Monday.com vs Jira Work Management: Which Is Better?

Your Ultimate Guide for 2024


Before we get to our review, we want to tell you about a new PM software alternative to Monday.com and Jira Work Management. After using them both (and trying countless other PM tools), we realized that the PM software on the market today is missing a lot of important features … features that we needed to run our own business.

So, instead of waiting and hoping they would improve their tools, we simply built our own PM software! It’s called Teamly, and you can get an absolutely FREE account by clicking the button below.

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Overview

Monday.com vs Jira Work Management Overview

If you want to know whether Monday.com or Jira Work Management is right for your team, you’ve come to the right place! In this guide, we’ll share 10 main differences between Monday.com and Jira Work Management, review the pros and cons of each, tell you what their users think, and help you decide which project management (PM) software is right for your business.

Launched in 2012

Monday.com was launched by Roy Mann and Eran Zinman in 2012, however, when it was first released, the software was called dapulse. In 2017, it underwent a name change and today, it’s known as Monday.com.

Monday.com is a cloud-based work operating system (OS) that can be used by teams of all sizes for project management, sales, HR, operations, IT, and more.

As with other PM tools, monday.com relies on boards, which function similarly to well-designed spreadsheets. These boards can be used to manage project, department, or product workflows. For instance, you might create a board to manage your content calendar, prepare for a product launch, or track software development.

Within these boards, you can add customized columns, such as progress tracking, time tracking, due date, assignee, and so on. Likewise, the board’s rows--which are called items in Monday.com terminology--can consist of tasks, activities, or whatever else you want.

Boards can be visualized in multiple ways. For instance, monday.com offers several different views, including: files, map, timeline, Gantt chart, workload, chart, form, calendar, and Kanban.

Launched in 2002

Jira was originally created in 2002 by Atlassian. Initially designed as a bug-tracking tool for software companies, Jira’s platform eventually grew to include three main products:

  • Jira Software - for bug tracking and software development
  • Jira Core - for project management by non-tech teams
  • Jira Service Management - for business service desks and IT operations to issue tickets and manage changes

In 2021, Atlassian launched Jira Work Management (JWM), a rebranded, improved version of Jira Core that users can optionally integrate with Jira Software and/or Jira Service Management.

Jira Work Management’s main view is the list view, which is a grid that’s like a standard to-do list. This list features important information, such as a project’s tasks, subtasks, and due dates, as well as the status of various tasks and who’s responsible for completing them. In addition to the list view, Jira Work Management also offers timeline, calendar, and board views.

Now that you have a better understanding of Monday.com and Jira Work Management, let’s take a look at the key differences between them …

Differences

Monday.com vs Jira Work Management: 10 Main Differences

1. Ease-of-Use

Both Monday.com and Jira Work Management are fairly intuitive, however, Jira Work Management is the more user-friendly of the two products.

Jira Work Management has a “Jira Wizard” to guide new users through the application, and it offers 23 helpful workflow templates for all the different teams within an organization, such as HR, legal, marketing, etc.

By contrast, although Monday.com has a far more visually appealing user interface, advanced features and a highly customizable platform add to its complexity. Fortunately, Monday.com offers 100+ templates to help teams create new projects and workflows quickly.

Even so, it can still take a few weeks (or even months) of using Monday.com before you determine the best way to track things at your organization.

Additionally, Monday.com offers helpful links to its basic training videos within the software itself, however, the sheer number of those videos (30) can overwhelm new users.

Our Vote:
  • Monday.com
  • Jira Work Management

2. Pricing

Both Monday.com and Jira Work Management offer membership tiers, and each software has a free plan. As of this writing, membership pricing is as follows:

(monthly billing)
  • INDIVIDUAL - no cost for up to two users
  • BASIC - $30/month, 3 user minimum; $10/month for each additional user
  • STANDARD - $36/month, 3 user minimum; $12/month for each additional user
  • PRO - $60/month, 3 user minimum; $20/month for each additional user
  • ENTERPRISE - Contact sales
  • Note: - Monday.com only allows additional users to be added in increments of five. For instance, if you have seven users, you’ll need to pay for ten users; if you have 23 users, you’ll need to pay for 25 users, and so on. However, once you hit 50+ users, you can contact sales for a quote.
(monthly billing)
  • FREE - no cost for teams with up to 10 members
  • STANDARD - 5/month per user
  • Note: - Jira Work Management pricing is cheaper for larger teams (100+ users). For instance, the cost is $4.67/month/user for 150 users and $4.40/month/user for teams with 250 users. Pricing continues to decrease incrementally, the larger your team size.

