Monday vs Jira Feature Differences Compared: Which Is Best?

Time to pit two giants of project and work management SaaS against each other. 

Here we offer a thorough Monday vs Jira comparison. Jira is made by Atlassian, which also makes Trello. Monday.com used to be called daPulse. 

Both are popular, but what’s the difference, and which is better? Let's find out together.

What is the difference between Monday and Jira?

The difference between Jira and Monday is simply that Monday.com is more of an all-purpose task and project management solution with team communication and collaboration features. Jira is project management with a focus on software development, bug and issue tracking, and DevOps.

Both Jira and Monday are built for companies to apply agile work methodologies. Agile working is a process by which work is broken down into short bursts and workers can be flexible in taking on tasks as priorities change on a regular basis. 

Monday is not identified with agile work as much as Jira. But nonetheless, agile methodology underpins both, and many of the other task management tools out there.

You can check out our Monday review for a targeted overview of that app. We also have a Jira review, so do consider giving that one a look for context too.

Monday vs Jira comparison chart

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Monday.com vs Jira pricing

Jira offers a free plan, and then three levels of premium plans, and if you want to see the prices for the enterprise level plan, you’ll have to contact Jira. Monday.com also has a free plan and then 4 premium packages, and similarly, you’ll need to contact them for their enterprise prices.

Which is best for you?

Even though Monday.com’s basic pricing plan is a bit more expensive than that of Jira’s, it’s still arguably a better value, with unlimited boards, items, docs and unlimited free viewers. Jira’s standard plan is only good for one site and one project. As you advance to the more premium packages, there is more flexibility with Monday’s pricing.

Jira vs Monday.com free versions

No business is likely to remain on a free plan forever as the need to scale up, add more users, and do more projects increases over time. Still, it’s great when project management software offers free plans as a way to get people on board and learn your platform.

Which is best for you?

Jira’s free plan is good for up to 10 users, while Monday’s is only good for 2. This makes Jira the clear winner. Although it should be noted that this is a close call, as Monday’s free version has unlimited boards.

Customer support

There are many ways one reaches out for support and customer service, including phone support, email, text, social media, or an online helpdesk tool. 

Which is best for you?

Monday.com has 24/7 customer support on all of their plans, including the free and basic plan, though it’s unclear if the premium subscribers get any priority here. 

With Jira, the free version only has community support, and the standard plan has customer support during local business hours. Only with the Jira premium plan is there 24/7 customer support. 

Knowledgebase & learning

Knowledgebase and similar things are useful ways users can get quick help without queuing in line for a customer service agent. Similar self-help tools include FAQs, webinars, video tutorials and other guides on company blogs.

Which is best for you?

Jira and Monday are equal contenders in this category, as both offer a solid knowledgebase and self-serve learning resources. Monday.com offers live webinars as well. Jira’s support mainly comes through their parent company’s site, Atlassian.

Monday or Jira for ease of use?

The more user friendly a project management system is, the more it’s going to score great points with users and reviewers. 

Onboarding time can be a real setback for daily productivity. And complicated software is a turnoff for a lot of employees, which means they won’t bother leveraging all the available functionalities.

Which is best for you?

Monday.com seems to have put a tad more thought into making their project management tools as user-friendly as possible, and the results are a clean and intuitive user experience. Jira is not overly complicated either, mind you.

Look and feel

The design of an interface and dashboards has a huge effect on how users interact with your platform. A good-looking system with an intuitive interface makes it easy to remain staring at these screens much longer than if no effort was put into making things look clean and great.

Which is best for you?

Jira has a cool simplicity to its dashboards and interfaces, while Monday goes for a bright and cheery look and feel. It all comes down to your aesthetic preferences.

Jira vs Monday features & functionality

Now that we’ve covered the broad strokes, it’s time to inspect the tools and features of Monday vs Jira in our project management software comparison.

Dashboards

The main dashboards when it comes to task and project management are Kanban boards, which are for moving tasks through stages, then there are Gantt charts, which are good for visualizing timelines. Scrum boards are also key for agile team members and project planning.

Which is best for you?

Monday has most of the key dashboards and views, including Kanban views, timeline views, calendar views, map views and chart views. Jira has scrum boards and Kanban boards, as well as roadmap dashboards. 

Monday has more choices overall. Both have good customizable dashboard options.

