Lark vs. monday.com: Which collaboration platform is right for your business?

Lark vs. monday.com: Which collaboration platform is right for your business?

Portrait of Jess Cheung Lark's Author
Portrait of Jess Cheung Lark's Author

Jess Cheung

May 30, 2023

5/30/23

5/30/23

6 min read

In today's fast-paced environment, teams need efficient and user-friendly platforms to streamline their work processes, complete tasks efficiently, and stay ahead of the competition.

Two such platforms are Lark and monday.com. In this blog post, we will look into both platforms' strengths, pricing, mobile-friendliness, and suitable teams.

What is Monday.com?

Monday.com is a project management platform designed primarily for desk-based teams, such as marketing, engineering, and sales. It offers features such as task management, project planning, timeline management, team collaboration, and more. One unique advantage of monday.com is that it provides a visual interface that makes it easy to manage various projects and see progresses.

What is Lark?

Lark is a collaboration platform designed for companies seeking to improve team efficiency and operational excellence both in the office and in the field.

Providing the tech stack in one app that knowledge workers can use to handle their work without toggling apps, Lark also provides tailored solutions to industries such as retail, food and beverage, and manufacturing, where frontline teams need to take care of their daily tasks in a more efficient way.

Lark offers a range of functions to make such solutions possible, including but not limited to:

Lark Base provides many project management solutions, including timeline tracking, task assignment, and automation. These features are also available on monday.com, making it easy for in-office teams to plan and track their work together without interruptions.

In addition, Lark provides desktop and mobile applications that allow frontline teams to perform daily tasks, such as facility inspections, inventory tracking, and reporting defects using their phones. Colleagues in the office can view real-time updates on a larger screen.

Lark vs. Monday.com pricing: get more while paying less with Lark

Both Lark and Monday.com offer a range of solutions to help teams streamline their work processes on projects of different shapes. However, there are some key differences between the two platforms. Lark provides more functions at a lower price point.

To being with, Lark takes a lead with the free tier, offering a wider array of features at zero cost. On top of the project management functions and versatile views that Monday.com doesn’t provide in its free plan, Lark provides functions such as chats, meetings, minutes, and more. Your team does not have to toggle multiple platforms for project collaboration and resource coordination as the project moves forward.

Using a free version, Lark gives users up to 50 seats and 100 GB file storage, while providing various work views for project teams to manage and track their projects easily, including Gantt view for duration tracking, Calendar view for deadline tracking, grid view for data records, Sub-item view for milestone breakout, gallery view for image display, and easy-to-build dashboards for insights. Lark also provides 1:1 and group chats, video conferencing, and meeting minutes together with project management solutions to help project teams communicate seamlessly. By contrast, Monday.com's free version only supports up to 2 users with a very limited file storage, and only the Kanban view is available, which could limit the project team's ability to track progress well.

If your organization has more than 50 employees, both platforms offer scalable pricing. Lark provides better value at a 70% lower price, and is suitable for your company's needs whether your team works at a desk or in the field. This is in contrast to a multi-tool, desk-bound tech stack with matching solutions that you would need to assemble to get your team up and running.

When comparing a paid version, it only takes every user on Lark $12 per month to get chat, email, calendar, meetings, docs, and project management solutions; when using Monday, each user needs to pay $12.5 extra to get chat functions and $12 for the likes of emails, calendar, and meetings. Just looking at the project management part alone, monday.com charges users $16 per user per month, making it a less competitive option compared with Lark price wise.

Suitable teams: Lark takes your frontline’s need into consideration

Lark is designed for both knowledge workers and frontline teams. For example, if you work in the manufacturing industry and your frontline team inspects the assembly line on a weekly basis, they can easily update the status of the assembly line, take pictures, and communicate with the back-end team in real-time using Lark's mobile application.

This applies to all the in-field work your team might need to conduct, such as OSHA compliance inspections, inventory tracking, revenue reporting, and defect ticket submission, among others. The best part: this system doesn't require an IT manager to start; a facility manager can easily build it on Lark Base.

For industries such as manufacturing, retail, and food and beverage where a lot of the workers can only use a phone for daily tasks, Lark is a much better option, providing mobile-first design for users to easily conduct daily routines such as inventory checking, inspections, sales reporting, and more. Lark also allows user to get in touch with colleagues directly without switching to another app, making it a much more convenient and intuitive option than monday.com when it comes to frontline team usage.

Project management software: Lark saves the time and cost on onboarding and integration

If your company is focusing on project management in an office setting, Lark remains a better Monday.com alternative to consider. Not only is Lark more affordable, but it also saves your team time and money with integration between your project management systems and your communication platform already built-in. This way, your project management, together with project communication with stakeholders, can all be consolidated in one place effortlessly.

1. All departments can use Lark

In addition to the field operations mentioned above, departments such as HR, marketing, admin, supply chain, project management office, legal, and enterprise service can all use Lark for their work, with free templates for the teams to get started easily.

2. Already connected with Messenger for timely project notifications

Your property team can use Lark Base to create and monitor milestones and tasks for preparing a new office location. Meanwhile, your marketing team can easily organize their social media calendar using Base's Calendar view. Assigned colleagues can receive reminders and notifications for upcoming tasks and due dates directly in Lark, via automated messages.

3. No need to pay for additional work views

In contrast, Monday.com's project management features such as various work views (Gantt, Calendar, etc.) require not only a more expensive paid plan, but also additional integration with tools like Slack to enable features such as assignment tagging and reminders.

By the time a reminder email is sent to a project member's inbox, it may take several hours or even days to be processed and responded to, further delaying the project timeline. The built-in integration puts Lark ahead of Monday.com competitors, as time is money for project teams.

Conclusion

While Monday.com is primarily designed for desk-based teams and project management, Lark is a collaboration platform that offers a range of solutions beyond project management for office settings. Lark helps companies improve operational excellence in the field with a more versatile, mobile-friendly solution that can be used by both frontline teams and office workers.

Furthermore, Lark provides more solutions at a lower price point to help companies reduce costs in their tech stack and avoid unnecessary subscriptions. This makes it a better alternative for companies seeking better collaboration and business growth by connecting their teams across the field and the office. Reach out to our team today to unlock a tailored solution for your business 👇