There is a great variety of project management software on the market. Statistics on project management software show that 69% of project managers use some PM software. But they all differ, so — which one would fit your business best?
In this article, we are bringing Wrike and Asana into focus and comparing their:
- Pricing,
- User interface,
- Task management,
- Team collaboration,
- Progress tracking,
- Administration,
- Integration,
- Support, and
- Security.
So, let’s get this battle started!
Table of Contents
Wrike vs Asana overview
Wrike was founded in 2006 and has since become a well-recognized name in the world of project management tools.
In October 2022, they launched Wrike Lightspeed — an updated platform with a Team Plan, new Analytics and Calendar views, a new home page, etc.
Wrike is available in 11 languages, and you can use it on the web, Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS.
Founded in 2008, Asana is a steady presence in the field of task management tools. You can use Asana on the web, Windows, MacOS, Android, and iOS.
It helps you organize your team and manage day-to-day work successfully.
Asana is available in 14 languages.
Here’s an overview of their features:
| Features | Wrike | Asana |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free plan, Paid plans start at $9.80 per user per month. | Free plan, Paid plans start at $10.99 per user per month. |
| User interface | User-friendly | User-friendly, clean |
| Task management | Robust | Robust |
| Team collaboration | Proofing, Approval software, Comments, @mentions | Direct messages, Comments, @menitions, Team, Conversations, Project conversations |
| Progress tracking | Dashboards, Time tracker | Portfolios, Workload, Time tracker, Dashboards |
| Administration | Types of users: – Owner, – Admins, – Regular users, – External users, – Collaborators, Locked spaces | Admin console, Guest access, Private projects, Comment-only projects |
| Integrations | Free open RESTful API, 400+ integrations with Wrike Integration add-on. | 200+ integrations |
| Support | Knowledge base, Community, Wrike Discover, Wrike webinars, 4 support packages | Asana guide, Asana help, Asana forum, Developer’s guides, Asana use cases, Webinars, Academy courses, Video tutorials |
| Security | Advanced | Advanced |
Wrike vs Asana pricing 0:1
Budget is a factor in every business decision. So, naturally, you need to know all pricing options before you decide on the task management tool for your organization.
Wrike offers a free plan that provides you with:
- An unlimited number of users,
- Board and Table view,
- 2 GB of storage per account and more.
If you need more features, Wrike has 4 paid plans to choose from:
- Team — $9.80 per user per month,
- Business — $24.80 per user per month,
- Enterprise — contact sales, and
- Pinnacle — contact sales.
However, if you opt for the Business plan or above, you’ll have to pay an annual subscription, since they are not available for a monthly subscription.
Another complication is that Wrike is sold in groups of users:
- For up to 30 users it’s sold in groups of 5,
- For 30-100 it’s sold in groups of 10, and
- For 100+ users it’s sold in groups of 25.
So, if you have, for example, 42 people in your organization, you have to pay subscriptions for 50 users.
The good thing is there is a 14-day trial period you can use to see if any of the paid plans fit your needs.
Wrike also offers 4 add-on features you can include in your account for an additional fee:
- Wrike Lock,
- Wrike Integrate,
- Wrike Two-Way Sync, and
- Wrike Marketing Insights.
Asana has 4 pricing plans:
- Basic — free forever,
- Premium — $10.99,
- Business — $24.99, and
- Enterprise — contact sales for information.
The free plan is available for up to 15 users and includes:
- Unlimited projects, tasks, messages, and activity log,
- Unlimited storage,
- List, Board, and Calendar views,
- 100+ integrations and more.
Asana has a generous free trial period — you can try any paid plan for 30 days.
If you have over 20 members and you opt for an annual subscription, you can pay Asana with invoices payable by bank transfer or check instead of a credit card.
💡 Plaky Pro Tip
If you are interested in how Asana and Wrike’s free plans compare to other project management tools, check out our other comparisons:
Wrike vs Asana pricing verdict
Wrike’s advantage over Asana in this round is that its free plan is available to an unlimited number of users.
Still, Asana snatched the point from Wrike because it offers more features in the free plan as well as unlimited storage space.
| Feature | Wrike | Asana |
|---|---|---|
| Free version | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Free trial | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Starting price | $9.80 | $10.99 |
| Overall impression | ⭐⭐⭐ | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
Wrike vs Asana user interface 0:1
Wrike’s interface is not the most elegant on the market, but it’s fairly straightforward. There are various themes to choose from in light and dark colors.
