Asana vs Monday: Which one to choose?

If you have experience working on projects, you know how important it is to have the right task management software to assist you in your work. 

So, it comes as no surprise that there are quite a few task management tools available on the market. 

In this article, we will take a closer look at Asana and monday.com. We begin with an overview of these two platforms and then compare their:

• Pricing,
• User interface, 
• Task management, 
• Team collaboration,
• Progress tracking, 
• Administration, 
• Integrations,
• Support, and 
• Security. 

In the end, we will give a final verdict and decide which task management tool is better.

So, let us begin!

Asana vs Monday overview

We will start this face-off with a quick overview of both platforms. 

Asana was founded in 2008 and has become one of the most popular project management tools on the market. 

This cloud-based platform is available for macOS, Windows, Android, and iOS.

It can help you with day-to-day work in:

• Managing tasks, 
• Communicating with your team, 
• Tracking progress, and more. 

monday.com was founded in 2012 and has since become a well-known name in the field of project management.

It is a cloud-based platform that is available for macOS, Windows, Linux, Android, and iOS.

monday.com offers a wide range of features designed to help you manage your work and easily collaborate with your colleagues. 

Here’s an overview of Asana’s and monday.com’s main features:

Feature	Asana	monday.com
Pricing	Free plan Paid plans start from $10.99 per user per month	Free plan Paid plans start from $8 per user per month
User interface	Clean, user-friendly	Clean, user-friendly
Task management	Well-organized	Well-organized
Team collaboration	Private messages, Team communication, Task comments, and Mentions	Co-editing documents, Comments, and  Brainstorming document
Progress tracking	Goals Universal Reporting	Progress tracking column
Administration	Guest accessAdmin console	Guest accessIn Enterprise: – Audit log, – Panic mode, and  – Private workspaces
Integrations	200+	200+
Support	Help page, Use cases, Forum, and 24/7 customer support	Knowledge base,  Community page, Videos, and 24/7 customer support
Security	Advanced	Advanced

Asana vs Monday pricing 1:0

The price of a product we are buying plays a very important role in our decision-making, whether we want to admit it or not. So, let’s start with a price comparison.

Asana offers a Basic plan that is free forever. It includes:

• Unlimited tasks, projects, messages, file storage, and activity log,
• Collaboration with up to 15 teammates,
• List, Board, and Calendar view,
• Mobile apps, 
• Assignees and due dates,
• 100+ integrations, and more. 

If you are looking for more advanced features you can opt for:

• Premium plan — $10.99 per user per month, 
• Business plan — $24.99 per user per month, or 
• Enterprise — pricing by request. 

monday.com has the Individual plan that is free forever for up to 2 seats, so it is not really suited for teams, but more for individuals who want to manage their work.

 This free plan includes:

• Unlimited docs, 
• Over 200 templates,
• Up to 3 boards,
• Over 20 columns, and
• Mobile apps.

Aside from the free plan, monday.com offers 4 paid plans:

• Basic — $8 per seat per month,
• Standard — $10 per seat per month,
• Pro — $16 per seat per month, and
• Enterprise — pricing by request.

All the prices in monday.com’s paid plans are for teams from 3 to 40 people, while bigger teams have to contact monday.com’s sales team for further pricing options. 

Asana vs Monday pricing verdict

Both platforms offer a free plan and a variety of paid plans, which means you can choose just the right plan for you and not have to pay for features you don’t really need.  

If you run a nonprofit organization, you might be interested to know that both Asana and monday.com offer discounts to nonprofits. 

Still, our point here goes to Asana because their free version can be used by an entire team and it includes more features than monday.com’s free version. 

Pricing	Asana	monday.com
Free version	✔️	✔️
Free trial	✔️	✔️
Starting price	$10.99	$8
Overall impression	⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐	⭐⭐⭐⭐

Asana vs Monday user interface 1:1

Projects often include many people coming from different backgrounds, and not all of them possess high-level technical skills. 

So, it is paramount that the interface of the software you choose is user-friendly and simple. 

Asana has a clear interface that is easy to navigate.

In Asana, you can automate your processes using Rules. There are pre-made Rules for you to choose from, but you can also create your own. Each rule consists of a trigger that activates the rule and automatically performs an action. Here’s an example:

Trigger: task has been marked as approved

Rule: when a task has been marked as approved, assign it to a team member

Action: task is assigned to a team member

Using Rules to automate your project workflow helps increase effectiveness and ensures your team doesn’t skip any important steps. 

Another thing that makes Asana user-friendly is the variety of templates offered. They are organized by different teams to make the choice of the template even easier. This way, you can create a new project board quickly and easily.

monday.com’s interface is recognizable for its vivid colors that help you easily spot the information you need.

To simplify your work and make it more efficient, you can set up automations. You can customize them to fit your needs and help you avoid repetitive work. For example, you can set up an automation that whenever a task status changes, the project owner is notified. 

There is also a wide range of templates to make your work in monday.com quicker. They are organized by categories, so you can easily find the template you need. 

Asana vs Monday user interface verdict

Both platforms have a clear and user-friendly interface, so we give each of them a point in this round.