Templates

Templates are great features to help save your project management team time by providing read-made layouts to run tasks, product or project management. It’s great to have a combination of a good template library with customizable template options.

Which is best for you?

Jira’s templates are divided into categories with the most important ones being software development, service management and work management. Some specific Jira templates include scrum, Kanban, DevOps and bug tracking. 

Monday’s template library is huge and serves more purposes than Jira’s. Monday has templates for things like CRM, portfolio management, marketing, sales, but also software development.  

Task management

Various core task management tools include the following: creating tasks and subtasks, doing task dependencies, having automated task notifications, task due dates, and perhaps most important, time tracking for tasks.

Which is best for you?

While both Jira and Monday have most of these important task management features, Monday’s toolkit is probably a bit more robust, as well as easier to use. Jira, however, does have more robust agile reporting, which helps with task planning.

Workflows and automation

Workflows are automated actions that occur based on set triggers, like: when a contact fills out a form, send them a followup email. Great project management should make it simple to build and run these workflows.

Which is best for you?

Jira’s automation workflow builder is quite basic and even fun to use. It’s done with drag and drop functionality, and uses ‘when/if-then’ then logic. They are also easy to customize. Monday’s automations are similar, but you need the pricer plans to have them.

File storage

Team collaboration often means working together on shared docs and other files. This is why project management solutions offer file storage for better collaboration.

Which is best for you?

With Jira’s free plan, you get 2 GBs of file storage, and their basic plan gets you 250 GBs. After that, it’s unlimited. Monday’s free plan only offers 50 MBs, and their basic plan is only 5 GBs. 

Bug tracking and issue tracking

Bug tracking is part of work and project management that deals with software development and upkeep and updates, as well as for IT support departments to deal with issues one at a time and deploy the fixes.

Which is best for you?

Bug tracking and issue tracking is Jira’s main specialty. You can even have automations to route each issue to the best assignee and set priority levels. You can use Monday for this as well, but it is less dedicated to bugs as Jira is.

Team collaboration tools

Tasks are done by both individuals and by teams, so teamwork features often include communication tools, shared document editing, notification on your team members’ statuses, and real-time updates on task completion and project progress.

Which is best for you?

Monday’s collaboration tools include a shared whiteboard feature, as well as advanced account permissions. You can also give guest access to outside stakeholders who might want to follow a project’s progress while having no permission to make any changes. Jira also has project roles and permissions, but less in the way of team communication features. 

Mobile versions

Project and task management are the kinds of business activities many people need to be able to handle on the go. That’s why a good mobile app for iOS or Android is a great benefit.

Which is best for you?

Monday has a dedicated project management mobile app for iOS and Android. You can use it for most basic task and project management purposes, like communicating with your team or updating the status of your work. 

Jira’s mobile app is good for managing boards and backlogs, creating and following bugs and issues, as well as managing service SLAs.

Integrations

Integrations allow you to connect one app to another so that you can access certain tools without needing to toggle between screens and platforms. Some are native, others are connected via tools like Zapier.

Which is best for you?

Jira has native integrations with tools like Slack, AWS, GitLab, and other Atlassian products like Confluence for Custom Fields and Confluence Issue Tab for Jira software. 

Monday has also got a lot of integrations, and is great if you are a Microsoft user and want to connect Monday with Outlook, Teams, Dropbox or Slack. 

Both systems make their APIs open for further add-on possibilities. 

Product limitations

Whether we call them limitations, drawbacks, disadvantages or cons, every platform is bound to have one or two.

Which is best for you?

Jira has limitations when it comes to team collaboration tools and communication features. Monday is limited for things like bug tracking and issue resolution. 

In the end, Jira is more limited in applications, but if you are looking for software development work management, then this is a pro, not a con. Monday is just more versatile.

Which is better, Jira or Monday? Our key takeaways

Side-by-side comparisons are very useful. We hope you find this one to be informative and to have answered most, if not all, of your questions about how Monday.com or Jira compare across different functionalities.

As for answering the question of which is best overall, we end up with a subjective answer based on needs. If you’re doing software development, and a task management tool for issue tracking is what you’re seeking, then go with Jira. If you need something for all-purpose project management, strongly consider Monday.com. 

Here is a good place to remind our readers that there are a slew of other options in this category, like Asana and Wrike, which are both amazing tools as well. You can read our project management tools comparison for a broader look at what apps are out there.

We hope this sets you on the path to picking the right digital tools for your project.