How does Asana compare to Trello, and how are similar and dissimilar?

One major benefit of using a project management tool is really to get everything “out of your head”. As a result, you’ll have more mental energy and processing power available for things like analysis, decision making, and creative problem solving. The tool is able to do what it’s intended to do well, which then allows you to do what clients look to you to do well.

I’ve used many project management tools, to different degrees of thoroughness and effectiveness. I’ve been forced on some projects, in what now thankfully feels like the distant path, to use behemoths like Microsoft Project, which I’d be pretty happy to never touch again in my lifetime. I’m guessing that since project management disciplines continue to distance themselves from a waterfall method and continue to align with Agile methods, Microsoft Project is becoming less and less popular, if it’s even used at all any more.

Anyway, back to the topic of the post. I was happy to have discovered Basecamp by 37Signals a number of years ago and was happy with that tool and the entire 37Signals suite of tools for a long time. However, over the past few years or so, I’ve found myself using Asana and Trello more and more.

After using both tools, I find that Trello works really well at the early stages of project creation and Asana excels at the ongoing management of a project that is already or about to be up-and-running.

Trello feels more free-form and less structured. At the same time, it does allows for some structure in the form of lists, which can be helpful. I find that Trello is a great resource to catch all the ideas you may have at the beginning of a project and that you need to dump out of your head and into a tool, so you don’t lose any of the ideas. Trello’s visual, card-based interface then lets you visually organize the idea dump in a way that logically makes sense to you.

One way to visualize organizing a process in Trello it to imagine taking a bunch of index cards on which you’ve jotted down a bunch of ideas, dumping them on your desk, aligning them in a neat grid, then arranging that grid in a way that makes sense to you.

Something that’s nice about Trello is that it’s an easy way to store all of your resources such as links, files, and images, in a single place. I usually do this in a list of cards I create called “Resources”. This is the virtual “pile” where I put anything and everything that I’ve collected or continue to collect that may be helpful as the project progresses.

This way, when I sit in front of my Trello screen, I feel like I have everything I need sitting in front of me, in a visually satisfying way, that can be organized just enough to provide a structure to make progress, while not being so restrictive as to surpress creative impulses that often arise for me during an initial brainstorming phase of a project.

Once I get a project up-and-running using Trello, I usually transfer the project to Asana for ongoing management. Asana’s list-based interface is very conducive toward ongoing management of a project. At first, I found the list-based view as a bit restrictive, however, over time, learned to use the headings in creative ways that made the task organization more flexible.

Without diminishing the functionality of Asana at all, I look at Asana as a powerful and very organized checklist. It’s admittedly much more than that, however that’s how I tend to use it most. I use Asana to mainly manage lists of tasks and find it particularly valuable in managing lists of tasks that I delegate, to a Virtual Assistant, for example.

Keeping the lists of tasks in Asana keeps the task-related conversations out of my email Inbox and centralizes all the communication for each task in a single place. I also find Asana very helpful for managing next steps in a project, for really any project that can be broken-down into discrete and actionable steps, which I guess means any project if you do it right ;)

One way to visualize using Asana is to think of it as similar to a library card catalog, where each card is a task. I open the drawer for the right project, see that project organized and separated logically into the right sections, with just enough flexibility to move the cards through each section, as they progress though their useful lifetime. When I’m done, I shut the drawer, allowing me to clear my head of the details, knowing exactly where to jump back into the project when I’m ready to get back to it.

So I guess what I’ve realized over time is that Trello works really well when you’re looking to organize a project at the project’s initiation phase, to get it up-and-running. Asana works really well to maintain a project when the project is up-and-running. Also, visualizing a spectrum where creativity is on one end and task management is on the other, I’d choose Trello for projects that lean heavier toward the creative side and Asana for projects that lean more toward task management.

P.S. — Are you a technical project manager that wants to work remotely? Sign up here and receive free access to my current lists of remote technical project manager jobs.

