Asana Review: User-Friendliest Project Management Tool?

Before, teams had to be in the same room or building to collaborate, but not anymore. This makes the way they organize and network essential. Asana claims to be able to help with both.

We took an in-depth look at Asana and will let you know who the project management platform is for and what it does better (and worse) than its competitors.

Asana is a project management tool developed by the US-based Asana Inc. The company was founded by two former Facebook staffers who learned first-hand how much time a growing company wastes on busy work.

To reduce the amount of "work for the sake of work, " they developed a tool that helps teams stay on top of upcoming tasks and focus on the most important. Asana was launched in 2012 and is now used by more than 100,000 businesses and millions of teams.

But does Asana make it easier for teams to work together? Or is it just another tool that workers have to learn for their managers's sake? To find out, we put the platform through an intensive review.

To start, you'll need an Asana account (free). Just register with a valid email address and answer a few questions about yourself and how you intend to use Asana.

Once registration is complete, you can set up your first project with the help of an AI assistant. This also serves as a kind of tutorial, since Asana shows you its basic features along with the most important layouts and views.

Once registered, you'll start a 30-day trial phase during which all of Asana's premium features are available. Once this period wraps up, you'll be switched to the free version, unless you purchase a subscription.

Asana's interface does a good job of balancing the amount of information against clarity and is divided into four main areas:

When you click on a task within a project, a detailed window will open. This includes the task's most important information, such as its due date, priority, and dependencies (should it have any).

You can add custom fields to your tasks, which we'll discuss in greater detail below in the next section.

When you use Asana, tasks and projects are the most important organizational levels. The platform's hierarchy consists of five such levels, which are easy to understand and process from largest to smallest:

You can visualize projects in Asana in many different ways. To alternate between views, go to the header bar and select an existing view or create a new one.

Asana offers nearly all the most common views, along with a few additional options. Here's what's available:

Asana covers all of the most important views. If you'd like to organize tasks in a table, you might be disappointed with Asana's Lists view and prefer Airtable or Smartsheet options.

Another downside is that you can't add geographic dimensions to your project, like with ClickUp or monday.

Below, we've prepared a comparison of Asana's features with those of the other platforms we reviewed:

Asana offers a mobile app for project management on the go. It displays your projects and tasks in a simplified List, Board, or Calendar view. You can also create new projects and tasks.

The app is best suited for checking upcoming tasks, adding new ones, or changing responsibilities from anywhere. Since you don't have access to the platform's full range of features, we prefer the web application.

Asana's user interface is sleek and modern, but there's much more to it than just looks: It also works very well.

Despite how much information it provides, you won't get lost since areas are neatly organized and there aren't any delays or loading times to contend with.

Even team members who aren't well-versed in project management tools will quickly become comfortable with Asana. Taken together, its interface is one of the best on the market.

Tasks are Asana's most important organizational level for everyday use: Each activity performed within a project should be added as a task or subtask.

There are several ways to add new tasks. You can click on "Create" in the interface's upper left or add the task directly to the project.

After that, give it a name and assign it to a team member. Only one person can be assigned responsibility for a task, however, there can be multiple contributors/collaborators.

In addition, you'll have plenty of choices for editing tasks. In the Lists view, task attributes can be completed in table form. However, you can also click on a task to open a detailed window.

There, you'll find all of the most important options: Due date, priority, project status, along with dependencies and subtasks (if any). You'll also see all contributors and can share comments with them.

Do you need more than the presets for your project's tasks? No problem: You can add custom fields to any task. Just click on the "+" symbol in the upper right (List view):

Next, name the field, select what type it is from the dropdown menu, and, if necessary, adjust any of the other parameters.

Custom fields can be created locally at the project or portfolio levels, or added to the global field library. To do the latter, check the box next to "Add to [Company Name's] field library".

Asana offers basic field types (text, numbers, and single/muti-select) and forms. However, compared to the other tools we reviewed, options are limited.

Table-based platforms like Airtable and Smartsheet simply provide much more, as you can see in our comparison table below:

You can further solidify your tasks within Asana's organizational hierarchy by defining goals and milestones. Here's how they differ from one another:

Moving down the hierarchy, you can break tasks down further into subtasks and sub-subtasks. Every subtask can be assigned to a different collaborator, who will then complete it (and other subtasks) with their colleagues.

