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.
"It is stable and easy to set up."
"It’s a great way to communicate plans and progress across the business and is flexible about how much detail I include and how I present it."
"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."
"What I like the most about Asana is its API integrations because we use a lot of cluttered toolsets in our company since we need to cater to different clients, for which its integration gives us a lot of flexibility."
"By using this software, I have adaptability in my work, and it can improve the production of our company."
"Asana is a very simple interface for project managers to figure out, providing all the functions they need."
"The solution appears to be quite stable."
"The tool has a lot of integrations."
"It comes with our Office 365."
"I especially like the reporting tools, which are visual tools and offer visual reports."
"The solution is very complete. It makes it a great option for project managers and they can use it extensively in almost any organizational setup."
"I have found that the chart reporting feature is very helpful for us currently."
"The product's initial setup phase is easy."
"Microsoft Project is easy to use and helps our teams visualize the evolution of our projects."
"The most valuable features of Microsoft Project are the availability of being online and within Teams. My entire team can use it and see it, versus the full Microsoft Projects, such as Project Professional, you need to have a license."
"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 inbox feature can be a little overwhelming if you are working with Asana just from its project boards and only checking it periodically."
"It's difficult to have short-term collaborations with external users because the operations team owns the final licenses, and I work for marketing."
"A user should be able to identify an assignee for specific tasks or task types while applying the template, or at a minimum, allow for a default assignee. As it is, the template gets created with the just task dates driven by the project start and end dates inputted by the user. In my current situation, I'm assigning myself to many tasks, so I have to do that manually every time. Even if I eventually start adding other people to assign tasks, there won't be more than a handful to do. However, those few people will have multiple tasks. It would be nice to be able to select those individuals during the setup rather than having to do so manually once the project has been created."
"The documentation for integration could be improved. We require more information to facilitate the integrations."
"You need to have an action plan, otherwise, it won't be as effective."
"It would be beneficial if Asana had a predecessor feature that automatically adjusts all subsequent dates when changes are made to a timeline. For example, if I assign a designer four hours for one task and two days for another, and the completion of a task takes longer than anticipated, it would be convenient if updating one date could prompt the adjustment of all other relevant dates. Essentially, this feature would streamline the process and eliminate the need for manual adjustments."
"It's hard to integrate Asana into other parts of the company workflow, so integration is an area for improvement."
"The product's page is not user-friendly."
"The solution is a basic tool that does not give you analytical insights. It does not have any AI capabilities which can also help to plan."
"This solution needs more templates focused on types of projects to ease setup."
"The tool's deployment is complex. Integration and automation also need to be improved."
"In a future release, the dashboard should improve because there isn't one, I had to create my own."
"It should be easier to break things. Breaking up the visualization from the task is sometimes a little bit tricky to do. You can do it, but it takes a minute. It's not an easy function to do. The way you have to format it and stuff like that takes a minute."
"The setup and scalability can be somewhat difficult for new users until they gain knowledge."
"I would like to see an entire baseline, like in JIRA."
"There needs to be better integration with other Microsoft products such as SharePoint, and the like."
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 Wrike, Microsoft Azure DevOps, 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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