Jira and Monday.com are two of the top project management software solutions on the market. They can help project managers and their software development teams plan, manage tasks, collaborate, and more to enhance efficiency and productivity. We will discuss Jira and Monday.com’s features, pricing, pros and cons, and how they differ to help you decide which of these PM software options is best for your developers.
Jira Project Management Features
A glance at Jira’s homepage shows that it is the top software development tool for Agile teams, and over 100,000 organizations trust it. With so many PM software solutions on the market, you might be wondering what makes Jira such a hit with Agile teams and followers of other methodologies. The answer to that is a massive list of features that helps those teams tackle tasks, stay on track, and boost productivity, which include:
- Scrum and Kanban boards
- Project templates
- Real-time roadmaps
- Advanced views and reporting
- Burndown charts and Velocity charts
- Plenty of third-party integrations
Jira has powerful Scrum and Kanban boards for managing work. Agile project managers can use Jira’s Scrum boards to break complex projects into smaller, manageable tasks. The software’s flexible Kanban boards, on the other hand, can help Agile and DevOps project managers visualize workflow, limit work-in-progress, and maintain efficiency. Best of all, Jira makes it easy to get started with templates that you can customize to fit your needs on the fly. With templates for Scrum, Kanban, DevOps, tracking, and more, Jira is ideal for development teams looking to get started with minimal onboarding.
Jira’s list of features continues with basic and advanced roadmaps to keep development teams in sync. They offer real-time updates and can be shared with stakeholders for transparency. Speaking of transparency, project managers can get it through Jira’s dashboards, multiple views, and reports and insights. Jira is particularly strong in the reporting department, thanks to Scrum and team specialties like burndown charts, sprint reports, velocity charts, and release burndowns. And for Kanban teams, the PM software has control charts and cumulative flow diagrams. Jira also offers reports for time tracking, user workload, and more.
Drag and drop automation that is supposedly “fun to use” is another Jira highlight, as are custom workflows, fields, and filters. Developers can track bugs with Jira, plus enjoy Open DevOps capabilities to access all of their top tools in one place and increase deployments while decreasing cycle time. And if you are looking for integrations out of your PM software, Jira connects to thousands of third-party apps.
Examples of Atlassian Marketplace
Jira Pricing
Jira has four pricing plans to choose from:
- Free: Up to 10 users
- Standard: $7.75 per user, per month
- Premium: $15.25 per user, per month
- Enterprise: Contact sales for pricing
Jira has a Free plan for up to 10 users and a Standard plan for up to 35,000 users that costs $7.75 per user, per month. The Premium plan offers advanced roadmaps, unlimited storage, and 24/7 support for $15.25 per user, per month, while the Enterprise plan with custom pricing offers unlimited sites, centralized security controls and user subscriptions, and Jira’s most advanced support.
Jira Pros
Jira has many pros that make it so popular. Jira pros include:
- Great for small to large development teams
- Built-in Agile features
- Built-in DevOps tools
- Bug tracking templates
Project managers can use the PM software for development teams of all sizes, scaling it from 1-20,000 users. Besides scalability, Jira offers superb security, flexibility, and customization. Open DevOps is a huge plus for developers looking to make life easier, as is the drag-and-drop automation and templates for DevOps, bug tracking, and more.
Jira Cons
Jira has the following disadvantages:
- Interface can be difficult to learn
- Lacking in built-in collaboration tools
- User report migration issues when using other project management tools
Some users have complained that Jira has a clunky, non-intuitive interface. As such, expect to devote some time to learning the software. Will this be a problem for software developers? Maybe not, but if you have non-technical team members, they may find Jira’s learning curve steep.
Another Jira con is collaboration. Unless you integrate it with third-party apps, like Slack, Gmail, etc., you will find yourself yearning for ways to communicate. Jira’s Free plan is rather bare, and once you start aiming for more advanced features, you may find its pricing out of reach. And, if you ever decide to move on, Jira can make it hard, as some have reported migration issues when moving to other software.
You can learn even more about Jira and its features by reading our Review of Jira Project Management Software.
