Project management tools can help bring efficiency to your individual teams and overall organization. These tools provide a central hub for communications and task tracking so that every initiative you create stays on schedule and budget.
But in the last few years, many project management tools have entered the market (including the building of this site), and while this competition is great for consumers, it also makes choosing the right one difficult.
To help you decide which project management tool is best for your teams, we’re going to review two of the most popular platforms.
Monday vs Airtable are both powerful project management tools, but they offer different advantages for different project scenarios.
Below, we’ll have these two project management solutions go head-to-head so you can decide which one might be right for your next project.
What is Monday?
Monday is an easy-to-use project management platform that focuses on traditional project management workflows. The platform is 100% cloud-based and teams can access it from just about anywhere and on any device.
Monday really focuses on being easy to use without a steep learning curve. Even those without formal project management experience will be able to quickly jump in and understand it
Monday started over a decade ago so they’ve had plenty of time to improve the product and respond to customer input and feedback. The result is a very polished platform that never gets in the way of what you’re trying to do.
Monday Features
Monday excels with traditional project management workflow features that are enhanced with collaborative elements.
Project Views
Monday offers one-click access to all of the common project management views like Kanban, timeline, Gantt, and calendar-based views. For those experienced with project management, using Monday’s version of Kanban boards or Gantt charts will immediately feel intuitive and easy to use.
Better yet, even if you’re not familiar with these tools, the easy drag-and-drop interface for many of the project views makes them very accessible to beginners.
This makes it easy for everyone on your team to understand your workflows even if they are not versed in project management fundamentals. Individual users can also access any view they want with a single click.
The ease of use of Monday’s project views is probably one of its strongest features. They don’t really do anything new or groundbreaking in this regard, but the clean interface and intuitive controls make it a breeze to work with.
Role Assignments
Monday offers robust role assignment features so you can keep better track of everyone on your team. These detailed role assignments also help you control access to various functions across the platform.
For example, oversharing is often a problem when using online collaborative tools. But with Monday, access to different content or boards can be customized so only the right team members have access or editing ability.
This also comes in very handy for task management and time tracking when needed.
Integrations To Match Your Workflow
For existing teams that already have specific workflows set up, a project management tool needs to be flexible enough to allow those workflows to be integrated with ease.
Monday offers integration with virtually all of the popular business productivity apps you are already using. In all, they offer over 200+ one-click integrations. These require no coding and you simply link your accounts for each app in most cases.
One example is the integration with Google Calendars. You can easily integrate your calendar with any project within Monday. This can be a one-way sync or a two-way sync. So any items added on Monday can be sent to your calendar or vice-versa.
Budgeting Tools
Not all project management platforms offer budgeting tools but Monday does come through in this area. You can easily add a number column to any project section to track expenses. You can even create formulas so that Monday automatically updates each section as the project progresses.
If you currently use separate spreadsheets to track expenses, this can be a real-time saver to streamline your overall budgeting during complex projects. It also allows different departments to access project info and financials all in one place.
Project Templates
If you’re new to project management, the included templates in Monday should offer you something to help you get started in the right direction. Even if you have experience in project management, these templates can be useful for quickly setting up new projects.
There are countless templates from software development, to marketing campaigns, manufacturing, and HR projects. You should be able to find something that suits your project with these templates.
Each template can also be easily customized just as you would if you created the project from scratch.
Automation
Nothing slows down your project or your team like repetitive manual tasks. These can drain the motivation from your team and slow down your overall timeline.
Monday offers an easy way to automate many task management situations. This frees up time and also ensures your project tasks are immediately up to date.
The Monday automation system works via three components:
- Triggers
- Conditions
- Actions
You set a trigger for each action you want to be automated. Then you choose a condition that must be met. Finally, you choose the action that takes place when the trigger and condition are met.
You can create your own automations using this logic setup or you can choose from many different premade formulas from within Monday.
CRM Tools
Monday also offers built-in CRM functions. These aren’t as powerful as a dedicated CRM like Salesforce, but they still allow for lead management, deal management, and strong reporting and analytics.
This can be a great way for service providers or freelance teams to simultaneously monitor prospects and new clients right from their project management software.
Monday pricing
Monday’s pricing primarily revolves around the number of users/seats you need. Features like different views (Gantt/Timeline) and budgeting tools are only available in the Standard Plan or Pro Plan. Automations are also limited by your choice of plan.
