Trello vs Monday vs Productive: Best Project Management Tools in 2024
Having trouble deciding which project management software is your best fit? We can help.
Trello and Monday are popular project management tools, but they’re used for different purposes. Trello is known for its streamlined approach to tasks and collaboration. Monday.com is a more customizable option but still very project management-focused.
There’s also a third alternative: Productive. As an agency management tool, Productive offers advanced features for financial and resource management while still supporting project tracking and everything that goes with it (tasks, time tracking, progress reports, etc.).
Our Trello vs Monday vs Productive app comparison covers their key features, benefits, and downsides based on user reviews. We’ll also discuss aspects such as the quality of customer support, integrations, and pricing, so stay tuned to learn more.
Trello vs Monday vs Productive: Key Takeaways
- Trello is a user-friendly project management tool with a visually appealing Kanban board, ideal for smaller teams and straightforward projects. However, it lacks advanced customization and comprehensive features for complex projects.
- Monday offers versatile project views and strong team collaboration tools, suitable for various industries. Despite its robust customization options, it has limited financial tracking and budgeting capabilities compared to more robust alternatives.
- Productive is an all-in-one agency management solution that provides advanced project management, financial forecasting, and resource scheduling features. It supports comprehensive business management, making it ideal for growing agencies needing detailed oversight of their operations.
Invest in Your Agency’s Future
Businesses chose Productive to scale their growth based on reliable financial and resourcing data.
Trello Overview
Trello is a Kanban-based tool suitable for managing task scheduling within smaller teams. It’s well known for its beginner-friendly and visually appealing interface.
USE TRELLO CARDS FOR MANAGING SIMPLE PROJECTS
Key Features
- Trello is best known for its Kanban boards and project cards that can be customized with different covers, descriptions, and other task-related specifics (assignee, due date, etc.). There are additional views, such as Timeline, Table, Calendar, and more.
- Trello also has plenty of official and community-created project templates for various types of workflows and business needs. Trello’s workspaces can get you started on various processes more easily, such as HR onboarding, design system checklists, and more.
- Trello provides basic project-related data visualizations and reports such as due dates and assignments per cards. Third-party apps and power-ups can provide some additional insights and functionalities.
Pros
Trello is your best choice if you’re looking for a highly streamlined option. It’s very task and project-focused and can be easily learned and used, even by the most inexperienced teams.
Trello has a very easy user interface. A newcomer can master it within a week.
Source: Capterra
Cons
While Trello is a great choice for basic project scheduling, it’s not a true all-in-one PM tool. It lacks advanced customization features for complex projects, as well as other valuable capabilities for business operations, including resource and financial management.
This comparison of Trello vs Monday by a user states the same:
Trello is great for our purposes because it simplifies task management and is easy to learn. However, if your organization needs more comprehensive project tracking capabilities, including tracking completion times, resource allocation, or calendar planning, then dedicated software such as Monday may be a better fit for you.
Source: Paraphrased from G2
Productive can be an even better alternative for project management financials, as you can manage budgets and employee cost rates, create invoices, and predict profit and revenue across projects.
VISUALIZE AND PREDICT YOUR BUSINESS METRICS WITH PRODUCTIVE’S FORECASTING
You can also check out our Trello comparison to Wrike and Productive to learn about some other alternatives.
Monday.com Overview
Monday Work OS is a work management platform suitable for a variety of industries, including construction, retail, manufacturing, and professional services.
MONDAY.COM PROVIDES COLOR-CODED TASKS AND CUSTOMIZABLE TEMPLATES
Key features
- Monday provides more than 10 customizable project views, including Gantt, Kanban, Calendar, Timeline, Chart, and more. You can create custom dashboards by combining various widgets, including charts, data, Gantt, time tracking, and workloads.
- Task management includes all of the features you need for seamless team collaboration. You can prioritize and manage tasks, set ownership and deadlines, customize your status columns, and set up task dependencies. You can also create no-code workflow automations.
