Monday.com or OpenProject: which fits your team's project work
Stay on monday.com if your team needs its hosted boards, automations and per-seat convenience more than control of where project data lives. OpenProject fits when project data must stay on your own servers, when the number of named users makes per-seat pricing hard to justify, or when you have staff who can run a self-hosted application. The decision usually turns on four questions, and the answers should be written down before anyone prices a migration. Renewal and cost pressure are common triggers, but they only justify a move once the requirements below are clear. First, decide where data must live. If a regulator, customer contract or internal policy requires project records, attachments and comments to stay in your own cloud account, data center or air-gapped network, a self-hosted OpenProject instance is the direct route. Second, count the named users who need access, including occasional reviewers and external contractors, because OpenProject's paid Enterprise on-premises plans are priced per named user, and the minimums differ by tier. Check the current figures on the OpenProject pricing page rather than relying on older numbers.
Third, establish whether single sign-on and directory synchronization are requirements. OpenProject lists SSO (SAML, OIDC, CAS, Kerberos and Okta), LDAP group synchronization and custom branding among its Enterprise features, so an organization that needs them should price an Enterprise plan from the start. Confirm with your identity team which protocols your directory uses, and whether group membership must drive project roles. Fourth, name the team that will run the server. That includes upgrades, backups, PostgreSQL maintenance and monitoring, whether in-house or through an implementation partner such as DeployOpen. If nobody owns those tasks, a hosted monday.com plan may remain the safer choice even when data residency is a concern. Ask your IT leads to confirm these four points in writing before comparing feature lists.
Which option fits which team situation
This table matches common monday.com situations to the option that usually fits better, with the reason and where OpenProject Enterprise matters. Read each row against your own hosting capacity, compliance scope and automation dependencies, since a single factor often decides the choice.
| Team situation | Better fit | Reason and what to confirm |
|---|---|---|
| Small team that wants no hosting work | monday.com or OpenProject Enterprise cloud | Self-hosting adds patching, backups and upgrades that a small team may not staff. Confirm the cloud option's data location and terms with OpenProject before deciding. |
| Regulated team that must keep project data on its own servers | Self-hosted OpenProject Community or Enterprise on-premises | OpenProject runs in your own infrastructure, so boards, work packages and attachments stay under your controls. Confirm which controls your assessor expects for project tools. |
| Heavy reliance on monday.com automations and dashboards | Rebuild first, then decide | OpenProject does not reproduce monday.com automations or dashboards one for one. Map each automation to a manual step or a workflow you configure, and test that before leaving. |
| Existing Jira Data Center estate | OpenProject, with a migration test first | The Jira Migrator is in beta and supports only Jira Data Center 10.x and 11.x. Use it in a test setup only, and confirm your Jira version is covered before scoping the move. |
| Organization that needs SSO and SCIM provisioning | OpenProject Enterprise on-premises | SSO, LDAP group synchronization and SCIM provisioning sit in paid Enterprise plans, not Community. Ask OpenProject which SCIM features the chosen plan includes. |
| Team that needs the Jira importer or portfolio management | OpenProject Enterprise from Basic upward | The Jira Migrator is listed under Enterprise plans from Basic upward, and portfolio and resource management require Enterprise. Confirm the plan level against your requirement list. |
| Team that mainly tracks tasks and needs lightweight boards | OpenProject Community | Work packages, Gantt charts, agile boards and time tracking are included in the free Community edition with community support. Plan for internal administration and support ownership. |
Where project data lives and who controls it
monday.com is a hosted service, so the vendor operates the platform, its infrastructure and the environment where your boards, items and column values are stored. Your organization controls its workspaces, users and permissions inside that service, but it does not choose the servers, the patching schedule or the physical location of the data. OpenProject works differently. It can run in your own cloud account, in a data center you operate or on an air-gapped network with no outbound internet access. Whoever runs the instance holds the database, the attachments and the backups, so the first decision is who will operate that environment and under which change process.
