Asana claims to be the best project management software on the market, and its clients include some of the biggest names in the business, such as Spotify, Nasa, General Electric and the New York Times. However, while over 100,000 organizations worldwide use Asana to manage their projects, it is not the only PM software that software development teams can choose. That’s why we’ve come up with a list of the best Asana alternatives, so you have some options when looking for a project management tool to boost your team’s collaboration and productivity. But first, we’ll summarize Asana’s features and pros and cons.
Features of asana
As mentioned, some of the world’s top organizations use Asana to help their teams manage software projects and stay on the same page. And when you look at Asana’s feature set, it’s easy to see why it’s so popular:
- Ability to manage projects, tasks, subtasks, Kanban boards for visualization and monitoring of work
- List, Timeline, and Calendar views
- Collaboration through followers, task comments, statuses, private messages, and project and team conversations
- Task dependencies
- Custom Quick Start Templates
- Shared calendar to see what teammates are working on
- Customizable and shareable dashboards to measure progress across projects and teams
- Customizable and downloadable charts
- Custom fields to suit your workflows
- Workflow builder for creating automated processes
- Forms for submitting and managing works in one place
- Automation to spend less time on daily repetitive tasks
- Load to see what’s on team members’ plates and ensure you don’t get overwhelmed
- Reports that offer real-time insight into progress
- Budget monitoring
- File attachments via your computer, Google Drive, Box or Dropbox
- Application integrations with Slack, Zoom, Google Drive, etc.
- Mobile apps for iOS and Android
Prices of asanas
Asana gives project managers four pricing plans to choose from. The Basic, fundamental the plan is free forever and helps teams or individuals break down with project management at no cost. with Basic, fundamental plan, you get tons of features to help you manage personal commitments and tasks for your small team, such as unlimited tasks, projects, messages, activity logs, and file storage. You also get multiple views (list, board, calendar, etc.) over 100 integrations and collaboration for up to 15 team members.
It’s an asana Premium plan costs $10.99 per user, per month when billed annually. It helps teams create project plans with additional features such as unlimited dashboards, custom fields, timelines, workflow builder, forms, rules, milestones, task templates, start dates and times, unlimited free guests, and private teams and projects.
For $24.99 per user, per month, you can access Business plan features that help teams and companies manage work effectively. It gives you everything from Premium plan, plus approvals, verification, portfolios, workload, custom rule builder, and advanced integrations with Power BI, Salesforce, Tableau, and more.
If you need additional support, security and control, Asana has it Company a plan that offers everything from Business plan, plus custom branding, data export and deletion, SAML, attachment controls, and more. You will need to contact Asana directly to receive custom Enterprise pricing.
Strengths and weaknesses of asana
Asana has a lot of strengths in its favor, but some of its weaknesses may make you look for an alternative project management solution. Here’s how Asana stacks up:
Project Management Asana Strengths for Developers:
- A great free forever plan that’s full of features for up to 15 team members
- Flexible enough to be used by other departments in your organization outside of software development, such as HR, finance, etc.
- Great for Agile teams with support for Kanban and Scrum, bug tracking, sprint planning, roadmaps, feedback, work requests, product launches and more
- Multiple views to visualize progress (Kanban boards, workloads, calendars, portfolios, timelines)
- Customizable dashboards
- Extensive collaboration tools
- Lots of integrations with third-party tools
- Automation that saves time
Weaknesses of Asana Project Management for Developers:
- It can be difficult for beginners to learn
- A mobile application can burden users who are on the move
- Disruptive notifications (you can turn them off, thankfully)
- Assigning tasks to multiple users is a clumsy process
- It may have too many features for small teams looking for a simple PM solution
- No previous time tracking
You can learn more about Asana by reading our Asana project management tool review.
Project management software is an alternative to Asana
While Asana is known as one of the best project management offerings on the market, you may find options that better suit the needs of your development team. Here are some of the best Asana alternatives worth considering during your search for PM software.
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Jira is one of the best Asana alternatives for Agile software development teams. Used by many productivity software developers, it is highlighted by Kanban boards, Scrum boards, roadmaps and cutting-edge reporting. Jira is also the choice of many development teams because of its DevOps, bug tracking features and integrations.
You can learn more about Jira in our Jira project management software review.
ActiveCollab
Smaller development teams may find ActiveCollab better suited to their project management needs than Asana. Its interface is easy to navigate and has multiple task views (list, column, timeline) to accommodate followers of Agile, Waterfall, Kanban and Scrum methods. In ActiveCollab, you can collaborate through in-app comments, notes, discussions, and chat, time tracking, resource management, workflow management, and integrations with other apps (including Asana).
You can learn more about ActiveCollab and its developer features by reading our ActiveCollab project management software review.
Airtable
True to its name, Airtable uses customizable tables to plan and organize tasks. Part spreadsheet and part database, Airtable offers multiple views (form, Kanban, grid, calendar), interface designer, automations to streamline your workflows, reporting, templates (product launch, Gantt, product roadmap, etc.) and integrations with Asana and other popular applications.
You can learn more about Airtable by checking out our review of the Airtable project management tool.
Hive
Hive is a highly rated project management software that works similar to Asana in that it uses tasks as building blocks. List makes it an alternative for project management because it offers some features that Asana doesn’t have, like native email, time tracking, note taking, comprehensive checking, and multi-user actions. Most importantly, Hive is easy to use, while Asana is known to be a bit of a learning curve.
Read our Hive Project Management Review to learn more.
Smartsheet
If you prefer the old-fashioned way of managing tasks and projects with spreadsheets, Smartsheet might be your favorite Asana alternative. It offers time tracking, budgeting, resource management, Kanban boards, Gantt charts, automated workflows, templates, and other features that have helped other teams see productivity gains of up to 70 percent and 60x faster setup times.
Read more about its features in our Smartsheet PM software review.
ClickUp
ClickUp makes the list of alternatives to Asana because it makes it easy to assign multiple team members to a task. ClickUp is also ideal for Agile development teams thanks to its huge library of automations (you can also create custom ones) and more than 100 integrations. Speaking of integrations, you can use Zapier to integrate ClickUp with Asana.
Learn more about ClickUp in our ClickUp project management review.
ProofHub
In ProofHub, you can assign tasks to multiple users and is known for giving managers a high level of control over projects and teams. You can track time in ProofHub with timesheets, take notes, create to-do lists, use Gantt charts, and collaborate through discussions or chat.
ProProfs project
Although very easy to use, ProProfs Project can help you manage complex projects. The Asana alternative features tons of professionally designed templates to get you started, and also lets you assign tasks to multiple users. Other ProProfs features worth mentioning include a risk mitigation feature that helps you identify potential bottlenecks, Gantt charts, a shared calendar, time tracking, task comments and discussions, file sharing, drag-and-drop project prioritization, and excellent reporting.
Alternative project management tools for developers
Still not finding the right option to fit your software development team’s project management and collaboration needs? Check out some of our other PM software reviews for more options: