6 Best Monday Alternatives for remote and hybrid teams

Monday.com is a project management tool that's designed to help you manage complex projects. With everything from Kanban boards to Gantt charts, it's a flexible tool that helps you manage different types of projects. But there's also several other tools in the market that can help you manage things like customer relationships, finances and more.

Our research makes it easy for you to find the right one for your needs.

Here's 6 project management tools we personally battle tested for you, along with their pros and cons

Here are the tools we checked out:

• Trello
• Jira
• Asana
• Notion
• Clickup
• Basecamp
  

Trello

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Trello is a web-based collaboration platform designed to help you visualize and organize all of your projects in a single place. Trello is highly adaptable and a visually-focused way to organize your projects. The system itself is very flexible and capable of providing a three-tier hierarchical information system. This system is broken up into boards, cards, and lists. Boards, the highest-level division, are the containers for lists. Lists are where your projects live. Cards are the basic subdivisions of a list. The system is very flexible and very easy to use. Using the tool, you can create boards, lists, and cards very quickly.

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Pros:

• Access anywhere, anytime – you can access your data anytime you want, via tablet, smartphone, and computer. Truly flexible.
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• An Uncomplicated Pricing Structure – Trello have a far less complicated pricing structure than other recognized project management tools. For example, $25 per month gives you an unlimited access package. This package allows you to invite an unlimited amount of members. This package also comes with a wide range of features that should not go ignored.
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• Trello will not disappoint when it comes to notifications. You will never miss a task. Whenever a task is removed, commented on or updated, you will receive an email notification. If you are a mobile user, you will, of course, get a push notification.
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• Trello will help you get rid of those tedious notes; you can use it to keep track of everything, which will further free up your time
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• The real-time feature allows up to 10,000 users to be logged in at the same time.
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• Follows the Kanban System – Kanban has had a significant influence on process improvement within the software development sector. Cards and a board are some of the tools that can be used to aid in planning and scheduling tasks."""

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Cons:

• Trello – A big issue with Trello is the reliance on data. If you don't have data, you can't view your Trello boards. Having no data is quite possible in the modern day and age, so this is not an issue we tried to solve.
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• Storage is Limited – Storage is limited to 250MB per upload, however you only have a 10MB per upload allowance if you are a basic member. This may be an issue if you are a gold member and want to upload a large number of files.
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• Equipped with a catalogue of powerful features, Trello is a very flexible tool. One challenge is that you cannot edit existing comments.
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• Don’t Go Too Large – Trello is most effective for managing tasks and projects on a small scale. If you’re looking for a solution for managing a large enterprise, maybe Trello isn’t the best option.

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Quick Conclusion:

As you can probably see, Trello has many advantages and can benefit businesses, sole traders, entrepreneurs and pretty much anybody who has daily tasks or projects to manage. Weighing up the pros and cons shows that Trello is an excellent piece of software that can help you get those essential jobs done. Whether for personal or professional use, Trello is a winner.

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Jira
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Jira Software is offered as a part of the wider Jira family

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Pros:

• It has a feature set that enables you to sketch out your big picture, communicate your plans, and use your platform to connect your plans to the everyday tasks of your project teams
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• Share your tasks with the team, in order to help them get work done more effectively.
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• Standard integration. With the help of 3rd party partners, the issue tracker and project management can integrate with thousands of 3rd party software. Using the Atlassian Marketplace, you can extend the features of the tools to adapt the experience to your needs.
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• Very flexible, Jira allows users to create any type of issue. They can also customize workflows to fit any requirement of a particular company. Users can create and customize various elements, such as tables, forms, timelines, reports, fields, and more.
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• Can be used by multiple people across different roles within a company
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Cons:

• Customers say the Jira application is sufficient for their needs, but still lacks the functionality of its web counterpart.
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• Complex integration from other applications. Migrating projects, for example, from Microsoft Team Foundation Server into Jira involves manually migrating each artifact into Jira, which is very time-consuming.
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• Reports can be used in multiple places.
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• We don't allow files bigger than 10MB to be uploaded. Uploading a photo, video, or document that is more than 10MB in size is not allowed.
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• Some find it a bit tricky to use. Older parts of the software have a slightly different interface, but newer parts have a different, newer interface.
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Quick Conclusion:

There are many ways to manage projects. Jira offers great support for agile and is used by thousands of companies. We've built our app around the same ethos, helping you manage your projects from anywhere.