OpenProject offers several deployment paths, and each one places operational work in a different team. Docker-based installation is the recommended route, while .deb and .rpm packages cover 64-bit Linux hosts, with Ubuntu 22.04, Debian 12, CentOS or RHEL 9.x and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 among the supported packaged installs. For horizontal scaling, OpenProject provides Kubernetes with Helm charts. Confirm the supported path against the current OpenProject system requirements and check that your platform team already runs the chosen stack, because operating PostgreSQL, the reverse proxy, storage and backups becomes your responsibility.
Identity is the other place where control shifts. On monday.com, sign-in is handled by the vendor's account system. With OpenProject, you decide how users authenticate. Single sign-on (SAML, OIDC, CAS, Kerberos, Okta), LDAP group synchronization and custom branding are Enterprise features, so confirm the plan you need before you design the directory integration. Compliance outcomes depend on your controls, such as access reviews, logging, backup testing and change management, and on the independent auditor who assesses them. The software does not provide certification on its own. Ask your auditor which evidence they expect from a self-hosted tool before you choose a hosting model.
What self-hosting OpenProject changes for security and compliance teams
Moving from monday.com to OpenProject moves data location, identity, backup, patching and logging from a vendor's shared service into your own infrastructure. Each card below is a decision or control your team will need to assign, document and test before cutover.
Data location and residency
With the Community edition or Enterprise on-premises, boards, work packages, comments, attachments and user records sit on servers and databases you choose. monday.com hosts the account in its own environment, so the residency question changes from reviewing a vendor's terms to specifying a hosting region, storage encryption and database placement yourself. Check where attachments are stored, where PostgreSQL backups are kept, and whether any integration sends work item content to a third party.
Identity integration and group sync
OpenProject's Enterprise plans list single sign-on through SAML, OIDC, CAS, Kerberos and Okta, along with LDAP group synchronization. Map each project role to a directory group before migration so access follows your joiner, mover and leaver process rather than manually edited memberships. Confirm which of these protocols your identity provider supports and test group removal, since a deprovisioned user should lose project access on the next sync. The Community edition does not include these features, so budget for an Enterprise tier if central identity is a requirement.
Backup ownership
With monday.com, the vendor operates the service and the platform availability. With OpenProject, your team owns the backup schedule, the PostgreSQL dump or snapshot process, attachment storage backups and restore testing. Define recovery point and recovery time objectives for work data, then run a restore into a separate environment and check that work packages, attachments and project configuration come back intact. Document who performs restores and where the backup copies are kept.
Patching and upgrade cadence
OpenProject publishes frequent releases, including 17.9.2 on October 15, 2026, so the patch cadence becomes an internal responsibility. Choose Docker, packaged installs or Kubernetes with Helm, then decide who tests each release, how long a rollback takes and which supported operating systems and PostgreSQL versions apply. Check the release notes for security fixes before scheduling production upgrades, and keep the staging environment on the same version as production.
Access logging and audit trails
Your log retention and audit trail depend on what OpenProject records, how logs leave the application container and where they are forwarded. Confirm which events are captured for logins, permission changes, exports and deletions, and whether those events can be sent to your SIEM. Check retention periods against your own policy, because the vendor does not set them for a self-hosted install. Ask monday.com for its equivalent audit records so you can compare the two sets of evidence.
Compliance evidence preparation
DeployOpen prepares controls, configurations and evidence for compliance assessments, including access reviews, backup test records and change logs. DeployOpen does not issue audit reports, attestations or certifications; independent auditors and certification bodies do that work. Agree in writing which control areas and evidence packages are in scope, and ask your auditor which artifacts they will accept before implementation starts.
What moving boards to OpenProject involves
The sequence turns monday.com boards, items and column values into OpenProject work packages that a test instance can prove before the team cuts over. Automations, integrations and dashboards are rebuilt by hand, so the plan has to account for them from the start.
