| Functionality | 9 <p>Jira delivers nearly all the functionality that SMBs—and even enterprises—will need.</p><p>Its task and project management capabilities are incredibly powerful and flexible. You can customize Jira to fit virtually any project, even those with complex structures like five layers of sub-tasks, each with their own custom fields.</p><p>That said, Jira does have some gaps. It doesn’t natively offer features like invoicing, billing, or expense tracking, which other tools sometimes include. Plus, for built-in docs or wikis, you’ll need to use its sister product, Confluence.</p> | 7 <p>Monday.com offers almost all the functionality most companies need to manage tasks and projects effectively. It has rich functionality natively such as robust automation, customizable forms, time-tracking, analytics, and even invoice creation. This allows teams to streamline their workflows and enhance productivity without relying heavily on external integrations.</p><p>However, it's missing the advanced customizability and automation that larger teams require to manage complex task and project relationships e.g. creating multiple layers of subtasks, meaningful project portfolio management functionality and sophisticated workflows with branches.</p> |
| Ease of Use | 4 <p>Compared to other project management tools, we find Jira complex to navigate. The interface is packed with features and options, which can make it overwhelming and unintuitive—especially for new users. The learning curve is steep, and it can take weeks for team members to get fully comfortable.</p><p>For example, even for simple projects, there are multiple configuration pages to manage: settings for the entire project, specific project views, built-in fields, custom fields—you name it. It’s powerful, but all these layers can quickly become confusing.</p> | 7 <p>Monday.com offers a generally user-friendly experience, with an abundance of templates and smooth onboarding that lowers the barrier of entry for non-technical, new users.</p><p>However, when delving into more advanced features, the platform's ease of use starts to wane. There's foreign terminology such as adding a "Problem Framing" quickies block to your docs, or enabling "battery view" for your board. The interface can also become cluttered as you use projects scale and more features are utilised.</p><p>For the average SMB employee, it might take 1-2 days with minimal guidance to become comfortable with the platform.</p> |
| Look and feel | 5 <p>While Jira has made strides in design and usability with recent updates, it still feels a bit dated compared to more modern Project Management tools like Linear. Customizing the UI is pretty limited, so you’re mostly stuck with the default look and feel.</p><p>Our main gripe, though, is page load times. At 2–3+ seconds per page, things can feel sluggish—and this gets gets compounded as your projects and teams grow. It's a frustration that can niggle you every day.</p> | 7 <p>Monday.com emphasizes visual management with bright, engaging colours and customisable icons. While this visual approach makes it easy to understand project statuses at a glance, it could also quickly get cluttered and busy, Page loads are quick (1-2 seconds).</p> |
| Customisability | 10 <p>We find Jira to be impressively, and overwhelmingly, customisable.</p><p>You can customise almost anything you can think of - custom task types, workflows, specialized screens, validation rules, and more. For ultimate flexibility, there’s even Jira’s own query language (JQL), which lets you search and filter issues with incredible precision.</p> | 8 <p>As an all-in-one tool, Monday.com offers a high level of customizability suitable for most teams, allowing you to tailor boards with custom columns, statuses, and automation without needing to code. Individual cards can be anything from tasks, projects to deals, employees and client. However, it doesn't match the advanced customization capabilities of tools like JIRA —such as creating multiple layers of subtasks or defining complex task relationships—which may limit larger teams managing complex projects.</p> |
| Ease of Setup | 4 <p>Jira offers a self-serve free trial and lets you purchase without dealing with sales. Getting started and setting up a few tasks or subtasks takes about 30–40 minutes, which can feel a bit more confusing compared to other tools. That said, its rich library of templates helps streamline the process.</p><p>Be prepared, though—a full setup will likely take at least a few days, especially if you’re customizing it for more complex workflows.</p> | 9 <p>Offers a self-serve free trial and allows purchase without needing to talk to sales. Getting started and setting up a few tasks and subtasks should take 20-30 minutes, because it has a very rich library of templates. Full setup should take less than a day.</p> |
| Customer Support | 4 <p>We find that Jira's support leaves a lot to be desired. Atlassian (the maker of Jira) nudge users toward self-service options like documentation and community forums, which can be frustrating when you need quick, direct help. Even when you reach out for support, the experience can be hit-or-miss—especially if you’re a smaller customer without a premium support plan.</p> | 7 <p>Monday.com offers personalised live chat within the platform. When contacted, it was extremely quick to connect with an agent who was decently helpful - although there still seems to be a tendency to send us Help Centre articles. Self-help resources on their Help Centre are high-quality and extensive.</p> |
| Integratability | 9 <p>Jira, powered by Atlassian, has a thriving app marketplace with thousands of plugins. If there’s a feature you need that Jira doesn’t offer natively, chances are there’s a third-party app for it. Plus, Jira provides an API, giving you the flexibility to build custom integrations when needed.</p> | 9 <p>Monday.com has a vibrant app marketplace with hundreds of plugins and integrations with the most relevant third party apps (e.g. CRM, marketing, developer tools etc). Its standout feature is its pre-built automation templates with most of these apps, which can be added with one-click. It also has an API for custom integrations.</p> |
| Ease of Migration | 5 <p>Migrating away from Jira can be a bit of a headache. Exporting data isn’t exactly seamless, and you’ll likely need to spend time cleaning and reformatting it before it’s usable in another tool. Custom fields, workflows, and issue types often don’t have direct equivalents elsewhere, which can lead to data loss or tricky mapping processes. It’s definitely something to plan for if you’re considering switching.</p> | 8 <p>While you can self-serve export data to formats like Excel, not all information—such as activity logs or certain file attachments—transfers seamlessly. Like other PM tools, custom fields and complex workflows might require manual rebuilding in the new platform, and these limitations can complicate migration efforts for teams with intricate setups. </p> |