Understandably, Monday.com’s pricing structure makes it difficult to assess total costs, so for comparison purposes, we did the math.

For a team with 25 users, Monday.com’s Standard plan would run you $300/month, whereas with Jira’s Standard plan, you could expect to pay $125/month. While of course cost shouldn’t be the only factor when you’re considering PM software, that’s a significant difference.

Furthermore, not only does Monday.com charge more per user, but the software’s pricing is way more confusing than it needs to be. As previously mentioned, even if you only have 6 users on your team, Monday.com forces you to pay in increments of 5 users, so you’d actually have to pay for 10 people, which is pretty frustrating.

For these reasons, we picked Jira Work Management for the win.

Our Vote:
  • Monday.com
  • Jira Work Management

3. Free Plan Limits & Restrictions

Although there are a number of things you can do with both Monday.com and Jira Work Management’s free plans, they do come with various restrictions.

For instance, Monday.com gives its free users unlimited boards but a mere 200 items (aka rows) to play with--unless they refer others to the software. Additionally, free users can only access Monday.com’s Kanban board view.

By contrast, Jira Work Management lets free users create unlimited projects with unlimited tasks while providing them access to four views: list, board, timeline, and calendar.

And while both Monday.com and Jira Work Management offer storage allowance, Monday.com limits free users to 500 MB, whereas Jira gives its free users a more generous 2 GB of storage.

Perhaps most importantly, Monday.com’s free plan is really designed for individuals. As such, it’s limited to just two users, whereas Jira Work Management’s free plan allows up to ten team members.

Based on Jira Work Management’s unlimited projects/tasks, additional views, 2 GB of file storage, and larger team size allowance, choosing a winner for this category was a no-brainer.

Our Vote:
  • Monday.com
  • Jira Work Management

4. Reporting

Project Management Tool Reporting Dashboard

Both Monday.com and Jira Work Management offer reporting dashboards for all membership tiers. These dashboards allow users to create customized views that display project progress, tasks, and other board data.

While both tools have similar reporting capabilities, there are some key differences. For instance, Monday.com has 75+ widgets you can add to your dashboard, including some third-party apps that offer additional reporting. Plus, Monday.com gives you the option to export dashboard data to Excel or a PDF file for further analysis.

However, Monday.com does limit reporting based on your membership. For instance, its free plan lets users create unlimited widgets and dashboards, but each dashboard can only contain information from one board. As a result, users can’t view real-time data from several projects at a glance. That number increases to five boards with Standard membership and ten boards with Pro.

By contrast, Jira Work Management gives even its free users access to all reporting features, so they can create as many custom dashboards as they want without restrictions.

And, as with Monday.com, Jira offers gadgets you can add to your dashboards for real-time, customized reporting. Additionally, you can go into any Jira project and run one of ten different reports, if you want to drill down into the project’s specifics.

Although Jira Work Management offers its free users generous reporting capabilities, we ultimately went with Monday.com for this category, due to its more appealing dashboard, exporting capabilities, and extensive customization options.

Our Vote:
  • Monday.com
  • Jira Work Management

5. Mobile App

Monday and Jira Mobile Apps

Both Monday.com and Jira Work Management offer highly-rated mobile apps for iOS and Android users.

While Monday.com users praise the app’s ease of use, customization options, and dashboard, some users note that the mobile app has technical glitches and limited functionality compared to Monday.com’s desktop app. Additionally, many people complained that they couldn’t filter subitems by status with the mobile app.

By contrast, Jira Cloud mobile app users appreciate its ease of navigation and generally report that the app makes it easier to keep up with tasks on the fly. Still, users have expressed dissatisfaction about the app’s slow load times and failure to sync in real-time.

Additionally, many have noted that the Jira Cloud app is best used as a reference or for making minor changes on the go rather than for efficiently running projects.

Since this category’s a close call, we’re going to go with user reviews here. Although the Monday.com and Jira Cloud apps have the same rating on the Apple App store (4.7), Monday.com is rated higher on the Google Play store--4.7, compared to Jira Cloud’s rating of 4.5--which is why we’ve chosen Monday.com for the win here.

Our Pick:
  • Monday.com
  • Jira Work Management

6. Customer Service

Both Monday.com and Jira Work Management offer multiple ways for users to get assistance--unfortunately, however, neither of the two competitors provide phone support.

Monday.com users can access 24/7 customer support via a website form. Monday.com also offers a knowledge base, video tutorials, webinars, and a community forum where users can pose questions.

Jira Work Management also allows users to contact customer support via a website form, however, if you’re using JWM over the weekend or in the evening, don’t expect an immediate response. Jira’s support team is only available Monday - Friday from 9AM-5PM for Jira Work Management users.

