When collaborating in an office, you are likely to need to use project management softwares. The most popular of these are, by far, Monday, Asana, and Trello. But you can only use one – which one is best for the workplace? In this article, we will look at an analysis of the three so you can make a decision about which is best for you.
Monday vs Asana vs Trello – Compared
To put it simply, Monday is the best option overall for organisation and it’s definitely the best in terms of user experience. Asana is great for integration with some tools, especially Google Drive. And Trello, well – the free version is hard to beat if you’re looking not to pay anything for your management software.
All three of the programmes have great features which are highly useful to various office environments. Let’s look at the background of each company, and then some of the pros and cons of each, which can help you make your mind up as to which is best.
About the Companies
Monday: Used by businesses such as Coca Cola, Bosch and Walmart, Monday is a programme that is targeted specifically to remote workers. The project management tool is famed for its user-friendly interface and seamless functionality. It was started in 2010 as an extension onto Wix, the website building platform. In 2019, it had funded $234.1 million dollars.
Asana: The San Francisco app was founded in 2008 by a Facebook co-founder and a Facebook and Google engineer. They left Facebook to work on this new company, who’s name is Sanskrit for ‘yoga pose’. By September 2018, Asana had 50,000 paying customers and was valued at around $1.5 billion.
Trello: This app was launched in September 2011 with a web and iPhone app. Shortly after, an android app was released, and it continues to function well on all devices. The New York City company went international in 2015, with localised platforms for Spain, Germany and Brazil, and it was bought by Atlassian in 2017 where it carried on its journey to global collaboration tool domination.
Monday – Amazing for Task Management & Time Tracking
Designed for remote teams, Monday is famous for being exceptionally easy to use and having a great user interface. It is made to be used with a minimum of two and maximum of one thousand people, and has features like brainstorming, calendar management and contact management.
Monday works by calling tasks ‘pulses’ and having various different ways to show these – as cards or otherwise. These can be assigned to each team member, and different specifications can be set for each.
They can be made dependent on other pulses and their status can be set. It’s easy to see the progress of each pulse in the status bar. This is quite similar to Asana’s system, although Asana calls each one ‘tasks’.
Each pulse can be viewed in different ways on the same page – nothing needs to be switched, which is one of the things that users like the best about Monday. There is also a mini progress bar for each pulse on the page.
Another feature offered by Monday is Groups. Pulses can be added to groups, and these can be made into projects or portfolios.
Monday has about 20 integrations to other programmes, including Slack, Google Drive, Shopify and Mailchimp. These are very useful ones – however, it does offer a lot less than Asana.
Monday is more secure than Asana as it offers two step verification and SSO with apps like Otka and One Login. It also has a great deal of online support for all customers.
One of the big drawbacks about using Monday.com is its price. There is a free trial on offer for two weeks, but membership for one month costs a minimum of $39 per group of five people per month, with rates increasing with each five users.
Pros
Cons
Asana – Perfect for Connecting with Team Members
Asana offers a range of tiers – from free to $10.99 per month – to ensure that each customers needs are met. Their software receives praise for its functionality and how easy it is to deliver team products using the tool. The software makes it easy to collaborate with other people and keep in sync with your colleagues.
Asana was one of the first entirely cloud-based personal management programmes, meaning it has always been very popular. Offering over 100 integrations, Asana can display information using tools like lists, graphs and calendars.
What you can do
Asana is pretty well known for being one of the best project management tools if you’re super organized. You can create various different graphs and Gantt charts very quickly, which isn’t too easy with other softwares.
When creating tasks with Asana, each is assigned to cards, which can be expanded to show more detail. Asana draws attention to tasks that are due soon and makes it easy to see a list of all tasks that are assigned to one particular person.
Asana’s workflows are presented really seamlessly – you can choose which kind of chart you would like it to show (such as a Kanban board, a Gantt chart or calendar) and also make sure that you stay on top of task dependencies. It also offers a project function that lets users see individual projects with tasks assigned within them.
Asana wins at the most integrations with other programmes – it offers 100 integrations from all sorts of companies! Notable ones that are offered on Asana but not Monday are Box, Evernote and Harvest. It also integrates with Zapier and offers its own API.
However, Monday has a slight edge when it comes to security. Asana offers Google SSO for Premium plans and above, but not two factor authentication.
Asana offers a range of plans, from a free basic plan to slightly expensive premier and business packages. The free plan allows collaborations with 15 other people as well as task tracking and using a Kanban board.
For small teams, Asana’s basic plan should work well, but any larger teams who want slightly more features should go for the business package. Asana’s free plan is a little bare when it comes to dashboards and reporting, so you might want to upgrade if you need the ability to do this.
For companies who need a range of assistance not offered, their ‘Enterprise’ package can be customisable to specific companies needs, and price is provided on request. This flexibility of packages, including the offering of a free version and the ability to have a customised plans, are real draws for using Asana.
Pros
Cons
Trello – The Best Free Platform out there
Trello is potentially the most popular programme on this list. But is it the best? Trello is different to Monday and Asana, in the fact that it is actually a very good bit of software for people working on their own, as its simplest functions are just a Kanban task board where items can be organised.
Trello can integrate to other platforms and has a ‘Butler’ assistant who helps with tasks like rule based triggers, calendar commands and due date commands. Trello works by being able to create cards, assigning them to each employee, and moving it along as the task progresses.
Trello can feature customisable boards, but doesn’t have any Gantt or calendar view offers. Trello is made to display more of a workflow rather than a schedule. This is sometimes seen as a drawback when compared to Monday and Asana, but it is also chosen by a lot of people because of its simplicity and ease of use.
A big perk of using Trello, which Monday does not offer, is other languages. Trello can be used in 10 different languages, so is great for international teams. Monday only offers English. It also offers enhanced security to even its free users, which the other apps fail to do. Premium users of Trello can make use of priority support and receive a response within one day.
Trello has a scale of costs; the basic level is free, with ‘business class’ costing $9.99 per person per month, and ‘Enterprise’ costing $20.83 per person per month. When we compare this to the Monday.com and Asana pricing structure, we can easily see that it’s much cheaper.
But, it is lacking in task management features in comparison to the other two. So whilst it is a cheaper version per user, it might not have the level of team collaboration tools that you really need.
Pros
Cons
Conclusion
These three project management softwares are all different, and the one you decide to use really depends on your priorities. If you are looking for something simple, which won’t cost much and that you can just use to organise a few tasks, Trello might be your answer. For something a bit more complex, with more features for the paid version, Asana is perfect.
For a project management software that is very developed, has great security and customer support, and that you need for a big team, Monday might be your best option.