Dependencies between tasks can also be indicated. For this, you'll have two options: Tasks can either block a particular task or subtask or be blocked by other tasks/subtasks.

In this way, you can better schedule the sequence in which tasks are completed and let team members know when they can start on a particular assignment.

So far as additional task features are concerned, Asana does nearly everything right. Below, you can see a comparison of its features:

Asana makes it possible to not just comprehensively describe and visualize tasks, but also to organize them within a project's hierarchy. You can break them down into subtasks and indicate how they impact one another.

Our only complaint is that there could be more custom field types.

Asana is meant for teams. This is even visible in its pricing structure, as a minimum of two licenses must be purchased. Most of its features are designed with collaboration in mind.

If you're working in a team, one of the first things you'll do in Asana is invite collaborators to your company/organization.

The easiest way to add new team members to your Asana account is by clicking "Invite" in the bottom left. After that, you'll be able to send them an invitation either via email or link.

New collaborators can then be added to a team, along with that team's portfolios and projects.

Asana has three main user types:

You can subdivide your Asana organization into teams, just like your company. Teams consist of multiple members who all contribute to the same project.

There are three visibility levels for teams. They can be: (1) visible and open to anyone, (2) visible to anyone, but only joined by request, or (3) private and membership by invitation only.

Once your teammates are on Asana, you can jointly work on tasks and projects. The platform focuses on project-based collaboration: You can assign each other tasks, discuss them in comments, tag others, and share likes.

There are also a few messaging features: You can message one or more members, or set up quick, automatic notifications. Use the "Teams" area (sidebar menu) to contact all team or project members.

All the same, Asana sticks to the basics: Conversations and messaging features focus on projects, teams, and tasks, which are the platform's strengths.

Asana messaging features aren't designed for quick exchanges. As such, it won't be able to replace a communication platform like Slack.

The platform has relatively few advanced collaboration features: There's no forum feature, Wikis (like what Basecamp offers), or the ability to jointly edit documents and whiteboards in real-time (like with ClickUp or monday).

We've prepared a comparative summary of Asana's collaboration features here:

Asana is designed for teams and does well when it comes to working together on projects or tasks. For directly communicating, however, Asana lags behind several other tools from our review series.

Asana includes many advanced features, many of which might not be visible at first glance.

You can create forms for any project with Asana and use them to gather important information and data. These can be designed for internal usage by teammates or external, third parties.

To access the form editor, click "Customize" in the upper right of the Projects page (sidebar menu).

Use the editor to name and describe your forms, add a cover image, and drag and drop questions.

You'll find all common field types: Text (lines and blocks), numbers, single or multi-select, dates, attachments, and email addresses. In addition, you can add headers to further segment the form.

You can assign responsibility for the form to one of your teammates and specify who can see it. In addition, you'll get a link and embed code for the form.

Whenever someone completes the form, it will be shown as a new task in the project it's attached to. This allows you to effectively gather and utilize data.

While on the topic of gathering information: Use Asana's reporting feature to visualize project data for a variety of different purposes.

Simply click on "Reporting" in the sidebar menu to the left and the "General Dashboard" will open. Here, you'll find an overview of all the charts and diagrams you've created, and be able to add new ones.

It is possible to combine different diagrams or charts on a single page to emphasize particular real-time metrics for your audience (i.e. performance data for your supervisors).

Asana offers a few ready-made charts that you can directly integrate into your dashboard, divided into the categories "Resourcing", "Work health", and "Progress".

However, it's also possible to add custom charts. For these, you can adjust the diagram's style, its reporting focus, axes, and filters.

As such, Asana offers plenty of options for visualizing data and filtering results. These, in turn, provide greater insight into how your projects are progressing.

In the world of projects, many routine tasks and workflows go through the same steps every time they occur.

With Asana, you can automate these processes, saving your organization time and allowing your teammates to focus on what's important. There are two main tools for doing this: Workflows and rules.

Workflows are cross-team work processes that always follow the same pattern. In the "Workflow" screen of your project, you can automate these processes with the Workflow Builder.

