Organizations turn to project management software to manage deadlines, client work, and day-to-day activities across the company.

Asana and monday.com have emerged as two of the top project management software in the industry. Their third-party integrations, ease of use, and task management features allow them to cater to the different needs of project managers and their teams. They also make project management more user-friendly, so you don’t have to be a project manager to take advantage of their best features. 

So, which one is the best? Asana and monday.com offer organizations and individuals tools to streamline processes, manage projects, and collaborate across teams. While both project management tools have user-friendly features, finding the best one for your business is crucial. 

Our detailed Asana vs. monday.com review can help you compare similar features, pricing, pros, and cons to make an informed decision. We’ll mention where these are similar to most project management software and areas where both Asana and monday.com excel.

In this article, we’ll cover the following:

  • What is Asana?
  • What is monday.com?
  • Asana vs monday: Features comparison
  • Asana vs monday: Customer Service and Support
  • Plan and pricing comparisons
  • Alternatives to Asana and monday.com
  • Final thoughts on your options

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Asana vs. monday.com: A brief description of both

What is Asana? 

Asana is a popular, cloud-based project management app for medium and small businesses. It offers features for team collaboration, project portfolio management, task management, workflow management, and more. 

Asana is great for project management

Asana lets you track task progress through multiple project views.

With the list view, you’ll see the duration and assignees for each task. You’ll also see the number of comments and dependent tasks next to the task name. Non-intrusive icons help you quickly discern priority tasks from less important ones.

Asana makes it easy to visualize information with Gantt charts, calendars, and Kanban board views. This flexibility helps each team member organize their work in the way that makes the most sense to them.

Asana benefits many projects, whether it’s a marketing campaign, sales strategy, or heavy development work. 

What is monday.com?

monday.com is a Work Operating System (Work OS) that allows companies to create tasks, visualize project progress, store documents, and collaborate better. The software combines powerful features into one project management tool for a more comprehensive view of work. Businesses of all sizes can use it for better team collaboration, work automation, bug tracking, and transparency.

monday.com pairs valuable metrics with an inviting interface that users can easily understand. You can customize the dashboard to show various statistics like project timelines, team member workloads, financial goals, etc.

While Asana’s comparatively minimal UI is by no means ineffective, monday.com really excels here. By using visual elements like colored tags, labels, and progress bars, monday.com has created an experience that’s easier to adjust to.

Both monday.com and Asana make it easy for project managers to set up, assign and manage tasks. They can also provide your organization with data to help you understand the general health of your company and make resource decisions.

Asana vs. monday.com: Features comparison

Although the core features are similar, Asana and monday.com present them in different ways. Consider the complexity of your projects and the number of people collaborating to get the best app for you.

One important note is that you’ll likely find the features you need for project management in both systems. Asana and monday are both extremely robust and offer a comprehensive list of features. Your best option is to ensure you have what is mandatory and then decide based on the advanced functionality you require,

Here are some key factors to help you decide the suitable project management tool for you, Asana or monday.

Team management

In Asana, you can create tasks, set deadlines, and assign them to team members by clicking the Add Task button. The app creates three categories for better task management features and functions: created tasks, assigned tasks, and completed tasks.

Once you’ve assigned tasks to your team, you can track each team member’s capacity with the Workload feature. 

You’ll be able to see their workloads over time, set maximum work hours, and reassign tasks by dragging and dropping them to other team members’ sprints. Planning projects and making adjustments on the fly becomes significantly more manageable as a result.

monday.com takes a detailed approach, allowing you to keep up with your projects and their progress. Task management is simplified.

At first glance, some users may be encumbered with the vast amount of information at their disposal. Fortunately, monday.com lets you remove elements and customize the dashboard to your liking.

monday.com dashboard

Start by choosing from several components like milestones, status updates, and a timeline view. monday.com becomes considerably more effective when you tweak it to your unique needs. Because it offers a wide range of insightful widgets, balancing workloads and budgets becomes much more manageable.

Workflow management

Asana lets you view your tasks through a list, a calendar view, timelines, or a Kanban board. Task dependencies ensure that you work step-by-step on your bigger projects. You can easily use the drag-and-drop functionality to move tasks to the view you choose.

Asana’s Workflow Builder takes workflow management a step further. You’ll be able to automate multiple aspects of project management and save time. 

You can set Rules that will automatically assign tasks to specific people when they reach a particular stage, view reports on your team’s performance, and create unique workflow templates for different projects.

Thanks to its numerous visualizations, monday.com helps you break down complex projects into smaller assignments. 

Switching between different workflow units is easier than in Asana, too — you can switch between projects, to-dos, or views without changing browsers or pages.

monday.com’s workflow builder is called Automations. Automations eliminate repetitive tasks from your workflow so you can focus on finishing your most important work. 

