Teams, whether large or small, are routinely required to handle multiple projects with crushing deadlines. Collaboration between team members and effective project management are two key ingredients for delivering successful projects, one after another. Project management and collaboration tools like Asana help achieve these project goals faster by keeping everything on track.
While Asana is a powerful software, it’s not without drawbacks. For example, if your team does a fair bit of budgeting, reporting, and invoicing, Asana might fall short of your expectations.
Effective Asana alternatives are a huge draw in the market. Some of them fill the gaps that Asana doesn’t address and as such, have rightly emerged as Asana’s top competitors.
This article is for you if you want to know more about Asana, its merits and demerits, and to discover the best Asana alternatives.
What Is Asana?
Asana is a traditional web-based task management tool that has garnered a lot of worldwide support because of its communication and collaboration-centric features. It is a content management system used extensively in conventional and agile business environments. It is the perfect choice for a wide range and size of businesses to streamline and modernize their operations.
Asana allows businesses to handle multiple projects in one place and is built with the most efficient task management system. It has emerged as a project management powerhouse in the last decade.
Below is a lowdown of Asana’s main attributes.
Key Asana Merits
- User-friendly interface - It has a thoughtful and creative design layout that makes navigation easy.
- Assignment of tasks can be done with ease - The tool has unparalleled features of task assignment, prioritization, and real-time information. You can share files and notes, visualize projects, and monitor deadlines. It has digital workspaces, a calendar section, and communication tools that make task management more simplified. Such integrated features cut the chaos and streamline work-process, enhancing team focus and productivity, while enabling users and team members to accomplish goals in relatively lesser time.
- Seamless integration - Asana integrates smoothly with apps like Google Drive, Microsoft Teams, and Slack.
- Collaboration-centric tool - It is a highly collaborative tool for project managers.
Why Do You Need Asana Alternatives?
Though user-friendly, Asana is not without its limitations. There has been some aggressive social campaigning in its support since its creation. However, Asana can be disappointing for some users. No wonder, several breakthrough Asana alternatives have emerged to cater to those who don’t feel Asana to be a good fit for their teams.
In this section, we take a closer look at Asana’s demerits that paved the way for these Asana alternatives to be all the rage in the market today.
As we mentioned, Asana is deficient on some grounds. Let us walk you through a few of them.
- No time tracking feature - Though it is a great task tracking tool, it fails miserably to track time. Business projects are time-bound and hence must run on software that has efficient time-tracking features.
- Daunting for beginners - Despite a user-friendly interface, Asana can be a little overwhelming for first-timers with its numerous features.
- Excessively task-oriented - The interface is heavy on task schedule and management features. Given the multiplicity of features, even simple tasks can look overwhelming. This takes away the beauty of the software. Less is more, and this is as relevant in the field of technology as elsewhere.
- Limited assignment - Unfortunately, only one user at a time can be allotted tasks on Asana. A team collaborates on a project to make it a success, but you will have to create multiple tasks on Asana as it has no provision to assign multiple people to the same task. This is the biggest flaw in the software.
- Can create confusion - Since there is no singular method on Asana to keep an eye on multiple projects that are due for delivery on the same day/week, it can create confusion among users and retard the work process.
- Small business application - Despite what its supporters say, Asana is ideal for small businesses. It does not have multi-tiered use. Asana can get a little intricate for larger companies handling complex projects under tight deadlines; they require more sophisticated applications to save their time and energy.
- Task Status - In Asana, you get to set the task status as ‘open’ or ‘close’ as it has no provision to monitor if a task is in progress, being assessed, or is lying unresolved.
- Comments - Asana does not offer the option to convert comments to task assignments, unlike its counterparts.
- Costing – Many Asana alternatives offer services either for free or at a minimal price. The free version of Asana allows only up to 15 users in a team. It charges $9.99 per user every month, which can get expensive for many.
List of Asana Free Alternatives
Take a look at the following top Asana free alternative service solutions that are a hit with the project managers today for their multitude of task and project management options, refined collaboration channels, customizable fields, and free pricing plans. They have built-in attractive key features, but we shall cover only those that these solutions offer for free.
