When this client first reached out, they were already one of the highest-volume Monday.com users in North America. Their goal: 10x their business over the next five years.
They were running almost everything on Monday.com — HR, marketing, sales, CRM, order management, and project delivery. Multiple teams across multiple markets, all coordinated through a single platform.
This is the story of how I pushed Monday.com to its limits, transitioned critical systems to low-code tools, and eventually moved to fully custom software — all while the business kept growing.
This is the same client featured in the video testimonial on my About page. Details have been anonymized.
Phase 1: The Monday.com Foundation
What They Had Built
When I came on board, they'd already invested heavily in Monday.com:
- CRM boards tracking thousands of clients
- Order management boards processing tens of thousands of orders per year
- Project delivery boards coordinating field teams across multiple markets
- HR and operations boards managing scheduling, payouts, and team performance
- Dashboards attempting to provide visibility into the entire operation
They were on Monday.com Enterprise — the highest tier available — and had integrated it with various tools through native automations.
The Cracks Started Showing
At first, the problems seemed manageable.
Board Limits: Monday.com Enterprise caps boards at 30,000 items. With 30,000+ orders per year, they were hitting this wall constantly. The workaround? Archive completed orders to separate boards. But this broke reporting, made historical lookups painful, and fragmented their data.
Performance Degradation: As boards grew, everything slowed. Load times increased. Automations became unreliable. Team members started avoiding certain views because they took too long.
Reporting Limitations: Monday.com's native dashboards couldn't handle the complexity they needed. Calculating margins, payouts, and performance metrics across thousands of records required workarounds on top of workarounds.
Data Integrity Issues: Multiple people editing boards simultaneously. Data inconsistencies crept in. Dropdown values changed. Records duplicated. No source of truth.
They hadn't done anything wrong. They'd just outgrown the platform.
Phase 2: Extending with Make.com
Before abandoning Monday.com entirely, I tried to extend it. Make.com became the integration layer.
What I Built
Automations that:
- Synced data between Monday.com boards and external systems
- Calculated complex metrics Monday.com couldn't handle natively
- Generated reports by pulling from multiple boards and aggregating externally
- Enforced data validation before records could be created or modified
- Triggered multi-step workflows spanning multiple boards and external tools
The Results
Make.com bought us time. It papered over Monday.com's limitations and let the business keep scaling.
But it created new problems:
Increased Complexity: More automations meant a harder system to understand and maintain. Debugging meant tracing through dozens of scenarios across multiple platforms.
Cost Escalation: Make.com pricing is operation-based. At their volume, automation costs became significant — and unpredictable.
Fragile Dependencies: Multiple points of failure. A Monday.com API hiccup could cascade through Make.com scenarios and break downstream processes.
I'd extended Monday.com's life. But I hadn't solved the fundamental problem: the platform wasn't designed for this scale.
Phase 3: The Low-Code Pivot
This was the turning point.
Monday.com and Make.com weren't going to cut it for the next phase. Not because they're bad tools — they're not. But at this scale, you need more control over data, performance, and system design.
The Architecture Decision
I moved the most critical systems — CRM, order management, and financial reporting — off Monday.com entirely.
The new stack:
| Component | Technology | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Database | PostgreSQL on Supabase | True relational data model, no item limits, SQL power |
| Admin Dashboard | Retool | Rapid development, powerful visualization, no frontend code |
| Automation | Make.com | Still useful for integrations and workflows |
| Field Operations | Monday.com | Kept for what it does well — task management and team coordination |
What We Gained
Unlimited Data: No more 30,000-item limits. Historical data stays accessible forever. Queries run fast regardless of volume.
Real Relational Modeling: Instead of forcing everything into Monday.com's "board-item-subitem" structure, I could model the business properly:
- Orders → Line Items → Products
- Clients → Orders → Attribution
- Service Providers → Markets → Management hierarchies
- Payout tiers → Commission calculations
SQL-Powered Analytics: Complex financial calculations — revenue, COGS, margins, payouts — now ran as SQL queries completing in milliseconds.
Timezone Handling: Proper date/time management. No more confusion about when an order was placed or which pay period it belonged to.
Audit Trails: Every change tracked. Every calculation reproducible.
