Asana Reviews

Pros

When we switched to Asana years ago, I didn't appreciate it right away because it's a new environment to me had to make a lot of adjustments. But as I use it every day, I got familiar with the app very quickly. It is very easy to use and might have a little learning curve. Navigating the app is all common sense though, and their help docs are very handy if you got any problems. Even though I'm familiar with the app, when I tried to open their knowledgebase, I was surprised to know there's a lot more I can do with Asana. Even with just the free version, it's so powerful and you can do so many things! It's good enough for SMBs who are just starting out. For me, some premium features are just too much so the essential features are sufficient for my business and work.

Another thing I like is you can switch to Kanban view, so it's a goodbye Trello for me. I use this view often on sprints and it's very handy and effective.

Another feature I like is you can convert an email to a task in Asana just by forwarding it to a specific email they give you, then it will be added automagically in your specific project.

I'm also happy that they have released their desktop app. That's a huge help for me in decluttering my browser tabs.

Cons

Asana is a beast. There's nothing to dislike from this app.

Pros

- I follow my projects with as little movement as possible through simple structure- User interface is simple and efficient with a nice visual structure- Possibility of future planning is effective in a brief and distinctive way, enabling you to view all events smoothly- The app is constantly updated

Cons

- As a user I encounter some uncomfortable features- Multiple advertising notifications on the e-mail- Inability to copy projects to another account- Basic version lacks some features that may be attractive to other users- Sometimes email notifications arrive lateLimited storage space is sometimes not suitable for projects and large work teams

Pros

The UI of Asana is very user friendly that allows me to create new projects and add team members to the project easily.

Cons

I wish Asana made its Team Communication feature simpler.

Pros

Asana's multiple functions and views are critical to my business operations.

Cons

I love everything about Asana. I can't think of anything that can be improved.

Alternatives Considered

Trello

Reasons for Switching to Asana

Asana is way superior to Trello because of its multiple ways of organizing information.

Pros

The number of temples and options available to help you set up a project and assign info, tasks and files

Cons

You can't reply to emails in Asana which means you are always switching between tools for this. Some of the integrations are buggy and you need to pay for some that I would expect would be included.Access to the app functions only being for paid subscriptions is frustrating

Pros

The most demanded method in our work in order to check the achievement of the best for projects and obtain positive results in the management.

Cons

There is no reason to worry about what is negative, on the contrary, it works well in managing and running projects.

Pros

- Task control- Task scheduling- Portfolio- Easiness to assign responsables- Integration with Zapier is amazing

Cons

Their report needs development, its very basic and doesnt help

Pros

In e-commerce space, we might have reduntant tasks for each client that's why Asana is keeping task management (non-technical) regulated and monitored.

Cons

I do not like when the updates are not seen on the task immediately, sometimes it bothers the overall operation.

Pros

Asana was more intuitive than what we used it for at my last job. It worked for assigning projects and keeping things organized. It also allowed for multiple departments to be on the same accord. So things that we were doing on social media would reflect what's on the website. What's on the website would reflect what's on YouTube. etc.

Cons

Though I was a fan, it offered more than we needed. We didn't need it to keep things organized for the most part. But it allows many people access to things they shouldn't have.

Pros

It has the best qualities making it easy to use. My colleagues and I finds it easy to collaborate on several tasks and projects.

Cons

It sometimes delays me the access to my account yet my colleagues are on board waiting. It also does not function well when I post many tasks.

Pros

Asana is very well designed and has a really nice optical appearance.
It helps to structure projects, timetables and priorize tasks in an easy understandable way.
It offers a good mobile solution with the Asana app.

Cons

Although it regularly sets up new features and helpful improvements, some features that are essential to me are missing:
- The overview of my tasks is a list that can not be sorted in many ways. It only offers to select from project, due dates and likes. I would prefer a sorting by due date connected with the priority of the tasks or due date connected with projects. As I often have up to 15 or 20 tasks per day it would be great to sort them more accurately.
- I miss the possibility to priorize tasks independently from their project. E. g. a task is assigned to my within a project and marked there with the priority medium. It though has high priority among my personal due tasks.
- Dependencies (not sub-tasks) cannot be set between different tasks. I would like to have the possibility to set a task as dependent on the completion of another task.

