If you currently use Monday for non-sales and marketing activities, like project management or workflow automation, it makes sense to stick with the same platform for CRM.
And that's because it'd be easy to integrate your CRM with your existing processes into the platform to save time and execute tasks more efficiently.
But, at the same time, if you're looking for a CRM solution for heavy-duty sales management, you'll need to consider other options that'll better suit your needs. For instance, if you need software that provides a power dialer, SMS sequences, or call recording, you'll need to look elsewhere.
Well, you've come to the right place: We've rounded up some of the best Monday CRM alternatives for sales management that offer advanced functionalities like automation, analytics, and customizable reporting.
But before we go into the list, let's take a brief look at what Monday CRM does.
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What Is Monday CRM?
If you know anything about Monday (or monday.com), you know that it's a multi-purpose project management tool, complete with Gantt charts, real-time collaboration, and task management tools. It helps teams collaborate, communicate, and track progress on tasks.
The Monday CRM, as its name suggests, is the sales-oriented version of monday.com. It's the arm of the software that helps you manage customer relationships and sales.
It comes with features like sales activity management, email tracking, custom sales pipeline builder, and more. It also fully syncs with Gmail and Outlook, so you can access your sent emails from within the Monday platform.
Their CRM's pricing starts at $10 per seat and scales up to $24 per seat, making it one of the least expensive CRM platforms on the market. But the price isn’t the only area to consider when choosing a collaboration tool for your sales team. So let's take a look at some areas where Monday CRM doesn't quite stack up to other CRM software solutions on the market.
Where Does Monday CRM Fall Short?
Monday CRM has some great features that make it a worthy choice for many businesses, especially if they’re already using Monday’s project management features. So this is in no way an attempt to discredit the product.
However, if you're looking for a CRM platform with features for heavy-duty or advanced sales management purposes, like the ones below, Monday CRM won’t cut it.
1. Doesn't Sync Incoming Emails
Monday CRM does a great job syncing your sent emails with Gmail and Outlook. But it doesn't sync incoming emails, making it difficult to track customer conversations in one place. So you might end up spending a lot of time manually transferring emails from your inbox to the CRM. And who wants to waste valuable time on that? Yeah, no one.
A user shared the following review on G2:
"I am disappointed by the lack of control we have over the way emails are tracked. We are able to control which outgoing emails are logged. However, there is no way to control the tracking of incoming emails without filtering by 'Item related Activities'-this defeats the purpose of using the CRM to track activity with contacts across boards."
Another user said it’s "hard to set up; seems complicated, and emails sometimes don't come through. The leads that are supposed to pull over from our inbox sometimes don't get transferred over, and I have to manually insert them."
2. No Power Dialer
Monday CRM does not come with a built-in power dialer feature. So if you're looking for an automated solution that helps you make several calls in succession, you'll have to look elsewhere.
And even though it integrates with PhoneBurner, a third-party power dialer, you'll still have to pay an additional subscription fee for the service. Plus, third-party integrations (instead of built-in solutions) can be an added hassle. Again, you’re trying to make life easier for your team, not harder. So you’d be better off with a CRM that comes with this feature already.
3. Basic Automation Functions
Monday CRM comes with basic automation capabilities, but it doesn't offer the same level of sophistication you'd find in many other solutions.
For instance, one user shared the following about Monday CRM's automation: "Automation functions were rudimentary at best. Gnatt charts had to be created manually. When trying to create your own template and automate a timeline, it never really worked and created A LOT of manual editing."
While Monday can be great for creating task lists, time tracking, and setting activity milestones for your sales team, it can’t help your sales team create automated sales workflows. This is a real limitation for sales teams that are heavily focused on outbound sales and outreach.
While exploring CRM options, it's also essential to consider the methodology your sales process follows. For instance, businesses that adhere to a "waterfall" methodology, known for its linear and sequential approach, might prefer a CRM that complements this structured process. The waterfall model's step-by-step progression can be mirrored in a CRM's pipeline management feature, ensuring that every sales stage cascades logically to the next.
9 Best Monday CRM Alternatives
The best monday.com alternatives include project management platforms like Wrike, Trello, Smartsheet, Airtable, Basecamp, or Asana. But none of these is an ideal solution when searching for a sales CRM.
Now let's take a look at nine of the best Monday CRM alternatives you should consider when shopping for the right customer relationship management (CRM) software:
1. Close: Best for SMB and SaaS
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If you're a small business or software as a service (SaaS) company, we built Close for businesses like yours.
Unlike Monday, Close isn't a project management software, but it comes with task management and automation features specifically for salespeople and sales teams. And if you already have your operations built in Monday, Close integrates with the platform, making it easy to bring over your data and start using Close.
With Close, you’re also able to track and report emails, integrate with other platforms (with Zoom, Google, Slack, and Office 365), send bulk emails, and score leads, amongst other things. As far as CRM systems go, it doesn’t get any better than that, especially if you’re looking for a small business CRM.