Wrike has a pinned section on the Home page. You can pin projects, tools, folders, and custom views to have quick access to them.
You can automate your processes with Wrike’s Automation Engine. Wrike saves you time by syncing related tasks so you don’t have to update other tasks and projects.
Asana has a user-friendly interface. You can choose between a light and a dark theme, or you can sync it with your system settings.
You can activate a “do not disturb” option when you want to focus on current work and don’t want to be interrupted by notifications. There is also an “out of the office” indicator you can use to let your colleagues know you are away.
Asana also offers Automations to simplify your day-to-day work. By automating repetitive tasks, you save time and reduce the chances of error.
Asana has developed a colorblind-friendly mode to help colorblind people navigate easily through their colorful interface.
Wrike vs Asana user interface verdict
Both Wrike and Asana have a user-friendly interface and offer automations.
Still, Asana’s clean interface wins this category by a landslide.
Wrike vs Asana task management
A top-level organizer in Wrike’s hierarchy is Space. You can create a space for each department in your organization. There are 4 types of Spaces in Wrike:
- Public,
- Private,
- Locked, and
- Personal.
When you join Wrike, Personal space is already created for you in your workspace. This is your own space, and no one can see items in it unless you share them.
You can use Folders to categorize your tasks and projects within a Space.
To help you navigate through your tasks with ease, there are 10 primary views available in Wrike:
- List,
- Table,
- Gantt chart,
- Board,
- Files,
- Resources,
- Calendar,
- Stream,
- Analytics, and
- Timelog.
The building block of Asana is a task. There are different ways to view tasks, such as:
- List,
- Board,
- Calendar, and
- Timeline.
Tasks can be grouped into columns in the Board view or into sections in the List view. Each task should have an assignee, so it’s clear who is in charge of what.
You can also add various information to a task by filling out fields such as start and due dates or by creating custom fields fit for your project or team.
Asana has a Template Library where all templates are categorized by teams (marketing, design, product, etc.), so you can easily find the template you need. Say you need to create a product roadmap and share it with your team — just pick the appropriate template from the product library, and you’re set.
Wrike vs Asana task management verdict
This was a close call, but Wrike gets the point in this category thanks to the variety of views it offers.
Wrike vs Asana team collaboration 0:1
Effective collaboration between team members is a fundamental part of running a successful business. Here’s how Wrike and Asana can help your team collaborate.
Wrike has a proofing feature that helps you collaborate with your team without emails and messaging. You can proof multiple file formats, like pdf, JPEGs, or Microsoft Office docs. You can even invite external collaborators to give feedback.
Wrike allows you to see both versions of your proofing item side by side — the original and updated version. This way, you can see all the changes and decide if maybe some of them were unnecessary. There are proofing templates available in Wrike to make proofing easier.
Another feature Wrike has to offer is the approval software, which ensures your review process is organized. You can set the due date for your task, folder, and project approvals and they will automatically be prioritized accordingly. You can create a space on your dashboard for pending approvals to ensure they are on track and not forgotten.
In Wrike, you can comment on tasks, folders, and projects. If you want to address someone directly you can @mention them and they will receive a notification.
In Asana you can communicate with your team on several levels:
- Direct messages — messages sent directly to another person in Asana. They will receive a notification in their inbox and via email.
- Comments — you can add comments to a task to keep all information in the same place. Everyone who has access to the task has access to the comments as well. If a comment contains important information that people on the task will need to go back to, you can pin it.
- Mentions — if you want to ask a question or notify a specific person in your organization, you can @mention them in comments or descriptions. If a person is mentioned in a task, they automatically become a collaborator and get a notification in their inbox. You can also @mention teams, projects, tasks, or messages to keep the work connected.
- Team conversations — every team has a space for conversations, where all announcements and discussions relevant to the whole team are. You can even add files to the messages you post.
- Project conversations — if you want to communicate with everyone working on a certain project, you can write messages in the Conversation view of the project. All project members will be notified. This way, all discussions related to the project are in one place
💡 Plaky Pro Tip
If you are interested in learning more about the importance of communication in project management, check out this article:
Asana has a Team Calendar, which enables you to see all of your team’s work in one place. This way, you can easily plan and organize your work.
Wrike vs Asana team collaboration verdict
Asana scores a point in this category due to its many communication options.
Wrike vs Asana progress tracking 0:1
You need to keep an eye on key performance indicators (KPIs) to make sure your project is on track.
This is where a task management tool steps in by letting you track your project’s progress easily as it happens.