What Stayed on Monday.com
Monday.com didn't disappear. It remained the system for:
- Field team task management: Service providers still received and completed jobs through Monday.com
- Team collaboration: Comments, updates, day-to-day coordination
- Simple workflows: Where the board-based model actually fit
The key insight: use each tool for what it does best.
Phase 4: Custom Software
By late 2025, even Retool started showing limitations. The client's ambitions had grown:
- Custom booking portal for clients to schedule services directly
- Service provider mobile app for real-time job management
- Advanced CRM features with automated follow-ups and lead scoring
- Financial integrations with QuickBooks and payment processors
- Custom analytics beyond what Retool dashboards could provide
Retool excels at internal tools. But when you need customer-facing applications, complex UX, or complete control over the experience, you need custom code.
The Transition
I didn't throw everything away. The PostgreSQL database from Phase 3 became the foundation. Data models, business logic, and integrations carried forward.
What changed:
- Custom frontend applications replaced Retool for specific use cases
- API layer gave complete control over data access and business rules
- Infrastructure ownership meant no more platform limits or pricing surprises
Current State
Today, they operate a hybrid system:
- Custom software handles CRM, order management, and customer-facing tools
- Monday.com manages field operations and team tasks
- Make.com bridges systems where needed
- PostgreSQL remains the source of truth for all business data
They're positioned to 10x without hitting platform ceilings again.
Lessons for Monday.com Users
1. Know the Limits Before You Hit Them
Monday.com Enterprise caps boards at 30,000 items. If you're processing thousands of transactions per year, plan for this:
- Archiving strategies (with the reporting tradeoffs)
- Splitting data across multiple boards (with the complexity tradeoffs)
- Moving high-volume data off-platform entirely
2. Monday.com Excels at Task Management, Not Data Management
Monday.com is fundamentally a task and project management tool. It's been extended to handle CRM, inventory, and other use cases — but those extensions have limits.
If your use case is:
- Collaborative task management → Monday.com is excellent
- High-volume transactional data → Consider purpose-built alternatives
3. Low-Code Tools Buy Time and Build Skills
Make.com and Retool served as bridges. They let me extend Monday.com's capabilities while building the data models and business logic that would eventually power custom software.
This phased approach meant:
- The business never stopped operating
- I validated data models before investing in custom development
- The team learned to think in terms of proper data architecture
4. The Right Tool Changes as You Scale
A startup might legitimately run their entire business on Monday.com — and that's fine. But a company processing 30,000 orders per year with 10x growth ambitions needs different infrastructure.
There's no shame in outgrowing a tool. It means you've grown.
5. Data Architecture Matters More Than Tools
The most valuable work wasn't choosing Retool or Supabase or any specific tool. It was designing the data model:
- How do orders relate to clients?
- How do we calculate service provider payouts?
- What defines a "market" and who belongs to it?
- How do we track performance over time?
These questions have the same answers regardless of what software runs the queries. Get the data model right, and changing tools becomes manageable.
Is This Path Right for You?
Not every business needs this trajectory.
Stay on Monday.com if:
- Data volumes are manageable (under 10,000 active items per board)
- Reporting needs are straightforward
- Your team values the visual, intuitive interface
- You're not hitting performance issues
Extend with Make.com if:
- You need integrations Monday.com doesn't natively support
- You want to enforce data validation rules
- You need multi-step workflows across boards
- You're willing to manage automation complexity
Migrate critical data if:
- You're hitting item limits regularly
- Performance is a daily frustration
- You need complex calculations Monday.com can't handle
- Data integrity is a constant battle
- You're planning significant growth
Build custom software if:
- You need customer-facing applications
- Your business processes are truly unique
- You want complete control over your tech stack
- You have the budget and resources to maintain it
Final Thoughts
Monday.com didn't fail this client. It served them well during a critical growth phase. But every platform has limits, and part of professional system design is recognizing when you're approaching them.
The goal was never to use Monday.com forever. The goal was to build a business that could scale. The tools had to evolve along with that ambition.
If you're running a Monday.com implementation and seeing signs of strain, you're not alone — and there are proven paths forward.
For questions about scaling Monday.com implementations or transitioning to other platforms, reach out here.