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.
"Asana has a wonderful user experience that is very easy to interact with and has tons of integrations with other products and tools."
"Asana, despite its compact size, proves to be incredibly valuable. When initiating a project, it offers the ability to generate a personalized form for clients. In this particular context, my clients include the customer success team and solution architects. This feature allows me to provide them with a convenient means to submit their requests, resembling a ticketing system geared towards internal operations. Moreover, it enables efficient allocation within my team. For instance, if a question pertains to customer success, I can assign it to the CSOps manager and the team. Similarly, if it relates to a specific channel, it can be allocated accordingly."
"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 most about Asana is its simplicity. For example: we're not the only ones using it, and we onboard our customers to it, and normally, they have no questions."
"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."
"By using this software, I have adaptability in my work, and it can improve the production of our company."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is its project management tracking systems."
"It has helped our departments maintain visibility."
"The product's initial setup phase is easy."
"The solution is stable."
"Microsoft Project is one of the only solutions you can use in just about any industry. It's difficult to do that with most other project management tools. There is a lot of flexibility within the product assets. Most sectors can utilize Microsoft Project successfully because it doesn't have any generic adapters."
"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."
"Microsoft offers good support."
"It is easy to use and pretty intuitive. User interfaces have stayed the same for the most part for the last 20 years. So, there is a familiarity."
"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."
"Microsoft Project offers comprehensive project overviews and the ability to rate down what we have and what we need in terms of software."
"The product's page is not user-friendly."
"Some customizations and functions are still not available, however, so far, they haven't been a deal killer."
"More features can be added."
"It's difficult to have short-term collaborations with external users because the operations team owns the final licenses, and I work for marketing."
"The documentation for integration could be improved. We require more information to facilitate the integrations."
"Having a quick way to do video inside the platform or video communication could be very handy."
"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."
"There could be some improvements in terms of how projects or day-to-day work is organized. One of the challenges when it comes to rolling out to an enterprise is the way the projects are organized. It has a kind of setup where you have different projects and tasks, but it is not as organized as Smartsheet when it comes to organizing projects or different teams. It can get really cluttered really fast. JIRA has another suite to submit the support tickets. It would be good if Asana could branch out to incorporate some kind of workflow. It is great for collaboration and recording work, but there isn't any workflow. It would be useful if they can map out a workflow of who approves what. This is kind of a big ask, and it is not geared towards that."
"The full suite would be pretty expensive."
"It is positioned at the more high end. Sometimes it's more complicated than we need."
"The Microsoft license is relatively expensive."
"There have been some drawbacks with customization. Some users want it to be an automation tool."
"Could be more user-friendly, and forecasting could be better."
"Once we commit our status, changing it is hard."
"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."
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 "Extremely stable, user-friendly, and easy to navigate". 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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