Monday.com is a general work management platform. You build your process out of boards, columns and automations, for any team in any industry. monday CRM and monday service are sold as separate products on top, for leads, quotes, invoices and support tickets.
Payaca is built for solar, heat pump, battery and EV charger install businesses. The CRM, multi-option proposals, scheduling, the field app, DNO applications through ENA Connect, MCS documentation, invoicing and payments sit on one project, ready to use rather than boards to build. Here's how they compare for a UK install business.
The short answer
Monday.com is a general work platform you build your own process on. Payaca already knows what a G99 application and an MCS handover pack are, so you run the install on it instead of building boards first.
- Payaca is best for install businesses that want the renewables workflow already built, including compliance, rather than assembled from blank boards.
- Monday.com is best for teams coordinating varied work across departments who value a flexible canvas over a purpose-built process.
- Payaca publishes its pricing: Growth, the standard plan for established install businesses, is £1,199/month. Current plans and eligibility are on the pricing page. Monday.com publishes per-seat tiers with a three-seat minimum, and prices its CRM and service products separately.
Looking at this yourself?
We'll show you your own jobs in Payaca, side by side with how you run them in Monday.com today. Book a demo
Feature comparison
| Feature | Payaca | Monday.com |
|---|---|---|
| Primary purpose | Complete platform for clean tech installation businesses | Work management, CRM and service products for any team, built from boards |
| Industry focus | Built for solar, heat pumps, batteries, EV chargers | Generic: suitable for any industry |
| DNO applications | ENA Connect integration for G98/G99 submissions | No DNO application feature, so you'd build it on a board |
| MCS compliance | Built-in MCS certificate generation | No MCS documents or scheme workflows, so you'd build them yourself |
| Design tool integration | Design in Payaca with Glow (limited release), or import from EasyPV, Heatpunk and OpenSolar | No native solar or heat pump design integrations, so third-party connectors are needed |
| Quoting & proposals | Multi-option clean tech proposals with e-signatures and online payment | Quotes & Invoices built into monday CRM, with monthly document limits by plan. Not built for multi-option clean tech proposals |
| Invoicing & payments | Full invoicing with online payment collection, plus Xero and QuickBooks | Invoices from monday CRM, with a payment button linking to your own payment provider |
| Field team mobile app | Offline field app for install teams, with job forms, photos and timesheets | Mobile app for boards and CRM records, with offline access on CRM Standard and above. No install job forms out of the box |
| Visual workflows | Pipeline board, calendar and map views of the schedule | Boards with table, kanban, calendar, timeline and Gantt views |
| Customer portal | Branded portal for customers to track and pay | monday service has a branded portal for support requests and tickets, not project tracking and payment |
| AI built in | Agent Dave, built into Payaca, answers from your account data, builds automations you check before they go live and drafts documents, plus an MCP server for Claude and Cursor | monday sidekick assistant and monday AI agents across the platform |
Primary purpose
Complete platform for clean tech installation businesses
Work management, CRM and service products for any team, built from boards
Industry focus
Built for solar, heat pumps, batteries, EV chargers
Generic: suitable for any industry
DNO applications
ENA Connect integration for G98/G99 submissions
No DNO application feature, so you'd build it on a board
MCS compliance
Built-in MCS certificate generation
No MCS documents or scheme workflows, so you'd build them yourself
Design tool integration
Design in Payaca with Glow (limited release), or import from EasyPV, Heatpunk and OpenSolar
No native solar or heat pump design integrations, so third-party connectors are needed
Quoting & proposals
Multi-option clean tech proposals with e-signatures and online payment
Quotes & Invoices built into monday CRM, with monthly document limits by plan. Not built for multi-option clean tech proposals
Invoicing & payments
Full invoicing with online payment collection, plus Xero and QuickBooks
Invoices from monday CRM, with a payment button linking to your own payment provider
Field team mobile app
Offline field app for install teams, with job forms, photos and timesheets
Mobile app for boards and CRM records, with offline access on CRM Standard and above. No install job forms out of the box
Visual workflows
Pipeline board, calendar and map views of the schedule
Boards with table, kanban, calendar, timeline and Gantt views
Customer portal
Branded portal for customers to track and pay
monday service has a branded portal for support requests and tickets, not project tracking and payment
AI built in
Agent Dave, built into Payaca, answers from your account data, builds automations you check before they go live and drafts documents, plus an MCP server for Claude and Cursor
monday sidekick assistant and monday AI agents across the platform
See it in Payaca
The real product, on our demo accounts.
