A four-person video team should not pay for ten licences. Least of all when it also needs another tool to review cuts and another for the budget.
LITE plan free forever. No user minimum and unlimited external collaborators.
Updated: September 2026
Monday.com is a horizontal work management platform: boards, automations and views that adapt to any process, from a launch to an onboarding. Its model is per seat, and its work management plans require a minimum of 10 seats. Play Platform is vertical: the project is a piece of video, so versions, videofeedback, a media library, budget and real cost all come as standard, and it charges per workspace with no minimums. The practical difference: with Monday.com you end up paying for seats you do not use and adding two more tools around it.
The whole company is going to use it, not only the content team, and you value being able to design any process with closely tailored automations. With 10 or more people inside, the minimum stops being a problem.
The production team is small and works with a lot of external people, the files are large, and you need to know what each piece costs.
Monday.com can build almost any board. What it cannot do is hold a 40 GB master, comment on the 2:14 mark, or add up a cost nobody typed in by hand.
| Capability | Play | Monday.com |
|---|---|---|
| Boards, views and calendar | YesProduction views already built | YesIts core |
| Configurable automations | PartialProduction flows, not a free-form builder | YesHome ground for the category |
| Use outside production: HR, IT, operations | NoPlay is vertical, production only | Yes |
| Media library for heavy files | Yes250 GB on LITE, 1 TB on PRO | PartialAttachments, with limits per file and plan |
| Versions of a piece and videofeedback | YesTimestamped comments | No |
| Automatic AI tagging of video | YesFrom the PRO plan | No |
| Budgets, rate cards and production cost control | YesCost Control, expenses and purchase orders | NoHandled with a number column |
| Sales CRM included at the same price | YesOn PRO, at no extra cost | NoA separate product, with its own price and minimum |
| Talent and crew management | YesMore than 1,200 vetted professionals | No |
| Production services you can hire | YesPLAY /Services, in the same environment | No |
| External collaborators at no per-seat cost | YesUnlimited on LITE, PRO and Enterprise | NoEveryone who works takes a seat |
| No user minimum | Yes3 on LITE, 5 included on PRO | No10-seat minimum on work management |
Monday.com is a work operating system: configurable boards, automations, dashboards and views from which each department builds its process. It has grown from project management into a family of separate products, with CRM, service and development sold separately at their own prices. Its model is per seat per month, and its work management plans start at a minimum of 10 seats, which points the product at medium and large teams.
Play is a Production-Tech company. It combines three pieces in one flow: Play Platform, the software where production is planned, managed, approved and optimised; PLAY /Services, the creative, production and post-production team that makes the content; and KAMI AI, the assistant that structures briefs, organises projects and tags footage. Play comes out of having run more than 10,000 video projects, so the platform reflects how a production actually works.
A DAM only stores. A project tracker only organises tasks. Review software only covers one stage. And a traditional production service hands you the video but gives you no platform and no control. Play is the only option that puts platform, services and AI in a single flow, from brief to publication. Monday.com is in the second box, very well solved, but the box is still the one about tasks.
The first one is on the invoice, and it shows up before you use the product.
monday.com's work management plans start at 10 seats. A four-person content team pays for ten from the first month, and that is before counting external people, who also take a seat if they work inside. Play charges 149 € per workspace with 5 users included and imposes no minimum at all.
The invoice is set by the work you do, not by a commercial threshold.
If you are a production company or agency and need a sales funnel as well as production, in monday.com that is a separate subscription, with its own per-seat price and its own minimum. In Play, CRM, Cost Control and Analytics are in the PRO plan at no extra cost.
One contract instead of two, and one place to look at a client's account.
The third pass on the edit, on a board, is a comment inside an item with the file attached and the feedback spread between the thread and email. In Play each cut is a version of the piece and comments sit on the video, timestamped.
Feedback stops getting lost between version 2 and version 3, which is where it always gets lost.
When capacity runs short, a well-built board does not shoot anything. Behind Play there is a network of more than 1,200 vetted professionals and an in-house creative, production and post-production team in Barcelona, Madrid and Toronto.
You scale volume without building an internal team or opening a procurement process.
Monday.com is an excellent tool for what it was designed for. The question is how many people will use it, and for what.
Monday.com charges per seat with a minimum of 10 on work management. Play charges per workspace, with 5 users included and no minimum.
0 €
149 €/month /workspace
Custom
Annual billing works out at 10 months. Extra storage at 29 €/TB per month.
| Internal team size | Play | Monday.com (Standard plan) |
|---|---|---|
| 4 people | 0 € on LITE · 250 GB | 120 € · the 10-seat minimum is billed |
| 5 people | 149 € on PRO · 1 TB and every module | 120 € · the minimum still applies |
| 10 people | 244 € on PRO · 149 € plus 5 extra users | 120 € |
| 15 people | 339 € on PRO · or Enterprise with a discount | 180 € |
| 30 external collaborators | 0 € extra · unlimited on every plan | They take a seat if they work inside the board |
To be straight about it: from ten internal people upwards monday.com is cheaper in licence terms than Play and does a great deal more outside video production. The comparison changes once you add what has to sit around it to produce video: review software, somewhere for the media, a cost spreadsheet and, if you are an agency or a production company, a CRM that over there is another product. See all of Play's plans and add-ons.
Almost nobody switches monday.com off entirely in the first month, and there is no need: what moves is the video production.
The LITE plan is free, allows 3 internal users, unlimited external collaborators and 250 GB. No seat minimum and no card.
Brief, tasks, calendar, media, versions, approval and cost. One complete piece is enough to show which boards stop being needed.
Client, freelancers and production company come in without taking a licence. It is the most visible difference from a per-seat model with a minimum.
All three come with PRO at no extra cost. If you had monday.com's CRM as a separate subscription, this is where you decide whether it is still needed.
Taking production out of monday.com may drop you a tier or even below the minimum, and that is where the real saving shows up.
For video production, yes: Play covers briefing, tasks, calendar and delivery queues, and adds video versions, videofeedback, a media library and cost control. For coordinating the rest of the company's work, no: Play is vertical and does not try to replace a horizontal tool.
Yes. Its work management plans are bought from 10 seats up, so a smaller team pays for ten anyway. Play has no minimum: LITE includes 3 internal users and PRO includes 5, with 19 € per additional user.
Play has a free LITE plan, a PRO plan at 149 € per workspace per month with 5 users included and 19 € per extra user, and a custom Enterprise plan. Monday.com charges per seat per month: 9 € on Basic, 12 € on Standard and 19 € on Pro billed annually, with a 10-seat minimum on work management.
No. monday.com's CRM is a separate product, with its own per-seat price, from 12 € a month with a minimum of 3 seats. In Play the CRM is in the PRO plan at no extra cost.
Not in Play: they are unlimited on LITE, PRO and Enterprise and only internal users are counted. In monday.com anyone who needs to work inside the board takes a paid seat.
Not to the same level. Monday.com has spent years polishing a very capable automation builder and has a clear advantage there. Play ships the flows a video production needs already built, rather than a blank canvas.
Yes. The Media Library includes timestamped videofeedback and public links so the client can comment without needing an account, available on the free plan too. Monday.com has no video review.
Open a free LITE workspace, take a whole piece through Play from start to finish, invite the team and the external people, and switch on budgets, cost and CRM. The usual route is to move only the video production and then recount the seats you still need.
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Lemonlight produces the video and delivers it.
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