You can use Automations to move tasks through various project stages. Your team will be notified when a project:

  • Reaches a specific date
  • Is moved 
  • Is assigned to someone new
  • Items are created or changed
  • Items move within boards
  • And many more

Automations let you create layers upon layers of custom triggers, conditions, and actions for virtually any situation. Monday.com has options that work across multiple boards. With this, you can create one board to serve as a general project management location while each individual task and project gets its own board. 

You can automate updates and information flow to simplify management across a department or company.

Portfolio management

Portfolio management is one unique aspect that distinguishes Asana and monday.com from other project management tools. It refers to managing all ongoing projects in a single space. Also, it balances short-term achievements against long-term goals.

Asana’s basic plans include this tool as its core portfolio feature. You can monitor the progress of each ongoing project so you always know when you’re on track or need adjustments.

On monday.com, the approach is different. Asana’s portfolios are essentially hyper-customizable dashboard reports. On the other hand, monday.com offers groups that can bring ongoing projects together in a single place. From there, you can create reporting within your groups, such as project status or comparisons with different elements.

Monday portfolio management

On monday, you can save views to get similar aspects that you can then navigate between.

The effort is similar but has a different path and name. From our testing, teams should be able to accomplish what they need with either platform.

Communication management

Asana features a robust team management system that allows team collaboration on projects and tasks. The Team Page stores announcements and all conversations within a company. This includes shared calendars for meetings and due dates.

Regarding team management, Asana is one of the best for enterprise organizations, as shown by having over a million teams, including those from Amazon, P&G, Spotify, and more. At the same time, monday.com is extremely well rated by Agile teams and startups.

monday.com has a streamlined team management system providing access to shareable data. You can add people for full collaboration or as visitors to read-only boards.

Asana team management

Asana allows you to comment at the team level, on projects, and on tasks for better communication management. Initially, monday.com only allowed you to comment on tasks. However, they’ve been rolling communications updates regularly to include new collaboration tools for projects, within work docs, and more.

Asana allows you to collaborate and communicate with your co-workers about projects easily. You can start a conversation in chat windows or comment on a task directly. You don’t have to worry about missing out on important information.

monday.com also keeps you up to date with your team. Clicking on any project task lets you mention, comment on, attach files, and add GIFs to that task item.

Asana vs. monday: Integrations

Integrations have become one of the significant ways that a project management tool will try to differentiate itself. Use your specific needs to trim down your task management or project management software shortlists.

To prove this, Asana and monday.com boat list on their websites that they support more than 200 integrations.

Asana was one of the first PM tools to pursue such a high number. Its core offerings include integrations for its API, Zapier, Google Drive, Slack, Dropbox, GitHub, Gmail, Microsoft 365, Adobe, Salesforce, Jira Cloud, etc. You can also integrate Asana with Hubstaff for synced projects and time tracking. 

monday.com lists core services like Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Gmail, plus CRMs, marketing tools, communications options, conferencing tools, development services like GitLab, and many more. It is perfect for managing small teams and medium-sized businesses looking to grow into large organizations.

Both offer their own APIs that your developers can use to integrate with other services or even your custom software and dashboards.

For support, each project management tool operates like most SaaS platforms with a mix of communications and service levels.

Integrations

Asana’s core support offering relies on chatbots. You’ll navigate to its help page and follow a series of questions that may push you to different articles. If you can’t find what you need, you create a support ticket. Response times can vary based on your plan and the company’s workload.

For enterprise customers, Asana provides 24/7 English support and will respond to inquiries filed via its web form within two business hours.

One thing to note from Asana’s forums is that you shouldn’t create multiple tickets for a single item. Whenever you make a related ticket, it can push you to the bottom of the list. In multiple posts, users have noted you may wait up to a week depending on your plan and seats.

On the monday.com platform, you can access 24/7 support by clicking the “?” symbol witihn the tool and hitting the “Get Help” option. You can ask a question or submit a ticket. They also have ongoing email support.

The free account has some limitations on support, but monday.com offers priority support starting at its Basic paid options. The Enterprise plans improve the 24/7 support with priority queuing. Enterprises also get a dedicated account manager for individual support on other tasks like onboarding.

Asana vs. monday.com: Plans & pricing

Asana and monday.com offer various pricing tiers depending on the licenses you need. Although Asana is pricier, they both offer a free plan. The free versions are enough for freelancers, small teams, and solopreneurs.

With the Asana free version, you can collaborate with 10 more people, while monday.com limits you to just two seats. This Asana plan offers the basics you need for simple projects, such as Android mobile apps, access to iOS desktop apps, and unlimited projects and tasks. But you will miss some advanced features like priority Rules, the timeline feature, and the workflow builder.

monday.com offers free users access to over 200 template options, three boards, and unlimited documents. For free project management software, this is a steal. However, you will miss out on Timelines, Gantt views, and automation. If you’re using this for multiple projects or if you share images and videos on boards, it can be worth upgrading to a paid account for a minimum of 5GB of storage.