Monday.com Features
Monday.com’s list of features begins with its intuitive interface that is easy to adapt to, even if you are new to PM software. Other features include:
- Custom dashboards and projects
- Multiple views, including Timeline, Workload, Kanban, and Gantt
- File sharing and other collaboration tools
- Code-free automations
- Time tracking and time management
- Third-party add-ons and integrations
Monday’s Workload View
Monday’s custom dashboards offer real-time insights into data and progress and let project managers quickly create summaries and run reports to get a clear idea of where their development team stands. Dashboards are not the only thing you can customize, though, as Monday.com also has customizable projects via 30 column types.
Monday.com puts project managers in complete control of how they visualize data through multiple views (map, form, timeline, calendar, Kanban, Gantt). The workload view offers a glance at your development team’s resources so you can make on-the-fly adjustments and avoid user burnout. Collaboration comes via a workdocs feature for real-time co-editing, plus file sharing. There are also third-party integrations with Slack, Dropbox, Microsoft Teams, and a host of other tools.
Other Monday.com features that can help development teams prosper include code-free automations and out-of-the-box time tracking.
Monday.com Pricing
Monday.com offers plenty of pricing flexibility with five pricing plans to choose from, including the following pricing tiers:
- Free: 2 users with limited features
- Basic: $8 per user, per month
- Standard: $10 per user, per month
- Pro: $16 per user, per month
- Enterprise: Contact sales for pricing
The Free plan offers two seats and is suited for individual developers or project managers who simply want to keep track of their work. The Basic plan costs $8 per seat, per month, and allows you to manage your team’s work in one spot.
Choose Monday.com’s most popular plan, Standard, and you will pay $10 per seat, per month for advanced collaboration and optimization features. Pick Pro, and you will pay $16 per seat, per month for running and streamlining complex workflows. And, should you need enterprise-grade features, contact Monday.com to get pricing on its Enterprise plan.
Monday.com Pros
Monday.com has a number of pros for project managers of software development teams, including:
- Intuitive and user-friendly interface
- 24/7 support
- Many views to help project managers better visualize data
- Plenty of customizations for workflows
Monday.com is user-friendly, which is a plus for development teams looking for simplicity and minimal onboarding time. And, should you run into any snags, the PM software has tons of tutorials and superb 24/7 support to help along the way.
Multiple views for visualizing data are another Monday.com plus, as are out-of-the-box time tracking, customization, automation, time tracking, tons of integrations, and quick-start templates.
Monday.com Cons
While there are many reasons a project manager would choose Monday.com for their developers and remote programmers, the project management tool does have its share of cons as well, including:
- Expense tracking can become complicated as the team grows
- Advanced reporting could use some enhancements
- Some users find task dependencies to be lacking
On the surface, Monday.com is quite user-friendly, and the intuitive interface makes it easy to get where you need to go. However, the PM software could be smoother and less complex when it comes to its expense tracking and collaboration departments.
Task dependencies and reporting are other areas where Monday.com falls short, and you may find its performance occasionally sluggish. Lastly, the Free plan is nice for teams on a budget, but as you try to access more advanced features and go up in pricing tiers, Monday.com may seem costly for larger teams.
You can learn more about this popular project management software by reading our Monday.com PM Software Review.
Jira and Monday.com Differences
How do Jira and Monday.com differ? Jira seems to be built more for Agile teams, so if you are a project manager in charge of such a development team, picking it may be a no-brainer. In terms of user-friendliness, Monday.com is much easier to adapt to.
Both offer solid security and support, plus a long list of features that makes Jira and Monday.com worthy of strong consideration. And, both may seem pricy compared to other PM software, especially if you have a large development team that requires more advanced features.
Jira versus Monday.com: The Verdict
If you have an Agile development team that requires robust reporting and has time to get used to Jira’s interface, do not hesitate to choose the project management tool like 100,000-plus organizations have already done. And, if you are looking for PM software that is easier to use and has more collaborative features, give Monday.com a strong look. Either way, you cannot go wrong, as Jira and Monday.com are among the top options in the PM software market.
Looking for other project management solutions? We have a great guide to the Best Project Management Software for Developers to help you find the right collaboration and task management tool.