Section 1: What Is Asana?
No, we’re not talking about yoga.
Asana is one of the world’s largest task management and project management software platforms for teams. Much like other systems, it allows teams to plan, share and organize their work. Teams can use Asana for a simple to-do list to organize their work.
One reason Asana has been successful in raising money is that their founders come from big name brand tech companies. Asana was founded in 2008 by Dustin Moskovitz and Justin Rosenstein. Moskovitz was on the original founder team of Facebook and Rosenstein was an early employee at Google.
Before Asana jumped on the scene, there weren’t too many great options for project management. Many of them were way too complex--like Microsoft Project--that only experienced project managers could use. Asana has focused on usability and team collaboration, demystifying the complexities of older project management software systems.
Though Asana has seen successes, will it work as well for your team too?
Asana is one of the world’s largest task management and project management software platforms for teams. Much like other systems, it allows teams to plan, share and organize their work. Teams can use Asana for a simple to-do list to organize their work.
One reason Asana has been successful in raising money is that their founders come from big name brand tech companies. Asana was founded in 2008 by Dustin Moskovitz and Justin Rosenstein. Moskovitz was on the original founder team of Facebook and Rosenstein was an early employee at Google.
Before Asana jumped on the scene, there weren’t too many great options for project management. Many of them were way too complex--like Microsoft Project--that only experienced project managers could use. Asana has focused on usability and team collaboration, demystifying the complexities of older project management software systems.
Though Asana has seen successes, will it work as well for your team too?
How does Asana work?
With Asana, business units or different parts of your company are separated into teams. All projects are
located within teams and tasks are inserted into Projects.
Asana also lets you create “Sections” that give you another level of organization.
Tasks are either done or not done which leads some users to use Sections as custom statuses (something ClickUp offers natively).
Meaning that if a task is under review or getting feedback, you could create a section that says “Under Review” and then move all of the tasks that meet that status to that section.
This leads to more disorganization as individual contributors may set up their sections and projects differently.
On a brighter note, tasks can involve deadlines, tags, subtasks, and semi-rich text.
To help you with updates to your work, an inbox will show you notifications, new assigned tasks and messages from your team and give you a calendar view.
In the free version, users get basic tasks, searches and archives, making it a basic to-do list with up to 15 team members.
In the premium version, users get more advanced features like reporting, start dates, unlimited dashboards and unlimited team members for $10.99 per user per month.
For teams that need more power, the Asana enterprise version gives you priority support, SAML support, and better data security and archiving.
Import
from Asana
Asana also lets you create “Sections” that give you another level of organization.
Tasks are either done or not done which leads some users to use Sections as custom statuses (something ClickUp offers natively).
Meaning that if a task is under review or getting feedback, you could create a section that says “Under Review” and then move all of the tasks that meet that status to that section.
This leads to more disorganization as individual contributors may set up their sections and projects differently.
On a brighter note, tasks can involve deadlines, tags, subtasks, and semi-rich text.
To help you with updates to your work, an inbox will show you notifications, new assigned tasks and messages from your team and give you a calendar view.
In the free version, users get basic tasks, searches and archives, making it a basic to-do list with up to 15 team members.
In the premium version, users get more advanced features like reporting, start dates, unlimited dashboards and unlimited team members for $10.99 per user per month.
For teams that need more power, the Asana enterprise version gives you priority support, SAML support, and better data security and archiving.
Section 2: Pros and Cons of Asana
The benefits of Asana in Project management
- 1. Great interface. With recent improvements in the last three to five years, Asana has one of the most distinctive and beautiful user interfaces around.
- 2. Simple to-do list. If you’re looking for a simple to-do list for your projects, then Asana can help you out there. They have clear-cut tasks with an easy drag-and-drop interface.
- 3. Great for small teams. We feel that Asana works best with three to five users, giving insight into each other’s projects and tasks.
- 4. Great for prioritizing. Because of Asana’s simplicity, it’s easy to mark items as top priority, especially if the rest are at a normal priority level. This will alert your team that this item needs attention right away.
