Anyone who’s experienced the tiresome hunt for the right task management solution knows that the struggle is real. Some tools are plastered as glorious ones with an irreplaceable feature set, while others make the cut by branding themselves as simple go-to solutions for you or your team.
Needless to say, an insightful review of one of the top task management tools was due. Which is why, today I’m reviewing Asana – a popular workflow management software that is used by some of the top organisations as well.
I’ve been using Asana for quite some time now and I thought readers might benefit from my personal experience. This review will feature insights covering the top strengths and shortcomings of Asana, along with my ratings of each service.
Let’s begin!
(Disclaimer: The views mentioned below are completely unbiased. My experience of using the tool might differ completely from yours and it entirely depends on our individual needs and how Asana caters to both.)
Pros
- The user interface is modern and intuitive
- Good speed with a feature-rich portfolio
- Timeline view provides interactive Gantt charts
- Powerful integrations with multiple third-party apps
- A free plan is available
Cons
- The feature ‘multiple assignees for tasks’ is missing
- No budget or expense tracking features
- Limited features in the free plan
Specifications
Customer Type – Small and Medium Sized Businesses
Deployment – Cloud Hosted
Supported Devices – Android, iOS, Web
Pricing Model – Free, Annual/Monthly Subscription
Onboarding – 4.8/5
Getting started with the software is as easy as it gets. The procedure to sign up is pretty straightforward and upon launching, you get a clear overview of all the essentials in the form of a dashboard.
Generally, you can easily find what you’re looking for, but you may have to spend some ample time to get the real juice out of it.
Your Asana dashboard acts as a central repository of all of your tasks and what lies ahead. You also get to experience the ease of picking up where you left off with built-in project templates. They help you quickly gear up for the work and get started without any hassle.
Design and Ease of Use – 4.3/5
Asana’s overall design is not something you would place all your bets on, but it’s enough to keep the ball rolling. The interface of the software is clutter-free and colorful, which makes workflow management interesting.
Occasionally, you’ll also run across something to make you like the software even more. For instance, upon completion of every task, a celebratory animation is played in the form of a unicorn, yeti, narwhal, or phoenix. If you’re not a big fan of animations, you can easily turn these off.
Moreover, Asana comes with a series of keyboard shortcuts for navigating quick actions. You can access the full list of shortcuts by clicking on the ‘Help’ button in the top right corner and selecting ‘keyboard shortcuts’.
Features – 3.7/5
Without a doubt, Asana has a rich feature set to boast about. There are tons of options available for you to play around with. Starting from the basic task management, the tool allows you to cascade into a library of advanced options as you move forward.
Some of the key features you get to enjoy are:
Tasks and Sub-tasks
At its heart, Asana is, after all, a task management solution with its to-do list app capabilities. Equipped with multiple options for managing tasks, Asana helps teams plan and track tasks smartly.
Within tasks, you can create subtasks, add due dates, plug in attachments, and assign tasks. My only grievance with the feature is the inability to assign a task to multiple team members simultaneously.
Other than this, you can also add comments within tasks to give further context to the discussion. This feature helps you get real-time visibility into what’s happening around you and avoid pointless email threads.
Timeline View/Gantt Charts
For any project, getting a crystal clear roadmap of the plan is the key to getting the desired output. In order to achieve this, Asana comes with a timeline view.
Primarily, the tool provides Gantt charts in the form of a timeline. The classic Gantt charts allow you to easily move items and update the information in real time. The beautiful charts also enable you to create task dependencies for identifying relationships among them.
By far, the timeline view in Asana is quite refreshing and is one of my favorite features of the tool.
Shared Calendar
Out of multiple options to view your tasks, one of the most important ones is the calendar. If you want to have a strategic layout of the tasks, Asana has got you covered.
Through a colorful calendar view, you get to share your long term plans with your team. Moreover, you and your teammates can make all the relevant changes and get real-time updates on how to move forward. This can be done through easy drag-and-drop functionality.
Collaboration Features
If your work revolves around a collaboration-rich culture, Asana deals with that too.
