Project management tools help streamline projects for businesses and individuals alike. Worldwide use of project management is on the rise. If you’re looking for a reliable project management tool, you will surely find two names among some of the best, Trello and Asana.
They both offer great functionalities that can make both your personal and business project management efficient. However, they also have some features that make them perfect for certain use cases. So choosing one between these two is very difficult.
With big users such as Google, Adobe, Accenture, Uber, Airbnb, they are both established names in the project management arena. Let’s find out which is the best project management tool between Trello vs Asana.
Brief Overview of Trello
Initially started as Fog Creek software, Tello first became public in 2011. It was released at Tech Crunch’s Disrupt Conference in September 2012 and immediately got appreciations for being an innovative software.
It was the first project management tool that introduced Kanban Board. By 2012, it was rapidly advancing and crossed the 5,00,000 users. In early 2017, Trello was acquired by Atlassian, the parent company of Jira.
Brief Overview of Asana
Founded in 2008, Asana was developed by two former Facebook executive, Dustin Moskovitz and Justin Rosenstein. Out of the frustration of how hard it was to coordinate the team and get relevant information on work that has been done and left, they decided to build an automated process. They started working on a tool called “Tasks”, which was highly effective for their internal uses on Facebook.
In 2008, they left Facebook to focus on the tool for greater use and decided on the name “Asana”. The name “Asana” is a Sanskrit word that resembles Yoga posture. According to Asana, they wanted to build a tool that will “bring ease, focus, and flow to a world otherwise full of chaos.”, hence the name “Asana“.
Trello vs Asana – Key Differences
Both Trello and Asana offers above-par features and has excellent applications. But they do have some dissimilarities in the feature set, target customer, use case, and also in their price range.
Let’s have a look at the key differences between Trello and Asana.
Use Case & Specialties
Trello is better for a small team with a simple business process. Its intuitive task management system makes it very easy to manage a project that can be streamlined with a physical kanban board.
Trello relies heavily on its kanban board, which is the prime focus of this tool. You can even add external viewers to the board, who can monitor the state of the project from the board.
Asana is great for large scale businesses with complex projects to maintain. A manager who wants to lead a big team and needs everyone to work in the same motion to complete the tasks can get the most out of this software.
The visual changes with every completed task or ongoing project make it very easy to track for a manager. Its ability to help large scale projects made it a clear choice for big organizations.
Related: Effortless Project Management with WordPress in Five Easy Steps
Versatility
Between the two, Trello is certainly better in terms of versatility. You can use Trello for pretty much anything you can think of. Whether you want to manage a personal project or a small business project, it can stand out as a clear choice.
Asana, on the other hand, is suited mostly for businesses that have complex business processes. But it does mean that Asana is great for the work it does because it only focuses on managing large scale projects.
Team Limitation
Unlimited users can use Trello under a single license even on the free version. So there’s no limit to the number of people you can include on your team.
If you choose to use Asana, you can manage a team of 15, unless you decide to buy one of their premium packages.
So if you have no budget to spare on project management as of now, Trello can be your mate.
Dependency Management
Task Dependency Management is a very handy feature for project management tools.
Using task dependency management, you can mark a task to be dependent on another task or person. This makes it easy to know who is responsible for a delay in work completion.
This important feature is available in Asana, but unfortunately missing on Trello.
Ease of Use
When it comes to the most popular software, one thing is common, ease of use. Both Trello and Asana are very popular for project management, so you can expect to experience a great user interface that is simple and intuitive.
However, of the two Trello is certainly the easier one to install and use. It will take you very little time to get used to it, while Asana might require some documentation reading before you can be an expert on it.
If you look at the UI, both are trendy and modern. Kanban boards visual is especially eye-catching for both the product. So there’s actually no clear winner in terms of easiness between Trello vs Asana.
Pricing
Both Trello and Asana are priced very reasonably. Trello offers a free version with unlimited users with a limitation of 10 boards per team. You will also miss lots of innovative features, which will cost you $9.99/month per user. You can also opt for their Enterprise package, which will reduce the per-person cost as the number rises.
Asana also has a free of cost version which you can use for a team of 15 people at max. However, for a bigger team, you must buy their Premium, Business, or Enterprise version. Their Premium version starts at $10.99/month per person, while the Business version will cost you $24.99 for the same. To get the Enterprise version, you need to contact their sales team directly from here.
Final Verdict – Trello vs Asana
Finally, it’s time to choose. Trello vs Asana, which is the better option? We had a hard time choosing between these two, as both of them are exceptionally featureful.
For use case, we think Asana is tremendous, and Trello doesn’t train behind for much. But Asana is slightly better for its focus on being the perfect choice for large businesses.
Trello, however, is more versatile than Asana. Both are priced quite similar, while Trello is slightly cheaper and also offers a free version for unlimited team members. The free version lacks features but can be good enough for a small organization.
Overall for its stability and crucial dependency management feature, we think Asana is slightly better than Trello.
What’s the Best Project Management Tool for SME?
We have talked about the best of the best when it comes to project management. But the top end software is not always the most cost-friendly choice of project manager for SME’s.
If you are an SME business owner, WP Project Manager can be a great choice for you. You can start using it free or buy the premium version that starts with a flat $79/year.
This WordPress-based project manager also offers some very good features like Time Tracker, Gantt Chart, Kanban Board, and most importantly unlimited user support.
So, for SME’s, we think WP Project Manager is a clear choice.
Wrapping Up
Trello vs Asana is a continuous debate because of its quality. They both are best in what they do and users often have a hard time choosing between these two. We think we were able to clear your confusion on whether you need Trello or Asana or even WP Project Manager to manage your business.
Moreover, with other competitors and solid project management tools available in the market, variation hungry people nowadays even look for Trello and Asana alternatives too. But when it comes to reliability, these two along with WP Project Manager are truly the project management solutions that everyone would desire.
Drop a comment and let us know your favorite project management solution between Trello and Asana. And If you are using any other alternatives to Trello and Asana then you can share your experience with those solutions too.
Thanks for describing them two. It looks like they’re quite different. Normally I use the app which is quite similar to Trello – Kanban Tool (kanabntool.com) as it’s truly visual, intuitive and user-friendly tool to finish any proyect with seamless tracker to boost productivity.