Here’s a little more about your plan options with each program.

Asana pricing

Asana has five tiers that you can use depending on your size and functionality needs.

  • Asana’s free plan for teams of up to 10 offers no limits on tasks, projects, messages, activities, and other core functions. You even get access to its iOS and Android mobile apps.
  • Starter plan: Asana’s paid plan starts at $13.49 per person monthly. It includes unlimited free guests, dashboards, and task templates. This tier adds advanced views like Gantt, dashboards, and customizable project templates. This plan supports up to 500 teammates.
  • The Advanced plan costs $30.49 per month per user. You will have advanced reporting options and four visualization features. This shines in automation, with more than 25,000 actions supported monthly. You also get access to multiple portfolios, improved goals, and advanced reporting.
  • Asana offers Enterprise and Enterprise+ plans with custom pricing. These are for large organizations and remove many caps on seats, views, and integrations. If you have advanced compliance needs, such as HIPAA, then these tools make sense.
  • You can lower your monthly fees by signing up for an annual plan. Non-profit organizations can also get a discount if you let Asana know — scroll down to the bottom of its pricing page for more information.

monday.com pricing

The monday.com service also offers five pricing tiers. Here are some highlights of these options:

  • The Free plan includes up to three boards, unlimited documents, access to templates, and mobile apps. It is limited to two seats.
  • The Basic plan costs $12 per seat per month and adds unlimited items and free viewers. You get 5GB of storage, a single dashboard, and advanced customer support.
  • The Standard plan costs $14 per person monthly. It adds timeline and other views, guests, automation, integration, and more dashboards.
  • The Pro plan is $24 per month per seat. It expands other limits and adds private boards, multiple views, and time tracking support.
  • The Enterprise plan comes with custom pricing, removed caps, enhanced cybersecurity options, onboarding help, and enterprise-specific support.
  • You’ll save 18% by signing up for an annual plan. 

7 alternatives to Asana and monday.com

There are well more than 100 project management tools on the market today. You also can find plenty more options with project management features added to a different type of program. So if you’re having the Asana vs monday debate, here are seven additional options for you to consider:

1. Tasks

Hubstaff Tasks is an agile project management software that helps your team do more with less. You get visual and clean sprint planning, Kanban board, to-do lists, and time tracking support. Automation is quick, you can easily track tasks, and views can be adapted to each team member’s needs.

Hubstaff and Hubstaff Tasks

2. Basecamp

Basecamp is a mix of task management and team communication. It’s been around for more than 20 years and has a very established user base. It’s very easy to collaborate on the platform, but it risks becoming cluttered and does not offer as many advanced features that enterprise teams would need.

3. Jira

For Agile project management needs, Jira is usually the go-to. It is a common choice for developers and designers to plan, work on, and release software projects. It may have the largest integration base with apps and native support for more than 3,000 options. Higher paid plans tend to be favored over the basic plan.

4. Smartsheet

If you love a good spreadsheet, this may be the right fit for your team. Smartsheet relies on the spreadsheet style for organizing your projects. It’s a reliable choice with more features as you move from Excel or Google Sheets into the world of collaborative project management.

5. Teamwork

Teamwork is strong for task management and tracking with a mix of invoicing options. It isn’t as robust in terms of analytics or Agile management as Asana or monday.com, but it does simplify many core functions.

6. Trello

Trello is Atlassian’s project management software designed for teams that need a highly visual platform. It’s great for recurring tasks and projects that move predictably without complex needs. Like other collaboration tools, Trello has a deep bench of integrations on free and paid plans.

7. Wrike

Wrike is a visual project and task management tool that makes it easy to see project statuses. It has a robust set of automation, more than 400 integration options, and a unique proofing feature that supports real-time comments and collaboration on core documents or tasks.

Asana vs. monday.com: Which is better?

Project management tools are designed to improve efficiency and increase work productivity. Asana and monday.com are both powerful software to help you track time, organize your work, and collaborate with others in your organization. Now that you understand their key differences, it is up to you to pick the perfect fit for your company’s needs.

Are you still looking for a different option? 

Try Hubstaff project management software for free with our basic plan or trial a premium option for free for 14 days. We offer a more streamlined version of the features that Asana and monday.com have but at an affordable price.

Hubstaff Tasks takes an “Agile for everyone” approach by giving you automated Stand-ups, drag-and-drop Sprint views, and Timelines. It also integrates with tools like Hubstaff for time tracking — which makes it a more comprehensive solution for time and project management. Sign up for Hubstaff Tasks’ free plan to see for yourself.


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Category: Product