- Anubhav Sarker
- Published: 10/14/2026
- Last Updated: 10/14/2026
For a small team that wants a working pipeline this month, monday CRM is the easier pick. Its paid plans cost $12, $17, and $28 per seat, billed yearly, compared to $25 and $100 for Salesforce's two paid small business editions. G2 reviewers report going live in two months on monday CRM and five on Salesforce. The catch sits in the plan ladder. Basic has no email sync and no automations, so the real starting point is Standard, and sequences, email templates, open tracking, and forecasting all wait for Pro.
Salesforce is the better pick for a team that already knows it needs custom objects that relate to each other, and that has someone willing to run the admin side. Starter Suite at $25 puts sales, service, marketing email, and commerce in one app with no user cap, but it has no forecasting, no quotes, no custom objects, and no API. Those arrive on the Pro Suite at $100 per seat on an annual contract, and Pro Suite allows five active flows. Pipeline Inspection and territory management start on Core at $195.
If you want the two products to talk to each other, budget for the enterprise end of both price lists. monday.com's native Salesforce integration is a paid add-on for its Ultimate plan, and on the Salesforce side, it needs Core or above.
What they were built for
monday.com launched the product as monday sales CRM on August 2, 2022, and now calls it monday CRM. It runs on the same boards the company sells for project work. Leads, contacts, accounts, and deals each live on a board, and you add a column for every field you want to track. The CRM reached $100 million in annual recurring revenue in July 2025, three years after launch. The company, founded in Israel in 2012 as DaPulse Labs and based in Tel Aviv, had more than 250,000 paying customers across all its products at the end of 2025.
Salesforce has been the largest CRM vendor by revenue for 13 years running, with 20.0% of the CRM market in 2025, and it has more than 150,000 customers. It offers three editions for small businesses: Free Suite, Starter Suite, and Pro Suite. On September 3, 2026, it replaced its Enterprise, Unlimited, and Agentforce 1 editions with Core, Advanced, and Max, at $195, $395, and $550 a user per month. Most monday vs Salesforce comparisons online still quote the old editions and their old prices, so check the date on any comparison you read.
Each company has a line about the other. Salesforce's guide to small business CRMs lists monday CRM as "Best for task management" and says it "focuses heavily on internal project execution rather than deep, specialized sales analytics." monday's own comparison says monday CRM "is a lot simpler to use" and that "Powerful automation and AI features are built in at every pricin
Feature by feature: the plan you need for each one
monday CRM sells four plans: Basic, Standard, Pro, and Ultimate, the new name for its Enterprise tier. Salesforce sells the Free Suite, Starter Suite, and Pro Suite to small businesses, and Core, Advanced, and Max to larger businesses.
Feature | monday CRM | Salesforce |
|---|---|---|
Email sync and tracking | Two-way Gmail and Outlook sync starts on the Standard plan, and Basic has no email sync. Email templates and open tracking need the Pro plan. | Gmail and Outlook sync starts with Starter Suite, which automatically logs emails, calendar events, and contacts. Free Suite allows 100 emails a month with simple templates. |
Email sequences | Email sequences need the Pro plan, and each step in a sequence uses one automation action. | Sales Engagement, which runs email cadences, is an add-on at $50 a user per month for Pro Suite and above. It is not sold for Starter Suite. |
Mass and marketing email | Mass email needs the Pro plan, with up to 500 emails per send and 2,000 a day. | Starter Suite and Pro Suite include 2,000 marketing email sends a month. Extra sends on Starter Suite cost $10 a month per 1,000. |
Automation | Basic has no automations. Standard allows 250 automation actions a month for the whole account, Pro allows 25,000, and Ultimate allows more. | Free Suite includes five flows, Pro Suite allows five active flows, and Core allows 2,000 active flows. Salesforce does not publish a flow limit for Starter Suite. |
Forecasting | Sales forecasting needs the Pro plan. | Forecasting starts in Pro Suite; Starter Suite does not include it. |
Quotes and invoices | Quotes and invoices are included with every plan: 20 per month on Basic, 50 on Standard, 250 on Pro, and no cap on Ultimate. The tool cannot collect a countersigned document yet. | Quotes start on Pro Suite. Free Suite and Starter Suite do not support quoting. |
Custom fields | monday calls fields columns. Basic allows five columns per board, Standard 15, Pro 75, and Ultimate has no cap. | Free Suite and Starter Suite allow 25 custom fields per object, Pro Suite 100, and Core 500. |
