Trello vs. Asana: Which of These Project Management Tools is Better?

Good project management is essential to taking care of all the moving parts of a business, especially when you start hiring other people. In this Trello vs Asana guide, I’ll take a close look at these two popular project management tools to determine which is better.

If you’ve read this post, you have all the knowledge you need to choose the best project management tool for your business.

Trello vs Asana: an introduction

Trello

Trello is essentially a digitized version of a Kanban board, a vertical organization method that organizes different phases of a project into columns and uses sticky notes for individual tasks. Tasks can be easily moved from one phase to the next using drag-and-drop technology.

asana

Asana is a more traditional project management tool with a greater focus on results, tracking, and teamwork. The program also offers multiple ways to view tasks, including a traditional list view and a board-style view.

Trello vs Asana: Features

This section looks at the features associated with each tool’s free plan. If you want to learn more about the paid plans, you can jump straight to them pricing Section.

Trello vs Asana: Interface and Ease of Use

Trello

There are two areas of the Trello interface: Yours Workplace and boards.

Workplace

The workspace is your main account area where you can view, manage, and create boards. There is also a “members‘ tab where you can add people to your workspace, and a ‘settings” section where you can control the visibility of your Workplace and/or connect it to Slack.

Premium users can also click theworkspace table.” This allows you to view tasks from multiple boards in one place so you can quickly check the overall progress of connected projects. For example, if you have an email newsletter related to your blog, you might want to create a workspace table where you can view tasks related to both the blog and the newsletter.

Note that you can connect multiple workspaces to one Trello account.

boards

Boards are the main way projects are displayed in Trello. Everyone plank is organized in vertical lists, making it easy to group related tasks. You can customize the names of each list to suit the needs of your project. For example, if you run a blog, you might have columns for Ideas, Draft, In Progress, Planned, and Published.

Individual tasks can then be added to lists as cards. These are basically the digital equivalent of sticky notes: you can easily rearrange them or move them to new lists as a project progresses.

You can also customize each card with different types of information, including a text description, image attachments, a task checklist, and a due date. Premium users can also create custom fields, e.g. B. a word count field for blog posts, and assign cards to specific members.

automation

Trello users also get access to automation through Butler. You can change this at any time by clicking on the “automation” button in the top right corner of any plank. This will open a pane where you can view the different types of automation that Butler offers.

The most useful area of ​​this automation is the “Rules” Setup pictured above. This allows you to determine what happens to cards when a specific action is taken. For example, you can set it up so that when a due date is marked as done, the corresponding card is automatically sent to the “In progress” List. This is a great way to ensure cards are moved when they should be, without having to rely on your team to remember them every time.

asana

Asana’s interface is organized very differently than Trello’s. Signing in takes you to a personal dashboard with two main content panels: a private panel listing your priorities and a list of the projects you are currently working on. This dashboard is one of my favorite things about Asana because it allows you to see upcoming and overdue deadlines instantly without having to search for a specific task to see its deadline.

Project overview

The next area of ​​Asana is the project dashboard. This area includes the project title, a brief description, a list of team members involved in that project, supporting documents, and a status indicator that lets users know if the project is on track, at risk, or completely out of control.

This overview is a great advantage for complex projects, especially those with multiple supporting documents. However, with simple projects, it feels like an unnecessary step between you and the to-do list.

tasks

With the free version of Asana, you can view tasks as a list, wall, or calendar. I especially like the calendar view because it provides a visual indication of task deadlines.

Once you’ve added a task to your list, you can edit it to add a description, assign your teammate, and choose or change the due date. You can also add subtasks and assign separate due dates and team members to each subtask.

Track your tasks

One thing that really stands out in the Trello vs Asana debate is “My tasks” Territory of Asana. In this area, you can view all the tasks assigned to you and organize them into categories based on when you want them done. You can also add separate categories if you want to organize tasks differently.

This is a great way to prioritize your tasks, especially if you’re working on multiple projects.

communication

There are three main ways for teammates to communicate in Asana:

• Inbox. This space is for messages between members who are part of the same organization but don’t work on the same projects. Messages that do not fit into any specific project can also be sent here.
• project news. Each project has its own “messages” area for communication between teammates. Only people assigned to that project can see messages sent here.
• task comments. People can leave comments on tasks within a specific project.

This variety of communication methods creates more robust collaboration opportunities than what you get with Trello.

Goals

Note that Asana does not track progress toward these goals; You must manually enter any progress made. You can set it up to remind you at strategic intervals, e.g. B. once a week.

reporting

Asana’s premium plans also offer excellent reporting capabilities. You can create charts to track a variety of metrics, including custom charts to track metrics unique to your projects.

Trello vs Asana: Add-ons and Integrations

Trello

Trello offers a wide variety of “power-ups” — the company’s term for add-ons. This includes things like workflow tools, a board chat for improved communication between team members, and a tool for creating customer personas.

You can also use Power-Ups to connect Trello to a variety of external apps, allowing you to manage everything from company files to customer support and social media. Some of the most notable integrations are with Google Suite, Slack, and HelpScout.

asana

Asana connects with many different third-party tools, so you can manage almost every aspect of your business in one place. Notable integrations include the Google Suite, Microsoft Office, and Salesforce.

Note that you must manually enable any integrations you want to use with Asana.

Trello vs Asana: Pricing

Trello

Along with the free plan we discussed earlier, Trello offers three Premium Plans:

• Default. Available for $5 per person per month billed annually ($6/person/month billed monthly). Includes everything in the free plan + unlimited boards, advanced checklists, custom fields, unlimited storage (250MB/file), 1,000 workspace commands per month, single board guests and saved searches.
• Bonus. Available for $10 per person per month billed annually ($12.50/person/month billed monthly). Includes everything from standard plan + dashboard view, timeline view, workspace grid view, calendar view, card view, unlimited workspace command executions and a variety of management and security features.
• Company. Available for $17.50 per person per month billed annually (no monthly billing available). Includes everything from the Premium plan + unlimited workspaces, company-wide permissions, org-visible boards, public board management, multi-board guests, and additional security and management features.

Note that the per-person price listed counts users who are part of your workspace and multi-board guests, not people invited to work on individual boards.

asana

Along with the free plan discussed previously, Asana offers two Premium Plans:

• Bonus. Available for $10.99 per person per month billed annually ($13.49/person/month billed monthly). This plan includes everything from the free plan + automated workflows, reporting, unlimited users, personalized community support.
• Company. Available for $24.99 per person per month billed annually ($30.49/person/month billed monthly). This plan includes everything from the Premium plan + advanced reporting, project and portfolio goals, advanced workflows, and personalized customer support.

Asana has a full guide on how to do this which users are counted in billing.

Trello vs Asana: the verdict

👉 Well, first, here’s a quick recap of the winners in each category:

• Features: Trello
• Interface: Trello for projects with minimal collaboration; Asana for more collaborative projects
• Addons and Integrations: Tie
• Pricing: Trello