- 5. Calendar view. Many people that use Asana really like the calendar view to see where each task and project stands and what’s on deck. This has been enhanced with their new timeline feature that shows how tasks and projects are interrelated, along with more help on making a project schedule.
Where Asana Needs Improvement
But there’s got to be real substance behind the beauty of Asana or what’s the point? And unfortunately this
is where Asana falls short, especially for teams looking to consolidate their productivity software tech
stack.
1. Hard for whole team to get on board
People have different productivity styles that may not be complemented by tools like Asana. In most organizations, the developers have one team, sales something else, and then your marketing or PR team is using Asana.
But how do you communicate across teams, on something like a go-to market strategy with your developers, product managers and more? You’ll have to resort to more meetings and email...things a project management system is supposed to eliminate.
With a productivity platform like ClickUp, you have access to more views than any of our competitors offer—these include the basics like lists, boards, and timelines, along with unique views like mind maps and docs (just to name a few). Individual team members can set up and save views the way they want—not how another user or a team miles away decides to set it up. You’ll have more flexibility in ClickUp.
See why ClickUp is the best Asana
alternative
People have different productivity styles that may not be complemented by tools like Asana. In most organizations, the developers have one team, sales something else, and then your marketing or PR team is using Asana.
But how do you communicate across teams, on something like a go-to market strategy with your developers, product managers and more? You’ll have to resort to more meetings and email...things a project management system is supposed to eliminate.
With a productivity platform like ClickUp, you have access to more views than any of our competitors offer—these include the basics like lists, boards, and timelines, along with unique views like mind maps and docs (just to name a few). Individual team members can set up and save views the way they want—not how another user or a team miles away decides to set it up. You’ll have more flexibility in ClickUp.
2. Limited Feature Set
Many of Asana's features are paywalled, meaning you can't get full access to the features you need without a paid membership. And even when you do, you'll find that Asana's feature set lacks a lot of core features that ClickUp has... for free!
Features like:
Many of Asana's features are paywalled, meaning you can't get full access to the features you need without a paid membership. And even when you do, you'll find that Asana's feature set lacks a lot of core features that ClickUp has... for free!
Features like:
- ● Docs
- ● Sprints
- ● Custom Roles
- ● Task Checklists
- ● Mind Maps
- ...and much more!
If you want a full project management platform that works for every team type, from software engineers to marketers, then ClickUp is the way to go.
3. Reliability
Asana has 99.96% uptime for their browser application, 99.71%, for API, and 99.98% for mobile. All while ClickUp prides itself on maintaining the highest levels of uptime across its entire platform.
How will you communicate with your team? How will you get the files you need?
How will you make everything okay before the deadline?
It’s important to think about the reliability of your project management software when your work (and possibly career!) depends on it.
Asana has 99.96% uptime for their browser application, 99.71%, for API, and 99.98% for mobile. All while ClickUp prides itself on maintaining the highest levels of uptime across its entire platform.
How will you communicate with your team? How will you get the files you need?
How will you make everything okay before the deadline?
It’s important to think about the reliability of your project management software when your work (and possibly career!) depends on it.
4. Behind the Times
Though Asana integrates with several tools, it could still improve with AI and other new features, says a senior research analyst.
“Another opportunity is enhancing the product with contextual intelligence. In a way, that is what Asana is achieving with integrations to apps such as Dropbox, Google Drive, Slack, Gmail and others. Adding A.I. and machine learning features could further enhance its capabilities and take it to the next level,” RaĂşl Castañón-MartĂnez, senior analyst at 451 Research, told ComputerWorld Magazine in 2017.
However, what Castañón-MartĂnez didn’t note is that others like ClickUp are already integrating with other workflow management tools and even have A.I with machine learning.
Though Asana integrates with several tools, it could still improve with AI and other new features, says a senior research analyst.
“Another opportunity is enhancing the product with contextual intelligence. In a way, that is what Asana is achieving with integrations to apps such as Dropbox, Google Drive, Slack, Gmail and others. Adding A.I. and machine learning features could further enhance its capabilities and take it to the next level,” RaĂşl Castañón-MartĂnez, senior analyst at 451 Research, told ComputerWorld Magazine in 2017.
