Asana vs. Monday: Which project management software is better?

Are you tired of trying to keep track of projects via Excel spreadsheets and Gmail? If so, it’s time to introduce yourself to the ever-growing world of cloud-based project management software. With the right app, you can keep track of everything related to your project in one convenient location.

That includes all tasks, task progress, assignees, communications, and deadlines — and since these programs are cloud-based — you can access them from anywhere. That means you can create and update tasks straight from your smartphone if you’re too busy to drop into the office.

The ease of use and flexibility of these programs is a big reason why they’re so popular with companies of all sizes in today’s age. In fact, as of 2022, 77% of all high-performing teams use project management software.

Yet, with all the options out there, how do you know which platform will work best for your needs?

Out of all the project management solutions out there, Asana and Monday.com are two of the most popular, highly-reviewed tools on the market. That’s why I’m pitting Asana vs. Monday in an ultimate comparison to see which platform offers the best:

• Features

• Pricing

• Collaboration

• Portfolio management

• Task management

• Customer support

• Ease of use

Without further ado, read on to learn more about Asana and Monday.com to see which project management system will work best for you.

Asana at a glance

Asana is a cloud-based project management software that was the brainchild of former Facebook executives in 2008. They envisioned Asana as project managers’ one-stop shop for:

• Task delegation

• Time tracking

• Project creation

• Workflow management

• Collaboration

• Team management

The platform uses a centralized dashboard that acts as a hub for team communications — eliminating the need for cumbersome back-and-forth emails. Managers can assign tasks to employees, complete with descriptions, due dates, attachments, and more.

Each task can have several stages before its complete, such as draft, draft review, and editing stages for blog posts. Asana also uses kanban boards, Gantt charts, calendars (timeline views), and list views to visualize your workflows in a way that’s easy to understand.

Asana also has some robust reporting features, allowing users to monitor task progress in real-time, set goals and milestones, and keep track of how busy your employees are with your tasks.

While automation isn’t included in the free version, the Workflow Builder add-on (starting with the Premium plan) grants you the ability to automate repetitive workflow tasks, which is a plus.

If your team contains less than 15 people, you’ll be able to use Asana for free. For this reason, Asana is a fantastic choice for small teams and entrepreneurs. Its Premium plan starts at $10.99 per month, which is the ideal plan for small to medium-sized businesses.

The software has seen a massive surge in popularity in recent years. In 2021, G2 ranked Asana as the #1 leader in project management. Due to its versatility, Asana is a popular choice for startups, small businesses, and even enterprise-level companies.

Monday.com at a glance

Monday.com got started in 2012 as a technology company offering SaaS (software-as-a-service) tools for project management, sales, CRM, and more.

An Israeli startup, the company went by the name ‘Dapulse’ at first (a reference to pulses, Monday.com‘s version of tasks). Yet, this name proved to be a problem, and the company would find lasting success after changing its name to Monday.

Monday.com is famous for its versatile functionality.

Monday provides various products, and they aren’t all centered on project management features. Here’s an overview of Monday.com‘s offerings:

• Monday Work Management. This is their flagship workflow management tool. It allows users to create projects, manage tasks, automate workflows, collaborate with team members, and more.

• Monday Marketer. This is the perfect tool for managing marketing campaigns. You can start new marketing projects, create a content calendar, manage digital assets, and monitor your campaigns.

• Monday Sales CRM. That’s right, Monday.com even has a customer relationship management tool available for users. It features clever visualization tools for your sales pipeline, lead management, contact management, and post-sales management.

• Monday Projects. This app is a bit more in-depth than Monday Work Management. It allows you to tackle advanced projects, portfolio management, critical paths, and program management.

• Monday Dev. Monday Dev provides an attractive toolset for development teams with bug tracking, sprint dashboards, roadmap planning, and scrum & kanban features.

As you can see, the Monday.com suite is a versatile array of programs that appeals to different types of users. Developers can use it to track bugs, marketers can generate leads, and general teams can manage their projects.

Individual tasks are called ‘pulses’ and work similarly to tasks on Asana and cards on Trello.

Core feature breakdown

Now let’s take a look at the core features of both programs, including collaboration tools, automation, dashboard views, integrations, task management, and project creation.

As previously mentioned, Monday.com has many different products that you can use for project management. Yet, for the purposes of this article, we’re going to stick with Monday Work Management, its general project management tool.

First, it’s crucial to distinguish that Asana uses multiple dashboard views while Monday.com only uses one.

That’s not necessarily a good or bad thing, as it will entirely depend on your preferences. Asana offers more versatility with its calendar view and list view, but Monday.com opts to keep it simple so users don’t have to jump back and forth between views continuously.