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Asana
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Asana makes it easy to manage your tasks and deadlines. Teams can keep track of what needs to be done and work together to get the job done.

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Pros:

• It offers a free plan. Project management software is important to small and medium-sized businesses. However, some of them can be costly but not Asana. Thanks to its free plan, small teams that are on a tight budget can still have access to their own PM software.
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• That’s because there are more than 10 apps you can integrate into Asana, and more are continuously being developed.
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• It is one of Asana’s strong points, helping businesses and organizations to focus on being productive. That is why the very simple assignments within projects are labelled with names and deadlines to track their progress. It also enables users to add files from the device used or from Dropbox or Google Drive.
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• Asana provides strong security features. With a team's project details and data being classified as confidential, Asana supports this through its storage security measures.
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• We have a dashboard, that enables you to track each task on it. It is highly customizable to allow you to obtain different dashboards for different purposes. Aside from that, you can make use of our dashboard for job applicants, customer queries, and group conversations too.
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• Better collaboration. Asana allows people to invite people to a workspace. The workspace enables people who belong there to actually see all the tasks and projects in it. Even the manager can assign people to follow a certain task or they may follow voluntarily.

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Cons:

• Not ideal for inexperienced users. Many experienced project managers have found Asana effective, but a number of new users struggle to get to grips with its intimidating interface. For newbies to be able to make the most of the software, they need onboarding help, which can be costly and time consuming. In fact, research has found that the learning curve is extremely steep, which means that it's too challenging for beginners.
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• Too many features. In a nutshell, Asana has too many features for small projects, and not enough for large projects. Because of this, it can become too overwhelming for a basic project.
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• Tasks can only be assigned to one person, this is so that everyone understands who should be working on a task. If someone passes a task onto someone else, the system will allow this, however, this can be confusing as to who is actually working on the task. If the person who is actually supposed to be working on the task is not available, this may cause problems.
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• No time tracking. Asana may be ideal for tracking projects and tasks and who they have been assigned to and more. However, its drawback is that it cannot track the time spent by the members working on their tasks. If teams need to bill different clients and categorize their work into billable and non-billable, they would need to use third-party tracking software.
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• Asana does not provide PDF or Excel export. As a result, you are unable to easily share files with clients/third parties who don't use Asana
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Quick Conclusion:

Asana has been proven advantageous to many businesses for many years. Though the pros and cons sound roughly equal, the value of Asana is up to individual users to determine based on their experience.

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Notion
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We offer a workspace that helps teams collaborate, plan and get organized. The platform is self-sufficient, enabling the creation of a template that everyone can work on. It is structured like a wiki, allowing the creation of a kanban-like project where users can adjust the layout. Behind the scenes, it is real-time collaboration, assignment of tasks, as well as comments. Essentially, Notion is a platform where teams get to work efficiently and be organized.

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Pros:

• Users have reported it's easy to understand. You can find helpful tutorials online, as well as great service from our team
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• Notion is all-in-one. Notion uses the tagline, ‘the all-in-one workspace’ because it’s the only app you need to accomplish everything.
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• Notion can be used on different devices. We have a desktop version, a web app, and native mobile apps. We want to make it as easy as possible for you to access your data wherever you are. """
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• There is a free trial. We want new users to have a half-hour to try out our software to see if it suits their needs. If they give it a go and decide it's not for them, it doesn't cost them anything. But this freemium model will limit their use over time.
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• Notion is for getting things done. Its clean and uncluttered UI makes tasks that are already complicated much more manageable. The Spreadsheets and Databases can be navigated easily and it helps to make organizing files seamless. This is owed to the fact that Notion understands that organization is the key to productivity.
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• Notion offers a variety of features. Users can create and manage to-do lists, track bills, automate their book keeping and more.

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Cons:

• Notion needs a lot of time to get started. One of the most common problems that people have with our product is that it takes a lot of time to set it up. The other problem is that the mobile app, while very useful, could be more intuitive than it is.
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• The Notion editor can be improved in a few areas. Users would like to better collaborate on PDFs and add annotations to images. It also lacks the ability to lock pages, but these features will be added later. Many users also want Notion to integrate with Sketch and UXPin.
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• The free version of Notion is limited, and is mainly a trial version. But it has all the features that will be required by a student to write a research paper.
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• Notion notification is not very reliable. Notion has a notification feature where users can tag their teammates to assign them tasks and due dates. Unfortunately, if their Notion is not up on their end, the notification doesn’t go through. There is also an option to turn off email notifications which hinder notifications from being received
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Quick Conclusion:

Our customers say that using Notion makes their jobs easier. We've had great feedback on our user experience, with many people saying that it just gets out of your way so you can focus on your work.