Inventory boards, items, users and workspaces
Someone with owner or admin rights in the monday.com account lists every workspace, board, group, column, item count, subitem structure and active user. Note which boards feed dashboards, which trigger automations and which connect to other tools, because those dependencies do not travel with the data. The output is a written inventory that assigns each board to a destination project in OpenProject and names a business owner who signs it off. Ask your monday.com account team to confirm your plan's API rate limits before extraction starts.
Extract data through the GraphQL API
A developer, or a DeployOpen engineer working inside your environment, writes a script against monday.com's GraphQL platform API to read boards, items, column values, users and workspaces. The API is the documented route for programmatic extraction, and the script should write raw JSON to a restricted staging store on your own servers, not a laptop. Board-level CSV exports can supplement the API for attachments and for a human-readable reference copy. The check is a record count per board that matches the inventory, plus a sample of items compared field by field against the live boards.
Map columns to work package fields
Build a mapping table that pairs each monday.com column with an OpenProject field. Item names usually become work package subjects, status columns map to OpenProject statuses, and person columns map to assignees and responsible users. Date columns map to start and due dates, and dropdowns or text columns become custom fields or work package types where a type is a better fit. Columns with no clean match, such as formula, mirror or dependency columns, need an explicit decision: rebuild, flatten to text, or drop. Have the business owners approve the table before loading, since most rework comes from unapproved mappings.
Load into a test OpenProject instance
Install OpenProject in a non-production environment on your own infrastructure, using the Docker-based installation the project recommends, and create the projects, types, statuses and custom fields from the mapping table. Load a single pilot board with a purpose-built script or import tool, then check work packages, assignees, dates, attachments and comments against the source. The OpenProject Jira Migrator is a Jira Data Center tool with beta status, and it does not read monday.com boards, so it is not an option here. The check is a reconciliation report showing matched counts and a list of every rejected or altered record, reviewed by the pilot team.
Rebuild automations, dashboards and integrations
Automations, integrations and dashboards do not transfer, so each one is documented from the monday.com account and rebuilt manually in OpenProject. Typical targets include board views, saved queries, notifications and any Gantt or portfolio views the team relied on. Connections to other tools need their own design, and OpenProject's integrations, such as its Nextcloud integration, should be checked against your actual requirements rather than assumed. The output is a rebuild register listing each monday.com automation or dashboard, its OpenProject equivalent, who tested it and whether the behavior matches.
Load the full data set and validate
After the pilot passes, run the same extraction and mapping for every board in scope and load the full data set into a staging OpenProject instance. Validation compares record counts, user access, permissions and sample records against the source, and it should include a permissions review so that people see only the projects they saw in monday.com. Any defect found here goes back into the mapping table and the pilot is rerun. The check is a signed reconciliation for each project and a list of accepted exceptions.
Run parallel use and cut over
Teams work in both systems for an agreed period, with monday.com kept as the read reference and new work recorded in OpenProject. Parallel use exposes missing fields, unfamiliar views and workflow gaps before the cutover date. At cutover, freeze monday.com edits, run a final incremental extraction, load the delta and switch users to OpenProject. Keep the final monday.com export archived on your own storage under your retention policy. Confirm the retention period and the exit terms of your monday.com contract with the vendor before you begin the final cutover.