Dashboards in Wrike help you stay on top of work by combining all project-related information in one place (plans, analytics, progress, schedules, etc.). You can view data in real time and measure key performance indicators (KPIs).
One of the most prominent features in Wrike is a built-in time tracker. You can track time live or add it manually. There’s an option to add time retrospectively in case you forgot to set the timer.
With Wrike’s time tracker, you can create timesheets and lock them weekly, monthly, or at custom intervals.
Dashboards are available in all paid plans, and the time tracker is available in Business plans and above.
Asana offers Portfolios in Business and Enterprise plans. Portfolios give you a comprehensive view of all your projects in one place.
A Workload tab in Portfolios shows you how much work each team has, and gives you the opportunity to reschedule or reassign tasks if you notice some of your teammates are overworked.
There is a native time tracking feature in the Business and Enterprise plans, which allows you to estimate time, record it, manually enter it or calculate time according to time logging.
If you opt for lower-level plans, you can still track time, but you will need to integrate Asana with one of the time tracking apps like Clockify.
All Asana’s paid plans offer Dashboards — tabs with information about the entire project. They can contain different types of graphs and visualizations to give you a holistic view of your project’s progress.
Wrike vs Asana progress tracking verdict
The two apps offer useful ways to track progress, but Asana’s Portfolio and Workload features secured a narrow victory for Asana.
Wrike vs Asana administration 1:0
Every project manager wants to have control over their organization, so naturally, administration options play a role in choosing a project management tool.
There are 5 types of users in Wrike:
- Owner — there can be only one owner of the account, and it’s the person who registered for the account.
- Admins — they have the right to edit account-wide settings and to view or edit other users.
- Regular users — they have full rights in the workspace, excluding the ones reserved for admins.
- External users — they are similar to regular users but don’t have permission to share projects, folders, and tasks.
- Collaborators — they have limited rights in Wrike. Collaborators are people you want to share your project ideas without giving them permission to edit it.
For example, if you are the business owner, you would register for the account in Wrike, and become the owner. Team leaders would be given the roles of admins and team members would be regular users.
If you have to hire a contractor for a specific part of the project, they can be an external user. And when you want to share your project ideas with your clients, you can give them the role of a collaborator.
In Enterprise or Pinnacle plans, the owner and the admins can create new user types and customize the existing ones.
Pinnacle plans also offer locked spaces. These are highly secure spaces suited for confidential collaboration. Space members have access to items in the space, but there is no way for them to share it. When you delete an item in a locked space it is permanently gone (instead of going to the recycle bin).
In paid plans, Asana offers Admin Console — a useful feature for account management. With Admin Console, admins can:
- Add and remove members,
- See all members and filter by member type (e.g. admin, member, invited, removed),
- Crete teams,
- Export data to CSV files,
- Set default privacy levels for teams and more.
Asana offers an unlimited number of free guests in all its paid plans.
You can create private and comment-only projects to have a grip on the information flow in your organization.
Wrike vs Asana administration verdict
Wrike earns a point in this round with its well-designed roles and locked spaces for collaboration that includes classified information.
Wrike vs Asana integration 1:0
Wrike offers a free open RESTful API and cloud storage platforms on all plans and integration with productivity tools and apps on all paid plans.
If you need more integrations, you can pay additionally for a Wrike Integration add-on. With it, you can:
- Connect with 400+ cloud and on-premise apps and databases with pre-built connectors,
- Integrate Wrike with however many apps you need,
- Configure integrations to fit your requirements and
- Create Wrike-to-Wrike integrations that allow you to automate actions that would otherwise have to be done manually.
Asana has over 200 integrations including Clockify, Zapier, Google Drive, GitHub, Zoom, etc.
Over 100 of these integrations are available in the free plan.
Wrike vs Asana integrations verdict
Wrike wins this category with double the number of integrations than Asana.
| Feature | Wrike | Asana |
|---|---|---|
| Number of integration | 400+ | 200+ |
| Overall impression | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | ⭐⭐⭐ |
Wrike vs Asana support 1:1
Every platform has a learning curve, so it is imperative they have a support system in place to help you.
If you are looking for answers about Wrike, you can check out their:
- Knowledge base,
- Community,
- Wrike Discover — online training portal, and
- Wrike webinars.
Wrike has a complex support plan. It has 4 support packages:
- Freemium — for free Wrike accounts,
- Standard — for paid and trial Wrike accounts,
- Premium — for paid accounts who bought Premium Support, and
- Premium Support Plus — for paid accounts who bought Premium Support Plus.
