Monday CRM requires a minimum of three seats. Bigin starts with one free seat. A founder working alone on Monday CRM Basic pays for three seats, $432 for the year, and gets no automation. Bigin is free for one user, then $7 a seat, with workflow automation on the free plan and the full AI toolkit at $12. Read on to find why Bigin is a far superior option.
Why opt for a CRM with notable limitations when you have Bigin
monday CRM is a good-looking product, and a board is a pleasant way to look at a pipeline. Pricing is where small teams get caught.
There is no free plan for monday CRM, only a 14-day trial. Every plan then starts at three seats and moves in multiples of five, so a solo founder pays for three people and a team of four pays for five. Basic works out at $432 for year one, and Basic has no automation at all, 1,000 contacts, five columns per board, and an activity log that forgets anything older than a week. The things that make a CRM earn its keep sit further up: automation and email sync on Standard, and mass email, templates, sequences and forecasting on Pro. At the three-seat minimum that is $612 and $1,008 a year.
Bigin is free for one user, $7 a seat after that, and you buy one seat if you need one seat. Automation starts on the free plan. The full AI toolkit arrives at $12 with 1,000 credits every month.
Why is Bigin the go-to CRM for small businesses?
We built Bigin around how small teams work, and priced it that way. Everything a customer-facing team runs on comes in the box: customizable pipelines, a built-in phone with IVR, WhatsApp and email in one place, and automation that starts on the free plan. AI joins at $12/user/month with 1,000 credits every month, a number you can actually budget against.
There is a forever-free plan to start on, no seat minimum to work around, help importing your monday data when you are ready. Btw, 50,000+ small businesses already running on it.
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What are Pipedrive's limitations?
Three seats minimum, even if you are one person
monday prices in buckets: three seats minimum, then multiples of five. A team of four buys five. A team of six buys ten. A founder working alone buys three. Basic at $12 a seat is $36 a month before you have automation or email sync, and $432 across the year. Bigin’s free plan is single-user and permanent, and the first paid seat costs $7. You buy the seats you use.
No free plan for the CRM
monday does have a free plan, but not for this product. It lives on the work platform. monday CRM gives you a 14-day Pro trial and then asks for a card. Bigin’s forever-free plan includes a customizable pipeline, contact management, a built-in phone, three automations and a web form. Start free, upgrade when it pays for itself.
Basic has no automation. None.
Not limited automation, none at all. monday CRM Basic ships without automations or integrations, and marketplace apps that depend on the integration engine cannot run there either. Automation starts on Standard at $17 a seat, which is $612 a year once the three-seat minimum applies. Bigin’s free plan runs three automations and Express runs 30, at $7.
Automation you can run out of
Standard meters automation at 250 actions a month, and a single notification to six board subscribers spends six of them. Overrun twice and monday pauses your automations after a 72-hour grace period, with the deficit carrying into the next cycle. Only Enterprise can buy extra actions. Bigin counts rules, not runs: 30 on Express, 50 on Premier, 100 on Bigin 360, and they never stop mid-month.
Your activity history expires
Board activity on monday CRM Basic goes back one week. Standard holds six months and Pro holds a year. Filtering that log by anything other than who made the change needs Pro. Bigin keeps record history without a time limit, on every plan including the free one.
You cannot budget for monday’s AI
No monday CRM plan publishes an AI credit allowance; all four tiers carry the same line, "Start for free, buy more as needed." The burn rate is published, though: eight credits per AI action on a board, 150 for a sales-agent call of up to five minutes. Bigin Premier includes 1,000 credits every month at $12, Bigin 360 includes 3,000. You know the number before you buy.
Calling is a mobile-only alpha, and there is no IVR
monday shipped Smart Call in 2026 and it is a real start, but read the fine print: outbound only, from the mobile app only, US numbers only, with numbers and minutes billed on top of your seats. There is no web dialer and no inbound calling. There is no IVR, no queues, no routing and no call transfers at any tier. A phone system means buying a third-party app. Bigin has a built-in phone with IVR from the free plan onward, plus 100+ telephony integrations.
WhatsApp costs extra, and it comes from someone else
monday CRM has no native WhatsApp Business channel. Its own CRM integrations page lists four communication tools: Slack, Teams, Zoom and Gmail. WhatsApp means a marketplace app from a third-party vendor, billed separately from around $1 to $30 a month on top of your seats, and monday states plainly that it does not endorse or certify marketplace apps. Bigin Express includes WhatsApp Business at $7.
The features that make it a sales CRM start at $28
Two-way Gmail and Outlook sync opens on Standard. Everything after that waits for Pro: mass email, email templates, sequences, email tracking and sales forecasting. Pro is $28 a seat, or $1,008 a year at three seats. Bigin Express includes mass email, templates, email insights and payment links at $7, and Premier adds the full AI toolkit at $12.