Asana and Trello are both tools that let you keep your team’s work organized. One of the most immediately noticeable differences used to be that Trello organized tasks in a Kanban board format whereas Asana presented them as a list. However, Asana recently added a new boards layout to the product and now has both a list and a board view for projects.

If you're a Kanban board lover, I'd definitely recommend checking out the new Asana Boards layout or signing up for Asana and testing it out (it's free for up to 15 people) :D

• Asana (product) is the perfect tool for the CEO and the product manager
• Trello (product) is the perfect tool for the team and individual team members

• Great list management features
• You can freely add multiple tags to each item
• A singe story/task/item can have relations to multiple projects and tags
• Good keyboard shortcuts
• Few clicks until value. Easy to add new tasks without filling to many fields
• A very good email integration
• Clever Follow features throughout the system where you can follow a task or a project
• Cleaver personal Tasks view with all tasks you are assigned to within the workspace
• It's free for smaller companies

• You can only assign a story/task to one member
• Can't invite outsiders into your lists within your workspace -- you need a new workspace for it
• There is no consolidated personal view, it's always just your tasks within each workspace
• The mobile application was disappointing, as its just the HTML5 site wrapped into an App. It has limited touch usability (like to prioritize tasks and such) UPDATE: The app has been totally overhauled and is now very fast and totally native on iPhone. An android app is said to be coming soon.
• The UI is getting more clumsy with gradients and too much graphical detail that makes it slow when moving things around with the mouse
• At this writing, there is no API. It makes me worried, as it demonstrate a non-API focus of the core development (or uncertainty about how future friendly the current architecture is)
• The sub-tasks (Titles:) are very difficult to work with and can easily loose its relations when items are moved around
• No Kanban view

• A very natural human UI for the team to instantly see overall status with its Kanban list structure
• You can invite outside members to a board within the organization
• You can create closed boards with limited group of members within the organization
• You can create public boards that anyone can view
• Create multiple lists within each kanban board and color label the stories
• Can implement checklists on stories/tasks
• Assign multiple members on a story/task
• It has an API where you can extend the system
• Provides high-quality native apps on iPhone and Android
• It's free

• Cards/tasks are limited to only one Board/Project
• Limited email integration
• Limited number of Labels
• No freeform Tags
• Difficult to work with multiple cards or tasks in the UI, like for moving, copy/paste and such.
• Keyboard shortcuts and keyboard productivity usage is limited

Asana is powerful to-do list. It allows you to easily add tasks, organize your lists, and manage projects. It is can be a bit inflexible, and doesn’t let you do things like assign a task to multiple people that you would think would be standard.

Trello is a powerful Kanban board. In other words, its helps tasks move from left to right through steps in a process. It is simple to get started and it is very flexible to your needs. However, it doesn’t make it easy to connect different boards, and can be hard to manage in a larger company.

These are both great project management tools that appeal to very different styles of work. Personally, I want to use a tool that combines both communication and project management.

Hive is a new tool that is great for that purpose. In a simple clean interface, Hive combines chat, project management, and file sharing on one dashboard. It is completely drag and drop and easy use. It also includes a Trello-style card view for those who prefer to manage tasks that way.

It’s free to try. Check it out at hive.com.

But don’t take my word for it! Here is what some of our customers think of Hive:

I’m digging https://t.co/GdwfYSHHyF from @Hive Really cool project management tool—better than Asana, Trello, etc. so far.

— Mike Cohn (@mikewcohn) May 11, 2017

We're buzzing like never before now that we're using Hive for our busy team! @hive we couldn't appreciate your hustle more.

— Forcade Associates (@ForcadeAssoc) January 9, 2017

Staying productive this Thursday with @hive to organize all our tasks! #organization #timemanagement

— SurveyLocal (@SurveyLocal) January 12, 2017

Trello[1] is a fun and interactive project management tool that lets you organize your work and tasks into visual boards. You can then add tasks or cards to these projects, assign a due date, add descriptions, attach assets, create checklists, make labels and assign tasks to fellow team members.