Alternatives Considered

Jira

Reasons for Choosing Asana

Todoist did not offer enough features and our new marketing manager has been using Asana for some time so he pushed a software change.

Switched From

Todoist

Reasons for Switching to Asana

Better user surface, easier to understand, already experiences with Asana. JIRA though is used for IT tasks.

Pros

The thing I like most about Asana is the ease with which you can update a task. Asana has a very simple & intuitive interface. It was very easy to update the tasks, create new tasks, make notes, etc., all from the home screen.

Cons

I have been using the free version, so not all features are available to me. I would like be able to create multiple projects, but I think that is available in the paid version. For now, and for what I've been using the program to assist with, I don't have any cons about Asana.

Alternatives Considered

Todoist

Reasons for Choosing Asana

The last task manager I used was Todoist, but I hadn't used it for some time. I had a friend recommend Asana to me, and he gave me a tour of the product. After that it was easy. Asana was the choice for me!

Switched From

Todoist

Reasons for Switching to Asana

I liked the user interface and the ability to quickly update tasks. Plus I had used the paid version and it seemed all the same features were available on the free version of Asana, so I made the switch. To me, if I upgrade to the paid version, it DEFINITELY seems more powerful than Todoist.

Pros

Implementation easiness saved a lot of time. User provision and giving them the access to play with Asana was a great advantage when it came to a full-stacked IT Development Company like us. Simple and elegant design was another plus mark.

Cons

When it came to the day to day functionalities in use users found it little difficult to take the full potential of the assigned tasks because of lack of details captured. Asana should focus on least functionalities to allow end-users (administrators) to customize data/information capturing fields. If the feasibility is there to add some more data driven fields it could have been a great advantage.

Alternatives Considered

Trello and Freshdesk

Reasons for Switching to Asana

In terms of professional look and feel Asana was in the top of the list even with Trial environments. Lack of customization was a common issue with all these three products, however Asana with standard implementation, covered most of our requirement at that time. That lead us to select Asana over other alternative trails.

Pros

It'a tough to pick one thing that I love, but I think if I had to, it's the fact that when I have an annoying to-do list in my head that I know I am going to want to share with a team member or some other contractor I will bring on to help me with something in my business, I can go to Asana to create a list, do a brain dump and add dates and other info as I come up with them. No need to look for paper (as much as I like to write things by hand) and no need to worry about leaving that written list at home the one time I am away from it and want to add to it. Asana is easy to use and has lots of stuff that gets me by as a free user. When I am ready to take on the expense, it will open up even more great features.

Cons

The expense. It's not bad for one person, but I have a little team that I intend to expand. The fee for Asana is per user. It's worth it. I am sure of that, but as a semi-solopreneur who has a few people to help me from time to time and who wants to solidify things so those team members are a definite fixture, I won't look to take on the expense until I know my business can pay for it.

Alternatives Considered

Trello

Reasons for Switching to Asana

More features to help capture a million thoughts running around my brain that I needed to organize and share with others who are not local to me.

Pros

Asana makes both managing projects and product development simple. Dare I say it? Perhaps even a pleasure. A pleasure because of some of the funky features it has - unicorns fly when you complete a task, friendly monsters peek at you over cards. But it’s certainly not frivolous. Projects are easy to set up and track. Team members can build a clear view of their work. Admins can report on progress.

Cons

It’s a shame you can’t assign tasks to two people. And that, in calendar view, you can’t rearrange tasks into the order you wish to do them.

Alternatives Considered

Pivotal Tracker

Reasons for Choosing Asana

Asana offers better functionality for more complex projects.

Switched From

Trello

Reasons for Switching to Asana

Pivotal is great for software development. But not as easy to set up and use.

