We compared Asana and Microsoft Project based on our user's reviews in several parameters.
In summary, Asana stands out for its effective task management, team collaboration, and user-friendly interface, with highly praised customer service and positive ROI. On the other hand, Microsoft Project offers detailed task management, powerful reporting, and seamless integration with Microsoft programs, with excellent customer service and positive ROI as well. Differences include Asana's affordability, intuitive interface, and automation capabilities compared to Microsoft Project's detailed project tracking, versatile templates, and robust reporting functionalities. Users suggest Asana could improve its interface and integrations, while Microsoft Project could enhance collaboration features and streamline project scheduling.
Features: Asana's most valuable features include effective task management, team collaboration, project organization, seamless integrations, and a user-friendly interface. On the other hand, Microsoft Project stands out with its detailed task management, project progress tracking, interactive Gantt charts, and robust reporting functionalities. Microsoft Project also offers efficient resource allocation, effective collaboration tools, customizable project templates, and the ability to handle large and complex projects.
Pricing and ROI: The setup cost for Asana is generally described as transparent, affordable, and flexible, while Microsoft Project is considered to have minimal setup costs with no additional expenses. Asana offers various plans suitable for different business sizes, whereas Microsoft Project has a straightforward and user-friendly licensing process., Asana's ROI is achieved through improved task management, collaboration, productivity, and cost savings. Users praise its intuitive interface and automation capabilities. On the other hand, Microsoft Project's ROI comes from streamlined projects, resource allocation, team collaboration, and increased profits with its robust features.
Room for Improvement: Asana users have suggested an enhanced interface, better integration with other applications, improved mobile app features, advanced automation options, and customization capabilities. On the other hand, Microsoft Project users desire a better user interface, improved collaboration features, intuitive project scheduling and resource management capabilities, and enhanced integration with other Microsoft software.
Deployment and customer support: Users of Asana mentioned spending three months on deployment and an additional week on setup, while others mentioned spending a week for both deployment and setup. On the other hand, users of Microsoft Project provided feedback with various timeframes for deployment, setup, and implementation phases., Asana's customer service is highly praised for its excellent assistance and prompt issue resolution. Users find their support staff to be knowledgeable and attentive. On the other hand, Microsoft Project's customer service is highly regarded for its effectiveness and efficiency. Users appreciate the support team's knowledge, responsiveness, and availability of support channels.
The summary above is based on 74 interviews we conducted recently with Asana and Microsoft Project users. To access the review's full transcripts, download our report.
"I love the way it monitors all of the current and past projects, and it sends notifications to keep everything on the track."
"It is stable and easy to set up."
"Asana is a very simple interface for project managers to figure out, providing all the functions they need."
"Asana has significantly reduced the number of emails we exchange because we can access the project directly. It organizes all the tasks related to each project, assigns them to staff with due dates, and tracks progress."
"The solution scales well."
"The tool has a lot of integrations."
"It is pretty comprehensive when it comes to the different views that it gives you. It gives you a Gantt chart view, calendar view, board view, and list view. It is kind of helpful to have different types of views and see how it views your different tasks. I appreciate being able to do that. The biggest thing is that it is extremely user friendly. Asana is pretty intuitive. Someone who is not tech-savvy can kind of catch on quickly. It is better than other tools like Smartsheet. Some of the other tools like Microsoft Project and Excel are great tools, but you have to invest a lot of time to learn them, which is not the case with Asana."
"I really enjoy the portfolios in Asana. One of the ways Asana stands out to me is with portfolios. You can have all your different projects, and you can have those assigned to different teams. If you want to customize a grouping of projects, you can use portfolios. For instance, one of the things that we do is we can assign a portfolio to a specific strategic objective we have, and we can put all those projects that are related to that strategic objective in that portfolio. We then know exactly what people are working on to help us achieve our goals. So, I really like portfolios."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is time management."
"It comes with our Office 365."
"The solution is stable."
"The built-in dashboards are powerful because they show both project and overall progress."
"The ability to break down project phases is most valuable. Being able to align the tasks and reporting with project milestones and progress is also valuable."
"The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that the product's GUI is very good...The product's scalability is good."
"The most valuable features of this solution are the scheduling, managing the resources, budgeting, tracking the progress, viewing the progress, reporting, and it is very easy to use."
"It is a complete and all-rounded enterprise product. From a portfolio management perspective and an individual project management perspective, it is a corporate-wide project management product. It can be used for resource planning, financial planning, task planning, etc."
"The messaging feature could be better."
"The solution can be difficult for new users to use because of the interface."
"The inbox feature can be a little overwhelming if you are working with Asana just from its project boards and only checking it periodically."
"The product's page is not user-friendly."
"Auto-shift is an essential feature for planning, but it's currently not there. It should have this feature so that when you move a task that depends on another task, the dates should be auto-shifted. For example, you have two tasks dependent on each other. When the parent task is moved or delayed, the child task should also be delayed, and the date should be shifted. When we have a very long timeline, it's very complex to go task by task and shift the dates on the task. Auto-shift is a fantastic and basic feature of project management, and having such a feature in Asana would make our lives much easier. If Asana added this feature, it would complete the suit and close the project management cycle because currently, there is a gap."
"In some instances, there were subtasks where more than one person needed to review it, but I could only assign it to one person. I would have to create a subtask under a subtask and then assign it to other people. This could be improved."
"More features can be added."
"You need to have an action plan, otherwise, it won't be as effective."
"We'd like to have more resource allocation and monitoring features."
"The scalability is co-dependent on the stability of the product. We have 4000 users, and at times the product is slow."
"The solution is currently a bit slow and can be faster."
"The new version has made it a bit more complicated."
"The tool's most valuable feature is scheduling."
"It is positioned at the more high end. Sometimes it's more complicated than we need."
"The full suite would be pretty expensive."
"Project is not easy to scale. It isn't a cloud-based solution where everybody can utilize it at the same time without version issues when you save your file. We use it at the enterprise level, but you have to share the files to others within your organization through Teams or SharePoint. One improvement would be to transition to cloud-based functionality. However, that might limit the functionality in other ways."
Asana is ranked 3rd in Project Management Software with 43 reviews while Microsoft Project is ranked 2nd in Project Management Software with 77 reviews. Asana is rated 8.4, while Microsoft Project is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Asana writes "Stands out with portfolios, easy setup, and real-time information, but needs big improvement when it comes to workflows, automation, and dashboards". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft Project writes "A stable solution that very accurately runs projects". Asana is most compared with Microsoft Azure DevOps, Wrike, monday.com, Jira and Trello, whereas Microsoft Project is most compared with Jira, Microsoft Project Server, Smartsheet, Broadcom Clarity and monday.com. See our Asana vs. Microsoft Project report.
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