Asana vs Monday task management 1:1

The main role of a task management tool is to make your day-to-day work on a project simple and efficient and save you valuable time. The most important factor in achieving this is the way task management is organized in the workspace.

With Asana, you can view tasks in the form of a:

• List, 
• Board, 
• Calendar, or 
• Timeline. 

Each task can include a due date, assignee, and priority status.

In the Board view, you can organize your tasks like sticky notes and add a cover image to each task to make it more visually appealing. 

Timeline is an especially useful feature because it allows you to set dependencies between tasks and see if the deadlines you assigned to tasks are realistic. If not, you can easily change deadlines by moving tasks across the timeline. 

In monday.com, you can manage your work in the main table or in over 15 views including:

• Kanban board, 
• Gantt chart, 
• Timeline, and 
• Calendar. 

Pulses, which is how tasks are called in monday.com, can be assigned categories such as owner, status, or priority. You can prolong and shorten pulses in the timeline, and add dependencies and milestones to easily visualize task progress. 

Another useful feature is the Dashboard, which you can customize to fit your needs — you can add a budget tracker, timeline, overall progress chart, and more. In the Basic price plan, you can customize the Dashboard based on one board, while in the higher paying plans, you can combine from 5 to 50 boards on a dashboard to make your work more organized.

Asana vs Monday task management verdict

Both Asana and monday.com offer customizable and functional workspaces that make organizing your work simple and straightforward. So, in this category, we assign a point to both tools.

Asana vs Monday team collaboration 1:0

Good communication among project team members is crucial for the success of a project. 

Consequently, options for team collaboration definitely play a role in deciding which software to choose. 

In Asana, you can create a space to communicate with your team in Team Conversations. You can assign each conversation a name and a description and even add attachments. 

You can also contact a teammate via private messages.

If you want to keep all information about a project or a specific task in one place, you can comment on tasks, mention teammates, or add followers to ensure everyone is in the loop. You can also receive updates about projects and tasks in your inbox. 

Asana also offers integrations with communication apps such as Slack, Microsoft Teams, Google Chat, and others. 

monday.com offers several ways for teams to collaborate within the platform. They can co-edit documents in real time and share comments, which is practical and time efficient.

You can also create a Brainstorming document from a template. Here, team members can share their ideas, suggestions, and thoughts, which can be a good way for the team to find the solution to any problems they encounter. 

You can integrate monday.com with communication and collaboration apps such as Slack, Microsoft Teams, Google Drive, and others. 

Asana vs Monday team management verdict

Both Asana and monday.com offer collaboration features and integration with communication apps. 

However, Asana offers a space for team conversations and private messages within the platform itself, so we give a point to Asana. Still, it is a really close call. 

Asana vs Monday progress tracking 1:0

To keep your project on track and be sure you’re not falling behind, you must track your progress regularly. 

Asana has a handy feature for tracking progress — Goals.

You can create multiple goals and group them into:

• company goals,
• team goals, and
• personal goals. 

Once you’ve created a goal, you can also create subgoals that need to be accomplished in order to reach the main goal. At any given time, you can check the progress of each goal and subgoal to see if the project is progressing as desired. 

Another way to track progress is using Universal Reporting. You can get real-time information about any team’s progress and report across teams and departments without manual updates. There are also customizable and shareable dashboards with graphs and charts representing each team’s progress to help you see information clearly and spot any potential problems. 

monday.com lets you keep an eye on project progress via the progress tracking column.  

In this column, you can keep an eye on all the status columns of each item to have a clear view of your tasks’ progress. This way, you can track the status of various tasks and see how close you are to completing a project in percentages.

 It calculates the percentage by counting how many tasks are marked as finished. For example, if 3 out of your 6 tasks are marked as ‘done’, the progress column will show your project’s progress is at 50%.

Asana vs Monday progress tracking verdict

Although monday.com’s progress tracking column is a useful feature, our point in this category goes to Asana because of its more elaborate goals feature. It’s a neat way to organize work and see how you are progressing towards your (or company’s) goals. 

Asana vs Monday administration 1:0

Administration options in the task management tool are important since they give the project manager or a team leader the ability to control the permissions and supervise their team.

Asana offers an Admin console in Standard and higher paid plans. With the Admin console, you can:

• See your organization’s activity in Asana,
• Manage security settings, and billing information, and
• Manage members and entire teams (invite or deactivate members, set privacy levels for teams, etc).

Another useful feature is that you can invite an unlimited number of guests. 

To access most of the advanced administration features in monday.com, you need to choose the Enterprise plan. 

If you pick the Enterprise plan, monday.com offers a variety of administration features, such as:

• Audit log — view who logged in, when, and from which IP address,
• Panic mode — lock your account in case of a security breach, and
• Private workspaces — control access to workspaces.

There is an option of adding guests in monday.com, with 4 guests in the Standard plan, and an unlimited number of guests in more expansive plans. 

Asana vs Monday administration verdict 

Since Asana offers an unlimited number of free guests and more administrative control in all paid plans than monday.com, we award Asana a point in this category. 

Asana vs Monday integrations 1:1

Teams usually use many apps in their work, so it is important to be able to integrate them with the project management tool they are using. 

