monday.com is a hosted work management platform billed per seat, with separate products for CRM, service and software development. Nexus is a self-hosted system that covers projects, CRM and HR in one application you buy once. monday.com is more flexible for general team workflows; Nexus fits a services business that bills its time. This page sets out how they differ.
At a glance
| monday.com | Nexus | |
|---|---|---|
| How you pay | By plan and number of users, monthly or yearly. Paid plans start from 3 users. A free plan of its work management product suits individuals | One-time licence: $24 Regular, $129 Extended. No per-user fee |
| What it covers | Work management, with monday CRM, monday service and monday dev as separate products with their own pricing | Projects and time tracking, CRM and sales, HR, support tickets and a client portal in one application |
| Where it runs | monday.com’s platform | Your own hosting, with your own database |
| Trial | A 14-day free trial of its Pro plan | A live demo, with the licence bought once |
| Mobile | iOS and Android apps | A web application used in a browser: Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari or Opera |
What Nexus’s project side includes
- Views: list, board, Gantt and calendar, with task dependencies that are enforced and sprints if you use them
- Time: a timer on tasks, with timesheets and expense claims routed through an approval queue
- Billing: approved billable hours and unbilled expenses collect into a draft invoice, one line per person per task, and each entry is marked as billed
- Clients: a client portal where they view invoices, accept quotes, sign contracts and raise tickets
- Access: viewer, member and manager access per project
Around that sit CRM with pipelines and quotes, and HR with leave, attendance and payroll. See the Nexus page for the full list and a live demo.
How the costs are structured
monday.com’s price depends on the plan, your seat count and which of its products you use, so we don’t print it here. You can work out your own five-year figure for both:
| monday.com | Nexus | |
|---|---|---|
| Software | Plan price per seat per month, times your seats (at least 3), times 60 months | The licence price, once |
| When the team grows | Each added seat increases the bill | Nothing changes |
| CRM and other products | Priced separately from work management | CRM, HR and projects are in the same licence |
| Hosting | Not applicable | Your own. A $10 a month hosting plan or VPS does the job, so $600 over 60 months |
| Setup help | Its help centre and sales team | Our managed service from $20 a month, where we manage your installation |
The own versus rent page works through five years of owning compared with renting.
Where monday.com is the better choice
- Flexible workflows for any team. It is a general work management platform, not tied to billing or HR.
- Mobile apps. It has iOS and Android apps.
- You want someone else to run it, with a free plan for individuals and a 14-day trial of its Pro plan.
- AI tools and security certifications. Its site lists AI credits for agents and notetakers, and ISO/IEC 27001 and 27018 security standards.
- A very large customer base. Its site cites more than 250,000 customers.
- Track record. Nexus’s first release was in September 2026.
Where Nexus is the better choice
- The price does not rise with seats. You pay once, and adding a colleague, a contractor or a branch changes nothing.
- Time becomes an invoice. A services business can bill the hours its team logs without retyping them.
- CRM, projects and HR in one login, sharing one database instead of three products and three bills.
- A portal for your clients to view invoices, accept quotes, sign contracts and raise tickets.
- Your data and the source code are yours, on your own server and under your licence.
- Ordinary hosting is enough. Nexus needs no cron, queue worker, Redis, WebSockets or Node.js. See the server requirements.
Good to know. Nexus is not a no-code workflow builder: it is a business system with set modules for projects, CRM and HR. Nexus records payments made against invoices but does not take card payments, and contract signing records a typed name, time and IP address rather than a legally qualified e-signature.
What you take on
You install Nexus on your own hosting, following the install guide in the documentation, and apply updates by copying files and running migrations. You also keep your own backups. If you would prefer not to, the managed service from $20 a month covers the installation for you, and we’ll add the details once the service pages are ready.
Questions
Can Nexus replace monday.com?
For managing projects, tasks and client billing, yes. If you build custom workflows for many different teams, check that Nexus’s set modules cover what you do.
Does Nexus have Gantt and board views?
Yes. Projects have list, board, Gantt and calendar views, with dependencies that are enforced.
Which licence does a business need?
Running Nexus for your own business is one project of your own. The licence guide explains the Regular and Extended licences.
Can I try Nexus first?
Yes. The Nexus page links to a live demo.
Statements about monday.com come from its pricing page, which we read on 6 October 2026. monday.com changes its plans and prices, so check its site for current figures.
See Nexus for yourself
Open the live demo, check the requirements and pick a licence.