Pros

- Asana's interface is extremely well designed, the best possible way for a fun and inviting user experience. I hope you enjoy using it as much as we enjoyed using it.
- Asana is an excellent communication tool, it allows you to eliminate a lot of stress from disorganization in communicating with the team. Problems, requests for feedback, clarifications, questions, and suggestions, will all end up in the activities through the appropriate comment function. The only one allowed.
- Trying Asana Basic, with a team of up to 15, for free, allowed me to work with three small teams, breaking down projects into manageable tasks and setting deadlines for completion. The ability to share documents between teams has also proved useful.
-Asana Basic allowed us to download the app for iOS or Android devices to work and consult updates wherever we are, even offline. We like it.

Cons

1. It was not easy to set up a project at the beginning, the learning curve is tough.
In Asana, projects are containers that allow you to create one or more tasks within them.
This is the furthest away from a Project Manager's concept of a project.

2. I found that having to start over every time I created a project, even when it was repeatable, was like wasting time.

3. In the free plan, you cannot create private projects, meaning that the project is visible and editable by every member of the team.

4. Asana organizes all resources horizontally, flattening their hierarchy. There are no different roles, just people and tasks.

5. The management of risk situations and the consequent negotiation between the resources involved in the project is not envisaged.

6. This is a very serious shortcoming, especially for those who work remotely. It is not possible to assign an hourly or daily cost to resources that are part of the team.

Pros

I love the basic set up and that you can switch between different views (when previously you had to choose one).
Portfolios are great for keeping an eye on multiple projects.
Having the ability to add tasks to multiple projects is a big plus and very helpful so that tasks can be seen from various perspectives. It's helpful also having the tag feature to group related tasks from various projects.
It's great that I can add emails straight to the projects as tasks and it's clickable so if I need to get more info or reply to the email its easy to find and open.
Custom fields are incredibly helpful so we can get the customized information that we need.
Forms I a great feature as well though I haven't been able to get much use of them as they are right now.

Cons

There are minor items that I'm not satisfied with. Automations/rules are very limited & it seems unnecessary to limit the # per project. The triggers & actions are also pretty limited but I understand this is a newer feature. I wish they'd incorporate tags into the automations.
It also seems that the Gmail extension has not been updated in a long time. I wish some of the features were incorporated. For instance, I'd like to note what section of a project a task goes in while saving it. It's not very helpful if I need to go & find it in Asana to edit it.
I wish there were a better way to work with templates, I don't like that templates look like regular projects in your list. It'd also be great if we could have templates for tasks as well.
I wish there was a way to organize your favorites, perhaps by having sections. It'd be helpful if milestones could have a start & end date.
The inbox is a bit overwhelming, it seems to capture everything & while you can just focus on the important items (like mentions) it still feels cluttered when you're on the main view & see every little update.
Reporting could be improved on. It's a bit glitchy whenever you make a change to the report, you have to resave & also the only format that is helpful to me is the CSV but I wish it would produce a Google sheet & I wish we could control what fields get exported.
I wish forms had more conditional logic as I can't really use them well as is.

Pros

The most impactful feature for me is the ability to create separate projects for each of my clients and customise the layout to suite their projects. I love the face that you can now switch between the board, calendar, and list view as I use each for certain projects. The board view is perfect for my Branding and Website design clients as we can see the whole project laid out.
While the calendar view is fantastic for my social media marketing clients where I can view the months and what content to place where during the month.
It is so simple to use that even my less tech-savvy clients can use it and end up incorporating it into their businesses.
I love that I can easily integrate it with my Google Office too.

Cons

The thing I least enjoy about Asana is the pricing. Am unable to afford the paid version with the awesome extra features but I do make do with the free version.