Also, Monday.com does not have a calendar included in its basic plan. While it’s possible to use calendars with Monday, you have to go with one of its paid plans.

First, let’s see how each program stacks up in terms of general task management.

Task management: Asana vs. Monday

Task creation is lightning-fast in Asana, but that’s primarily due to the fact that you don’t have to enter as many task details as you do on Monday. Depending on your needs, that can be either a good or a bad thing.

While you’ll be able to create tasks quicker on Asana, Monday’s tasks offer more information at a glance. On Monday, you can see a tasks’:

• Team

• Owners

• Timelines

• Color-coded status updates

• Task progress

That’s quite a bit of information, but you can delete some of the columns if it becomes too overwhelming.

With Asana, task creation involves:

• Create a task

• Set goals/deadlines

• Create any dependencies

• Assign the task to a team member

This process is quicker yet still provides enough information to inform team members within a few seconds.

On Asana, your employees can view all the tasks assigned to them via the My Tasks dashboard, complete with deadlines for each one. Each task can contain attachments, links, descriptions, and employee communication (users can leave messages to each other in the task view) — all of which makes team collaboration a breeze.

Monday’s Pulse system

Monday handles task management in a similar way, except it refers to its tasks as ‘pulses.’ Each pulse comes with the following:

• An activity log

• FAQ section

• File attachments

• Comments section

Users can arrange pulses in columns to create a customized task flow.

The Task Overview feature allows managers to create, assign, and track pulses for employees.

Asana’s task dependency system

Asana has a task dependency system built-in that’s included in all plans, which is something it has over Monday.com.

What’s a task dependency system?

It’s a feature that allows you to start specific tasks only after others are completed first. That will help you avoid completing tasks out of order, which can cause confusion and mistakes.

An example would be setting the publishing of an article dependent on the completion of the copy editing first. Otherwise, your staff may publish a blog that has yet to be edited/proofread.

Monday does not have a built-in task dependency system — but there is a workaround. You can create a dependency column to create connections between tasks, preventing some tasks from starting before others are completed.

Winner: Asana

Both platforms have some excellent task management features, but Asana edges the victory here since its capabilities are a bit more robust.

Portfolio management: Monday.com vs. Asana

Portfolio management is a necessity for any project management solution.

Why is that?

It’s because a portfolio management tool helps you view the bigger picture in terms of your progress toward major milestones and goals. After all, if you’re hyper-focused on a single project, you’ll likely lose touch with all your other projects. Good portfolio management involves balancing your short-term and long-term goals in the most effective way possible.

Luckily, both Asana and Monday have portfolio management tools, so let’s check out what they have to offer.

Asana has a portfolio management feature that works exactly like its project management tool — only you view project progress instead of task progress.

To see a list of all your ongoing projects, zoom out of your day-to-day tasks until you’re able to see your entire portfolio.

It’s a straightforward yet highly effective way of visualizing your overall progress, which can help you stay on track.

Monday also has a portfolio management feature, albeit one that’s simpler in nature. Its Groups feature allows you to group similar tasks and projects together, which can help you identify missing project details in seconds. While you won’t be able to gain as many insights as Asana’s feature, it still comes in handy.

Winner: Asana

This one wasn’t much of a contest. Monday’s Groups capability is user-friendly but goes less in-depth than Asana’s portfolio manager.

Workflow management

Both Asana and Monday.com have some excellent features for managing your virtual workspace.

Asana makes keeping all your critical project details a cinch with its intuitive color-coding features. Just by glancing at the task, you’ll be able to tell:

• Who’s working on each task

• Which tasks they’ve completed

• The deadline for each task

Workflows in Asana are called views, and it offers quite a few of them. Users can view their tasks and workflows in the following formats:

• A timeline

• A Gantt chart

• A kanban board

• Task list view

The variety here adds significant flexibility to Asana, as users are able to pick the view that suits them best. For instance, you may prefer using kanban boards instead of timelines or Gantt charts. Yet, you’ll appreciate its calendar view whenever deadlines are steadily approaching.

However, workflow management is the area where Monday.com truly shines the brightest.

That’s because it offers the largest variety of ways to view your projects and tasks, including the following:

• List view

• Timeline view

• Gantt chart

• Kanban board

• Map view

• Pie chart view

As you can see, Monday even lets you visualize tasks as maps and pie charts, which is not only unique but can come in very handy. For example, if you need to manage location logistics for international clients, the map view is a real lifesaver because of how much time it can save.