Compliance & documentation
Generate MCS documents and keep every certificate on the job. More on Compliance & documentation
The whole job in 100 seconds
What you'd build or add on Monday.com
To run an install business on Monday.com, you'd need extra products, tools or custom boards:
- monday CRM, a separate product for leads, deals, quotes and invoices
- A proposal tool for multi-option clean tech proposals
- A payment provider to take card payments
- A scheduling tool for field team dispatch
- A compliance system for DNO and MCS requirements
- A customer portal for customers to track their install and pay
Payaca includes all of these in one system, built for clean tech install businesses.
Switching from Monday.com
Monday.com boards export to Excel. We map the columns to Payaca's customers, contacts and projects, put each project at the right stage of your pipeline, and import it through Payaca's import tooling. Anything you've tracked in a custom column can come across as a custom field.
Guided onboarding comes with Growth and above, as a one-off £1,500. It covers mapping your workflow into Payaca, migrating the data and training the team.
If another department still runs on Monday.com, you can keep those boards and connect them to Payaca through the open API or Zapier.
Which is right for you?
Choose Payaca if
- You want the install workflow ready to use, not boards to build
- You want G98 and G99 applications submitted through ENA Connect from the job
- You want MCS documentation, proposals, invoicing and payments on the same project
- You want a field app built for install teams, with offline mode
Consider Monday.com if
- You coordinate varied work across departments, not just installs
- You want a flexible visual canvas and have the time to build and maintain your own process
Questions
Can I use Monday.com to run a solar installation business?
You can build it yourself. monday CRM, a separate product, adds leads, deals, quotes and invoices, and monday service adds a support portal. But none of it is set up for installation work: there's no DNO application, no MCS paperwork, no install job forms and no design tool connection, so you'd be building and maintaining those boards yourself, or adding other tools.
What does Monday.com do well?
Monday.com is good at visual boards, team collaboration and workflow automation, and its website also lists AI through monday sidekick and AI agents. You can shape it to almost any process. But it's a general platform you configure yourself, not one built around an install job.
Should I use Monday.com for project management alongside another system?
You could, but you'd create data silos. Your project boards wouldn't connect to quotes, invoices, compliance documents, or customer communications. Purpose-built software like Payaca keeps everything linked. When you update a job, related documents and customer records update too.
Is Monday.com cheaper than Payaca?
Monday.com is priced per seat with a three-seat minimum, and the CRM and service products are priced separately from work management. Add scheduling, payments and the time to build compliance workflows, and the total can exceed Payaca while being harder to manage. Compare total cost of ownership, not just one tool.
Can I create quotes and invoices in Monday.com?
Yes, on monday CRM. Its Quotes & Invoices feature builds documents from your CRM boards, with signature collection and a payment button that links to your own payment provider, up to a monthly document limit set by your plan. Payaca's proposals are built for clean tech: multi-option quotes, e-signatures and online payments on the same project as the install.
Does Monday.com have a field technician app?
Monday.com has a mobile app for updating boards and CRM records, with offline access on CRM Standard and above. It isn't set up for installation work out of the box: Payaca's field app comes with job forms, photo capture against the job and the compliance evidence your MCS and DNO paperwork needs.
Competitor details are based on their public information as of 29 October 2026. Spotted something out of date? Tell us.