monday CRM alternative: Stack vs monday CRM for Australian businesses
Choose monday CRM if you want a highly customisable sales CRM with quotes and invoices, especially if you use monday.com for projects. Choose Stack if you're a solo operator or small team who wants your inbox, pipeline, client records and portals ready to use, with plans sized for one person or five.
monday.com is best known for work management, and its separate monday CRM product is built for sales pipelines. If you're comparing monday CRM with Stack, here's what each one does, where each falls short, and who each suits. We make Stack, so read it with that in mind. Every claim about monday.com comes from its own published pricing, help and product pages.
What monday CRM does well
monday CRM is a flexible, visual CRM built on monday.com's boards. You can shape your pipeline and data the way you like, and plans include AI credits, dashboards, and quotes and invoices. monday.com also sells separate products for work management, service and software teams, so a larger business can run several departments on one platform.
If you want a highly customisable sales CRM, especially alongside monday.com for project work, monday CRM is a strong option.
Where monday CRM may not fit
- Plans start at three seats. monday.com's paid plans start from a minimum of three seats and then go up in set bundles, so a solo operator pays for more seats than they use.
- Products are priced separately. CRM, work management and service are separate products with their own plans and seats.
- Clients are guests on boards. You can share boards with outside users, but there's no dedicated client portal for each client's work, documents and requests. The Standard CRM plan includes up to three free guests.
- Flexibility means setup. Boards, columns and automations make monday CRM very adaptable, and someone has to design and maintain them.
What Stack does
Stack is a workspace for Australian businesses that run on client work, from solo designers and consultants to studios of around fifteen people. It covers the pipeline and everything after the sale, with plans sized for one person or a small team.
- Your inbox at the centre. Connect Gmail or Microsoft 365 and your mail, calendar and tasks sync both ways. Email and SMS sit in one threaded inbox, with the client's record beside every conversation.
- A sales pipeline. Every enquiry on a board with a clear next step and an owner. Won deals hand straight over to client management.
- Client management. One record for each client, with the people, the work, the files and every conversation, plus onboarding templates and checklists you build once and reuse.
- Client portals on every plan. Each client gets a private page for progress, documents, messages and requests. They sign in from an emailed link, so there's no new account to create.
- A booking page. Clients book themselves into your real calendar availability.
- Penny, your AI assistant. Penny works from your inbox, calendar and tasks. She writes daily briefs and first drafts of replies, and suggests the next step. You approve her drafts before they're sent, and Penny is included on every plan.
What Stack doesn't do yet
Stack doesn't send quotes, proposals, contracts or invoices, take payments or connect to accounting software. monday CRM includes quotes and invoices, so if those matter to you, monday CRM covers more. Stack also isn't a general work management platform for other departments.
Stack is in public beta. It's young and changing quickly, and you're working directly with the Melbourne team who build it.
Side by side
Minimum team size
monday CRM: paid plans start from three seats.
Stack: Pro Workspace for one person, or Team Workspace covering five users.
Sales pipeline
monday CRM: a customisable pipeline you build from boards and columns.
Stack: a ready-made pipeline board that hands won deals straight to client management.
After the sale
monday CRM: focused on sales, with separate products for work management and service.
Stack: client records, onboarding templates and client work in the same workspace as the pipeline.
Client portal
monday CRM: share boards with guests.
Stack: a portal for every client on every plan, with an emailed sign-in link instead of a client account.
Quotes and invoices
monday CRM: included.
Stack: not available.
AI
monday CRM: AI credits included on all plans.
Stack: Penny on every plan, working from your inbox and calendar, with her drafts waiting for your approval.
Where it's made
monday.com: headquartered in Tel Aviv, with an Asia Pacific headquarters in Sydney.
Stack: Australian-owned, built in Melbourne and priced in Australian dollars.
Pricing
monday CRM has Basic, Standard, Pro and Ultimate plans, priced per seat from a minimum of three seats, with a 14-day free trial. Check monday.com's pricing page for current rates.
Stack Pro Workspace, for one person, is A$49 a month. Team Workspace covers five users, and you can add more. Founding offer: the first 100 subscribers pay from A$15 a month for their first 12 months, until 31 October 2026.
Every Stack plan starts with a 14-day free trial, no credit card required. If you don't continue, your workspace becomes read-only and your data is kept. Cancel any time, with no lock-in contract.
Moving across from monday CRM
You don't have to switch everything in one go. Connect your email and calendar, import your contacts from a CSV or vCard file, and run Stack alongside monday CRM during the trial. If you're moving a team, email hello@thinkswift.au and we'll help you plan it.
So which one?
If you want a highly customisable sales CRM with quotes and invoices, or you already run projects in monday.com, monday CRM is a good fit. If you're a solo operator or small team who wants your inbox, pipeline, clients and portals working together without paying for unused seats, try Stack free for 14 days.