Allegra as a Monday Alternative: The Better Choice

You know monday and believe there must be a better and more powerful project management tool as an alternative? Or do you want to introduce a new solution for successful project management, have come across monday, and are looking for a Monday alternative that you can also host yourself?

We have examined both team collaboration tools in detail and compared them. Our observations are documented below.

The Key Differences at a Glance

In summary, the following fundamental differences exist between the Monday alternative Allegra and Monday:

• Allegra and Monday are both available as Software as a Service in the cloud. However, Allegra can also be purchased and installed and operated on-premises (self hosting).
• Monday is de facto a functionally simple task management system. It foregoes the concept of projects and structuring. Allegra as a Monday alternative also supports task management, but offers incomparably more customization options. Beyond that, it is a fairly complete project management tool with Gantt charts, resource planning, Kanban and Scrum support.
• Monday mainly works with task boards and simple lists. Allegra, on the other hand, offers complete support for agile methods with epics, user stories, backlogs, sprints, burn charts, etc. Additionally, Allegra supports the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) to manage larger initiatives in an agile manner.

You cannot really compare the two project management tools. Therefore, we have focused on the task management function in the following comparison.

1. Cloud and Self Hosting

Monday is an Israeli company and stores its data on Amazon servers in the USA. Monday assures GDPR compliance even though the data is not stored within the EU. The cloud servers for Allegra are located in Frankfurt and Paris for European customers and are therefore subject to strict European data protection regulations.

The German data center where data in Allegra is stored is certified according to ISO/IEC 27001 and DIN EN ISO 9001 and is approved for commissioned data processing. This guarantees Allegra users the highest security standards. Data transfer between the data center and the end device is encrypted using the secure SSL method.

Allegra offers comprehensive security for your work: With a German server location and a stable cloud.

2. Onboarding, Support, and Integration

Anyone can download Allegra and try it for free. Alternatively, you can request a dedicated test instance in the cloud from the vendor. Above a certain license volume, the vendor also assists with customization and initial configuration of the tool during the trial phase.

With Monday, you can also get an impression of the software at no cost or obligation, but only for small teams. If you want to implement realistic scenarios, you have to pay.

Allegra’s customer support advises you via phone, email, contact form, and web conferences on configuration and application questions. The onboarding package included in the license costs—spanning several hours—significantly facilitates and accelerates the software introduction.

Monday’s customer support is English-speaking, and they attempt to direct customers to published self-help material.

Because each Allegra customer receives their own dedicated virtual server, the solution integrates well into existing IT infrastructure. Through the various APIs, customer-specific extensions can be built, e.g., for integration with ERP, CRM, and CI/CD systems. There are several ready-to-use integrations for single sign-on as well as CI/CD systems like GitLab and Jenkins.

3. Perspectives and Views

Monday and Allegra offer different views of projects and tasks. Both team collaboration tools have a board view. Monday uses it to map a workflow that is created in the form of cards.

The Allegra (Kanban) board view also includes the task status, which shows the user at a glance which tasks are planned, active, completed, or under review. This enables clear and collaborative project work.

4. Task Management

The user interface of Monday is clearly designed and makes extensive use of colorful elements. Instead of boring lists, there are many colorful tiles adorned with icons. Everything is generously dimensioned. For those who like it really colorful, there is little better.

Where Are the Projects?

Project management software without projects? Is that possible? The answer is: No! The collaboration tool Monday organizes all tasks in “views” on which “boards” are placed. There are several board types, such as a calendar view or a timeline. In the table view, the columns of the boards can be configured. There are also templates for boards.

With Monday, It Stays Simple

Thanks to Monday’s simple approach, project management never becomes complex. There is a simple reason for this: The software does not support handling more complex tasks. Here is an excerpt of what is not possible:

• Only boards, no projects or sub-projects. From about 30 tasks per board, the overview deteriorates noticeably
• No task hierarchy, meaning no Work Breakdown Structure is possible
• Very simple access control limited to either an entire row on the board, all content, or read-only
• Very limited options for creating input forms (“We are on it…”)
• The entire layout and design is overwhelmed with more than 5 people and a few hundred tasks

Toy or Tool?

Everyone has to answer this question for themselves. Monday offers a bit of both—you can play with it and you can also handle manageable tasks. The noise level of Monday’s marketing makes you think a huge truck is coming around the corner. But when you look, it’s more like a compact car.

5. Project Management

As described above, Monday lacks essential functions that are important for a serious project management tool. These include:

• Missing structuring capabilities
• No concept for projects
• Functionally weak filter options
• No support for Gantt charts
• Limited configurability

Monday is a nicely made software for simple task management, but it is by no means project management software like Allegra.

6. Agile Methods

To truly support agile project management methods like Scrum and Kanban, offering a board view is not sufficient. Here, another significant difference between Allegra as a Monday alternative and Monday emerges: Allegra has a complete feature set regarding agile methods. Concepts such as epics, user stories, releases, backlogs, sprints, team velocity, and burn charts are supported in the application logic. For larger initiatives, there is the option to scale Scrum according to the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe).

7. Time and Cost Management

Professional project controlling is only available in Allegra. With the help of controlling, expenses—including project-, person-, or task-related expenses—can be tracked and exported as an Excel file.

Unlike Allegra, Monday does not offer the ability to track estimated remaining effort. Monday does have time tracking, but it is up to the user to keep track of the remaining time from the difference between planned and actual time.

Allegra as a Monday alternative offers a user-friendly solution to keep the remaining time in focus. After all, the effort impacts the overall duration and thus the costs of a project. With the estimated remaining effort, the Allegra user keeps a better eye on the success factor of time and prevents their project from failing.

8. Service Desk and Guest Users

Allegra’s rights system offers the user a unique free authorization group—the guest user. An unlimited number of guest users can be integrated into a project or individual tasks at no cost. These can be external employees, customers, suppliers, or partners who receive read access to a project and editing rights for individual tasks. They have their own dashboard and can work on assigned tasks.

This means a project manager can invite a customer as a guest user and assign them individual or multiple tasks by granting editing rights. The guest participates by adding comments and attachments, checking checklists, and changing the task status.

Allegra’s guest users enable the free inclusion of important project stakeholders. This makes collaboration between all relevant project participants simple and transparent.

Conclusion: Allegra Is More Than a Monday Alternative

Monday is a nice, easy-to-use task management tool. Allegra stands out as a Monday alternative through:

• German server location and thus highest data security
• Option for self hosting
• Customer service available in your language
• Complete project management functionality with Gantt charts and resource planning
• Full support for Scrum and SAFe
• Powerful workflow engine and very extensive task management functionality
• Clear dashboard for perfect project management
• If you are looking for an Asana alternative, this article might also be interesting: Asana Alternative Allegra: Much More Than a Replacement

See for yourself what the comprehensive project management software Allegra has to offer and book a free live demo.