What Is Monday.Com?

If you’ve Googled “what is monday.com?”, here’s the first thing I need to clear up.

Strictly speaking, there is no longer a product called monday.com.

Around 2022, Monday became a multi-product company. Today, “monday.com” is really a catch-all term we all still use to describe the broader Monday ecosystem, which now includes multiple products built on the same platform.

Most notably:

• Monday CRM (now by far their most popular product)

• Monday Work Management (the modern equivalent of what used to be called monday.com)

• Monday Dev (for software and product teams)

• Monday Service (for support ticketing)

• Monday Campaigns (for email marketing)

So when people ask “what is monday.com?”, what they usually mean is:

“What is this Monday platform everyone’s using, and which version should I actually be on?”

I’ve helped many organisations implement, fix, rebuild, and occasionally rescue their Monday setups. What follows is the straight-talk version. No marketing gloss. Just what it really is, where it shines, and where it can overwhelm very quickly.

What Is monday.com (Really)?

When monday.com was “just monday.com” it was marketed as a “no code work management system” or “no-code work os”. Although monday promoted their product as a Project Management Tool, it wasn’t really a project management tool - it was a no-code tool you could use to build your own pretty damn-good project management too.

Despite all the changes and new features and products, despite even the fact that one of their products is called Monday CRM, I would still argue that the variuous monday products are all still best described as a no-code work management systems.

Yes, Monday CRM does come with a (very) basic generic CRM-type setup that you COULD run with out of the box as a CRM.

And yes, Monday does offer hundreds of templates you can combine to cobble together to create something vaguely resembling a “complete system”.

However, the default Monday CRM setup comes with a bunch of built-in limitations and is also structured in a way that might actually do more harm than good for some organisations.

To make matter worse, when relying on multiple templates that were never designed to work with each other, it is usually more work to unbuild then rebuild the templates than it would have been to just build everything from scratch!

For all these reasons, I would still argue that all of the Monday Products are really different versions of the same no-code platforms you can use to build a project management system, a CRM, a Support ticket system etc. But monday.com itself ISN’T a Project Management System, it isn’t a CRM, it isn’t a Support ticketing system.

Ie Monay.com is a platform that lets you build your own internal systems for managing:

• Projects

• Sales pipelines

• Client delivery

• Marketing campaigns

• HR processes

• Operational workflows

You’re not buying a solution. You’re buying a flexible framework and being asked to design something that mirrors how your business actually works.

That flexibility is both Monday’s superpower and its Achilles heel.

An Important Reality Check

This is the part most people don’t hear early enough.

monday.com:

• Is powerful

• Is extremely flexible

• Can replace spreadsheets, CRMs, task tools, and dashboards

It is also:

• Complex

• Easy to overbuild

• Overwhelming for new users

• Completely unlike anything you have used before

• Very tolerant of bad decisions

Monday will let you build almost anything. It will not stop you from building something confusing.

The Monday Products Explained (Without the Marketing Spin)

Monday CRM (Not Just a Sales Tool)

Despite the name, Monday CRM is not “just for sales”.

This is one of the most misunderstood parts of the platform.

In practice, Monday CRM offers almost every single feature that Monday Work Management offers, and in many cases, more. (I like to explain it like this to my clients; “Think of Monday Work Management as Monday.com 1.0 and think of Monday CRM as Monday.com 2.0”)

You can use Monday CRM for:

• Sales pipelines (or any key pipeline/workflow)

• Client onboarding

• Account management

• Ongoing client delivery

• Internal workflows

• Operations

• Marketing processes

The idea that CRM is only for sales teams is outdated. Structurally, it’s a superset of Work Management for most organisations.

Here’s the part that surprises people:

The only feature you get in Monday Work Management that you do not get in Monday CRM is only available on the Enterprise plan anyway. Yes, you do pay more per user for Monday CRM but it offers killer features you don’t get with Work Management and is a way better fit for almost all of the businesses I speak to.

For the vast majority of teams, that difference is irrelevant.

This is why, in practice, I recommend the Pro plan on Monday CRM to 99.99% of the users I speak to.

It gives you:

• Full flexibility

• Advanced automations

• Dashboards

• Integrations

• Email & Activity logging

• Sequences

• Scalability without hitting artificial ceilings

Most teams who start on Work Management eventually realise they could have done everything (and more) on CRM from day one.