Pros

Asana is a beautiful and flexible tool for managing your project and for team collaboration. The tool provides a very simple and easy to use GUI that provides you with quick buttons for all the common things you would need, such as creating a new project or task, assigning users, notifications, scheduling, permissions, watchers, etc. I am pretty impressed as all these options are available right on the main window in a very intuitive manner, as opposed to a bunch of buttons being cluttered in one area or options buried within menu trees. I love the fact that you can create tasks and organize them as easy as making using a simple todo list app on your phone. You type your task and can drag them and make dependencies too that way. There are several views that you can use, such as the calendar view, comments view, task view, and custom views that you can personalize to suit your needs. The colors are vibrant, simple, and blend well with the white motif. Although it may appear pretty simple, it also contains powerful advanced options such as page settings, task dependencies, special functions for managing users. As a collaboration tool, everyone sees updates to tasks in realtime. Asana also provides nice graphs, statistics, and reports. Asana integrates with other popular tools as well, such as Google Drive, Dropbox, Salesforce, etc. This isn't even everything that Asana has to offer, it is truly a great tool to work with.

Cons

I don't really have anything negative to say about Asana as it has been a pleasure to use. I guess even with a simplistic tool like this, there are still people in our team that struggle with the initial learning curve and need training. I think if Asana had some kind of start tutorial where it guided you through the basic functions and provided explanations for each button and where they are located then that might especially help new users.

Pros

I like being able to click "My Tasks" to see what I need to prioritize depending on deadlines, including multi-workflow projects; it helps me remain on top of my work and guarantee I get everything done on time. With Asana, an easy-to-use project management application that is useful even for rookie or inexperienced users, creating, scheduling, and managing operational workflow, development projects, and team performance becomes simple and comfortable.

Cons

I dislike it when random people in my workplace assign me jobs in Asana with no context or explanation; I believe there should be an option to refuse assignments or seek extra information before they are automatically placed to their task list. Asana is a straightforward and easy-to-use application, however beginner users may struggle to utilize it when they are unfamiliar with how to use it, for example, for project Gantt charts, plan time tracking, and other comparable project functions. counterpart software.

Pros

I have reviewed native applications of big names of the market, that do not finish convincing you, they offer you many promises in functionalities that do not finish concretizing, that is one of the things that I like the most of Asana, it offers you clarity from the first moment, and It gives you at the same time, a simple interface, very powerful and able to get any team to work with the collective work and common goals. In addition, I like that all co-workers can see in digital every progress and achievement achieved of their assigned responsibilities. Also, it has allowed us to be more organized with the meetings and requirements of our clients. As the planning cannot be rigid, thanks to Asana we have identified aspects that can put at risk the global goals of the company, so we have managed to help the department that presents some difficulty. Actually, Asana gives you the full view, it's a genius.

Cons

Entrepreneurs can find in Asana a complete platform and very capable of growing any initiative, that is why I do not identify negative aspects to mention, I have years of use and it is wonderful the ability they have to reinvent themselves in the provision of a service that It looks a lot like wine, it improves with the passage of time.

Pros

There is something very satisfying about having a digital to do list, saved in the cloud, updated automatically and reminding you of key dates, comments and edits. There is something even more satisfying about being able to finally click a little tick button and have an animated unicorn fly across the screen as a reward. It is very useful to be able to keep ALL correspondence relating to a particular task or project in the same thread. This includes text messages, copy, images, PDFs, etc. - all easily downloadable. It's fairly intuitive - looming deadlines are highlighted in red, you can order tasks how you'd like them, you can tag people using the @ symbol like in Gmail and on social media. So, when you are in Asana, all is fine - you can see all your tasks as a list, a project as a whole or separated into Elements. You can even see your team-mate's projects too. Oh, also, adding sub tasks to tasks and sub tasks is very useful. It's not a nice feeling knowing that you can't tick something off your list until it's sub tasks sub tasks have been done, but that's not Asana's fault! It's nice that it emails you to notify you of key events, but this does have a downside. It's good that it ties in with Time Tracking software too.