Free Plan: $0/month
- 2 users
- Up to 3 boards
- 200+ templates
- 8 column types
- iOS and Android apps
Basic Plan: $8/month – Per seat – max of 24 seats
- Everything in the Free Plan
- Unlimited free viewers
- Unlimited items
- 5GB of storage
- Priority support
- Create a dashboard from one board
Standard Plan: $10/month – Per seat – max of 30 seats
- Everything in the Basic Plan
- Timeline and Gantt views
- Calendar view
- 250 automation actions per month
- Integrations (up to 500 actions per month)
- Create a dashboard from 5 boards
Pro Plan: $16/month – Per seat – max of 48 seats
- Everything in the Standard Plan
- Private boards
- Time tracking
- Formula column
- Dependency column
- Create a dashboard from 10 boards
- 25K automation and integration actions
Enterprise Plan: Contact Monday for custom pricing
- Everything in the Pro Plan
- Enterprise-level automation and integrations
- Advanced reporting and analytics
- Advanced permissions
- Custom onboarding and training
- Create a dashboard from 50 boards
What is Airtable?
Airtable is what would happen if a mad scientist combined a project management platform, a database, and a powerful spreadsheet program. While that may sound a bit scary, the result is actually truly unique and surprisingly easy to use.
Airtable is a relational database that allows users to create low-code or no-code applications around the data and tables within a database (called a “base” in Airtable).
While that may not sound like it has much to do with project management, Airtable does have traditional project features built in. You can access views such as Kanban or Gantt as well as gallery views and calendar-style views.
But it is important to know that Airtable doesn’t try to be a strict project management tool like Monday. What sets Airtable apart is that it is highly customizable. You can create almost any project workflow that you want, especially if it is highly data-driven.
This makes Airtable more flexible than other project management options. Each team or organization can create a completely customized project workflow complete with data-gathering tools like forms.
One downside of all this flexibility can be the learning curve. Airtable is surprisingly easy considering the complexity, but you will have to learn a few things to take advantage of it.
Those coming from other project management tools may need some time to adjust to Airtable’s vernacular. Airtable uses its own terms throughout the interface, so those take a bit of time for new users to wrap their heads around.
However, for those working on projects involving data or capturing and manipulating data, Airtable can do things no other project management software can do.
Airtable Features
Airtable has many features dedicated to data processing and automation along with the basic project management features you would expect.
Project Views
Like most project management platforms, Airtable provides many of the common views that users are accustomed to. These include:
List view – A simple-to-use view best for displaying hierarchical data like projects, tasks, or deliverables.
Kanban view – Airtable can display a traditional Kanban board view where tasks move between columns as they move from inception to completion.
Gantt view – Airtable offers a standard Gantt chart option with dependencies shown across different tasks and projects.
Timeline view – Airtable’s timeline view is similar to the Gantt view but allows you to visualize any set of records you want over time.
Calendar – Calendar views can be created from any Airtable database as long as it contains at least one date field.
Gallery – The gallery view can transform each record in a database into a card. Images can be associated with records for a more visual workflow.
Grid – This is the default view in Airtable for all new databases and it looks similar to a traditional spreadsheet with rows and columns.
Form – Airtable can use a built-in form builder to capture data. Each record can be automatically placed into an existing database. This feature is unique to Airtable compared to other popular project management tools.
Role Assignments
Airtable has fewer total roles that can be assigned compared to Monday. They include Owner, Editor, Commenter, and Read-Only (viewer).
Each role has its own permissions but you can further customize these as needed for special permissions. Admins or creators can easily access the role assignment menu by clicking on the dropdown menu next to any user’s name within a workspace.
Templates
Airtable has fewer templates than Monday with only about 20 across different industry formats. This may sound like a negative but Airtable isn’t really suited for template use. It’s built specifically for customized use, so the absence of a deep template library isn’t a negative.
However, if you do enjoy using templates to speed up your workflow, then this would be something to consider as Airtable likely doesn’t have a template to suit your needs.
Reporting and Analytics
Being a database at its core, Airtable provides detailed reporting and analytics functions that other project management tools can’t compare with.
Airtable offers extensive visualization tools to help you create graphics or charts to help display your data.
Users can also create customized reporting options due to the low-code nature of the platform. Besides custom creations, users can also take advantage of what are called Extensions. These are additional functions that can be added to workspaces.
You can think of these as a type of premade “widgets” to expand or add functions. The implementation is clever because they add many functions but are only added when needed for a workspace. This helps to keep the overall interface cleaner and less cluttered.
Automation
Automations are relatively easy with Airtable, but they do take some time to customize. There is also a limit to the number of automations per database. The limit is 50, but each customization of a trigger counts as an automation. So you can quickly use up your limit if you’re not careful.
This is one aspect of Airtable we find to be lacking and hope they can find a way to increase this limit in the future.
