Monday.com, the Israeli startup worth almost $3 billion, announced today (Tuesday) its intentions of becoming much more than just a project management tool by launching its custom app framework, called monday Apps. Following the launch of this endeavor, one question comes to mind, is this the most monumental step towards monday.com becoming the next Microsoft or Salesforce, as the CEO claims?

The first 20 apps were built in 2 days

Monday.com’s operating system, Work OS, was launched earlier this year in February, and now graduates from its beta stage with the release of monday Apps, which is a commercial automation and customization app building platform. Previously, monday.com only allowed apps and integrations that it had developed, but now any organization can develop their own customize and specific apps, that can also be offered to other organizations or uploaded to a marketplace in the near future. In doing so, monday.com moves closer to fulfilling its vision in creating its very own ecosystem.

According to the company, its R&D team built the first 20 apps in only two days. With remote work being ever-popular, the first apps help address the needs of remote working but are not limited to such, like an app to share ideas, track employee attendance, or an app displaying logjams in workflow while also offering insight on how to fix it.  

In a conversation with Geektime, monday Apps PM, Ben Rosenfeld explained that the platform allows app development in any language you want: “We can differentiate two types of apps; the first is views and widgets that display visual data and are mostly developed using HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. The second is integration, a feature synchronized between systems (servers), which unlike the first type is not visual. It’s creating a sort of “recipe” that is followed by a command in a certain system that dictates action in another system. These integrations can be written in any server language.”

Tech Lead and one of the first developers at monday.com, Tal Haramati reveals that right now there are 70 apps ready for use on the platform and that the company expects that another 130 apps will be added by the end of the year by outside users.  

What’s the difference between your app framework to those of Jira, ASANA, Slack, and others like them?

Rosenfeld: “We are unique in that our product is developed perfectly for building apps, adding to the fact, that it allows the creation of different entities connected on the platform. The saved data is at the center and around it, it’s possible to add layers of interrogation, management, personalized data display and unique automation and integrations to monday.com.”

When hearing about this, one of the first things that come to mind was Apple’s App Store, which is one of the high earners on the company’s quarterly reports. However, both Rosenfeld and Haramati claim that monday Apps was developed in order to allow users to adapt the platform to their needs: “The app framework wasn’t developed as a revenue cash-cow. Currently, there are no future plans to charge fees from app developers.”

The two further explain that the price for the different apps will be set by the app developer and based on a number of different factors like the value that the app has generated, the number of potential users, the number of actions the app allows, and more. As previously mentioned the company intends on deploying a marketplace model by the end of the year: “The model could be around developing apps for bringing in new customers like in the partnership model. The marketplace will launch towards the end of the 3rd quarter and with it also further details regarding our planned business model.”

Monday.com was founded in 2012, by CEO Roy Man and CTO Eran Zinman. The company released its first product back in 2014 under the name dapulse, but then in 2017 went through a complete rebrand. Monday.com has 350 employees working at the headquarters in Tel Aviv and offices in New York. The company has raised a total of $234 million up-to-date and claims to have over 100,000 organizations paying for service from around the world.