This client came to us as one of North America's highest-volume Monday.com users—with an ambitious goal: 10x their business over five years.
At the time, 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. Monday.com had been instrumental in getting them to this point. Now they needed what comes next.
This is the story of how we pushed Monday.com to its limits, transitioned critical systems to low-code tools, and eventually moved to fully custom software—all while the business continued to grow.
Results at a Glance
Phase 1: The Monday.com Foundation
What They Had Built
When we came on board, the client had already invested heavily in Monday.com. Their setup included:
- CRM boards tracking thousands of clients with contact info, notes, and relationship history
- Order management boards processing tens of thousands of orders per year
- Project delivery boards coordinating field teams across multiple geographic markets
- HR and operations boards managing scheduling, payouts, and team performance
- Dashboards attempting to provide visibility into the entire operation
They were using 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 has a 30,000-item limit per board. With 30,000+ orders per year, they were hitting this wall regularly. The workaround? Archive completed orders to separate boards. But this broke reporting, made historical lookups painful, and created data fragmentation.
Performance Degradation
As boards grew, everything slowed down. Loading times increased. Automations became unreliable. Team members started avoiding certain views because they took too long to load.
Reporting Limitations
Monday.com's native dashboards and reporting 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
With multiple people editing boards simultaneously, data inconsistencies crept in. Dropdown values would get changed. Records would be duplicated. There was no source of truth.
The client had done everything right—they'd simply reached the scale where Monday.com's architecture becomes a constraint rather than an enabler.
Phase 2: Extending with Make.com
Before abandoning Monday.com entirely, we tried to extend it. Make.com (formerly Integromat) became our integration layer.
What We Built
We created automations that:
- Synced data between Monday.com boards and external systems
- Calculated complex metrics that Monday.com couldn't handle natively
- Generated reports by pulling data from multiple boards and aggregating it externally
- Enforced data validation before records could be created or modified
- Triggered multi-step workflows that spanned multiple boards and external tools
The Results
Make.com bought us time. It addressed many of Monday.com's limitations and allowed the business to continue scaling.
But it also created new problems:
Increased Complexity
The more automations we built, the harder the system became to understand and maintain. When something broke, debugging meant tracing through dozens of scenarios across multiple platforms.
Cost Escalation
Make.com pricing is based on operations. At their volume, automation costs became significant—and unpredictable.
Fragile Dependencies
The system now had multiple points of failure. A Monday.com API hiccup could cascade through Make.com scenarios and break downstream processes.
We had extended Monday.com's life, but we hadn't solved the fundamental problem: the platform wasn't designed for this scale.
Phase 3: The Low-Code Pivot (Retool + Supabase)
This was the turning point—and where our work got interesting.
It became clear that Monday.com and Make.com alone weren't going to support the next phase of growth—not because they aren't great tools, but because at this scale, you need more control over data, performance, and system design.
The Architecture Decision
We decided to move the most critical systems—CRM, order management, and financial reporting—off Monday.com entirely.
The New Stack
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, we 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 that once required manual spreadsheet work or clunky workarounds now run as simple database queries—completing in milliseconds:
SELECT
SUM(unit_price * quantity) as revenue,
SUM(material_cost + labor_cost + overhead) as cogs,
SUM(provider_payout) as payouts
FROM line_items
WHERE order_date >= '2024-01-01'What previously took hours of spreadsheet wrangling now happens in real-time.
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 We Kept on Monday.com
Monday.com didn't disappear entirely. It remained the system for:
- Field team task management: Service providers still received and completed jobs through Monday.com
- Team collaboration: Comments, updates, and 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 Development
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 user experience, you eventually need custom code.
The Transition
We didn't throw everything away. The PostgreSQL database we'd built in Phase 3 became the foundation for custom applications. The data models, business logic, and integrations carried forward.
What changed:
- Custom frontend applications replaced Retool for specific use cases
- API layer gave us complete control over data access and business rules
- Infrastructure ownership meant no more platform limits or pricing surprises
Current State
Today, the client operates 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
- Supabase/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
This journey taught us several things that apply to anyone using Monday.com seriously:
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. Options include:
- 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 us 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
- We 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's a sign you're building something real.
5. Data Architecture Matters More Than Tools
The most valuable work we did 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 to follow this trajectory. Ask yourself:
Stay on Monday.com if:
- Your data volumes are manageable (under 10,000 active items per board)
- Your reporting needs are straightforward
- Your team values the visual, intuitive interface
- You're not hitting performance issues
Consider extending 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
Consider migrating critical data if:
- You're hitting item limits regularly
- Performance has become a daily frustration
- You need complex calculations Monday.com can't handle
- Data integrity is a constant battle
- You're planning significant growth
Consider 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 technical 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, know that you're not alone—and there are proven paths forward.
Hear from this client directly:
Watch the testimonial →Hitting the limits of your current setup?
We've guided dozens of businesses through this exact transition—from Monday.com optimization to custom development.
Let's talk about where you're headed →This case study is based on a real client engagement. Details have been anonymized to protect confidentiality.