Asana offers over 200 integrations, including Zoom, Jira, Salesforce, GitHub, etc. Over 100 are available in the free plan, while some integrations like Salesforce, Tableau, and Power BI are available only in Business and Enterprise plans. 

monday.com offers 200+ integrations, but they are available only in the Standard and higher playing plans. 

Asana vs Monday integration verdict 

Both monday.com and Asana offer a large number of integrations, so we award them each with a point in this category.

Integrations	Asana	monday.com
Number of integrations	200+	200+
Overall impression	⭐⭐⭐⭐	⭐⭐⭐⭐

Asana vs Monday support 0:1

Task management software has an abundance of features and can be used in many ways to improve your everyday work.

Still, it’s pretty much inevitable that you’ll need some help with a feature or someone to fix a bug for you at some point. So it is important to have adequate support available. 

On Asana’s support page, you can find:

• Asana help — instructions for Asana features,
• Use cases — insight into how other teams use Asana,
• Developer’s guide — instructions on how to customize Asana and leverage data with Asana API,
• Asana forum — questions and discussions in 6 languages (English, Japanese, Spanish, French, German, and Portuguese), and
• Asana academy — trainings, courses, and webinars.

You can contact support by submitting a form on Asana’s support page describing your problem or question, and you will receive an answer from one of the support agents.

There is also 24/7 customer support, but it is available only to Enterprise customers. 

When you are using monday.com, and you find yourself faced with a problem you don’t know how to solve, you can consult monday.com’s help center. They offer:

• Knowledge base containing articles with instructions on how to best utilize monday.com,
• Videos with instructions, tutorials, and an overview of monday.com’s features, and
• Community page where you can see problems and questions other users had and how they were solved.

If you don’t find the answer you are looking for in the help center, monday.com offers 24/7 customer support you can contact via:

• Email,
• Chat, or 
• Call. 

Asana vs Monday support verdict

Both tools provide their customers with an extensive list of articles, tutorials, and guides. But, since monday.com offers 24/7 support to all of its users, it is the winner of this category. 

Support	Asana	monday.com
Knowledge base/hub	Yes	Yes
24/7 support	Only in Enterprise	Yes
Overall impression	⭐⭐⭐⭐	⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Asana vs Monday security 1:1

Last but definitely not least is security. 

Companies enter sensitive and classified data into their task management tools, so it is crucial that these tools are as secure as they can be. 

Asana encrypts your data and manages data using Amazon’s relational database service (RDS), which allows them to recover from a database failure very quickly. 

It also offers two-factor authentication. 

Asana possesses several security certifications and attestations, including:

• SOC 2 and 3,
• HIPAA,
• ISO,
• GDPR, and
• GLBA.

monday.com has two-factor authentication and IP restriction to help keep your account secure. 

It also encrypts data in transit and at rest using AES-256 (Advanced Encryption Standard) or better. 

To ensure you don’t lose your data, monday.com backs up user data every 5 minutes and encrypts all backups. They also have a disaster recovery plan they test twice a year.

When it comes to certifications and compliance, monday.com is:

• ISO certified,
• GDPR certified,
• SOC 1, 2, and 3 compliant, and 
• HIPAA compliant. 

Asana vs Monday security verdict

In this category, we have decided to award both tools with a point since they both take user data protection seriously and expend significant effort to keep it safe. 

Security	Asana	monday.com
Two-factor authentication	Yes	Yes
Data encryption	Yes	Yes
Relevant Certifications	Yes	Yes
Overall impression	⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐	⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Asana vs Monday verdict 8:5

Finally, when we add all the points, the winner of this comparison is — Asana. 

Category / Feature	Asana	monday.com
Pricing	1	0
User Interface	1	1
Task management	1	1
Team collaboration	1	0
Progress tracking	1	0
Administration	1	0
Integrations	1	1
Support	0	1
Security	1	1
Total score	8	5

But the answer to our question in the title is not so simple that it can be represented faithfully by numbers alone. 

Both Asana and monday.com are popular project management tools that can be very useful when managing a project. 

You should base your decision on what you and your team need and which categories are most important to you. So take your time and analyze what each of the platforms offers and make your choice wisely. 

Looking for an Asana and Monday alternative? Try Plaky

Plaky is a free task management platform that has a colorful and user-friendly interface. Unlike monday.com and Asana, it has an unlimited number of users and workspaces in the free plan. It also offers private boards in the free plan.

With Plaky, you can:

• Create a board for each of your projects, from scratch or from one of many project templates,
• Create tasks with customizable categories, 
• Organize tasks in groups, 
• Save time with the filter option and see only the relevant information about a task,
• Discuss work with your team in the comment section of a task,
• Track activity across the board or in an item in the activity log, and
• Get notifications for tasks you’ve been assigned or if someone @mentions you in a task. 

So if you are looking for a secure task management tool with advanced features and an easy-to-use interface, sign up for a free Plaky account and try it yourself. 

✉️ Have you tried either Asana or monday.com? What do you think about them? Share your impressions with us at blogfeedback@plaky.com and we may include your answers in this or some future post. If you found this post useful, share it with someone you think will be interested in it.