Furthermore, users on the free plan aren’t supported at all. If they need help, their only support option is to turn to the Jira community or to Jira Work Management’s written tutorials.

Because Monday.com offers 24/7 customer support and a wide array of video tutorials and webinars, we’re Team Monday.com on this one.

Our Vote:
  • Monday.com
  • Jira Work Management

7. Integrations

Monday and Jira Work Management Integration Options

When it comes to integrations, Jira Work Management really shines. The software integrates with more than 1,000 apps, many of which are free for small teams. By contrast, Monday.com integrates with just 50+ applications.

That said, both Monday.com and Jira Work Management integrate with the apps that teams are most likely to use, including popular picks like Slack, Google Drive, MailChimp, Gmail, and GitHub. Still, based on Jira’s incredible number of integrations, we picked Jira Work Management for this category.

Our Vote:
  • Monday.com
  • Jira Work Management

8. Time Tracking

Project Management Tool Time Tracking

figure out how much time various tasks take, calculate labor costs, and improve resource management.

With both Monday.com and Jira Work Management, users can track time. For instance, Monday.com allows Pro and Enterprise users to add a time tracking column to their boards. When users work on a task, they can then start a time clock to track the amount of time spent on that particular task.

Jira Work Management doesn’t offer a time clock, although users can manually enter the amount of time they’ve spent on a task. Additionally, there are various plug-ins that can be added to Jira Work Management for more accurate time tracking.

Our Pick:
  • Monday.com
  • Jira Work Management

9. Budgeting

Monday.com offers some budgeting features, so users can, for instance, record cost estimates for tasks, track budgets, and view actual versus estimated project costs. Additionally, with Monday.com’s Quotes & Invoices widget, users can create quotes and invoices using board data.

By contrast, Jira Work Management doesn’t offer built-in budgeting or invoicing features. However, users do have the opportunity to integrate various budgeting apps with Jira Work Management.

Our Pick:
  • Monday.com
  • Jira Work Management

10. Communications

Both Monday.com and Jira Work Management have communication features. For instance, users can set up automations within Jira Work Management to notify people via email when certain events occur, such as a new task being created.

Additionally, Jira Work Management integrates with Slack, so teams can get immediate notifications about any changes, edits, or comments in specified Slack channels.

Monday.com offers users similar functionality via its own Slack integration. Users can also receive communications through Monday.com’s inbox. The inbox shows users recent updates that have been made to the boards they’re subscribed to.

Additionally, Monday.com uses bell notifications to notify users each time something occurs that’s directly relevant to them--such as being mentioned by a team member, getting assigned to a task, or someone replying to their update.

Because Monday.com offers built-in notifications and an inbox, we’re going with Monday.com on this one.

Our Pick:
  • Monday.com
  • Jira Work Management

Reviews

Monday.com and Jira Work Management Reviews

While reviews don’t paint the entire picture, they can offer some helpful insights into Monday.com and Jira Work Management. So, let’s take a look at how they stack up against each other on TrustRadius.

reviews-logo

Monday.com Reviews

At the time of this writing, Monday.com has 2,384 reviews and a rating of 8.7 out of 10. Generally speaking, Monday.com users like the software’s board templates, intuitive design, and colorful dashboards.

Additionally, users appreciate how easy Monday.com makes it to share confidential information with clients, freelancers, and other external parties.

However, not all Monday.com reviews are positive, and a small minority of Monday.com users report disappointing experiences. For instance, some reviewers note that between the inbox and bell notifications, they’re inundated with too many unnecessary messages.

Additionally, users report that the software lacks enough data space and is updated too often with new features that aren’t retrofitted into older boards.

reviews-logo

Jira Work Management Reviews

Being relatively new, Jira Work Management has far fewer reviews on TrustRadius (31). Still, they tend to skew favorably, with Jira Work Management earning a rating of 8.4 out of 10.

On the plus side, users commend Jira Work Management’s automations, different views, and ability to create forms. They also like how easy Jira Work Management makes it to manage project dependencies.

Still, there were a few criticisms. For instance, Jira Work Management users complained about its “tedious search feature” and lack of a built-in timer.

Users also didn’t like Atlassian’s pace of innovation and mentioned that new features are slow to be added to Jira Work Management.

Pros and Cons

Monday.com vs Jira Work Management: Pros and Cons

Pros
  • Highly Customizable - Because monday.com is an operating system--rather than just a PM tool--users have the ability to create highly customized software applications using monday.com’s columns, views, items, automations, integrations, and widgets.