You'll do this by breaking down each workflow into different segments, representing each of the project's phases.

You can further define workflow phases with rules. These are automated processes that follow the logic of "When x happens, y occurs". Each rule consists of a trigger and an action.

The trigger can be optionally bound to certain conditions that need to be met for the rule to be activated. Asana offers several pre-defined rules for common processes, such as the creation of subtasks or the shifting of tasks.

However, you can also create your own rules using the available triggers, conditions, and actions. It's possible to integrate external programs (like Slack or Google Calendar) into these.

This makes it possible, for example, to automatically send a message to a Slack channel when a task is completed.

Asana's clever fusing of rules and workflows makes the platform's automation features all the more powerful and excellent for visualizing a variety of different workflows and processes.

Since there are so many ready-made templates, using them isn't difficult either.

By now, Asana has integrated a few AI features into its platform. For these, Asana uses its own, proprietary machine-leaning model, as well as third-party language models, like OpenAI and Anthropic.

The platform's AI features mostly help in terms of project administration: You can generate personalized suggestions for your tasks or teams based on filter models.

The OpenAI models are primarily used in the comments area: Use them to summarize tasks and discussions or reply with automatic answers to questions. It's also possible to query the AI about project progress:

The AI features are nice, but it seems like Asana added them solely to be able to say that they integrated AI into their platform: None of them are indispensable.

It's possible to integrate other cloud-based tools that you and your team use into Asana, and there's plenty to choose from: There are hundreds of apps available beyond the basics like Google, Microsoft, Slack, and Salesforce.

And, if you still can't find what you're looking for, Asana offers an API for self-designed integrations.

And there's still more! Asana offers resource management tools (such as those for time tracking) and security features like its Audit Suite.

For an overview of Asana's additional features, check out our comparison table below:

There's more to Asana than just task and project management. We particularly liked its approach to automations, and the versatility its combination of rules/workflows offers.

For reporting, there's lots of room for flexibility and customization too thanks to the user-defined dashboards and charts.

Asana provides a well-stocked Help Center filled with tutorials, video guides, and case studies.

The videos are particularly effective at informing and introducing beginners to the platform's basic features. Its articles include plenty of GIFs and other visualizations too.

Beyond that, Asana provides a few onboarding courses in its Academy, as well as regular live training, and a community forum.

Subscribers (regular, non-Enterprise users) can only get direct support through filing a ticket. There's no live chat or hotline. Our support ticket was answered to our satisfaction within 5 hours.

More support channels would be nice, but the speed and quality of the support we received during testing were solid.

Asana offers five subscriptions, three of which are for smaller teams, while two are for larger businesses.

The Starter and Advanced subscriptions aren't ideal for individuals as at least two licenses must be purchased to use them.

We've prepared an overview of Asana's subscriptions here:

So, how does Asana do in terms of price compared to the other project management platforms from our sample? The answer depends on your needs.

The free version is relatively generous, offering unlimited tasks and projects, as well as collaboration with up to 10 teammates. A premium subscription is more expensive than other tools with similar features though.

Take a look at our ranking below to see how all of the project management platforms featured in our test fared. To compare them, we chose the subscription that included 10 users and unlimited projects:

Asana is worth considering: The platform supports team-based projects with its polished and well-thought-out user interface. Chances are good that you'll be able to enrich and simplify your existing workflows with it.

But looks aren't all: Asana offers plenty of different views and task features, along with powerful automation and reporting tools.

Despite the positives, there are a few drawbacks: Collaboration tools are limited to the necessities, and Asana won't become your go-to team communication hub.

In addition, compared to some of the other services we looked at, customization is limited, particularly in terms of user-defined fields.

If you can live with these limitations, you'll find Asana to be a versatile, and sharp-looking platform that makes it easy to efficiently manage all sorts of different projects.

What do Asana customers have to say about the platform? We read through verified reviews and summarized the most frequent feedback below:

For something as sleek as Asana and slightly more versatile, check out monday.

If you're after greater detail, ClickUp is worth a look: The platform is even more flexible and customizable than Asana, but not as user-friendly or elegant.

You can find more of the best alternatives to Asana here: