Asana
9 comparisons available
About Asana
Asana is a work management platform founded in 2008 by Dustin Moskovitz (Facebook co-founder) and Justin Rosenstein (former Google/Facebook engineer), built to eliminate reliance on email for team coordination and now one of the leading cross-functional project management tools with 150,000+ paying customers. Asana's strength is cross-functional work management — it serves marketing, operations, HR, finance, and product teams equally well, not just software engineering. Asana's view flexibility is a key feature: the same project can be viewed as a list, board (kanban), timeline (Gantt-style), calendar, or portfolio. Asana's dependency model allows linking tasks so that blocking relationships are explicit — when a task is completed, downstream tasks are automatically unblocked and assignees notified. Asana Portfolio provides executive-level visibility across multiple projects in a single dashboard, showing status, workload, and risk across an entire department's work. Asana Goals links team projects to company-level OKRs — individual task completion rolls up to project milestones, which roll up to goals. Asana Rules automate repetitive work: when task status changes, assign to a different person; when a due date passes, flag the portfolio. Asana integrates with 300+ tools: Slack, Google Workspace, Microsoft Teams, Salesforce, GitHub, Jira, Zoom, and Figma. Asana AI (2024) adds smart status updates, subtask generation, and workload balancing suggestions. Asana's free tier covers unlimited tasks and projects for up to 15 users — among the most generous in the project management space. Asana went public in 2020 and generates $700M+ ARR.
Frequently Asked Questions
Asana vs Jira — which is better for software teams?
Jira for software engineering teams needing sprint planning, story points, velocity charts, and deep developer tool integrations (GitHub, Bitbucket, CI/CD). Asana for teams where engineering works alongside marketing, design, and operations — Asana's cross-functional features, timeline view, and portfolio management serve mixed teams better. Many organizations use both: Jira for the engineering team, Asana for company-wide project coordination.
Is Asana free for small teams?
Asana's free tier (Personal plan) supports up to 10 users with unlimited tasks, projects, list view, board view, calendar, and 100+ integrations. Timeline view (Gantt), advanced reporting, and custom fields require the Starter plan ($10.99/user/month). Premium users accessing just Asana to view and complete tasks count as limited members at no cost — viewer-free pricing makes Asana accessible for teams with many stakeholders who don't edit projects.
What is Asana Portfolio?
Asana Portfolio is a high-level dashboard that aggregates multiple projects into one view, showing each project's current status (on track, at risk, off track), completion percentage, team owner, and due dates. Portfolio is designed for team leads and executives who need cross-project visibility without drilling into individual projects. Combined with Asana Goals, Portfolio creates a three-level hierarchy: Goals (company OKRs) → Portfolios (initiative groups) → Projects (specific workstreams).
Top Alternatives to Asana
Jira
Engineering-focused issue tracking — Jira for developer sprints; Asana for cross-functional teams
Linear
Developer-first issue tracker — Linear for engineering speed; Asana for non-developer teams
Monday.com
Visual work management with automation — Monday for highly visual, automation-heavy workflows
Notion
All-in-one docs + tasks — Notion for knowledge base + tasks; Asana for structured project management
Basecamp
Simple async-first team coordination — Basecamp for flat simplicity; Asana for task dependencies and reporting
Trello
Simple kanban boards — Trello for visual card management; Asana for richer project tracking