However, what Castañón-MartĂnez didn’t note is that others like ClickUp are already integrating with other workflow management tools and even have A.I with machine learning.
5. Is Asana For Serious Work?
Unicorns and dragons flying around? Sometimes it’s hard to get the right tone for work when the tool you’re using doesn’t seem like it means business. Sure, we all like to have fun at work, but there’s also a time to focus...that’s why it’s work.
Many users have needs that go beyond the features that are only on the Asana free tier and will need to upgrade, or find a tool that has more features for free.
This hesitancy could lead teams back to Excel or email or even nothing at all. So when considering Asana, ask yourself this: “Is this enough to really make our work stand out?”
Full
comparison of Asana and ClickUp
Unicorns and dragons flying around? Sometimes it’s hard to get the right tone for work when the tool you’re using doesn’t seem like it means business. Sure, we all like to have fun at work, but there’s also a time to focus...that’s why it’s work.
Many users have needs that go beyond the features that are only on the Asana free tier and will need to upgrade, or find a tool that has more features for free.
This hesitancy could lead teams back to Excel or email or even nothing at all. So when considering Asana, ask yourself this: “Is this enough to really make our work stand out?”
Section 3: Reviews of Asana
Asana makes lots of lists and get accolades, but how do real people and users feel about Asana? Generally pretty good, though there are areas for improvement. Here are some of the
common themes:
Can't Find What You're Looking For —
Stephanie, September 2020
"I find that Asana is not intuitive at all. It's difficult to navigate and to find tasks that have been assigned or changed."
"I find that Asana is not intuitive at all. It's difficult to navigate and to find tasks that have been assigned or changed."
No High-Level Reporting — Todd, February
2019
You cannot run a team within Asana unless you want to waste a LOT of time figuring out the status of all your projects. They are missing such basic features that I ultimately had to build a spreadsheet to handle reporting instead of using their system for it.
You cannot run a team within Asana unless you want to waste a LOT of time figuring out the status of all your projects. They are missing such basic features that I ultimately had to build a spreadsheet to handle reporting instead of using their system for it.
Difficult To Use — Michelle, March
2018
"Not useful for design intensive work. Slow to load. Hard to keep track of projects and No desktop apps."
"Not useful for design intensive work. Slow to load. Hard to keep track of projects and No desktop apps."
Section 4: Asana Alternatives for Project Management
If you’re frustrated by what Asana offers and need a better option, check out this full breakdown of
multiple Asana
alternatives. Below are a few options that you may want to consider.
1. ClickUp
A few of the features that Asana doesn’t have include a Bulk Action Toolbar that allows you to make bulk changes, super rich editing in tasks and descriptions, multiple assignees to a task and even a Chrome extension for screenshots and time tracking.
And if you have to stay in Asana for just a little longer, you can integrate with ClickUp for any tasks that your team may start in Asana. For the top Asana alternative, look no further than ClickUp.
Need more convincing? Try ClickUp completely free. Forever!.
A few of the features that Asana doesn’t have include a Bulk Action Toolbar that allows you to make bulk changes, super rich editing in tasks and descriptions, multiple assignees to a task and even a Chrome extension for screenshots and time tracking.
And if you have to stay in Asana for just a little longer, you can integrate with ClickUp for any tasks that your team may start in Asana. For the top Asana alternative, look no further than ClickUp.
Need more convincing? Try ClickUp completely free. Forever!.
2. Flow
Flow has a combination look of lists, kanban boards and timelines to give you a comprehensive view of your work in an easy-to-use interface. It’s a simple snapshot of what’s happening and lacks more powerful features like assigned comments and custom statuses. A strength of Flow is its resource management to adequately balance time for your team members.
Compare ClickUp and Flow.
Flow has a combination look of lists, kanban boards and timelines to give you a comprehensive view of your work in an easy-to-use interface. It’s a simple snapshot of what’s happening and lacks more powerful features like assigned comments and custom statuses. A strength of Flow is its resource management to adequately balance time for your team members.