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ClickUp

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Clickup is a cloud-based collaboration tool that is suitable for businesses across all industries. Clickup is a suitable for your business whether it is large or small, and it includes features like communication and collaboration and tasks assignment and statuses. More specifically, Clickup allows you to assign tasks and comments to a specific team or members of a team. You can also mark these comments as ‘in progress’ or ‘resolved’, and also make custom statuses.

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Pros:

• Suitable for teams, as well as, individual users. Most project management software is usually suitable for teams. Clickup has an edge compared to them because it is also easy to use for individuals. It has a suite of features that are perfect for managing daily activities. The newer versions are especially impressive because of their enhanced user interface. Also, the integrations help save time.
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• It's easy to switch between the dashboard and other views. Clickup's user interface is full of options that make your work much easier.
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• Even the free version of Clickup is powerful. Many free versions are less powerful or lack features. However, this isn't true for Clickup, which still supports many features that are only found in paid versions of other software. For example, it has email notifications, an Android/iOS app, task dependencies, file attachments for tasks, and more.
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• Clickup's overarching aim is to provide an efficient and effective experience for its customers. This is evidenced by the customer-centric nature of the features they provide.
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• We're always there to help. We're easy to get in touch with and will go out of our way to ensure your questions are answered.
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• One of the main reasons for Clickup's popularity and user satisfaction is the friendly interface. Several single users have commented on the clarity of the interface.

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Cons:

• There's a high learning curve. Our users report that the complexity of the product is hard to understand.
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• Too much choice for customization. Some people have said that too many choices can be overwhelming; they'd prefer a more simple solution.
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• Users have complained that the calendar is ‘confusing’ and ‘clunky’. They claim the interface is not intuitive and it’s difficult to use, especially when entering dates. It seems to be the main source of complaints from the users.
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• As an enterprise solution, the system can be confusing for non-technical users and not intuitive. However, the company is working hard to improve the interface.
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• A common criticism of Clickup is that you have to use a third-party service to send tasks from a Gmail filter.

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Quick Conclusion:

Clickup may not be as popular as Asana, Trello, Basecamp, or other platforms, but it is definitely impressing users. Though it has disadvantages, the developers are constantly upgrading the platform to provide great user experience. It is worth a try for both team users and solo users.

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Basecamp

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Basecamp is a tool that allows you to communicate with your team members. It mainly streamlines the work that you need to do with others, allowing you to upload files and organize members’ schedules and to-do lists. It is also chat-enabled so that you can communicate with your team in real time. Basecamp is easy on the eyes because it arranges the files on the main page with useful icons instead of linear lists. It allows you to comment on files, acknowledge tasks and notify users about your recent activity. Everything that your team talks about is contained in Basecamp, so you never need to send emails and messages on various other platforms and software.

Pros:

• We aim to make storing files in one place easier for you. The reason we do this is that it makes it easier to access older files, as every project comes with a docs and files area
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• Basecamp has a flexible pricing model. The free plan is very simple: it has a limit of 15 users and 12 projects. That's it! The paid plan is more advanced with unlimited users and projects. There are also 30 days of free trials for interested customers.
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• Basecamp allows you to switch notifications on or off, and can be set to be on permanently for those who want to be notified every step of the way.
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• Basecamp makes it easy for users to communicate with each other
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• In keeping with its intuitive design, Basecamp works seamlessly on tablets and mobile devices and syncs to your iPhone or Android device, with notifications included.
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• Connect Basecamp to Google Docs to seamlessly attach documents.

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Cons:

• No time tracking at this time. There are many parts of tracking time that are important to an efficient process.
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• Basecamp doesn’t allow its users to archive a topic. This can be problematic because while it does help to declutter, it can be difficult to keep track of topics. This can stand in the way of more important ones. This means that users need to keep track of the relevance of the topic rather than the topic itself.
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• No starring feature. Google users know how useful the starring feature is. It would be nice to have it on Basecamp so that more important boards and messages rise above the rest. Users can easily go to the starred section and find the specific item they are looking for. """
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• A priori, it doesn’t have all the features you need. Simple isn’t always a good thing.

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Quick Conclusion:

Basecamp is widely used in the industry because it makes the task of managing projects easy and efficient. Project management has never been this easy, thanks to Basecamp. However, it also has a few disadvantages which users may not like.