Jira vs monday.com: Project and Work Management Features Compared in 2024
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Jira vs monday.com: Project and Work Management Features Compared in 2024
Picking new project management software can be challenging, especially as many platforms offer many of the same tools. If you’re stuck between a rock and a hard place and can’t decide between Jira and monday.com, our Jira vs monday comparison is for you.
The main difference between Jira and monday is that monday.com is versatile and ideal for those who use multiple project management methodologies across numerous industries. Jira is not as versatile, as it’s designed for scrum teams developing software.
monday.com and Jira are similar in many ways, as they both offer a comprehensive suite of work management tools, including kanban boards, timelines, calendars and dashboards.
Jira’s free plan is significantly better than monday’s, but monday.com’s paid plans make the software shine thanks to the number of features on offer for the price.
Facts & Expert Analysis:
Suitable for Multiple Professions: monday.com’s versatility makes it the ideal platform for everyone, including marketing professionals, human resource teams, construction firms, software creators and more.
Integration Support: Thanks to support for integrations, monday and Jira can link to many software platforms, greatly enhancing a project manager’s ability to create custom workflows and automations.
Best PM software for Teams: monday.com is the best project management software for most teams thanks to its flexibility. If you’re still unsure, you can use its 14-day free trial to see it in action.
If you’re looking for an agile project management suite and have narrowed things down to Jira and monday.com, you’re in the right place. Both platforms made our roundup of the best project management software, so we understand why you might be having difficulty choosing. In this Jira vs monday comparison, we’ll help you find the right project management solution for you.
In the sections below, you’ll learn about both platforms. We’ll cover what they have in common, how they differ, who they’re designed for, and how much each platform costs. So, without further ado, let’s get started.
03/27/2024 Facts checked
Our Jira vs monday.com guide has been rewritten with an easier-to-read format and new information.
Cloudwards Editor’s Choice: monday.com
Thanks to its beautiful user interface, workflow tools that suit agile and traditional project management methodologies, collaboration tools, templates and affordable plans, monday.com receives our editor’s choice. Whether you’re working on a complex project that requires Gantt charts or software development that uses kanban boards, monday.com has you covered.
Our experts believe that the monday work management platform is the better product management solution for most teams. monday.com is a proprietary project management tool designed for use in multiple industries and by various teams. Jira is a process-driven project management tool better suited to the software development niche.
Who Is Jira For?
Those who develop software: Thanks to its scrum boards, backlog and issue tracking tools, and sprint support, Jira is ideal for software development teams.
Teams that use kanban boards: Being the sibling of Trello means the Jira software has a very nice kanban board that agile teams working on simple projects will enjoy.
Startups and small businesses: Jira’s free plan, which supports up to 10 members, unlimited projects, integrations, backlog support and more, is ideal for small scrum teams and startups.
Who Is monday.com For?
Flexible teams: monday.com’s mix of workflow tools makes it the ideal platform for teams that use multiple project management methodologies. Kanban, scrum, scrumban, DSDM, waterfall, critical path method and more can all be used on monday.com.
Teams who want an all-in-one platform: Project managers who like to keep things simple will appreciate monday’s all-in-one features, which include collaboration features, integrations, automations and reports that show detailed project metrics in beautiful dashboards.
Teams on a budget: monday.com’s paid plans won’t strain your bottom line. The Standard and Pro plans are affordable and have more features than you can shake a stick at.
Our Comparison Methodology
Our project management experts have used Jira and monday.com extensively. To see how we really feel about each platform, you should read our Jira review and monday.com review. Our experts know how each platform functions, the available tools, what they are best suited for and much more.
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Our testing pits both platforms’ features against each other. We test how responsive the tools are and what they’re suitable for. We test each platform’s response to help questions, and we dive into knowledgebases to see what the support is like. Plus, we compare the cost of each platform to see which offers better value. Every angle that can be covered is covered.
Monday vs Jira Pricing Comparison: Which One Offers Better Options?
Jira and monday.com offer plans that will appeal to a wide range of organizations; however, we feel that monday.com’s plans are better overall and provide more bang for your buck.