Compare ClickUp and Flow.
3. Trello
Users can review projects and collaborate in real-time for better task management. Trello keeps everyone informed through task lists, activity log, and email notifications to ensure that nothing gets left behind with boards and cards. Trello is often compared to a whiteboard filled with sticky notes, but in digital form.
A drawback to Trello is how lean it is compared to similar tools, meaning you’ll have to have a lot of add-ons to really make it work for you.
Compare Asana and Trello.
Users can review projects and collaborate in real-time for better task management. Trello keeps everyone informed through task lists, activity log, and email notifications to ensure that nothing gets left behind with boards and cards. Trello is often compared to a whiteboard filled with sticky notes, but in digital form.
A drawback to Trello is how lean it is compared to similar tools, meaning you’ll have to have a lot of add-ons to really make it work for you.
Compare Asana and Trello.
4. Monday
Monday is a very simple tool to learn and understand, giving you a great overview of where things stand from a bird’s eye view. The simple grid-style view of tasks makes Monday work for many teams, and most actions require only a few clicks. Monday has a visual timeline which allows you to see which team member is busy working on which project. It’s dependent on tables, but doesn’t help you keep work in one place--forcing you to use another tool yet again.
Many users come from monday to Asana for an enhanced project management experience. The problem is companies that plan to scale miss the mark and have to change platforms again when Asana's structure fails to grow with them. This problem is the foundation for building ClickUp
Read more about Monday as an Asana alternative.
Monday is a very simple tool to learn and understand, giving you a great overview of where things stand from a bird’s eye view. The simple grid-style view of tasks makes Monday work for many teams, and most actions require only a few clicks. Monday has a visual timeline which allows you to see which team member is busy working on which project. It’s dependent on tables, but doesn’t help you keep work in one place--forcing you to use another tool yet again.
Many users come from monday to Asana for an enhanced project management experience. The problem is companies that plan to scale miss the mark and have to change platforms again when Asana's structure fails to grow with them. This problem is the foundation for building ClickUp
Read more about Monday as an Asana alternative.
Section 5: How To Import From Asana
Okay, are you ready to switch from Asana? It’s easy to start an import and it will only take about 10
minutes. Here are the exact steps you need to follow to export from Asana into ClickUp.
For even more details, check out this Help Center doc from ClickUp.
1. Create your structure first
Before importing your tasks from Asana, arrange your Teams and Spaces in ClickUp. This will help you stay organized and not lose anything in the process. Here’s how ClickUp is set up and how to set up your hierarchy.
Before importing your tasks from Asana, arrange your Teams and Spaces in ClickUp. This will help you stay organized and not lose anything in the process. Here’s how ClickUp is set up and how to set up your hierarchy.
2. Go to settings in ClickUp
From here, select “Import” on the left side and then “Import from Asana.”
From here, select “Import” on the left side and then “Import from Asana.”
3. Import tasks
You’ll see how your instance of Asana maps over to the new structure in ClickUp. You can also import projects and boards from Asana. See how to do that here.
You’ll see how your instance of Asana maps over to the new structure in ClickUp. You can also import projects and boards from Asana. See how to do that here.
4. Import Users
You can also map over your users from Asana and create new users right inside ClickUp.
You can also map over your users from Asana and create new users right inside ClickUp.
Missing a step? Have more questions?
See
more details on importing from Asana
Section 6: Conclusion: Will Asana Improve Your Productivity & Project Management?
After reviewing the details about Asana, is it the right choice for you? Asana is a great task management
tool with an amazing user experience that delights all who try it. But is it enough to do the job beyond
basic task management for a small team? Probably not.
If you’re a fast-growing company that’s concerned about innovation, then Asana won’t be the best fit due to its decentralized product roadmap and slow integration of important product features.
Not sure Asana is the right choice for you?
Start with ClickUp today
If you’re a fast-growing company that’s concerned about innovation, then Asana won’t be the best fit due to its decentralized product roadmap and slow integration of important product features.
Not sure Asana is the right choice for you?