Monday Work Management

Monday Work Management is essentially the modern version of what used to be called monday.com.

It’s commonly used for:

• Project management

• Operations

• Marketing teams

• Internal delivery

It’s a solid product, but in many cases, it’s chosen by default rather than by design. Teams assume “CRM isn’t for us,” when in reality CRM would have been the better long-term foundation.

Monday Dev

Monday Dev is built specifically for product and engineering teams, with tooling around:

• Sprints

• Backlogs

• Roadmaps

• Bug tracking

• Dev-focused integrations

Unless you’re running a product team, this usually isn’t the right starting point.

How monday.com Actually Works

All Monday products share the same core building blocks.

Boards

Boards are where work lives. Each row represents a task, deal, client, or process item. Think of them as structured spreadsheets with logic layered on top.z

Think of each Board as managing one key process, data set or workflow and make sure you name it and the Items it contains accordingly.

Eg if your organisation is B2B and you sometimes get repeat business from the same companies/customers, it is going to be important that you can connect inquiries to the right Company/customer so that you have a record of all inquiries (and jobs) related to that company.

Given this understanding, the Board that collects potential jobs should be named something like “Inquiries” and you are going to want two Connect Boards Columns in that Board, one connected to your Companies Board and one connected to your Contacts Board.

The mistake a lot of users would make in such a scenario is this; they would see the name, phone number and email of the key contact contained within that inquiry and think to themselves “this board must be managing potential customers because it contains their contact details”. Taking this mindset, they don’t connect the Board to Companies or Contacts. This results in an inability to relate inquiries to Companies/contacts and vice versa. It also means that if you get another inquiry from the same company/customer, because you are thinking of the items in this board as being potential customers, it makes the chances of duplicate companies/contacts being created quite hight.

Columns

Columns define what data you track:

• Status

• Dates

• Owners

• Numbers

• Relationships

• Formulas

This is where overwhelm often begins. More columns does not equal more clarity.

Board Views

You can view the same data as:

• Table

• Kanban

• Timeline

• Gantt

• Calendar

• A host of other options.

This flexibility is useful, but it also invites clutter if every possible view is created “just in case.” As a general rule, try to avoid. having more than a dozen columns in most of your Board Views. More than this and many of your columns will be hidden off-screen and harder to use.

Dashboards

Dashboards pull data from multiple boards into one place.

When done well, they provide instant visibility.
When done poorly, they create false confidence.

Why Businesses Choose monday.com

Most organisations I work with come to Monday for one of three reasons:

• They’ve outgrown spreadsheets

• Their tools are fragmented

• They lack visibility and accountability

• Their proceses and workflows are unique and not well-represented by a traditional CRM.

monday.com works best when:

• Processes are semi-defined

• Teams need flexibility

• One-size-fits-all tools don’t quite fit

Where monday.com Struggles

Overwhelm

The platform offers too many choices too early. Without guidance, teams either freeze or build inconsistently. (What’s that saying…something about a camel being a horse designed by committee”…)

Early Design Mistakes

Bad structural decisions don’t surface immediately. They show up months later, when fixing them means rebuilding.

It Reflects Your Thinking

monday doesn’t fix broken workflows. It exposes them.

Who monday.com Is (and Isn’t) For

Good fit if you:

• Want a system tailored to your business

• Have evolving but real workflows

• Value visibility

• Are willing to design intentionally

Poor fit if you:

• Want something fully pre-built

• Don’t want to think about structure

• Expect the tool to create clarity for you

So… What Is monday.com, Really?

monday.com isn’t simple.
It isn’t magic.
And it definitely isn’t foolproof.

It’s a platform that amplifies whatever you bring into it.

Clear workflows become clearer.
Messy workflows become very organised chaos.

Used intentionally, Monday CRM in particular can become the backbone of how your business operates.

Used casually or inconsistently, it becomes just another colourful tool people quietly avoid.

And that, after helping many organisations master it, is the most honest answer I can give to “what is monday.com?”

Just The Tip Of The Iceberg

Does this article answer your questions about what is Monday dot com?  I hope so...

There is SO much more that Monday.com can do for your Small Business, I simply don't have enough time or pixels to describe them all here.  

But hopefully this gives you some idea of how powerful Monday.com is and what a transformation it can offer both you and your Small Biz.