What has to be rebuilt after the data moves
Data transfer is only half of a monday.com exit. Work packages, statuses and users can arrive in OpenProject while the behavior that made the boards useful stays behind. Before committing to a migration, inventory every automation recipe, integration, dashboard, notification rule and recurring item in each monday.com workspace, and record which team relies on each one. Pull the automation and integration lists from the workspace admin views, then sort them into three groups: rebuild natively in OpenProject, replace with an external tool or script, or retire with the owner's agreement. The migration tools do not carry these over. The OpenProject Jira Migrator documentation lists the objects it imports (projects, versions, issues, comments, attachments, basic custom fields, users, statuses and types), and it applies to Jira rather than monday.com, so monday.com automations and dashboards must be treated as manual scope. Scope that work against OpenProject's own features before you write any rebuild plan. Confirm in your test instance whether each automation trigger, such as a status change that sets an owner or a recurring item that creates a new work package, has a native equivalent or needs a hook, webhook or small script that calls the OpenProject API. Check notification and reminder behavior the same way, because teams often depend on due-date alerts that must be configured again. Ask the implementation partner or your own platform team for a written list of gaps with an estimated effort for each, and make that list the input to the quote. Effort is driven by the number of distinct automation logic patterns, not by the number of boards, so a few shared rules across many boards is usually cheaper to rebuild than many one-off rules. Test each rebuilt workflow against the monday.com original using the same real sample of work, then have the business owner of each board sign off, not only the administrator who built it. Run side-by-side scenarios: create an item, move it through every status, trigger the due-date and reassignment paths, and compare what appears on the dashboard and in notifications. Record the expected and actual result for each. Give the project owners or portfolio leads the final sign-off for their boards, the IT or platform team the sign-off on integrations and credentials, and the security or compliance lead the sign-off on access and notification changes. Keep the test records as evidence of the cutover decision, since they show which behaviors were rebuilt, replaced or deliberately retired.
Questions buyers ask before moving from monday.com to OpenProject
What does a move from monday.com to OpenProject cost?
The cost has four parts: OpenProject licensing, hosting, migration work and internal administration. The Community edition is free software, so licensing is zero only if you do not need Enterprise features. Enterprise on-premises is priced per named user per month, with Basic at 5.95 euros, Professional at 10.95 euros (25-user minimum), Premium at 15.95 euros (100-user minimum) and Corporate on request for 250 or more users, according to the OpenProject pricing page. Hosting, migration and ongoing administration are one-time or recurring costs you pay to your infrastructure team or to an implementation partner. Ask any partner for a fixed-scope quote that separates these lines, and ask what changes if you add boards, automations or integrations to the scope.
How long does a monday.com to OpenProject migration take?
The timeline depends on the number of boards and items, how many automations and dashboards you need to rebuild, how clean your column data is, and how many people must validate results. Extraction through monday.com's GraphQL API is usually the quickest step, while rebuilding automations and reporting is often the longest because monday.com automations and dashboards do not transfer automatically. No supplied figure sets a duration, so ask for a timeline in the written scope after an inventory of boards, columns, users and integrations. Plan a parallel period where both systems run so teams can check work packages against their old boards.
What does the migration need from our internal team?
Your team needs to make decisions and check results more than it needs to write code. Owners must confirm which boards and workspaces stay, how monday.com columns map to OpenProject work package types, statuses and custom fields, and who holds access in each workspace. An administrator must approve the target environment, identity setup and backups. Someone who knows your automations must document each rule so it can be rebuilt. Plan for a named owner on both the business and the technical side for the duration of the project.
Can our own team migrate from monday.com to OpenProject without a partner?
Yes, a capable team can do the work, but the scope determines how much effort it takes. Simple boards with text, status, date and person columns are manageable with a script that reads the monday.com GraphQL API and loads work packages. Complex boards with linked items, formula-like logic, automations and dashboards require design work that many internal teams underestimate. OpenProject's Jira Migrator is not a path for monday.com data, so you will write or adapt your own import. Ask whether your team can staff the work for the full period, test with a copy of production data, and roll back if validation fails.
Do we need OpenProject Enterprise to use single sign-on?
Yes, single sign-on is listed among OpenProject's Enterprise features, not the Community edition. The pricing page lists SAML, OIDC, CAS, Kerberos and Okta support in Enterprise plans, and LDAP group synchronization is also an Enterprise feature. If your identity provider requires SSO for access, budget for an Enterprise plan from the tier that includes it, and confirm the exact tier with OpenProject before you buy. Review your identity design early, because SSO and group mapping decide who can see which projects after cutover.