Cons

So, we have to talk about emails. I, as I'm sure many others do too, have a huge number of tasks assigned to me on Asana. Many of these involve other people - clients, team members, project managers, etc. They all have different deadlines and start dates. Every single action involving you, by default, generates an email. Even after turning many of these notifications off, the Updates folder in my inbox is still so full or notifications, it's very common to miss more important ones. Also, the very fact that there is an Inbox IN Asana itself, means that you are notified of everything twice. This aspect doesn't quite feel right or logical. It also quite frequently logs me out, forcing me to log back in again.

Pros

- Inbox feature. You can stay up to date with any mentions or questions other team members might have for you by checking your inbox. It also reminds you of upcoming tasks and alerts you when new tasks are created in projects you follow. So helpful for staying in the loop!
- Well-designed. The flow of comments on Tasks and the way their is a Conversation and Calendar section as well as Task List is so beautiful. Oh and Files too! There is more to list here than I have space for!
- Fun. Tab+B makes my day. The occasional "celebrations" make checking off tasks a joy!
- Multiple teams. This is super handy for when you need projects that aren't involving everybody on the Team. And yet tasks from all projects show up together in your "My Tasks" view!
- Use of tags, mark-as-waiting-on, custom fields and more features in the paid version that we couldn't live without! But the free version is amazing as well.

Cons

There is not a lot that I don't like about Asana. They are always rolling out new features. There are some small nitpicky things, like no ability to add your own sorters in "My Task" view, but those are way overshadowed by the positives.

Pros

The collaboration opportunities this platform offers is excellent. I also really like being able to assign users are contributors or comment-only. That has been helpful when working with clients who get a little overzealous with their task assigning. Obviously the look and feel are great - it's very intuitive to someone who uses collaborative tools (ie. similar to Basecamp). I also love the drag and drop file archive - we use this feature even more than Dropbox because all aspects of the project can live in one place. The more I can keep my team in this system working, and finding what they need independently, the better.

Cons

Not being able to assign the same task to two people is a pain. I don't want to duplicate the task because that clutters up my project space and can cause confusion (esp when I have a ton of moving parts). . So the option to have two people responsible for the same task would be ideal.

I've had issues with the dependency feature as well. It's not super intuitive - though it's a feature I'd like to use because I'd like to trigger team members to start on certain work once a task is completed - it would make my job as the Sr. PM easier. Maybe blowing out the dependency functionality is something to look into.

One thing I hear ALOT from clients and team members is accessing links from their Asana email notifications. They will click a link and be taken to just that specific task, but they don't understand where that task lives because the project tags aren't obvious enough. If the links could open up the full project with the list or kanban view on the left, and the open task on the right, that would be hugely helpful.

Resourcing is a huge issue for our company so I would love to see something about resource management implemented in the future. I would pay double to have a solid resourcing/traffic view in Asana.

Pros

The excellent user interface provides for a clean and organized way to add tasks to your list, edit tasks, and cross tasks off when completed. As I primarily use this software for business purposes for collaboration with team members within my office, it is a one-stop-shop that has eliminated paper checklists, sticky notes, and "to-do" lists, by combining all of these in a slick web interface. The ease of use results in frequent task updates which can be viewed and commented on by the entire team, ensuring tasks are not missed or forgotten. As I am often working on many projects simultaneously throughout the week, the convenience of adding new projects and tasks to individual projects is extremely helpful to stay organized, view all of the pending tasks, and schedule time accordingly based on completion dates you have inputted for each task. Another great feature is linking emails to certain projects in Asana; a quick copy of the URL for the project in the platform, and you can easily send emails and attachments directly into Asana for effortless filing. As a free software, Asana is an excellent tool to use for group collaboration, or for personal use to make sure you are effectively managing checklist, tasks and projects.

Cons

The major downside to Asana used in a working environment is that tasks can't be assigned priorities, which can result in frequent check-ins on the list to ensure you are prioritizing tasks properly. A color-coded priority method would be extremely helpful in elevating high priority tasks above the rest. As Asana is a cloud-based software, latency can sometimes be an issue resulting in a delay in typing and moving between projects and tasks, though this is only a minor convenience.