- For resource management, you can plan, schedule, and allocate resources with the workload view. You can set up working hours and assign effort (i.e. hours) for teammates across time. Monday.com also provides time management with an integrated timer.
Pros
Monday can be a good option if you’re looking for something more complex than Trello, but still very project management-oriented. A user review on G2 states that:
Monday.com provides us with a versatile and visually appealing platform on which to manage work-related tasks, projects, and processes via effective collaborative workflows.
There’s a decent amount of customization available, with a wide range of project views, task fields, details, and color-coding, “making it simple to identify priority projects, completed tasks, and deliveries” (Source: G2).
Cons
There are some mixed reviews when it comes to Monday’s usability, customization, and automation. Some users state that the tool is intuitive, while others express difficulties with setting up everything correctly:
Monday’s biggest flaw is probably that the UI appears really simple (like legos) and gives the misleading impression that it’s just a colourful version of Excel. Until you do a deep dive, you won’t get it.
Source: Paraphrased from Reddit
Additionally, although monday.com has more robust features than Trello, it’s still limited in some regards, especially in resource and financial management.
If you’re interested in a similar tool but want to explore alternatives with a different approach to project management, check out our comparison of Asana vs Monday vs ClickUp vs Productive.
Productive Overview
Productive is known as an all-in-one platform for business management and performance insights. It combines basic functionalities for project management with advanced capabilities like financial forecasting and capacity planning for agencies.
PRODUCTIVE COMBINES TASK MANAGEMENT TOOLS WITH ADVANCED REPORTING FEATURES
Key features
- Productive offers various project views, including Gantt and Kanban, along with flexible permissions to control who can see and do what within the platform. Features like easy task hierarchies (dependencies, to-dos, milestones) and integrated time tracking ensure efficient project execution.
- Track your budgets, manage cost rates, handle invoicing, and forecast profitability—all within a single platform. Productive’s financial tools provide real-time insights into project and business health, supporting informed decision-making and enhanced financial oversight.
- With Productive, you can create responsive schedules with data on employee working hours, holidays, and time off. Visualize and forecast utilization across individual employees or departments to ensure balanced workloads and optimal efficiency.
- Additional features include built-in collaborative documentation and a lightweight CRM for sales forecasting and performance management. You can also create no-code automations for streamlining repetitive tasks and use Productive AI for content creation (and more).
Pros
Productive is the ideal platform for companies looking for a scalable solution with robust operations management features. You can use Productive to help project managers organize individual tasks and deliver projects, schedule resources for a more high-level overview, and manage profit and revenue in real-time for strategic decision-making.
In comparison to Monday, Productive provides more options for getting in-depth insights into project and business performance:
Scheduling was a real pain with Monday and Productive made things so much easier, especially since Gantt charts were released. Being able to allocate time per task was a big deal for me since I could finally see how much time each person is spending on a project and how much capacity we have.
Cons
Productive can have a steeper learning curve than a streamlined tool like Trello. There’s much more to do, so getting the most out of the tool requires some time and energy. However, in the long run, the benefits of using an all-in-one platform like Productive can outweigh the initial investment in time and training.
Productive is not just flexible, it also adapts to our growing needs. Our company’s ever-changing business processes are easily handled with its customization options.
Find out how Productive helps support business growth.
Invest in Your Agency’s Future
Businesses chose Productive to scale their agency’s growth based on reliable financial and resourcing data.
Monday vs Trello vs Productive Comparison
Here’s a run-down of some of the main differences between these three tools, based on their comprehensiveness, specific features, project management support, pricing, and more:
Industry-Specific Needs
Trello, Monday, and Productive each cater to different industries and business needs. Trello is a versatile tool used across various industries, particularly enjoyed by smaller teams and creative projects management due to its visual approach.
Monday work management is suitable for various industries, including construction, retail, and manufacturing. It offers a more customizable approach to project management.
If you’re in professional services, your best pick is Productive. It’s designed specifically to support operational workflows for consultancies, design, marketing, software development, and creative agencies.