Support is a chatbot until you upgrade
The Basic, Standard and Pro cards on monday's CRM pricing page list no support commitment at all. Prioritized 24/7 support, tailored onboarding and white-glove migration are Ultimate features, and Ultimate has no published price. No monday plan includes phone support. Every paid Bigin plan includes phone, email and live chat support, a free onboarding session and data-import help, with phone availability varying by region and language.
HIPAA sits behind a sales call
HIPAA coverage on monday requires the Enterprise tier, now renamed Ultimate, plus a signed business associate agreement. Ultimate is quote-only. Keep this block but drop the current "tens of thousands of dollars per year" figure, which is not published anywhere and is not defensible. Before publishing, confirm with product which Bigin plans carry HIPAA support so the Bigin half of the claim is precise.
Here's a list of features that Bigin offers for your business:
Team Pipelines
Team Pipelines
Connected Pipelines
Built-in AI assistance
Built-in telephony & IVR
WhatsApp, email & social messaging
Workflow automation
Payment links
Booking & appointment scheduling
Customizable dashboards & KPIs
Apps for iOS, Android & macOS
Bigin vs. monday CRM
Features
Bigin Express$7/user/month billed annually
monday CRM Standard$17/user/month billed annually
Bigin Premier$12/user/month billed annually
monday CRM Pro$28/user/month billed annually
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SALES
Free edition available
forever free plan (single user)
14-day trial only
Full-fledged pipeline management
from Free plan
Contact and lead management
from Free plan
Deal management
from Free plan
Payment collection (payment links)
Stripe, PayPal, Razorpay, Paytm
Via marketplace apps
Via marketplace apps
Quote management
Via Zoho Books / Zoho Invoice integration
50 per month
Via Zoho Books / Zoho Invoice integration
250 per month
COMMUNICATION
Built-in telephony
from Free plan
Alpha - outbound only, mobile app only, US numbers only
Alpha - outbound only, mobile app only, US numbers only
Telephony marketplace
Third-party apps (paid)
Third-party apps (paid)
Built-in IVR system
from Free plan
Meeting integrations (Zoom, Teams, Zoho Meeting)
Zoom, Teams
Zoom, Teams
Email integrations (two-way sync)
Gmail, Outlook (Standard+)
Gmail, Outlook
Email templates
Email insights (opens / clicks)
mass email insights
Mass emails
WhatsApp integration
WhatsApp Business
Third-party apps only (paid)
Third-party apps only (paid)
X integration
AUTOMATION
Workflow automation
30 workflows (from Free plan: 3)
Stage automation
Built-in
Status-based
Built-in
Status-based
Formula fields
Automation across apps (Zapier + Zoho Flow)
from Free plan
Zapier / Make only
Zapier / Make only
STREAMLINING CUSTOMER-FACING OPERATIONS
Pre-built pipeline templates for different operations
from Free plan
board templates
board templates
Case / ticket management through Email-in
Topping (add-on)
Topping (add-on)
Connected records / Connected Pipelines
Manual setup
Manual setup
Built-in dashboards & reports
from Free plan
DATA AND OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT
Versatile no-code form builder
from Free plan
Social media lead ads capture (FB, IG, LinkedIn, TikTok)
Built-in pipelines dedicated to different operations
Case and ticket management through Email-in
Connected records (When a record reaches the desired stage in one team pipeline, you can create a record automatically in another team pipeline that captures the next set of business activities.)
Built-in dashboards for detailed insights into your business
All you need to take your business to the next level
Bigin is the right choice for your small business and is trusted by over 50,000 small businesses globally. We want to help you scale up your business and achieve consistent growth. And in the future, if your business needs more than what Bigin can offer, you can always switch to Zoho CRM or Zoho CRM Plus. We're here to help you at every milestone your business reaches.
Build your business using the most powerful app ecosystem
monday CRM looks flexible enough to run anything, thanks to its boards and endless templates. But configuring work views is not the same as actually running a business end to end. Zoho One was purpose-built for exactly that, connecting sales, marketing, HR, finance, and more into one system rather than a wall of tasks. Priced at $37/user/month, it delivers real operational depth instead of per-seat upsells.
Expert reviews and ratings
Rating Platform
monday CRM
Bigin
4.5/5
4.6/5
Ease of Use
8.8
9.1/10
Ease of Setup
8.5
8.7/10
4.7/5
4.7/5
4.7/5
4.7/5
4.7/5
4.7/5
4.5/5
4.4/5
4.4/5
4.7/5
4/5
4.7/5
*The names and logos for Zoho are trademarks of Zoho Corp. All other trademarks, brand names, or product names belong to their respective holders. Comparison information as of 4/08/2026. Prices mentioned are in USD.
Trusted by 50,000+ small businesses globally
I'm self-employed and I run a design, printing, and marketing business. I wear all the hats when it comes to my business, so I need tools that help me automate and track everything that goes on day-to-day. I have been looking for a simple CRM for the last 3 years. During that time, all I found were apps with way too many features that came with a hefty price tag. When I started using Bigin, I loved how easy it was to use, and it had a clean and organized interface. The ability to sync my other apps with it using Zoho Flow was a big plus. One of the best things is they made it affordable. I look forward to being seeing how Bigin evolves and helps me run my business better.