  • 200+ Templates - Monday.com offers 200+ templates for virtually every industry and team type. These templates are customizable, so users can quickly create workflows, rather than trying to develop them from scratch.

  • Multiple Views - Monday.com has several different views, including: files, map, timeline, Gantt chart, workload, chart, form, calendar, and Kanban. With so many different ways to view project data, Monday.com is incredibly versatile.

  • Time Tracking - Many PM tools don’t offer built-in time tracking or if they do, there’s usually an additional charge. However, with Monday.com, users on the Pro plan (or above) can manually enter time or use a time tracking clock to track how long tasks take.

Cons
  • Membership Limitations - A lot of Monday.com’s best features aren’t accessible in its Individual or Basic plans. For instance, users need at least the Standard plan to use integrations or automations. They also don’t have access to the Timeline, Calendar, or Gantt views in the two lowest-priced plans.

  • Confusing Pricing - Monday.com’s pricing is more confusing than it needs to be, and users often have to pay for people that aren’t actually on their team, since Monday.com charges for up to 5 users at a time … meaning businesses with 11 team members, for instance, must pay for up to 15 team members.

  • Less User-Friendly - With its high degree of customization, Monday.com does come with a learning curve--especially for users who are new to PM. As a result, it can take more time to become adept with Monday.com than some other PM tools on the market.

  • Limited Task Dependencies - Task dependencies occur when certain tasks can’t be started until other tasks are completed. Although this is a common scenario, Monday.com only allows users to identify task dependencies by due date. Not only is this frustrating, but worse, this limited feature is available to Pro and Enterprise users only.

Who Is Monday.com Best For?

Monday.com is best for businesses that:

  • Don’t make use of task dependencies in project management
  • Are small to medium-sized
  • Need time tracking functionality
  • Regularly create quotes and invoices for clients
Pros
  • Easy Form Creation - Jira Work Management allows users to create forms for use with other internal teams. This provides a convenient, easily trackable system, for instance, when one team wants to request work from another.

  • Good Free Plan - With Jira Work Management’s Free plan, small teams (up to 10 people) can create unlimited projects, tasks, reports, and dashboards. They also can create unlimited automations within a project. Additionally, teams can use all of Jira Work Management’s project views with the Free plan.

    This free plan is considerably more generous than what many other PM software companies offer. As a result, Jira Work Management’s Free plan may be enough to suit the needs of some teams, provided they have no more than 10 members.

  • Integrations - With thousands of integrations, Jira Work Management can integrate with virtually any tool you might be using in your business. Plus, unlike a lot of other PM software, Jira Work Management allows even its free users to take advantage of integrations.

  • Intuitive UI - Although Jira Work Management isn’t as visually appealing as some of the other PM tools on the market, it’s fairly simple to use. As a result, even those new to project management can figure it out relatively quickly.

Cons
  • Limited Support - Not only is it impossible to speak to a customer service rep on the phone, but Jira’s reps only respond to support requests from 9AM-5PM. Additionally, teams using Jira Work Management’s Free plan don’t get any support at all beyond the ability to ask questions to the Jira community.

  • No Built-In Budgeting - Jira Work Management doesn’t offer built-in budgeting or invoicing features. Although you can integrate Jira Work Management with other budgeting applications, these apps typically charge a monthly per-user fee.

  • Not for Agile PM - Jira Work Management is a lighter version of Jira Software that was designed for business teams to collaborate. As such, if you’re using an Agile project methodology, you’ll need a more robust PM tool, like Jira Software.

  • Few Templates - Although Jira Work Management does offer 23 workflow templates for the different teams within an organization, that’s a paltry number when compared to Monday.com’s 100+ workflow templates.

Who Is Jira Work Management Best For?

Jira Work Management is best for businesses that:

  • Want to improve collaboration among non-technical teams
  • Don’t use an Agile project management methodology
  • Don’t require sophisticated budgeting/invoicing features
  • Are looking for a free PM tool to satisfy the needs of a small team
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We’ve been building and selling software online since 2005

And along the way, we’ve used just about every well-known project management tool out there.


While they were OK, we never found one tool that offered all of the important functionality we needed to manage our large teams and projects. Instead, we were forced to patchwork together a few different PM tools to meet our needs … which wasn’t efficient or cost-effective!

Rather than continue doing that, we decided to build our own PM software. One that does EVERYTHING you need to manage a remote team of people, ultra-effectively … without all the confusing features nobody actually uses or the unbelievably steep learning curve that goes hand-in-hand with most PM software.

It’s called Teamly, and best of all, you can get your absolutely FREE account by clicking the button below.

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