How good is monday.com as a CRM? Honest review
Currently using HubSpot CRM (free tier) but we're outgrowing it. Looking at monday.com's CRM template and it looks promising, but I have concerns. Our needs: • Pipeline management with custom stages • Email tracking and templates • Contact/deal association • Sales forecasting and reporting • Integration with Gmail For those using monday.com as a CRM — what's working? What's frustrating? How does it compare to dedicated CRMs like HubSpot or Pipedrive? Specifically wondering about: 1. Email integration quality 2. Mobile app for sales reps 3. Reporting capabilities 4. Contact import/management
2 Answers
I implement CRMs for a living and here's my honest take on monday.com as a CRM:
The Good: • Visual pipelines are unmatched — much better than HubSpot's list view • Customization is incredible. Want 15 custom fields? No problem. • Automation between sales and operations is seamless since it's all one platform • The 'Connect Boards' feature lets you link deals to projects post-sale
The Frustrating: • Email integration is weaker than HubSpot. No email tracking opens/clicks natively (need a third-party app) • Contact management is clunkier — no automatic company/contact association like HubSpot • Mobile app is fine for viewing, not great for data entry
Verdict: If you need heavy email automation and marketing features, stick with HubSpot. If you want visual deal tracking and your sales process is complex/custom, monday.com wins.
Many of my clients use monday.com for pipeline/operations and keep HubSpot (free) just for email marketing.
Switched from Pipedrive to monday.com CRM 8 months ago. Here's the real talk:
What improved: • Forecasting accuracy went up 30% because we could build custom weighted probability models • Sales-to-ops handoff is instant — no more 'did you update the project board?' • Dashboards are infinitely more flexible than Pipedrive
What we miss: • Email open tracking (we added Mailtrack to compensate) • Automatic contact enrichment (Clearbit integration helps) • Built-in calling
The killer feature: Mirror columns. We mirror deal values into our project boards, so when a deal closes, project budgets auto-populate. No double data entry.
For a 12-person sales team, we're happy with the switch. But if you're 50+ people with complex sales hierarchies, you might outgrow it.