Asana review: A great tool for power users

Asana is a popular project management tool. Well known for its colourful interface, its cheerful façade hides a powerful engine beneath. Whatever needs doing, Asana can handle it. The only real downside is that it comes with a hefty price tag – if you decide to pay for it at all. But how does it compare to other project management software?

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Asana review: What do you get for the money?

Asana offers three plans that scale in terms of features. The free plan features everything you need to run most basic projects, including a list-based view, a kanban board and a calendar. However, it caps the number of users at 15, meaning that teams larger than this will need to upgrade.

The upgrade might sting a little: at £9.49 per user per month (when paying annually), it sits at the high end of the market. You get plenty of excellent features for that money, though, such as the ability to build forms, set milestones for your organisation, and further customise your workspace. That said, not all those features will appeal to every business, so Monday.com’s equivalent plan, which costs just £8, may be a better option. 

As good as the Premium plan is, it would have been better had Asana offered a plan that sits between the two, where the features of the free plan remain but the 15-user cap is removed. For example, Wrike offers roughly the same number of features as Asana in its free plan, but there’s no cap on the number of users you can invite.

The jump from Premium to Business is also quite steep. At £21 per user per month when paying annually, it’s about as expensive as such plans get. That said, the outlay might be worth it for larger businesses, since Asana adds a lot of extra functionality. This includes the ability to manage multiple projects through so-called portfolios, keep track of organisation-wide goals, plus time-tracking tools – although you can add the latter through plugins, too.

The free plan remains generous, then, but we would describe Asana as pricey. We won’t argue it’s not good value – you get a lot of interesting features for your money – but if you don’t need all of Asana’s bells and whistles, then you may want to consider other, cheaper options instead.

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Asana review: What’s it like to use?

Asana has one of the most user-friendly interfaces on the market, and it feels as though plenty of other project management software out there has taken its cues from Asana over the years. For example, like Monday.com or Wrike, the list is the base view for Asana, where you can order your tasks into separate groups, assign team members and set priority levels. 

This list works very well, although the list’s columns can only be adjusted with a set template; more free-from columns are for Business subscribers only. Moving cards can feel a bit slow at times, but it’s our only gripe with it.

The nice thing about the list is that any sections you create automatically transfer over to the kanban board. This saves plenty of hassle and therefore time, since when you move one card in one view, it moves in all others, too. 

Like the list, the board is excellent. Much like Trello’s option, there’s a lot of information on the front of cards, allowing you to see plenty at a glance. Moving cards is far easier than it is in the list view, too, so if you’re likely to be doing a lot of that, the board may be a better option.

A third view is the timeline, which, in our opinion, isn’t as good as the others. It tries to be a Gantt view, and although we guess it will do in a pinch, if you need an actual Gantt view that displays dependencies, then you may want to check out either Wrike or a dedicated tool such as TeamGantt. Alternatively, you could also just use Asana’s built-in calendar, which is up to the task.

The calendar delivers a pretty good overview of what’s happening when, although you may want to resize it a tad; it can feel a bit large on first opening it. Still, between the calendar, the list and the board, you have a solid, dependable task management tool.

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Asana review: Are there any other useful features?

As solid as the basic tools are, they’re not Asana’s main strength. The software offers a large suite of advanced features that you won’t find anywhere else. For example, it offers automations, but adds a twist: you can automate entire workflows with Asana. This means that a single action can see an entire cascade across your whole organisation. It’s a huge time-saver.

Asana also offers a better overview than most other tools. Data-driven managers will likely love the Dashboard view, which shows exactly what’s going on in a single project. Below is a simple example, but it scales very well to larger projects.

You can also set up so-called portfolios, where you can view the progress of several projects at once – perfect for larger companies that may be pursuing several goals at one time. Speaking of which, Asana also lets you set future goals and roadmaps, which are great for reminding you about the bigger picture, hopefully preventing you from becoming bogged down in day-to-day tasks.

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Asana review: Should you sign up?

There are many good reasons to sign up to Asana. The free plan is great for small teams with modest needs, and stands tall among other free project management tools. While the paid plans might be a little overpriced for small companies, if you’re running a larger team that needs advanced features, Asana should probably be your first stop.

When it comes to long-term planning or managing multiple projects, Asana is among the best out there and well worth checking out, even at its admittedly high price. Both the Premium and the Business plan come with 14-day free trials, and we recommend you give them a whirl if you think they have what you’re looking for.

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