Winner: Monday.com

You just can’t beat the versatility Monday offers when it comes to workflow management, which is why it takes the cake in this round.

Collaboration: Asana vs. Monday

Next in our Asana vs. Monday showdown is to compare team collaboration features.

After all, collaboration is at the heart of any project, as nothing would get done without it. Collaboration features are also some of the most crucial for project management solutions. Without them, you’ll be forced to go back to the Excel/Gmail combo that makes collaborating a nightmare.

So what collaboration features do Asana and Monday offer?

Asana’s user interface has a project message board that employees can use to:

• Send each other DMs

• Comment on individual tasks (with the ability to tag one another)

• A calendar to set and view deadlines

Besides that, Asana users have to attach documents via third-party apps like Google Docs or Google Drive, as it has no built-in document sharing/creation system. There’s also no online whiteboard, which can be disappointing for some.

Monday.com has a bit more to offer in the way of collaboration than Asana. Besides task commenting, an instant messenger, and a calendar view — Monday also has an online whiteboard and document collaboration.

That means you won’t need to use third-party apps like Google Docs to create and share documents on Monday, which is definitely a plus. Its document creation tool is robust, as you can collaborate with others via messages and comments.

The online whiteboard makes it effortless to brainstorm, collaborate, and storyboard project ideas with team members, no matter where they are in the world.

Winner: Monday

There’s no denying that Monday.com has more collaboration features than Asana, including its excellent document collaboration tool and online whiteboard.

Integrations: Asana vs. Monday

For a project management tool to integrate seamlessly into your existing workflows, you need it to integrate with the right programs. Both Asana and Monday can integrate with tons of different applications, from instant messaging apps like Slack to CRM software like Mailchimp.

Asana integrates with a whopping 150+ integrations, including the following:

• Dropbox

• Microsoft Teams

• Zoom

• Evernote

• Dossier

• Jira

• Salesforce

• Zapier

• ClickUp

• Wrike

As you can see, Asana integrates with some of the most popular business tools on the market. You can also use apps like Time Camp to add a time-tracking functionality to Asana.

Monday.com doesn’t integrate with as many apps as Asana, with only around 50 or so. Yet, it still integrates with popular tools, such as:

• Salesforce

• Outlook

• Google Drive

• Zoom

• Trello

• Asana (yes, you can integrate Asana into Monday)

• Adobe Creative Cloud

As another bonus, Monday’s integrations are customizable, which is something Asana doesn’t have.

Winner: Asana

It’s hard not to pick Asana here, as it has the most integrations out of the two. Yet, Monday has the added bonus of customizable integrations, which some users may find more desirable.

Both programs are available to mobile users through their Android and IOS mobile apps.

Pricing: Asana vs. Monday

Last but not least, let’s take a look at the pricing tiers for both programs to see which will give you the most value for the money.

Asana pricing plans

Here’s an overview of Asana’s pricing:

• Basic (free plan): $0 per month, basic workflows for up to 15 people, three project views, basic reporting

• Premium: $10.99 per month, four project views, unlimited essentials, automated workflows

• Business: $24.99 per month, advanced workflows, advanced reporting, personalized support

The free version is ideal for small teams and freelancers, while the premium and business plans work great for larger teams.

Monday.com pricing plans

Here’s an overview of Monday’s pricing:

• Individual (free plan): $0 per month, up to 3 boards, 200+ templates, up to 2 team members, and 20 column types

• Basic: $8 per month, unlimited boards, 5G of storage, prioritized support

• Standard: $10 per month, timeline & Gantt views, calendar view, guest access, 250 automation actions per month, 250 integration actions per month

• Pro: $16 per month, chart view, formula column, private boards and docs, 25,000 automation actions per month, 25,000 integration actions per month

Both have pretty standard pricing plans, but we have to give Monday the edge here, as it’s more affordable, has more features, and offers more pricing plans.

The verdict: Asana vs. Monday

Now that we’ve compared both programs in terms of primary features, collaboration, integrations, and pricing — it’s time to declare the winner in the matchup Asana vs. Monday.

We have to give the edge to Monday.com overall, as it has amazing features, flexible pricing, customizability, and many ways to view your projects. It also has more robust features for teamwork, and there’s less of a learning curve than there is with Asana (you’ll definitely need to view a few tutorials before starting Asana, but you can jump right into Monday.com).

That’s not to say that Asana doesn’t have its place in the project management world — it’s one of the most popular programs for a reason.

If task management tools are what you’re most concerned with, then Asana is by far the superior program. Yet, Monday.com offers more overall, especially considering its different products (CRM, marketing, web development, etc.)