Features:
Free Plan
Yes, supports two users and offers basic tools
Yes, supports 10 users and unlimited boards
Entry-Tier Plan
Basic $9 per user per month (billed annually), unlimited users and viewers, project templates, mobile apps, kanban board, 24/7 support
N/A
Mid-Tier Plan
Standard $12 per user per month, everything in Basic plus calendar and timeline view, 250 integration actions, 250 monthly automations, filters, 20GB of storage, embedded documents
Standard $8.15 per user per month, 35,000 users, roles and permissions, 250GB of storage, better customer support, 1,700 automations monthly
High-Tier Plan
Premium $19 per user per month (billed annually), everything in Standard and 100GB of storage, 25,000 automation and integration actions
Premium $16 per user per month, everything in Standard and AI, advanced planners, 24/7 premium support, 1,000 automation per user per month, unlimited storage
Enterprise Plan
Yes, call for pricing, all tools are available
Yes, call for pricing, all tools are available
Both platforms offer a free plan, but monday.com’s is nothing to write home about, as it only supports two members, offers 500 MB of storage and has few tools. Jira’s free plan is much better, as it supports up to 10 members, has unlimited boards, offers 2GB of file storage and more. If you need a free tool, you might want to look more closely at Jira.
Skip monday’s Basic plan and head for the $12 per user per month (billed annually) Standard plan. The features are more than enough for small to medium-sized teams. Pro, at $19 per user per month (billed annually), adds more tools and security options and is perfect for large teams. There’s also a scalable Enterprise plan. Learn more in our monday.com pricing guide.
Jira’s paid plans are also competitive. The Standard plan, which costs $8.15 per user per month, adds many admin and security tools and bumps storage to 250GB. The Premium plan, which costs $16 per user per month, adds AI tools, advanced planning features and unlimited storage. Both plans work on a sliding scale that decreases the price as more users are added.
Like monday.com, Jira also offers a scalable Enterprise plan that includes all of Jira’s bells and whistles. You can learn more about Jira’s plans and features in our Jira pricing guide.
Jira vs monday.com: Similarities
Though monday.com and Jira target different users, you might be surprised to know that they have a lot in common. In the following sections, we’ll examine the similarities between the platforms.
Task Management Tools
Surprisingly, Jira and monday.com share many of the same workflow tools and views. In both platforms, you’ll find scrum and kanban boards that can be used to track and assign tasks; add due dates, files and comments; monitor sprints; and more. In addition, Gantt charts (timelines) can be used to plot project dates and milestones, as well as calendars.
Jira natively supports backlog management and issue tracking, which is ideal for software development teams. Monday also supports backlogs and bug tracking thanks to the hundreds of project templates available. Both suites also feature dashboards that can be used to track tasks, due dates, finances, project metrics and more.
Both pieces of project management software also have project portfolio management and group task cataloging capabilities, which make them ideal for teams working on multiple complex projects. Any way you slice it, Jira and monday.com can handle simple and complex projects.
Jira’s kanban board and timeline task management tool aren’t as fleshed out as monday’s, and the platform overall is suited more to software development than to general project management. However, both platforms still offer many of the same tools, which is a boon for teams that need them to track project tasks.
Custom Workflows and Templates
Jira and monday.com excel when it comes to creating custom workflows. Both platforms use kanban boards, so it’s easy to set up workflows that match any project. Should you need to add an extra step to a process, it’s as easy as adding a new column to your board. If you need to remove a step, you can delete it and move on.
Jira and monday.com also have numerous project templates for different project types in many industries and even department-specific templates. These strategic planning features can also be modified so you can tailor them to your project. Thanks to the templates, you can get your projects up and running quickly. For custom workflows, Jira and monday are fantastic options.
Security and Privacy
You can’t be too careful with the data your company produces. Fortunately, monday and Jira offer excellent security features. In fact, they’re so good that, with the right plan, both are HIPAA compliant, which means you can use them in ultra-secure healthcare industries.
Dive into Jira and you’ll find that the software can use two-factor authentication and single sign-on methods, produce audit logs and offer mobile device management (MDM). Admins can also set password policies, user roles and permissions, and domain verifications. Jira uses TLS 1.2+ with PFS encryption for data in transit and AES-256 to cipher data encryption at rest.
monday.com offers many of the same options, such as two-factor authentication, SSO and Google authentication methods, in addition to SCIM provisioning and IP restrictions. Users can generate audit logs, set private workspaces and grant custom roles. monday.com also uses AES 256-bit to cipher data and TLS 1.3 to cipher data in transit across open networks.
