s Security

Like Wrike, Monday.com is General Data Protection Regulation- (GDPR) compliant, has multiple International Organization for Standardization (ISO) certifications as well as being SOC 1, 2, and 3 compliant. It’s also HIPAA compliant, which is important within the medical field. It provides data encryption, multi-factor authentication support, Single Sign On (SSO), and advanced session management, as well as privacy controls. Not every plan has all these features, however.

Monday.com’s Road Map for 2020

Monday.com has some exciting plans for 2020, whereas Wrike did not share this information. Monday.com is capitalizing on its popular automations feature by allowing users to create their own time-saving workflows. It’s adding integrations for business functions like finance, marketing, design, and customer relationship management (CRM). It’s also providing integrations for video conferencing and chat to facilitate more immediate communication with distributed teams.

Wrike vs Monday: Ease of Use

Both Wrike and Monday.com are highly customizable and offer pre-made templates, making it easy for users to get started, although Monday.com offers twice the data fields and significantly more pre-built templates. While the interfaces are different from each other, neither is difficult to understand. Both offer assistance in creating customized templates along with new user onboarding and training services.

Wrike Ease of Use

Wrike’s number of project-management feature configurations can make it more difficult to set up initially, especially when you start doing more than the most basic tasks. The interface follows a standard project management design, so certified project management professionals (PMP) will not find it difficult to navigate to common features. The forms function can feed directly to tasks, which is a great time-saver and can get as complex as you need.

Monday.com Ease of Use

Monday.com allows you to customize your tasks right on the taskbar, adding data fields with ease. It’s also highly customizable, bright and intuitive. The in-app help tools are very well designed, making it user friendly for just about any kind of user—including those unfamiliar with traditional project management. Just search for the feature you need and in some cases, it will walk you through the implementation with step by step instructions.

Wrike vs Monday: Customer Service

While Monday.com impressed us with its in-app tools, both it and Wrike offer solid knowledge bases with search capabilities, user communities, direct help via email, contact forms, phone support, and more. Monday.com invites users to share their templates and experiences. Wrike brings users together with in-person conferences around the world.

Wrike Customer Service

Wrike has a searchable help center with illustrated articles from its knowledge base and responses within its community forums. It also offers live and on-demand webinars. For more personal help, you can contact them via phone or contact form 24/7.

Its professional services take you from consultation to implementation and training. In addition, its user conferences lets your users attend to learn more about getting the most of the software as well as networking with other project managers.

Monday.com Customer Service

Monday.com offers live phone and email support 24/7 and boasts that its support team members often reply to client issues after standard business hours. It has a robust help section within the project management software program that is searchable and gives you several self-help guides, including articles and videos. In some cases, the software itself provides tools that walk you through completing a task within a detailed tutorial. In addition, Monday.com offers:

• Knowledge Base
• Guides
• Video Tutorials
• Webinars
• Community Forum
• VIP Training Package

Monday.com also extends professional services for custom implementations, data migrations from existing project management tools, onboarding, training, and industry-specific integrations. That’s helpful when you want to move from traditional project management software or Microsoft Excel spreadsheets to something more user-friendly for your entire team.

Wrike vs Monday: Customer Reviews

It’s always a good sign when the customer reviews generally rave about a software solution, and this is the case for both Wrike and Monday.com. There were some concerns here and there about Wrike’s ease of use and Monday.com’s scalability, but overall both are highly recommended.

Wrike Customer Reviews

We found that Wrike user reviews praised its wide range of features, allowing them to create the right project template for their needs. Some, however, said that the complexities made it difficult to learn. There were some complaints about files not synchronizing or updating, and people complained that they could not find certain features. Most rated the product at 4 or more out of 5 stars.

Monday.com Customer Reviews

In our research, we found that Monday.com’s users praised its flexibility and ease of use, saying it enabled them to simplify their project management processes, which is the goal, after all. There were some concerns about the price and also that it did not work as well with very large teams. Users also wished for a more granular view (perhaps with subtasks). The overwhelming majority recommend this software for all kinds of projects and industries and on average, rated it higher than Wrike.

Bottom Line

Both Wrike and Monday.com are great choices for project management software. Both let you view task and progress in multiple ways, facilitate communication, and work with other programs. Plus, users love both platforms. Wrike’s in-app collaborative features and integrations outstrip Monday.com’s, making it a better choice for larger corporations and complex projects needing outside participation, but Monday.com’s software is more flexible and intuitive.

Monday.com (formerly DaPulse) is an excellent choice for teams starting out with project management software and for creatives who enjoy a clean, bright interface. It lets you do your own thing, your way. Further, it’s expanding its capabilities with planned integrations for 2020. Sign up for a free trial of Monday.com, and learn how it can make managing your projects and your teams easier.

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