Pros of Using Close
- Add Custom Fields and Activities to track information in a structured, customized way
- A mobile app makes it easy to track leads and make calls on the go
- Text, call, or email leads and customers directly from the Close platform
- Use the Kanban board-style Pipeline view for fast and easy sales cycles
- Multiple users say Close is super fast to set up and use, with a limited learning curve
- Add a pre-recorded voicemail you can activate with one click
- Use single sign-on (SSO) for added security
- Get notifications for upcoming meetings, and receive inbound phone calls through the app
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Cons of Using Close
- Not ideal for field sales teams
- Not built for project planning, file sharing, or creating docs and proposals
Pricing
- Startup plan: $99 per month, billed annually (includes 3 users)
- Professional plan: $299 per month, billed annually (includes 3 users)
- Enterprise plan: $699 per month, billed annually (includes 5 users)
Free Trial?
Psst… Want to learn more about Close as a CRM? Watch our on-demand demo to see Close in action, no signup required!
2. Salesforce: Best for Enterprise Brands with Big Budgets
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If you're looking for a Monday CRM alternative for large enterprise organizations with big budgets, Salesforce is for you.
It comes with advanced features, like the ability to create custom fields, automate recurring tasks and marketing campaigns, forecasting, manage sales pipelines, leverage AI-driven analytics for smarter decision-making, and so on.
However, a standout attribute within Salesforce is its Einstein GPT engine—a generative AI tool engineered to elevate productivity and efficiency. Leveraging this innovative tool empowers you to craft landing pages, extract intelligent customer insights, orchestrate automation workflows, and much more. This capability is particularly indispensable when tackling substantial volumes of data and tasks, aligning seamlessly with modern outbound sales tools.
All that said, Salesforce comes with a hefty price tag, and may be out of reach for smaller sales teams. Many of the basic features an outbound sales team would need are gated behind paid add-ons, making this option the most expensive on our list.
Pros of Using Salesforce
- Easy onboarding for experienced sales team members—as many of them are already familiar with the platform
- Directly integrates with lots of marketing, comms, and sales apps
- An all-in-one solution for marketing, sales, customer support, etc.
- Advanced analytics and reporting capabilities
- Personalized and customized reports with flexible permissions settings
Cons of Using Salesforce
- Expensive compared to other CRM options on this list
- Some features aren't always easy to find because you have to sort through so many tools to locate the one you need
Pricing
- $25 to $300 per user per month (billed annually)
Free Trial?
- 30-day free trial available
If you're looking for a powerful and customizable CRM platform that won't break the bank, there are plenty of Salesforce alternatives to choose from. Check out this article for a list of top-performing alternatives.
3. Streak: Best for Businesses That Use Gmail and Need Limited Functionality
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Imagine you could turn your Gmail inbox into a CRM and collaboration platform—without having to jump between multiple apps.
That's exactly what Streak does. It's a lightweight CRM system that allows you to organize your emails inside your inbox.
So if you already use Gmail or are planning to, and you're not looking for a full-blown CRM with plenty of advanced features, Streak is a good Monday CRM alternative to consider.
It comes with features like sales workflow tracking, email tracking and reporting, automated lead capture from Gmail, opportunity management, bulk email sending, and analytics.
Pros of Using Salesforce
- Use email merge to send personalized bulk emails
- Integrates with most tools in Google Workspace
- Automatic data enrichment for each contact inside Gmail
- Easily set up follow-up sequences with existing customers and leads
- Customize pipeline stages using dynamic colors for easy differentiation
Cons of Using Salesforce
- Multiple users complain it often gets glitchy
- May no longer be useful if your CRM needs become heavier and more advanced
Pricing
- Monthly plan: $0 to $159 per user/month
Free Trial?
- Yes
4. Less Annoying CRM: Best for Simple Small Business Contact Management
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The highlight of this Monday alternative is its simplicity.
It's specifically designed for small businesses, especially the ones that don't have a lot of tech-savvy employees or that are first-timers with any CRM system. It's also great for businesses that don't have complicated marketing and sales processes.
Less Annoying CRM (LACRM) does away with all the bells and whistles in many other CRM tools and just focuses on the essential contact management features.
It allows you to store customer and prospect info, organize contacts into groups, manage tasks and projects, track sales pipelines, give your team full visibility of projects, delegate tasks, and more.
Pros of Using LACRM
- Easy import and export of bulky data
- Very knowledgeable customer support staff
- Zero bloat—contains only the most needed CRM features
- Unlimited and customizable sales data fields for work management
- Highly user-friendly interface, even for first-time users
Cons of Using LACRM
- No mobile app
- Can't make calls directly from the platform
Pricing
- Flat fee: $15 per user/month
Free Trial?
- 30-day free trial available
5. Pipedrive: Best for Small Teams That Need a Platform for Sales & Marketing Automation
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If you need something beyond a basic CRM, Pipedrive might be what you're looking for. Beyond being a contact manager, it also offers powerful sales and marketing automation features, like email automation, customer segmentation, analytics, and more.
Pipedrive has a visually-appealing interface that makes it easy to get the hang of things. You can also use it to design processes and workflows, which you can customize for different customer segments, industry types, teams, and more.