Trello offers kanban style boards that allow you to drag and drop your task cards around as you organize your workflow. What sets it apart from other project management tools is it’s user-friendly interface, making it a breeze for anyone to get up and running quickly.

Trello also has iOS and Android apps so you can always stay in sync, wherever you go.

Unfortunately, if you are a part of a large team, Trello can get pretty messy, even with the Kanban inspired design. As workforces grow some users have noted that they don’t get email notifications on time when a task is edited, or their board starts to load slowly as more tasks are added.

Trello ‘generates’ most of its power from its ability to add on third-party apps or ‘power-ups.’ But these power-ups come at an additional cost of up to $9.99 per user.

Asana

Asana has consistently been a crowd favorite tool for task management.

Asana is a project and task management tool that makes team collaboration and communication a breeze. With Asana, you can assign tasks, view progress, have conversations all in one place. Asana is a fast, responsive, beautiful looking and feature-rich application.

You can share notes, attachments, follow and ‘like’ tasks, add due dates, and receive email notifications when a task is assigned to you or if someone on your team has made changes to the task or project.

Asana makes it easy to add files to tasks, with size up to 100MB and the best part is there’s no storage limit.

With plenty of third-party integrations like Dropbox, Hipchat, Zendesk, Jira and much more, Asana enhances your productivity and helps you handle all your operations from a single tool.

Apart from the Kanban styled Trello interface, Asana allows your tasks and projects to be displayed in list view, calendar view, or file view.

It’s a fun, simple app that gets the job done well.

Pricing: Asana is free for up to 15 users and offers unlimited projects, tasks, and conversations. Pro versions start at $9.99/month.

Footnotes

[1] Top Trello Alternatives Teams Can Use For Project Management

At the simplest level:

• Asana is, by default, list-based (although they’ve recently added kanban boards) and is great at letting you see tasks across projects as long as they’re within the same organization. (If you have
• Trello is board-style - think of post-it notes or index cards stuck on a whiteboard or pinboard. You can move the cards between different columns (traditionally a task starts on the left side and moves to the right as it progresses, but you can use a different categorization system if you want).

When it comes to things like being able to view tasks assigned to you (or tasks by due dates) across projects, or viewing reporting/data about projects/tasks, Asana is going to win over Trello. On the other hand, Trello is more free-form than Asana. On their free tiers, neither of them have task dependencies, prioritization, or a view that lets you see across organizations. (Asana allows for task dependencies and prioritization if you upgrade, Trello doesn’t.)

One project management tool that combines the best of both worlds (especially if you’re a software engineer and/or working on/with a software engineer team) is Clubhouse. It’s easy to pick up, but also offers advanced features like task dependencies, a Github integration, a unified dashboard across projects, and more. I work on the CH marketing team, and a lot of our users switch from Asana & Trello specifically for those reasons — if you want to learn more about how it compares to each, you can read about Clubhouse vs Asana here and Clubhouse vs Trello here.

Caroline Gormley has a good answer. Let me add the most important aspects form my point of view:

Asana pro:
In Asana you have a unified view of your tasks of all projects. In Trello every board stands for it self. You may add links to other cards but there is no “dashboard” over all boards.

Trello pro:
Asana is dedicated to tasks. Trello is a “horizontal” / multi-purpose tool which means you can handle everything with it: Tasks, but also ideas, clients, facilities (whatever is collectible).

What both tools are missing (shameless advertising here), is the availability to grow to a full information platform. On a basic level, simple tasks / cards are sufficient, but on a later stage you need real connections between different types of information: “Clients” need connections to “invoices” and “offers” (that’s CRM) but also to “bugs” and “features” (that’s the dev world). Only a flexible database platform can to that for you. Well, most of the time these systems are much to complicated to begin with. That’s why we created Zenkit. It starts as a very simple task management and can grow to a complete information system.