Many popular tech review blogs have compared Microsoft Teams and monday.com as tools that increase team collaboration and visibility on corporate projects. Some businesses say monday.com is a good tool for small to medium-sized businesses that need to manage workflows, while Microsoft is more powerful for growing enterprises that need a highly collaborative communication and planning tool. Both tools have their individual strengths and weaknesses, which we will address here.
Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Teams is a highly collaborative communication and planning tool. It can be used by businesses of any size but works best with growing businesses that are leveraging any application in the O365 suite including Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook, Skype for Business, Sharepoint, and more.
Let’s talk about team communication – one of the main reasons people use Microsoft Teams. Many businesses use Microsoft Teams for the chat, call, and video functionality. This is particularly helpful for businesses with employees working both at home and in the office. A meeting can host up to 300 participants (10,000 at the enterprise level) with the use of HD video. Participants can chat with each other during the meeting, share their screens with each other, as well as record the meeting to view at a later time.
Additionally, businesses use Microsoft Teams for the integration with Office 365 applications, like SharePoint or Outlook. The integration makes it easy for businesses to link files to each other, track project progress, and schedule team meetings with many participants.
As far as pricing goes, Microsoft offers a free trial version of Microsoft Teams so you can evaluate before deciding whether you need the paid version or not. The free trial may even be suitable for your business, but Microsoft 365 Business Basic plan includes the ability to record meetings, usage reports for your 365 applications, phone & web support, multi-factor authentication, and more.
The interesting thing about the Microsoft plan is that the Microsoft 365 Business Basic plan also includes access to web versions of Office apps (like Word and Outlook), 1 TB of OneDrive cloud storage per user, and a custom email domain address. It is priced starting at $6.40 CAD user/month for the basic plan but must be paid annually.
Monday.com
Monday.com is a project management tool that is best used for small to medium-sized teams that need to manage all kinds of projects and custom workflows. The basic monday.com plan offers “unlimited boards, 200+ templates, 20 column types, unlimited free viewers, iOS and Android apps, [and] the ability to create a dashboard based on 1 board”. The pricing for monday.com starts at $11 CAD user/month (purchased at 5 seat increments).
monday.com offers project management tools like kanbans, calendars, timelines, Gantt charts, forms, and a customizable view to visualize your data. This is particularly helpful when your team is working on large projects with many moving parts. monday.com frees up corporate time by automating repetitive tasks, such as sending a reminder to the sales team about their weekly reports on Monday mornings. Businesses also use monday.com to create boards and track project progress. One of the main use cases of monday.com is for creating custom workflows that empower users to stay on top of their tasks and projects.
On the other hand, monday.com purchasing options are not flexible. Pricing is priced out in groups of 5 licenses (plus an option to start at 3 licenses). This means that if your team needs 7 licenses, you’ll need to purchase two sets of 5. It’s a tiered system, so some functionality may not be available at a lower level. This means you would have to upgrade to experience those additional features. For example, the Basic plan has 5 GB of file storage, whereas the Standard package has 20 GB of file storage, the Pro package has 100 GB, and the Enterprise package has 1,000 GB.
Microsoft Teams vs Monday.com: Which One Is Best?
In the past, many would agree that monday.com lead the project management space. Microsoft Teams had no activity feed and no third-party integration; it also couldn’t compare with the data visualization features that monday.com offered. However, as of mid-2020, Microsoft Teams introduced an activity feed for you to see all the updates you missed. It also has third-party app integration with apps like Trello, Asana, and even monday.com; there are over 700 applications you can integrate with.
On the other hand, monday.com offers data visualization and task automation that can save businesses time and money. It allows the user to visually see high-level project overviews and upcoming tasks, which can increase productivity, motivation, and accountability.
Microsoft Teams Takes The Cake
After the 2020 update, it’s a no-brainer that Microsoft Teams is the winner here. First, Microsoft offers a lower barrier to entry with the free trial version and offers a less expensive licensing model. Microsoft priced the license at $6.40 per user per month and it includes the use of Office web applications. On the other hand, monday.com is priced at $11 per user per month and you must purchase the licenses in 5 seat increments.
Additionally, for businesses operating with a hybrid working environment where employees work from home and from the office, the chat & video functionality to support remote work is essential. One must consider the fact that monday.com has no video conferencing or chat functionality and comes with less file storage (although you can integrate Zoom into monday.com at the Standard pricing level, which is $14 per user per month).
Based on the analysis discussed here, Microserve recommends Microsoft Teams as the overall better option for businesses looking for a collaboration management tool in 2021.
Ready to learn more? Please talk with one of our IT experts today.
