Onplana vs Monday

Three usual reasons: (1) you have an existing Microsoft Project / .mpp portfolio that needs to migrate without rebuild, Monday accepts only Excel/CSV, Onplana imports .mpp directly with all four dependency types preserved; (2) you need critical path and baselines on your Gantt on every plan, including Free; (3) you need formal governance with stage gates and multi-reviewer approval, Monday models it via boards, Onplana ships a 12-stage pipeline.

Monday is better when project work is just one of many things your teams do, sales pipelines, ops checklists, marketing calendars, CRM-lite. Its flexible-board model fits cross-functional workflows that don't have a strict schedule. If your team's question is "track our work" not "run our schedule", Monday is the more natural fit.

Functionally similar, and both now include AI in the plan. Monday's paid plans carry a monthly allowance of AI credits from Basic up, with more for purchase, and its Free plan has none; Onplana includes AI on every plan, including Free (a one-time allowance there, a monthly one on paid plans). Both can generate plans and summarize status; risk flagging starts on Professional in Onplana.

Yes. Both scale to enterprise PMOs: Onplana's Enterprise plan has no member limit, and the plans below it hold 100 and 1,000 members. The free tiers differ: Monday's free tier caps at 2 seats, Onplana's Free plan at 5 members.

monday.com exports a board as an Excel file, with the board name and each group's name in rows above the column headers. Before you import it, delete every row above the first header row (the board name, the blank row and the first group's name), then delete the group-name and header rows that repeat before each later group, so the sheet has one header row and then your items. Onplana then reads Name as the task title, Timeline as the start and finish, Person as the assignee and Status as the status. You can also build an Excel or CSV file with the columns our import guide names, such as Task Name, Start, Finish, Status and Assignee. Most teams come to Onplana from Microsoft Project, not from Monday.

Under two minutes in our own timing. On 29 October 2026 we timed a new Free workspace on a development copy of Onplana, from the sign-up page to a project whose tasks all have dates, three runs each, typing at a normal pace: a plan drafted by AI from a one-sentence description took about a minute (54 to 62 seconds), and importing an Asana CSV export took about 13 seconds (13 to 14). The time you spend reading each screen comes on top.