Krista Guerrero,Owner, Kreative Design/Marketing
Bigin is easy to use for a growing organisation like Ammacus. The platform is very intuitive and saves time on double entering information and has saved us many hours in lost productivity. As an early adopter of Bigin, we look forward to continued new applications & developments to make the platform even better than it is today. In addition, we have received fantastic client support when it was required.
Craig Aspey,Managing Director, Ammacus
Bigin is exactly what we needed at our growing real estate company. We had looked into many CRM services but all of them were either too costly with features we didn’t yet need; too complicated to set up; or too simplistic. Zoho Bigin has been amazing. I watched one instruction video from the YouTube channel and I was ready to set up. It’s so simple to navigate that we were up and running on day 2. Customer support has also been great. I’ve received quick responses to all my queries. Just stellar all the way.
I am a huge fan of Bigin. I have literally spent years trying to find a solution like this so that I could track all of my clients. I have two different business entities with differing needs for each. This has made it challenging. I tried different apps that are made for larger businesses and they were not as user friendly as Bigin. Plus, the costs were too high for me. I recommend Bigin to everyone I know. I have been a customer since October of 2020 and I could not be happier with this application.
Susan Carpenter,Owner, Life's Doors Meditation
I have been using Bigin since almost it was launched and I must say this is one of the most simple yet very effective tools for entrepreneurs. The Deals module helps me stay on top of my plans and closures. The leads are easy to add, track and follow-up, due to which I feel much in control of my marketing process. Assigning tasks and calls have taken my follow-ups to the next level. I love Bigin's web, Mac and iOS interfaces and I find them very intuitive and easy to use. Thank you Zoho for creating this CRM and making my life so simple.
Still have more doubts? Here are the answers to some frequently asked questions!
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Is monday CRM free?
No, monday CRM has a free plan, but it is on the work platform, not monday CRM. monday CRM gives you a 14-day Pro trial and then starts at $12 per seat per month billed annually, with a three-seat minimum, so the real entry price is $36 a month. Bigin has a forever-free plan for a single user that includes a customizable pipeline, contact management, built-in telephony, three automations and a web form, and paid plans start at $7.
How much cheaper is Bigin than monday CRM?
Bigin’s paid plans run $7 to $18 per user per month billed annually. monday CRM runs $12 to $28 per seat, with Ultimate quote-only. The gap widens once you match features rather than price tags. Automation, mass email and email templates cost $7 on Bigin Express; on monday, automation starts at $17 and mass email at $28. For a five-person team that is $420 a year on Bigin Express against $1,020 on monday Standard, or $720 on Bigin Premier against $1,680 on monday Pro. For one person it is $84 a year against $432, because monday will not sell you fewer than three seats.
Does monday CRM include AI on its cheaper plans?
It includes access, not an amount. All four monday CRM tiers list AI credits, AI Sidekick and Notetaker hours with the same phrase, "Start for free, buy more as needed," and monday publishes no credit allowance for any monday CRM plan. What it does publish is what things cost you: eight credits for an AI action on a CRM board, 150 credits for an AI sales-agent call of up to five minutes, and assistant messages priced by complexity. Bigin includes its full AI toolkit, a writing assistant, email replies, record summaries, Cross-sell suggestions and churn alerts, from Premier at $12, with 1,000 AI credits refreshed every month and 3,000 on Bigin 360.
Can I make calls from monday CRM?
From the mobile app, in the United States, outbound only, and only while Smart Call is in alpha. There is no web dialer, no inbound calling and no IVR, queues or call transfers at any tier, and phone numbers and minutes are billed on top of your seats. A working phone setup means a paid third-party app from the marketplace. Bigin has a built-in phone with IVR from the free plan onward, plus 100+ telephony integrations.
How do I migrate from monday CRM to Bigin?
Export your monday boards to CSV and Bigin’s import tools bring across contacts, companies, deals and notes. Every paid plan includes a free onboarding session and data-import help from our team, so you do not have to work out the field mapping alone. Bigin’s single-click migration covers Pipedrive, HubSpot, Insightly and Zoho CRM today; monday CRM is a CSV import. If it does not work out, Bigin has a money-back guarantee: 30 days on monthly plans and 45 on annual.
Will I outgrow Bigin?
Bigin scales from a free single-user plan to Bigin 360 at $18 per user per month, with 15 team pipelines, one million records, 100 automations and 3,000 AI credits a month. If you eventually need more, your data moves to Zoho CRM with one click, so you never migrate platforms twice.
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Give your business a chance to grow
Organize your customer-facing activities with Bigin. Sign up for a free 15-day trial and take a closer look at the minimalist yet complete customer relationship management tool for your business.
