Compared with ionic compounds, covalent compounds generally have melting and boiling points that are:

1. Melting point tracks how strongly the units of a solid attract each other. 2. Molecules are electrically neutral, so the attraction between them is weaker than that between electrically charged ions. 3. Because of that, covalent compounds generally have much lower melting and boiling points than ionic compounds. 4. The same reasoning explains why many covalent substances are gases at room temperature. _Source: OpenStax Chemistry 2e (CC BY 4.0), Ch 7 'Chemical Bonding and Molecular Geometry', sections 7.1-7.6_