Although the tool lacks a live chat feature, it provides some of the basics to foster a culture of team collaboration. You can add files to the tasks, or comment on them to involve your team members seamlessly.
Integrations
Like any other standard task management software, Asana comes with its fair share of in-app integrations.
Up your workflow automation game through the powerful integrations the software offers. The most noticeable ones include Harvest for time tracking, Slack, Microsoft Office 365, G-suite applications, and Zapier.
The software also integrates effortlessly with other advanced tools like Salesforce, Adobe Creative Cloud, Trello and other cloud service providers like Google Drive. Yes, you can integrate Trello with Asana and easily export all of your projects, tasks, and more.
Other Key Features
- Milestones setting for highlighting key events
- A dedicated toolset for managing agile teams
- Workload management through easy drag and drop of tasks
- Custom filters and search tags for viewing specific tasks
- Email reminders and notifications of all the updates
Pricing – 3.8/5
Despite being a little on the steeper side of pricing, Asana is affordable for most businesses and teams. It comes with a 4 tier pricing structure. You can easily go for the one that fits rightly with your team’s needs:
Basic: Free for Up To 15 Team Members
- Tasks
- Multiple Views
- Assignees and Due Date
- Integrations
Premium: $10.99 Per User/Month
- Timeline
- Custom Fields
- Private Projects
- Custom Templates
- Advanced Reporting
- SSO and Advanced Security
Business: $24.99 Per User/Month
- Advanced Integrations
- Advanced Search and Reporting
- Admin Console
- Timeline and Task Dependencies
- Google SSO
- Priority Support
Enterprise: Contact Vendor for Pricing
- All features of other plans
- Custom Branding
- Data Export and Deletion
- Cross Regional Backups
- Data deletion
Security – 4.8/5
It’s safe to say that Asana takes privacy and security pretty seriously. The software provides security features that are compliant with recent EU-US privacy laws. It uses TLS 1.1 encryption for data transfer and has also completed SOC 2 type 1 and type 2 audits for security controls.
Asana also invites data threat claims from consumers through a bounty program. Wherein, if you find a data vulnerability, you can disclose it to the company. As far as my knowledge is concerned, Asana has a strong record of zero security breaches to date. Read more about this program here.
Some of the key security features are:
- GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) compliant data management
- Encryption of shared data for maintaining data confidentiality
- Custom access rights of tasks to distinct team members
- Data export at any time in the form of .csv and .json file
Customer Reviews
Now that you’ve gotten a hang of what I think about Asana, let’s explore what other users on the internet have to say about it (hint: it’s mostly positive):
“Initially it was a bit overwhelming to set up and sort through all of the features and uses, but once you work with your team and figure out a system it is hands down the most useful and intuitive workspace/task management platform. There are always new features and integrations to be learned which is great to experiment and use as you grow with the platform”
“Spectacular tool for project management with robust features and communication functionality”
“It was a very good tool to use, highly user-friendly, quite effective, and very visually attractive. This tool is great for startups in my opinion and the price is fair for the features it has”
“The interface is very helpful and is well organized and easy to digest for new users. You can stagger your “board” with assorted tasks and create tier them with steps. There are great outlines that they provide to you, but you can almost treat it as if it is your own sandbox and do what you want with it. I love that kind of app”
Final Verdict
Staying true to its literal roots, Asana tries to make workflow management as painless as possible. Even though it lacks some of the top-notch features like budget allocation and some resource management software features, I would still give it a solid 8 overall rating. Highly recommended for startups and medium-sized teams, Asana steals the largest share in the top task management software category. Although the software comes with plenty of features catering to the ‘project management’ angle, the reason I don’t consider it a sterling project management software is simply that it doesn’t qualify as one.
If you dig deep, you’d realize Asana does not try to be one either. It provides users with almost everything you’d expect from an elegant task management solution.
So, as a final word, I would say that if you have a small team to manage or your business is in the growing stages, Asana will be a perfect choice. As for Enterprises – you guys should probably look for other advanced options (like Wrike) if you want to stay away from unavoidable complexities.
I hope I was able to provide you with an insightful analysis of the tool. If you decide to go for it or are already using it, do provide your feedback in the comments below.