Custom objects | monday CRM has no custom objects in the Salesforce sense. Every record type is a board, and every plan allows unlimited boards, so a new board for vendors or projects works as a new record type. | Custom objects start at 50 in Pro Suite, and Core allows 200. Free Suite and Starter Suite allow none. |
Record limits | Basic allows 1,000 active contacts and deals, Standard 10,000, Pro 100,000, and Ultimate has no cap. | Salesforce sets storage limits in place of record counts. Free Suite, Starter Suite, and Pro Suite get 10 GB of data storage per org, and Core adds 20 MB per user on top of that. |
Pipelines | Every plan includes unlimited pipelines. | Separate sales processes for different kinds of deals come with Core and above. Salesforce does not publish whether Starter Suite or Pro Suite can run more than one. |
Reports and dashboards | Basic allows one custom dashboard, Standard five, Pro 50, and Ultimate has no cap. | Reports and dashboards are on every edition, with up to 25 widgets per dashboard. Salesforce does not publish report or dashboard counts for Starter Suite or Pro Suite. |
Phone | monday Smart Call is included on every plan, with up to 5 numbers in the US, Canada, Puerto Rico, or Israel. It records, transcribes, and summarizes every call, and each connected minute costs five AI credits. | Sales Dialer is an add-on, starting at $5 per user per month for Pro Suite and above. No edition includes it. |
Permissions | Private boards and board and column permissions need the Pro plan. Ultimate adds account-level and multi-level permissions. | Pro Suite allows three custom profiles and 10 permission sets. Core allows 1,500 custom profiles per license type. |
API | Every plan can use the API, with 1,000 calls a day on Basic and Standard, 10,000 on Pro, and 25,000 on Ultimate. | Starter Suite has no API. Pro Suite can add it for $25 a user per month, and Core includes it. |
AI | Timeline summaries, an AI email assistant, and deal insights are included at no extra cost on the Standard plan. AI blocks cost eight credits per action, the Lead Agent costs 10 credits per lead, and AI lead scoring needs the Ultimate plan. | Starter Suite includes an Employee Agent that summarizes records and drafts follow-up emails. Agentforce for Sales costs $125 a user per month as an add-on for Core and Advanced, and Max includes it. |
Support | Every plan gets 24/7 support. Ultimate adds prioritized support, tailored onboarding, and account management. | Every license includes the Standard Success Plan, which answers within two days. Premier, with a one-hour response for business-stopping issues, comes with Core and above. |
The two ladders put the money in different places. monday's $28 Pro seat buys sequences, forecasting, mass email, and 25,000 automation actions a month, with no custom objects and 75 columns per board. Salesforce's $100 Pro Suite seat buys custom objects, quoting, forecasting, and 100 custom fields per object, with five active flows and no sequences unless you pay $50 more.
The automation row compares two different units. monday counts actions: every time an automation runs, and every sequence step it sends. Salesforce counts flows: the automations you have built, however often they run. Standard's 250 actions per month amount to about 8 per day for the whole account. That is enough to try automation and too few to depend on it.
The phone row surprised me most. monday CRM includes calling with recording and AI summaries on every plan, paid for in credits, though only with numbers from four countries. Salesforce sells its dialer as an add-on and keeps it off Starter Suite.
Salesforce vs monday CRM for small teams
For a team of 3 to 10 that mostly sells, monday.com CRM Standard at $17 per seat, billed yearly, is the floor, because it adds the Gmail and Outlook sync that Basic lacks. Pro at $28 holds the sales tools: sequences, templates, open tracking, mass email, forecasting, private boards, and room for 100,000 contacts and deals. Basic, Standard, and Pro can all be billed monthly, at $18, $25, and $41.
Seats cost small teams extra. monday CRM sells seats in buckets that start at 3 and then increase in multiples of 5, so a team of 6 pays for 10 seats. An operations manager in health and fitness rated monday CRM 4 out of 5 on Capterra on August 4, 2026, and wrote: "I wish it had a paid version/option for individuals. I am self-employed and would use it if I didn't have to pay for a minimum of 3 seats"
Salesforce starts lower and climbs faster. Free Suite covers two users at no cost. Starter Suite at $25 can be billed monthly, has no user maximum, and adds email sync, 2,000 marketing emails a month, and service tools. Pro Suite is the first edition to include forecasting, quotes, custom objects, and the option to buy API access, and it costs $100 per seat on an annual contract. A team that wants email cadences pays another $50 a seat for Sales Engagement.