How do we size hosting for OpenProject?
Size hosting from your user count and your expected load, then test it. OpenProject's system requirements guide suggests 4 cores and 4 GB RAM for up to 200 users, 8 cores and 8 GB RAM for about 500 users, and 16 cores and 16 GB RAM for about 1,500 users. Docker-based installation is the recommended method, and Kubernetes with Helm charts supports horizontal scaling. OpenProject officially supports PostgreSQL 16 or later and requires the pg_trgm, btree_gist and unaccent extensions. Confirm the database extensions with your DBA and check the current system requirements page before you provision.
What happens to automations, dashboards and integrations after the move?
They do not transfer automatically and must be rebuilt, replaced or retired. monday.com automations, dashboards and integrations are part of the platform configuration, so an export of boards and items leaves them behind. Before cutover, list each automation, its trigger and its action, and decide whether OpenProject covers it natively, through a workflow in another tool or through a retired process. Dashboards should be rebuilt from the work package data you loaded, and each rebuilt report should be checked against the monday.com original.
When staying on monday.com is the right call
Staying on monday.com is often the right decision when the work depends on what the platform does for you every day, and when nobody on the team wants to run infrastructure. The clearest signal is heavy use of monday.com automations, integrations and app connections that feed other systems. Those pieces do not move with the boards, so a migration means rebuilding each trigger, notification and sync somewhere else. Before deciding, list every automation and integration in use, note which ones a business process would stop without, and estimate the rebuild work for each. If that list is short and the team is happy with it, the case for leaving weakens.
The second condition is capacity. OpenProject and Plane both need someone to install, patch, back up, upgrade and monitor the server, and the OpenProject system requirements describe a database with specific PostgreSQL extensions that must be kept current. If the organization has no platform or IT operations staff who can take that on, a self-hosted tool will depend on one or two people, and a hosting partner or managed deployment will add a recurring cost. Ask who would be on call when the instance is down, and what that person would need to know.
The third condition is the absence of a data residency or control requirement. monday.com is a hosted service, and many teams use it without any regulator or contract asking where the data sits or who can administer it. If that holds, the main reasons to self-host (keeping records inside your own network, controlling retention and access at the server level) may not justify the change. Confirm this with legal and security before assuming it, because a single customer contract or sector rule can change the answer. Staying is also a reasonable interim choice while the team tests OpenProject or Plane on a sample project, which costs little and shows whether the workflow fits.
How DeployOpen helps evaluate, implement and migrate OpenProject
DeployOpen plans, implements, customizes, integrates, hardens, backs up, upgrades, documents and supports OpenProject inside your own cloud accounts, data centers or air-gapped networks. We start with a written scope that fits your monday.com boards, timelines and automations, so the move is agreed before any work begins.
How we scope
- Inventory which monday.com boards, items and column values need to move, and which are retired.
- Confirm the OpenProject edition, including whether SSO, LDAP group synchronization or branding need a paid Enterprise plan.
- Agree deliverables and timelines in writing, since most engagements are fixed-scope.
How we build
- Deploy OpenProject with Docker or packaged installs on your own servers, sized against the published system requirements.
- Map monday.com columns to OpenProject work package types, statuses and custom fields, and test the load in a staging environment.
- Rebuild automations, dashboards and integrations as documented OpenProject configuration, then run security testing on the result.
How we hand over
- Document the architecture, configuration, data mapping decisions and known gaps for your administrators.
- Provide evidence of backups, access controls and upgrade procedures for your compliance and audit teams.
- Walk through administration, user onboarding and the rollback plan before cutover so your team can operate the platform.
How we support
- Offer ongoing support, upgrades and continuous testing as a retainer after go-live.
- Plan OpenProject upgrades against published release notes and test them before applying them to production.
- Ask us to confirm scope, current edition and retainer terms in a written quote before any work starts.