Pros of Using Pipedrive
- Drag-and-drop interface for easy workflow customization
- Kaban-board-style sales pipeline view
- Mobile CRM app available for iOS or Android devices
- Automatic "next step" prompts to help sales reps close deals faster
- Built-in email marketing automation
Cons of Using Pipedrive
- Multiple users complain customer support team can be slow
- Reports say customization can be tricky sometimes
Pricing
- Monthly: $11.90 to $74.90 per user, per month
Free Trial?
- 14-day free trial
6. Freshworks: Best for Businesses That Need a CRM + Customer Service System
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From Freshworks' suite of SaaS products, Freshsales is an intuitive sales software that integrates chatbots, web forms, and direct contact methods for sales teams. The suite of tools integrates nicely, allowing you to add customer service features easily alongside your sales features.
When you add on Freshdesk, the Freshworks support module, you get a ticketing system for managing customer requests and inquiries, a field service management system for managing onsite requests, an internal discussion board for team collaboration, help desk automation capabilities, canned responses, and more.
So if you're looking for a Monday CRM alternative to provide agile customer service, Freshworks is worth a look.
Pros of Using Freshworks
- Integrations with more than 1000 third-party applications
- A robust customer support ticketing system
- Create plenty of customizable fields
- Task and sales pipeline management feature
- Automation capabilities help streamline the customer support process
Cons of Using Freshworks
- Need to use a whole other program for live chat
- Limited reporting functions
Pricing
- Monthly: $18 to $95 per user per month
Free Trial?
- 21-day free trial
7. Insightly: Best for an All-In-One Platform for Marketing, Customer Service, & CRM
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Insightly is an all-in-one system for marketing, customer service, and sales management.
It includes most of the features you'll find in the other Monday alternatives we've shared in this list, like team collaboration, task automation, contact and opportunity tracking, pipeline management, email integration, and more.
What sets Insightly apart from the crowd, though, is its AppConnect feature. It allows you to deeply integrate over 2,000 other SaaS products into your system without writing a single line of code.
Pros of Using Insightly
- Integrates with more than 2,000 SaaS applications
- Smart invoicing feature available
- Customizable fields and page layouts
- Built-in teamwork and collaboration capabilities
- Ability to customize the platform's interface and layout
Cons of Using Insightly
- No native tool to build forms
- Using AppConnect incurs extra fees
Pricing
- Monthly: $29 to $99 per user per month
Free Trial?
- No free trial, but a free plan is available
8. Salesflare: Best for Small Businesses in Need of an Automated CRM
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Salesflare is a cloud-based CRM designed for small businesses, especially the ones selling B2B products or services.
Its key features are similar to the other tools we've highlighted in this guide—automated data entry, email finder, activity tracking, contact management, lead scoring, customer segmentation, sales opportunities management, and more.
But the #1 benefit you get with Salesflare is its automated data entry feature: it gathers information about each of your contacts from social media profiles, email signatures, LinkedIn, and many other sources.
Pros of Using Salesflare
- Automatic data enrichment
- Many users say it's super easy to use
- Customizable reporting and analytics
- Email finder for easy email address searches
- Integrations with third-party applications like Zapier
Cons of Using Salesflare
- Limited customer support available for some non-USA regions
- User interface could be improved
Pricing
- Monthly: $29 to $99 per user per month
Free Trial?
- 30-day free trial
9. HubSpot: Best for All-In-One CRM, Marketing, Customer Service, & Sales
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Last but not least, Salesflare is an all-in-one platform for marketing, customer service, and sales.
It offers an enterprise-level tool for customer service that allows you to set up a help center with automated ticketing, customer insights and analytics, call routing, and more.
As for their CRM, it has similar features to the other Monday alternatives we've shared in this list, but one standout benefit of HubSpot is that it has almost all the marketing and sales tools you'll need in one place. This is especially helpful if you're running a small business and don't want to switch between too many platforms. That said, HubSpot’s CRM can come with some serious limitations for active sales teams.
Pros of Using HubSpot
- Email read receipts
- Comprehensive customer service solutions
- Reporting and analytics for customer insights
- Integrates with many third-party apps
- Extensive CRM features
Cons of Using HubSpot
- Expensive for many small businesses
- So many features that can become overwhelming
Pricing
- Monthly plan for 2 users with limited features: $30 per month
- Monthly Professional plan for 5 users: $1,780 per month
- Annual plan for 20 users: $5,000 per month
- Required Professional Onboarding fee: $4,500
Free Trial
- 14-day free trial
Pro tip: Wondering how Close compares to other CRMs on our list? Take a look at direct feature comparisons between Close CRM and other top CRMs on the market.
Pick the Best CRM Software for Your Business
Naming “the best” Monday CRM alternative is an impossible task. After all, your business is unique, and the right CRM provider for your unique business will depend on your budget, your goals, and your team’s resources.
So, take some time to research each software's features, read reviews from other customers, and, if possible, try out a free trial before deciding. That way, you'll have a better understanding of what the software can do and how it can help your business.
Ready to get started? Take Close CRM for a spin for free, no strings attached, and see how this powerhouse sales CRM can be the perfect complement to your sales process.