Both trials are free, and they differ in length. monday's runs 14 days on the Pro plan and cannot be extended. Salesforce's runs 30 days, and the Starter Suite trial covers up to 10 users. I would trial monday CRM Pro and Salesforce Starter Suite at the same time, with the same week of real deals in both, because the two cost about the same per seat.
Is monday CRM cheaper than Salesforce?
Yes, plan for plan. Billed yearly, monday CRM costs $12 a seat per month for Basic, $17 for Standard, and $28 for Pro, or $18, $25, and $41 billed monthly. Ultimate is priced by quote. Every plan needs at least three seats, and there is no free CRM plan.
Salesforce costs nothing for the Free Suite with two users, $25 per user per month for the Starter Suite, and $100 per user per month for the Pro Suite on an annual contract. Core costs $195, Advanced $395, and Max $550, all billed yearly.
The fair comparison sets feature against feature. Forecasting and email sequences together cost $28 a seat on monday CRM Pro. On Salesforce, they cost $150 a seat: Pro Suite for forecasting, plus Sales Engagement for cadences. For five seats over a year, that comes to $1,680 on monday CRM and $9,000 on Salesforce.
Can monday.com integrate with Salesforce?
Yes, with conditions on both sides. monday.com's Salesforce integration is a paid add-on for its Ultimate plan. On the Salesforce side, monday requires the Enterprise or Unlimited edition, which Salesforce now sells as Core and Advanced, and the integration does not support Professional. Starter Suite has no API for integration. If you run Pro Suite with the $25 API add-on, ask monday before you buy.
The integration syncs campaigns, accounts, cases, leads, opportunities, contacts, orders, users, and custom objects. You set it up with two one-way templates, one that pulls Salesforce records onto a monday board and one that pushes board changes back to Salesforce, and together they give you a two-way sync. A Salesforce user with the "API Enabled" permission must install Monday's package first.
Salesforce has its own route in the other direction. Flow Builder includes a monday.com connector, which needs the MuleSoft for Flow: Integration add-on. Zapier lists eight ready-made templates for the pair, and Make lists 13 monday triggers and 11 Salesforce actions. Every one of these routes goes through the Salesforce API.
The plan requirements tell me who the monday Salesforce integration is for: companies that run sales in Salesforce and project work in monday.com, at a size where both bills already sit at the enterprise end. A small team choosing its first CRM should pick one of the two.
What reviewers say
Based on reviews, monday CRM is the easier product to run, and Salesforce is the one that covers more. Salesforce has about 15 times as many G2 reviews, so its scores rest on a much larger sample.
Platform | monday CRM | Salesforce Sales Cloud |
|---|---|---|
G2 | monday CRM scores 4.5 out of 5 from 1,814 reviews. | Salesforce Sales Cloud scores 4.4 out of 5 from 27,571 reviews. |
Capterra | monday CRM scores 4.7 out of 5 from 467 reviews, with 4.5 for value for money. | Salesforce scores 4.4 out of 5 from 18,813 reviews, with 4.0 for value for money. |
TrustRadius | monday CRM scores 8.2 out of 10 from 240 reviews. | Salesforce, listed as Agentforce Sales, scores 8.8 out of 10 from 3,471 reviews. |
Apple App Store | The monday.com app, which also runs monday CRM, scores 4.8 out of 5 from about 48,000 ratings. | The Salesforce app has a 4.8/5 rating based on about 354,000 ratings. |
Google Play (US) | The monday.com app has a 4.7/5 rating based on about 45,000 reviews. | The Salesforce app scores 3.6 out of 5 from about 59,600 reviews. |
On G2's side-by-side scores, monday CRM leads on ease of use (8.8 against 8.2), ease of setup (8.5 against 7.8), ease of admin (8.8 against 7.9), quality of support (8.4 against 8.1), and product direction (9.2 against 8.3). Salesforce leads on meeting requirements (8.8 against 8.5). Reviewers report 2 months to implement monday CRM and 5 for Salesforce, and a return on investment after 10 months versus 14. monday CRM's largest group of reviewers works at small businesses, and Salesforce's largest group works at mid-market companies.
The monday mobile scores cover more than the CRM. monday CRM runs inside the monday.com app on both iPhone and Android, so both monday scores rate the whole platform. A standalone monday CRM iPhone app arrived in August 2026 and has too few ratings to show a score. Salesforce's 3.6 on Android is the weakest number in the table.
Capterra's 2026 CRM Shortlist ranks Salesforce Sales Cloud first, and monday CRM 11th, and G2's Best Sales Software Products list for 2026 ranks Salesforce Sales Cloud first.
Recent complaints, quoted as written, name the same costs the plan table shows.
