There’s been plenty of great stuff written on this board about Monday.com, by Saul and others. I wanted to add my perspective so as to get some feedback since I am still on the fence about investing in it. First of all, I’m not a techie, far from it. And after reading many reviews of Asana’s and Monday’s (and other competitive collaboration software offerings) I am no closer to knowing which is better, or even which management team is better (although Monday’s founders are impressive). I’ve learned that business success is seldom about building a better mousetrap (see Bill Gates) but rather about building a successful go-to-market strategy and then making sure your happy customers remain happy. That’s why customer support is crucial to B2B software – yet it is often overlooked. But not, it seems, by Monday. As one Monday customer notes: “you do have a very robust support system. Every time I put in a ticket, someone replies within the hour.” Smartsheet, for one, doesn’t offer one hour service.
Monday’s user reviews are simply outstanding, and because of their growing use cases, their claim to being or becoming a “work OS” for business doesn’t seem that much of a stretch. On reading Monday’s blog, I was surprised to see they actually compare themselves to ServiceNow, a 100-billion-dollar (mkt cap) company. But then, when I saw the customer reviews on Gartner (in the Project Management category) I discovered they have almost DOUBLE the number of ServiceNow’s 5-star ratings! (The actual percentages are 48% vs 28%, based on 161 ratings and 144 ratings respectively.) In addition, a WHOPPING 84% of Monday customers were “willing to recommend” vs only 66% of Now customers. Here is the link: https://www.gartner.com/reviews/market/project-portfolio-man…
I always thought Now was positioning itself this way, especially with their prime target, enterprise customers. But Monday is committed to fulfilling its own claim to be a work OS. Monday’s features and use cases and its no code/ low code apps — not to mention its ease of use and visually attractive product design and customer support may be separating it from its peers. Pricing wise they are a little higher than competitors, but users seem to feel the extra cost is worth it. Pricing is transparent (except for their “enterprise pricing” tier) unlike ServiceNow. In addition, Monday seems to offer a more intuitive and colorful interface than competitors and a huge array of features compared to most (although the choices can be overwhelming and send users down a rabbit hole for a while, which is a negative). Monday’s software works with every size team imaginable – from small to medium to large enterprise customers. Anecdotally, Monday seems to be taking business from its older competitors, and even some new ones, including Asana.
What surprised me most is that Monday’s offerings are also rated highly by plenty of single-person FREELANCERS. I guess they need to keep track of their suppliers and their workflow as much as anyone else! Net Dollar Retention Rate has been increasing over the past two years, from 116% to 125%, and, as per Saul, Monday’s recent 93% growth rate (having decelerated from well over 100 percent in prior years) coupled with its overall financials suggest the path to profitability looks promising, especially for such a recent IPO (June, 2021). Over $50k customers are growing impressively at over 200%, as Saul and others have noted, but it’s off a very small base (in the hundreds compared to TEAM which has over 8,000 $50K customers and is growing them at 40%!) Jira is complex and not particularly user friendly as it was created as a workflow tool for developers.
But guess what? That tells us how massive the collaboration software market really is. According to Markets and Markets research, the Enterprise Collaboration Market alone will be worth $85.8 billion by 2026. https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/PressReleases/enterprise-c…. As an aside, every company in the world can use and benefit from collaboration software, which may be why Atlassian hasn’t needed to advertise very much over the years.
Monday integrates (or will integrate soon) with plenty of software solutions including Datadog (soon) and Jira and Asana (now) as noted by a previous poster). Again, leadership sees mass cross-pollination as essential to their long term growth as a ‘work OS’. There’s plenty of competition, and the product only becomes truly sticky in large org’s if and when executive leadership gets behind it (many of the project mgt s/w users on Reddit boards for example seem to be constantly searching to find the “perfect” one) because what’s the point if only one team in organization uses it and loves it, if other teams are happy using other products? But again, maybe Monday’s GTM strategy, intuitive interface and customer support commitment will win out because the combination puts it at a higher level. Asana has a higher valuation likely for no other reason than it is American, while Monday is, heavens above, an Israeli outfit. I only have a small position (3%) in Monday because of the impending lockup of millions of shares coming in early December but would love to hear any additional thoughts or insights as we move ever closer.