What's good about Mondly?

Mondly certainly has a beautiful user interface, and it's obvious a lot of work has gone into its design. It's also smooth, easy to use, and tries as hard as possible to keep you going by rewarding you with "points" and "levels," making it almost feel like a video game where you're trying to level up and beat your high score. There's even a points leaderboard to encourage you to do more and move up. All of this makes you want to keep doing lessons, which is of course a good thing (in fact, I'd argue that simply being persistent is the best way to learn a foreign language). You may think that you have enough self-motivation to continue your language studies without what may seem like gimmicks, but my experience is just a fraction of language learners really persist with it, and the way Mondly constantly encourages you to continue is a big positive in my book.

What's bad about Mondly?

Mondly will only ever get you to a beginner/lower-intermediate level in your target language. While its constant drilling and repetition of key words and sentences will teach you the basics of a language, even after completing all the lessons for some language, you'll still be nowhere even remotely close to what anyone would consider fluent, and you'll struggle big-time having natural conversations with native speakers. To actually get comfortable speaking a foreign language you need real conversation practice with real people. That's why I strongly recommend platforms like Italki (an excellent place for finding cheap native speakers to practice with) and Preply.

How does Mondly compare to Duolingo?

Duolingo and Mondly are very similar: they both make themselves feel like games where you want to get points and beat a high score, there's a lot of repetition, and lessons are sorted into themes. Duolingo has the same problem as Mondly in that it'll only take you to a basic level and no matter how much you use it, and you'll still be woefully unequipped to have real conversations with real people in the language you're learning. Duolingo does have a big advantage over Mondly in that it's free with ads (you can just pay for their premium version, Duolingo Plus, if you want to get rid of the ads and be able to use it offline) and it has forums (so you can ask questions about any given lesson). Mondly's advantages over Duolingo is that you can have a base language other than English, you get daily lessons to motivate you, and their conversation practice and AR features are above what Duolingo offers.

What's the bottom line on Mondly?

Try Mondly if you're brand new to a foreign language and want to learn some words and phrases. But as soon as you've reached a basic level, you'd better get out of your comfort zone and try practicing real conversations with real people, else you'll never actually learn to speak the language.