If you are looking for 24/7 support and a 1-hour response time, you will need to pay additionally for premium support.
Here’s an overview of all Wrike’s support plans:
You can submit a request on Asana’s support page to contact their support team.
If you want to get better acquainted with Asana, you can check out:
- Asana guide,
- Asana help,
- Asana forum,
- Developer’s guides,
- Asana use cases,
- Webinars in English, German, and Japanese,
- Academy courses, and
- Video tutorials.
All paid plans offer premium support and Academy training, but if you want 24/7 support, you’ll have to get the Enterprise plan.
Wrike vs Asana support verdict
Asana and Wrike both have knowledge hubs rich with materials to help you out, but neither offers 24/7 support on lower-level plans. So, they both leave this round of face-off with a point.
| Feature | Wrike | Asana |
|---|---|---|
| 24/7 support | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Knowledge base | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Overall impression | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
Wrike vs Asana security 1:1
Data security is on the mind of every business owner. If the security measures are not up to scratch, all the other features the tool has to offer become irrelevant. So, how do these two tools keep your data safe?
Wrike has data centers in the USA and Europe. Full backup of the data is executed on a daily basis and the data is stored encrypted.
With Wrike, you can manage your data encryption keys. Wrike Lock provides you with the master encryption key which is the only thing that can decipher the encryption keys of your data. This master key is stored with Amazon Web Services’ Key Management Service.
Enterprise and Pinnacle plans have advanced security features, such as two-factor verification and controlled admin permissions.
Wrike is HIPAA, Type II SOC 2 & 3, and ISO compliant and possesses CSA STAR, CCPA, and GDPR certifications.
Asana has data centers in Europe, Australia, and Japan. They use Amazon relational database service (RDS) to manage user data, which enables them to recover from a database failure quickly.
In Asana, you can export and delete your own data. There is also an Enterprise Key Management (EKM) feature, which allows you to encrypt your data with keys that you own.
It offers multi-factor authentication and Google Single Sign On (SSO).
Asana has a number of certifications and attestations:
- SOC 2 (Type II) and SOC 3,
- ISO,
- CSA Star Level 1,
- GDPR,
- HIPAA,
- CCPA,
- FERPA,
- GLPA, and
- APPI.
Wrike vs Asana security verdict
Both Wrike and Asana have an advanced level of data protection and relevant certifications. Therefore, they each win a point for security.
| Feature | Wrike | Asana |
|---|---|---|
| Two-factor authentication | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Relevant certification | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Encryption keys | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Overall impression | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
Wrike vs Asana verdict: 5:6
And the winner is — Asana.
| Feature | Wrike | Asana |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | 0 | 1 |
| User interface | 0 | 1 |
| Task management | 1 | 0 |
| Team collaboration | 0 | 1 |
| Progress tracking | 0 | 1 |
| Administration | 1 | 0 |
| Integration | 1 | 0 |
| Support | 1 | 1 |
| Security | 1 | 1 |
| Total score | 5 | 6 |
As the numbers show, it was a close call. Both Wrike and Asana have proved themselves to be useful tools for task management.
The question is, what features are your priority? Compare both of these tools to the specific needs of your organization and decide which would suit you better.
Looking for a Wrike or Asana alternative? Try Plaky
If neither Wrike nor Asana wowed you — try Plaky. It is a free task management tool with a user-friendly interface.
It offers 24/7 support with a 1-hour average response time for free, making it a great alternative to Asana.
With Plaky, you can:
- Organize your workload easily into projects and tasks,
- Create a board for each project using customizable project templates,
- Track the project’s progress using filter and sort options,
- Collaborate with your teammates with comments and @mentions in tasks, and
- Add an unlimited number of users and create an unlimited number of tasks and boards.
Its free plan includes:
- Unlimited number of users,
- Unlimited workspaces,
- Unlimited boards and tasks,
- Google SSO, and more.
Plaky is ISO certified and SOC 2 and GDPR compliant.
A few additional features are available on Plaky paid plans, including private boards and viewer roles. Instead of hiding features behind a paywall, the paid plans in Plaky instead mostly focus on lifting some technical limitations found in the FREE plan, such as increasing the file size cap from 10MB per file (FREE plan) to 25MB (PRO plan) and 100MB (ENTERPRISE plan).
✉️ Do you have any experience using Wrike or Asana? How did you like them? Contact us at blogfeedback@plaky.com and let us know, 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.