The good news is that each trigger can have up to 25 actions connected to it. So you can really customize your automation to do some clever things.
Collaboration Tools
This is a crucial project management area where Airtable is lacking. Users can comment within a workspace and reply to other comments, but that’s about the extent of the collaboration tools.
Although that may seem like a dealbreaker, Airtable has many integrations with apps like Slack so you can communicate with your team. Triggers and automation can be set up to automatically send updates to various Slack accounts or messaging apps.
So the Airtable built-in collaboration tools are lacking, but there are many workarounds using Airtable’s plentiful integrations.
Airtable does allow for client/guest viewing, which can be a nice addition for account managers who need to provide certain access but still control what the client views. For example, removing internal communications from the client’s view.
Integrations
If you need the powerful database and customization functions of Airtable but still need robust project management, an integration may help you.
Airtable currently has integrations for Asana, Basecamp, Jira, and Trello. Using any of these can make up for the gaps in Airtable, but you will be paying for two products in the process, which is a downside.
Airtable doesn’t have many integrations and the total mostly includes only the most prominent business apps. If you use less popular apps, there’s little chance there’s an integration for it within Airtable.
Budgeting Tools
Because of Airtable’s similarity to a spreadsheet, you get one of the more powerful budgeting tools available in a project management solution.
You can also utilize the internal forms so team members can submit expenses and other items that are automatically entered and calculated into the workspace.
Interface Customization
One unique feature of Airtable is the interface designer. This allows you to customize the interface to fit your team and workflow. It’s a simple editor and doesn’t require any coding skills like CSS.
It’s a welcome addition and plays into the overall customization of Airtable which is its greatest strength compared to other tools.
Airtable Pricing
Free Plan: $0/Month
- Unlimited bases
- 1K records per base
- Up to 5 editors
- 1GB of attachments per base
- 100 automation runs
- Interface designer
Team Plan: $20/Month – Per seat
- Unlimited bases
- 50K records per base
- Up to 5 editors
- 20GB of attachments per base
- 25K automation runs
- Interface designer
- Standard sync options
- Gantt and timeline view
- Extensions
- Expanded formatting and color options
Business Plan: $45/Month – Per seat
- Unlimited bases
- 125K records per base
- 100GB of attachments per base
- 100K automation runs
- Interface designer
- Premium sync options
- Gantt and timeline view
- Extensions
- Expanded formatting and color options
- Two-way sync
- SSO
- Admin panel
Enterprise Plan: Contact Airtable for custom pricing
- Unlimited bases
- 500K records per base
- 1000GB of attachments per base
- 500K automation runs
- Interface designer
- On-premise sync options
- Gantt and timeline view
- Extensions
- Expanded formatting and color options
- Two-way sync
- SSO
- Enhanced Admin panel
- Enterprise hub
- API Access
- Audit log
Airtable vs Monday.com: Comparison
What’s nice about Airtable and Monday is that they are so different it’s easy to compare them to each other (and choose one).
Monday is a dedicated project management tool that is powerful in the hands of experienced project managers, but it’s also very approachable for those with little or no PM experience.
The super-clean interface makes it easy to focus on your project and tasks and not the software itself. It really shines for marketing, sales, and creative teams who need tight collaboration integrated with each project.
The free version has many of the features of the paid plan and the pricing is heavily based on the number of users. This can be negative as you are often forced to pay for a higher tier to cover your team size. But on the plus side, only a few features are reserved for the higher tiers, which is a consumer-friendly model overall.
Airtable on the other hand really tries to do something different. For data-heavy applications that also need basic project management features, there’s really no other similar tool.
If you’re currently using an array of spreadsheets for your project management, budgeting, and other operations, then Airtable will be a huge step up in efficiency. Not only that, you’ll feel right at home with its default grid view.
Airtable is also great for those who need to capture data during a project or as part of their operations. The forms in Airtable are integral to the databases and overall workflow to create a seamless integration.
However, those looking for a traditional project management tool may find Airtable to be frustrating and require too many workarounds to get where they want to go.
Monday Vs Airtable Review & Wrap up
Hopefully, you now have enough information to decide which of these platforms will work best for your team. Both Airtable and Monday have generous free plans that should allow you plenty of time to try each one.
Airtable doesn’t let you have access to their extensions, which is a big part of the experience. But you should still be able to see the core features and decide if they’re right for you.
Monday has a similar free plan, with only a few project views missing and automation limitations compared to the paid plans. But if you’re familiar with different project views, that shouldn’t be a problem when evaluating the software.
As a final tip, always try to get feedback from others in your team before making a final decision. Both free plans allow for more than one user, so give other team members a try each tool.