Integrations and Automation Capabilities
Along with project management tools like workflow views, those needing new project management software need to consider integrations and automations, which can link other software platforms to your project management software for better workflows and take care of time-consuming admin tasks. Fortunately, both Jira and monday offer these features.
Jira integrates with many platforms, though most are geared towards reporting and software development. Still, you’ll find integrations for Slack, Microsoft Teams, Google Drive, Google Docs and more. There’s also a native integration with Confluence, which can help you create documents for scrum ceremonies like sprint retrospective and sprint review meetings.
Jira also allows you to enable automations. Creating automations in Jira is straightforward. You can use template automations to automate the removal of completed tasks, auto-assign tasks to team members like scrum developers or trigger an action when a comment is left on a card. You can also create automations to suit your workflow.
Integrations on monday.com are much the same, though you will find that they cover a much broader spectrum. There are integrations for top platforms, such as some of the best cloud storage services, Google Calendar, Zoom, Slack, Canva and many more, including software development integrations.
Automations are another area where monday.com shines. The automation center is filled with pre-made automations that you can install with just a few clicks, and the automation builder is slick and easy to use. Within minutes, you can create all sorts of automations on both platforms that will save you precious time.
Reports
As a project manager, part of your job is to track team performance, team velocity and many other performance metrics. Jira and monday.com offer a wide variety of reports and graphical analysis tools that can help you keep track of work and meet your business initiatives.
The dashboards monday.com offers are excellent. They’re bright, colorful, easy to read and customizable. You can put virtually any project information on the dashboard, including financials, due dates, workloads, timelines and more. Project data on the dashboard is displayed via graphs, pie charts and text. You’ll find support for pivot boards, too.
Jira’s customizable dashboard isn’t as pretty as monday’s, but it’s no less functional. More than 40 configurable widgets can be added to Jira’s dashboard. You’ll find heat maps, pie charts, workload and team velocity charts, sprint health charts, issue statistics and more. Ultimately, if you like digging into data, it’s hard to go wrong with Jira or monday.com.
monday.com vs Jira: Differences
As much as monday.com and Jira have in common, they also have a fair few differences, some of which may sway you one way or the other. We’ll look at how these two project management solutions differ below.
Customer Service and Support
Customer service is worth its weight in gold, and every company should strive to be the best. However, there’s a noticeable difference in the levels of service and support you’ll receive from monday.com and Jira.
monday.com offers 24/7 support on all plans. You can reach out to a live chat agent and receive help immediately. We opened several chats and got our issues resolved quickly. We sent a few emails to the support desk and received help within 24 hours. The only downside is that phone support is only for billing issues. Monday.com also has a forum where you can get help.
If you want to solve a problem on your own, you can visit the well-designed monday.com help pages in the knowledgebase. You’ll find articles with screenshots and easy-to-follow instructions. There’s also a stellar monday.com academy where you can learn the ins and outs of the platform. If you need help, there’s no shortage of ways to receive it.
Jira’s, or rather Atlassian’s, approach to customer service is different. Customer support on the free plan is nonexistent; you can only receive help from the functional community forum. However, as we found out, response times can vary from minutes to 24 hours or longer.
The standard plan offers support during business hours. Premium adds 24/7 support for high-impact issues and provides faster response times, while Enterprise offers 24/7 support for all problems and adds phone support. It’s clear to see where Atlassian’s view on support lies.
Jira also offers a knowledgebase that’s jam-packed with articles and guides that will help you solve problems independently, which you’ll need if you’re a free user. Still, the guides, though well written, aren’t of the same quality as monday.com’s.
User-Friendliness
One big area where monday.com and Jira differ is in terms of user-friendliness. Hands down, monday.com is the most intuitive and gorgeously designed project management platform out there. Jira isn’t bad; in fact, it’s well designed and easy to navigate, but Jira comes nowhere near monday.com’s levels of refinement.
Everything about monday.com is beautifully crafted. The menus are easy to find and navigate, the tools are smooth and they feature a lovely color palette. The project templates are top notch and can be used quickly. There’s nothing complicated about monday.com, and the learning curve is shallow, which means new and experienced teams will feel at home.
