monday reviews is our latest blog series where we provide the facts about different project management tools—no BS and no hyperbole needed. Keep scrolling for our analysis and to learn more about all the project management tools out there. Enjoy! 😊
When searching for new project management software, monday.com and Asana are 2 names guaranteed to pop up.
With solid reputations — both are valued at upwards of $1 billion — and, at first glance, similar features, you’re probably facing a dilemma. How do you tell which is the best option for your company?
Don’t worry. In this post, we’ll break down the monday.com vs. Asana dilemma, and offer a — refreshingly bias-free — take on what tool is more appropriate for different use cases.
monday.com vs. Asana: at a glance
As 2 of the biggest players in the project management software industry, you might think they’re perfectly matched.
But even at the surface level, you can see clear differences in features, pricing, and positioning between monday.com and Asana.
What about the features?
For the features, you’d expect the 2 options to match up closely, but when you look deeper, you see a different story.
monday.com
monday.com isn’t a simple, ready-made tool that solves a few basic problems. It’s a robust digital platform that lets you create the project management solution you need.With fully customizable workflows, automations, and real-time dashboards, your managers will always feel in control.
And that’s just the beginning. Here’s a small highlight reel of monday.com’s features:
- Complete workflow management
- Drag-and-drop Gantt chart software
- Kanban board, grid, calendar, and other advanced views
- Advanced automation builder
- 40+ native integrations, including Slack, Jira, and more
- Fully customizable real-time dashboard
- Low-code Apps framework to build custom functionality
- Collaborative tools like threaded comments and notifications
Asana
Asana is no slouch on features, either. It offers robust functionality for managing your projects from start to finish.
Here are the feature highlights for Asana:
- Workflow and task management
- Gantt charts and basic timelines
- Kanban board, calendar, and other views
- Team collaboration tools like threaded comments and notifications
- Real-time dashboards
As a task management tool, you won’t miss anything. But when compared to monday.com, you don’t get the same level of customizability.
Many of the most crucial features are also locked into the expensive Asana business plan.
Plans and pricing
Let’s take a closer look at plans and pricing, and which of the options come out on top.
monday.com
The basic plan is best suited for a small team that doesn’t need advanced features or automations.
Our standard plan includes the majority of our essential features. You get access to:
- Automations and integrations (250 actions per month)
- Complete workflow management
- Unlimited projects and work items
- Guest access and user control
- Gantt charts and other advanced board views
- A real-time dashboard that combines up to 5 boards
Our pro plan includes 25,000 actions, native time-tracking, and more.
Finally, our enterprise plan is available for businesses that value enterprise-grade security features, plus greater control and support.
For a more detailed breakdown of our plans and flexible pricing options, check out our pricing page.
Asana
Asana offers a basic free plan, but the premium plan starts at $10.99/user per month and is very limited.
If you want to access workflow management features like automations and integrations, you need to invest in the $25/month business plan.
With it, you get access to:
- Gantt-like timeline view and other advanced views
- Unlimited tasks, projects, and storage
- Portfolio views — overview of multiple projects
- Full task management system including due dates, assignees, and more
While both tools go above and beyond a task list, Asana hides its most useful features in a fairly expensive plan.
Reliability and customer service
Unplanned downtime, or an inability to reach customer service when you need help can considerably slow down a project.
In 2020, unplanned server downtime cost 51% of businesses more than $500,000per hour. Even from third-party tools, it can stop an entire office of workers from doing their job properly.
monday.com
At monday.com, we take our 99.99% uptime SLA seriously. We track and log all incidents in real-time on our uptime page, where you can view and analyze live data.
We also realize that it’s not just actual downtime that can stop you from getting work done.
If something unexpected happens, or you can’t figure out how to do something, you need access to help.
That’s why monday.com offers 24/7 support for all customers. We’ll answer anytime, anywhere, with a guaranteed average response time of under 60 minutes.
Asana
Asana also does a good job investing in robust uptime monitoring tools. They’ve got a publicly available log that you can check that showcases their recent performance. But, they don’t seem to offer a 99.99% uptime SLA for their enterprise plan, like we do.
For customer service, Asana vaguely claims that it offers “priority support” for all its plans, without defining what that means.
Advanced: customizability and automations
Let’s go beyond the basic project management features, and see how the platforms will actually help your teams get more work done.
From our experience, it all boils down to features that help companies standardize and automate their workflow.
monday.com
With monday.com, you can easily go beyond basic automations. Use robust, native integrations to automate your workflow across tools — 250 monthly actions come with the standard plan.
- Easily customize, save, and re-use templates
- Color-code items to help you grasp the project status at-a-glance
- Use widgets to create a custom dashboard from scratch
- Our low-code Apps Framework lets you easily create a custom app
Asana
You can use native integrations and basic automation rules to automate your workflow. But they’re only available in the business plan for $24.99/user per month. At that price, it’s a pretty big investment for small businesses.
Asana doesn’t currently offer a low-code framework to make it easier for you to create the functionality you need.
That doesn’t mean you don’t have any customization options — they’re just more limited than monday.com. And, for a small business or personal project, the out-of-the-box features may be enough.
monday.com vs. Asana: which one is right for your business?
If you just want a free tool to manage some basic personal or small business projects, Asana — which offers a free version — is a good choice.
But for business needs, it’s a very different story.
monday.com is fully customizable, letting you build your very own software management system on top of our Work OS platform. You can even use our Apps Framework to quickly build an integration with your own custom software.
Use our library of 100+ workflow templates, and customize them easily with new status colors, columns, and more to standardize how your team works.
You can do everything in our simple drag-and-drop interface.
Since Asana offers a free plan, it may seem like the more economical choice, but every paid plan is more expensive than monday.com’s equivalent. So if you need premium features, monday.com is actually the more affordable option.
Standard tools can only get you so far
80% of companies are aiming to accelerate their digital transformation in 2021. Without the right platform, you won’t be able to truly digitize your workplace.
While both are solid options, at monday.com, we’ve dedicated ourselves to give our users the functionality they need to build their own custom tools.
That way, you can take advantage of the power that 75% of large enterprises expect to use by 2024 — citizen development.
We give your employees the foundation they need to create a smarter, better workflow in your company. Try out the monday.com Work OS with our free 14-day trial and feel the difference.