What I really like about Productive is that it’s not trying to be a tool for everybody. It’s really a tool for agencies. And I really like that because some of the pain points that an agency has are not addressed by other tools because it’s not something that is a priority for them.
Project Management and Collaboration
All three tools excel in collaboration and project management, but they differ in their approaches.
Trello uses a Kanban-style board ideal for visual task management and team collaboration. Though there are other views, it’s still a more streamlined tool with fewer options for managing complex projects.
Monday.com offers over 10 customizable project views, including Gantt, Kanban, and Calendar, allowing for a more detailed and organized approach to managing tasks and team collaboration.
And then you have Productive, which combines these features with built-in collaborative documentation and a lightweight CRM, making it a comprehensive tool for team collaboration and communication.
PRODUCTIVE INTEGRATES A CRM SOLUTION FOR SUPPORTING CROSS-FUNCTIONAL TEAMS
Advanced Features
In terms of comprehensiveness, Productive stands out as the most all-encompassing solution. It integrates advanced project management with financial forecasting, capacity planning, and resource scheduling, providing real-time insights into project and business health.
HANDLE COMPLEX DATA WITH PRODUCTIVE’S BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE FEATURES
Monday is next up, offering a decent amount of customization and automation features but lacking integrated financial management features. Trello a straightforward tool for visual task management and collaboration, making it the least comprehensive, but also the simplest to learn.
User-Friendliness and Customer Support
All three tools have good ratings when it comes to their customer support. However, Productive is a bit of a standout, as reviews specifically underline this as one of its best features:
The best thing about Productive is the customer support. This is the first time I have used a SaaS product where it was this easy and helpful to contact the support team and get the help you need.
Source: G2
When it comes to user-friendliness, Trello is by far the easiest tool to pick up and use. Monday.com has mixed reviews, and Productive has a wealth of features, which automatically makes it more difficult to use effectively.
Both can take longer to learn, but you’ll get more from investing in Productive (such as forecasting and accounting support).
Integrations
- Trello makes up for some of its limited native features with a wide array of third-party app integrations and powerups. The most popular ones include Slack, Jira, and Miro, but some additional software integrations are time tracking tools like Toggl, HR tools like Hubstaff, and the Google Suite (Google Drive and Google Calendar).
- Monday has a good variety of third-party integrations. The most popular options include Quickbooks for project accounting management, Miro for collaboration, Calendly for syncing events, and Google Drive for file sharing.
- Productive offers a more limited set of integrations for now, but there are some great options there. This includes accounting tools such as QuickBooks and Xero, Slack and Google Calendar for productivity and communication, and BambooHR and Breathe for HR.
Pricing
- Trello offers a free plan with unlimited cards and up to 10 boards. For unlimited boards and more advanced features (such as multiple views, security features and permissions). Trello offers three paid plans: the Standard, Premium plan, and Enterprise.
- Monday also has a free plan for up to two seats and three boards, which is more limited vs Trello. The Basic version of Monday has limited features, with Gantt, automations, time tracking, and advanced analytics all being available in the more expensive plans.
- Productive doesn’t have a free version, but there’s a 14-day free trial that can help you test out some of its features. Its Essential plan includes basic project and real-time collaboration tools, including budgeting, task management, built-in time tracking, docs, reporting, and time off management. More advanced features are available in the Professional, Ultimate, or Enterprise plans (learn more about Pricing).
Choosing the Best PM Software
Trello, Monday, and Productive can all be a good option, depending on your team size, expertise, industry, and specific business needs.
Trello is recommended for beginners who are working on straightforward projects. It’s best for collaboration and supporting productivity. Monday is a bit more complex. It offers more customizations and workflow automations but still focuses mainly on project management.
Productive has all of the above combined with advanced financial management, resource planning, and forecasting.
If you’re juggling multiple tools to cover financials, scheduling, and management, book a demo with Productive to learn how you can handle everything from a single tool.
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