On monday CRM: "Pricing per seat adds up fast once you're past 20-30 users, and some of the better automation features sit behind higher tiers. It's easy to underestimate the real cost when you're scaling the team." Verified user in writing and editing, small business, G2, August 9, 2026, rated 4.5/5. The second half of that first sentence is the automation row of the table.
On Salesforce: "The biggest downside is cost. Salesforce Sales Cloud can get expensive quickly, especially once you start adding extra features, users, or third-party integrations. Even basic functionality often requires higher-tier licenses or add-ons, which increases the total cost of ownership." Bill L., VP of Sales and Operations in education management, Capterra, June 25, 2026, rated 4 out of 5.
And from a salesperson's chair: "Salesforce UI is not great. Reps hate using it, but it's a necessary evil. There is a reason reps have gotten the reputation of not updating CRMs, and it's because of Salesforce." Taylor H., account executive in computer software, Capterra, September 2, 2026, rated 3 out of 5. Three stars and the word "necessary" in the same review is about as fair a summary of Salesforce as I have read.
Is monday CRM better than Salesforce?
monday CRM is better for a small team that wants to set up its own pipeline in weeks, wants sequences and forecasting for $28 a seat, and can work without custom objects. Salesforce is better for a business that needs related custom objects, territory management, or Pipeline Inspection, or that plans to hire an administrator. The G2 scores agree: monday CRM leads on every sub-score except meeting requirements. In the Salesforce vs monday choice, I would let the custom objects row decide. If your business needs one, buy Salesforce.
What are the disadvantages of monday CRM?
monday CRM's disadvantages sit in its plan limits. Every plan requires at least 3 seats, and seats come in buckets, so a team of 6 pays for 10. Basic has no email sync, no automations, five columns per board, and room for 1,000 contacts and deals, which leaves a board with a contact list. Standard caps automation at 250 actions a month for the account, and sequences, templates, open tracking, and forecasting wait for Pro. AI lead scoring needs Ultimate, and so does the Salesforce integration. The built-in phone works only with numbers from the US, Canada, Puerto Rico, and Israel. Quotes cannot yet collect a countersignature. And monday CRM has no custom objects, so related records live on boards linked to other boards. A team that sells through one or two pipelines and likes to build its own setup will notice little of this.
Is Salesforce worth it for a small business?
Salesforce is worth it for a small business that will use only the features included in the higher editions: custom objects, the full Salesforce API, and, later, territory management and Pipeline Inspection. Starter Suite is good value at $25 for a team that wants sales, service, and marketing email in one login, and it has no user cap. The cost steps up one step. Pro Suite at $100 needs an annual contract and allows five active flows. Cadences cost $50 a seat more, the dialer $5 more, and API access $25 more. Agentforce for Sales adds $125 a seat on Core and Advanced. G2 reviewers report five months to implement Salesforce and 14 months to see a return. A team with an administrator, or the budget for a Salesforce partner, will get its money's worth. A team without one pays for features it never sets up.
Where Bigin fits
Disclosure first: Bigin is our product, a pipeline-centric CRM built by Zoho for small businesses, so read this section knowing who wrote it. If you came here looking for a monday alternative sized for a small team, Bigin is the one I work on.
Bigin Express costs $7 per user per month, billed annually, or $9 per user per month, billed monthly, and Bigin also has a free plan. Every plan, Free, has a built-in phone. Express includes WhatsApp, 30 automations, 3 team pipelines, room for 50,000 records, and free onboarding. Bigin scores 4.6 on G2 from 877 reviews and 4.7 on Capterra from 744, where it holds the 2026 CRM Shortlist designations for best ease of use and best value for money. Bigin stops short in a few places: 10 custom fields per module on Express and 50 on Bigin 360, no custom objects, and no platform like Salesforce's. If your team needs custom objects or the Salesforce API, Bigin is the wrong pick. Our guide on choosing a CRM covers this decision in more detail.
Wrapping up
monday CRM is cheaper per seat and easier to set up, and G2 reviewers rate it higher on every sub-score except meeting requirements. Its real starting point is Standard at $17; its sales tools sit on Pro at $28, and every plan needs at least three seats. It has no custom objects, and its Salesforce integration needs the Ultimate plan. Salesforce covers more and asks more of you: Starter Suite at $25 has no forecasting, quotes, or API, and Pro Suite at $100 adds them, with an annual contract and five active flows. The two connect natively only at the enterprise end of both price lists. And if your team has fewer than 10 people, try Bigin free before you commit to a three-seat minimum or an annual contract.