1. nTask
The free features of nTask allow for unlimited workspaces with up to 5 team members per workspace. It has features like the time tracker, calendar management, team timesheets, issue tracking, unlimited tasks and meetings, 100 MBs of storage space, and 5 MBs of file size.
2. ClickUp
Its free features include 100 MB storage and allow unlimited tasks and unlimited users.
3. Nuclino
Its free features include unlimited users, unlimited workspaces, 2GB total storage, and up to 50 items and 3 fields.
4. Meister Task
Its free features include unlimited projects/tasks and project members; customizable dashboards; two integrations with your favorite apps; file attachments of up to 20MB per file.
5. Freedcamp
Its free features include a personal task manager; passwords manager; up to 10MB file upload size; unlimited users, projects, and storage; calendar; messaging/discussion boards; team milestones; time tracking; tasks and sub-tasks.
6. KanbanFlow
The free features offer unlimited boards; unlimited tasks; sub-tasks; filters; WIP limits; and recurring tasks.
List of Asana Paid Alternatives
These are a range of software suites that serve different business purposes with an entire gamut of functionalities meant to improve performance and productivity at work. They offer comprehensive features within an affordable pricing system.
- Hive
- Basecamp
- Monday.com
- Trello
- Smartsheet
- Wrike
- Airtable
- Jira
- ProofHub
- SmartTask
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Our Learners Also Asked
1. Is Asana or Trello better?
Both are collaborative, project management apps. Trello is a Kanban app, more suited for individuals than teams. The lack of clear section headers can give a slightly messy look to Trello. Asana is the traditional task management tool that manages larger teams efficiently and more professionally. Its UI looks much more organized with robust templates. Each software has its pros and cons.
2. What Is Asana not good for?
While it helps to track tasks with Asana, it has no features to track time. Its interface can also be a little daunting for the uninitiated. It has a limited assignment, meaning only single members can be assigned tasks, instead of an entire team at one go. It is also an expensive tool for larger teams because its free version is limited to 15 users. Hence, bigger organizations opt for the Asana alternatives and Asana free alternative solutions that are the best fit for their project needs.
3. Is Asana better than Teams?
It would be unfair to compare the two because Asana and Microsoft Teams have very different collaboration features integrated into them, despite both being popular collaborative tools in the workplace. Asana helps to monitor progress in a task, whilst Teams aims to improve collaboration and communication channels between members on a project. Asana is marginally favored over Teams, though, in terms of value for money, functionality, and customer reviews.
4. Is Asana free forever?
If you have a small team of 15, you can stay on Asana’s free plan forever because its free version allows only up to 15 users with the best features and unlimited access. This is why Asana is ideal for small management teams, rather than larger ones.
5. What is the difference between Slack and Asana?
Slack is a communication tool that has the provision to chat with individual members or even the entire team in real-time. Contrarily, Asana is a project management tool that enables managers to define projects/campaigns, set deadlines, assign tasks, track progress, and has more integrations than Slack. Your business needs will determine which software you choose to use, as they are disparate in terms of purpose and functional features. Slack is your best bet for improving workplace communication, while Asana is for streamlining projects.
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Final Thoughts
Business organizations handle multiple and critical client projects. They have an ever-growing demand for dynamic and qualified professionals who can competently and successfully pilot projects and steer them toward successful completion within deadlines. It is imperative for project managers to be well-versed with the avant-garde technological solutions (read effective project management tools and techniques) to ease the workload on themselves and their team members to enhance productivity in the workplace, eliminate stress, and deliver perfection.
If you are keen to jump-start your career in project management or are a mid-level professional looking to enhance your skills, Simplilearn is the place to be in. Our structured certification programs in project management are tailored to suit your needs. With self-paced and blended learning models, hands-on activities, graded assignments, case studies, and interactive seminars, these courses are designed to make you industry-ready. You can lean on our 24*7 learner support and assistance to resolve your queries.