Jira’s design is more reserved than monday’s, but it isn’t any less functional. There are splashes of color here and there, and the drag-and-drop kanban and scrum boards are a delight to use. The tools, including backlogs and issue trackers, are nicely designed, and the menus and settings are intuitive. You can get where you need to be with a few clicks.
The biggest drawback to anyone unfamiliar with the scrum framework will be the language and terminology used in Jira. Littered throughout the software are words that will make little sense to anyone but scrum teams and developers. If this is what you’re looking for, you’ll love Jira. Still, if you’re a team that works with multiple agile methods, monday.com will be the better choice.
Collaboration Tools
Though neither Jira nor monday.com offers many collaboration tools, one platform does pull ahead in this category, and that’s monday. You can use integrations to get around the fact that there are few real-time collaboration tools with either platform, but we would prefer to see them both spending a little time fleshing out native options.
If you want to boost collaboration, pick monday.com. Though there’s no real-time chat tool on monday.com, the platform’s commenting and messaging system is better than the one found in Jira by a hair. Users will also find a whiteboard that allows distributed teams to work together in real time. Users can embed documents, leave comments, proof work and more.
Jira collaboration tools are few and far between. There’s no native real-time chat app or whiteboard. The only way to communicate is via @ messages, which can be left in task cards. However, it’s worth mentioning that Jira can integrate with Confluence, another Atlassian product that includes real-time collaboration tools, but they aren’t native to Jira.
Does monday.com or Jira Have Better Work Management Features?
monday.com and Jira offer a similar set of work management features, all of which can help you get your work done efficiently. However, the quality of monday.com’s tools and the platform’s versatility make it shine brighter than Jira.
Thanks to the delightful boards, Jira is ideal for teams focusing on scrum and kanban and developing software. monday.com’s tools support a wider range of teams across more varied industries, from marketing to human resources and from software development to construction, and the collaboration tools make it a better choice for remote teams.
If You Want to Consider Other Services, Check Out…
Though we believe monday.com is the best project management software available and that Jira is the best scrum software, we understand that neither may float your boat. If this is the case, we recommend taking a closer look at ClickUp, Zoho Projects, Trello and Wrike, as they offer many of the same features as Jira and monday.com.
Thanks to its beautiful interface, intuitive task management tools, collaboration features, superior customer service, plans and versatility, monday.com wins the fight with Jira. Both Jira and monday.com are fine pieces of project management software, but it’s clear that monday.com is the better platform for most teams.
Have you used monday.com or Jira? What do you like or dislike about them? Is there another platform that you prefer? Let us know in the comments, and as always, thanks for reading.
FAQ: monday.com vs Jira
Overall, monday.com is a better platform for most teams due to its versatility. However, teams working in agile development, specifically software, who want to use the scrum framework should consider Jira over monday.com.
We often recommend Monday.com over other project management platforms due to its ease of use, feature set and pricing. However, ClickUp, Zoho Projects, Asana and Wrike are solid alternatives.
Yes, you can integrate monday.com with Jira. Managers can share workflows between the platforms, keeping teams in different departments aligned.
The Microsoft software equivalent to monday.com is Microsoft Project. It integrates well with the company’s other products, such as Microsoft Teams and the various Microsoft Office apps. Read our Microsoft Project review.
Brett is a freelance journalist with 10 years of experience in the tech industry. Brett has covered everything from smartphones to cameras to software while holding the roles of Tech Columnist and Gear Editor. He writes about project management for Cloudwards. When not behind his desk writing, Brett can be found out and about with one of his many cameras, hiking in the wilderness, playing with his dogs, or playing video games. Brett is a self-confessed coffee addict and will do nearly anything for a good cup of Joe.
Originally a software engineer, Aleksander decided to leave the office lifestyle behind to live as a digital nomad. He now spends his time writing about technology and tourism, which allows him the freedom to call many different places home. When he’s not writing or editing, he likes to read fantasy/sci-fi, listen to podcasts about history and politics and travel.
Jasna earned her BA in translation and interpreting back in 2011. After
working in the IT industry for many years as a content analyst, she took a
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