Asana vs Todoist: 4 Critical Differences

Managing projects is no child’s play for both large and small organizations. At times it can feel very challenging, especially when a slew of projects come up. Consequently, businesses are turning to leverage collaborative Project Management tools to help out their teams. Project Management software aims to make it easier to track work activities, minimize the need for E-Mail and superfluous meetings. They also help in streamlining all company procedures and improving time management by teams.

Simply searching for the best Project Management software will provide you with a plethora of options, making it nearly impossible to make the best pick possible. Let’s take a closer look at 2 of the leading players in the field, Asana vs Todoist, to help you filter down your options.

While productivity enthusiasts will find both software useful for organizing personal and work-related assignments, they differ in a few ways. In this article, you will look at the key parameters that help in making Asana vs Todoist decision. It will also conclude with the right choice of Asana vs Todoist for your business.

Table of Contents

• Introduction to Asana
• Key Features of Asana
• Introduction to Todoist
• Key Features of Todoist
• Parameters that Drive the Asana vs Todoist Decision
  • Asana vs Todoist: Usability
  • Asana vs Todoist: Document Sharing
  • Asana vs Todoist: Project Visualization
  • Asana vs Todoist: Pricing
• Conclusion

Introduction to Asana

Asana is a SaaS (Software as a Service) platform that allows you to keep track of your project and the people working on it. You can effortlessly organize your project, prioritize work, collaborate with your team, and keep track of your progress.

Dustin Moskovitz (co-founder of Facebook) and Justin Rosenstein (ex-engineer for both Facebook and Google) founded Asana in 2008 with the purpose of improving the efficiency and workflow of Facebook employees. Soon they discovered that tech conglomerates weren’t the only ones who could benefit from increased productivity. As a result, they started creating solutions to assist individuals in improving their work-life while simultaneously propelling Asana to the top of the enterprise SaaS market.

The Cloud-based platform allows Asana workspace teammates to track and manage project progress at its most basic level. To monitor particular components of a larger project, at a more granular level, users can create tasks on Asana.

In simpler words, teams can create tasks, assign them to teammates, establish completion deadlines, and comment on and share relevant documents. Team members can receive notifications on the status of their work, as well as approaching deadlines. The dashboard in Asana also gives team leaders a high-level snapshot of project status at a glance.

Key Features of Asana

Asana is an exceptionally user-friendly platform, having a great user interface to ensure an improved user experience while tracking and organizing tasks. Let’s take a look at some of Asana’s most important features:

• Customizable Dashboards: Asana offers completely customizable dashboards that display each participant’s status and track the progress of each task independently. In addition, the dashboard may be used to track Leads, Customer Queries, Job Applications, and group conversations.
• Intuitive UI: Asana’s user interface is incredibly contemporary and eye-catching. You can easily create tasks and assign them to team members. You can also quickly alter the task’s status using the drag and drop feature.
• Views: Asana users can choose from a variety of different view options. These views help in organizing the project tasks in a manner that helps users get a sense of the project they are working on. The aesthetically appealing Kanban boards could be used in projects where duties must follow certain procedures from start to finish. And for jobs with specific deadlines, the calendar and timeline views will be more useful.
• Security: When it comes to keeping your data, Asana adheres to the best-in-class security regulations. It uses Amazon’s Relational Database Service to manage user data (RDS). In addition, Asana hosts data in secure SSAE 16 / SOC2 certified data centers, implement firewalls and access restrictions on its servers.
• Recurring Task: Asana has a Recurring Task feature that allows you to create tasks in a loop by merely adding them once and setting the Repeat Schedule. Setting up a Recurring Task Schedule ensures that you are reminded before your task is due on a daily, weekly, monthly, or annual basis. It’s a one-time effort that guarantees you’ll fulfill your regular deadlines without having to think about them.

For more information on Asana, click here.

Introduction to Todoist

Todoist is a Project Management tool that is designed to help you stay on top of your everyday activities. Since its inception in 2007, Todoist has grown to over 25 million users who use the to-do app to organize their professional and personal lives. Todoist finds an ideal combination between capability and simplicity for many people. It doesn’t have a lot of underlying features, but it’s powerful enough to handle most Task Management workflows.

The app provides a clear picture of all the tasks that have been assigned to you, allowing you to tour them and begin working on them quickly. It keeps you updated and fully in sync with due dates and recurring due dates, guaranteeing you never miss a deadline. Furthermore, the color-coded priority levels play an important part in assisting you in completing chores ahead of schedule.

Key Features of Todoist

Although it is not a full-fledged project management tool like Asana, it does have collaborative capabilities that make it a viable Asana alternative. Listed below are some of the key features of Todoist:

• Email Addition: This tool allows you to quickly transform E-Mails into tasks. It gives you task flexibility because you may add them from anywhere and at any time. Whether you’re on a desktop or a mobile device, this Todoist function works on both.
• Recurring Task: You can use this functionality to identify any saved recurring due dates and set a due date depending on the last time you completed a project. Additionally, you can make use of the Quick Add option. It identifies deadlines and offers shortcuts to certain tasks, such as Labeling, Scheduling, Job Prioritization, and Project Assignment to peers.
• Vacation Mode: Normally, the Todoist Karma system keeps track of your productivity by rewarding points for tasks completed on a daily basis. If you miss a deadline, you will lose points. However, there will be instances when circumstances beyond your control prohibit you from fulfilling your goals. When this occurs, you can activate Vacation Mode to keep your goal streaks intact. You won’t lose any points until you come back and finish your assignments.
• Voice Command: No matter where you are, you may add new functions in seconds using the voice command. You can, for example, use voice commands to set due dates.
• Filters and Labels: Filters highlight the most critical to-do lists, allowing you to prioritize your tasks. 
• Automatic Reminders based on your Location: Todoist will automatically remind you of any due assignments at the proper time. You can change the length of time before receiving a reminder, albeit you don’t have to do so manually. You may also generate reminders depending on your current location. This function will notify you when you are near a location where you must do a job.

For more information on Todoist, click here.

Parameters that Drive the Asana vs Todoist Decision

Now, that you have a basic idea of Asana and Todoist, let us talk about the parameters that drive the Asana vs Todoist decision and make the best choice for your business. There is no on-fit solution to this. The decision of Asana vs Todoist highly depends on your Business Model, Requirements, Budget, and Parameters listed below. The following are the parameters that drive Asana vs Todoist decision:

• Asana vs Todoist: Usability
• Asana vs Todoist: Document Sharing
• Asana vs Todoist: Project Visualization
• Asana vs Todoist: Pricing

1) Asana vs Todoist: Usability

Both Asana and Todoist are incredible tools for managing your workload. Asana is a full-featured Project Management and Collaboration tool that assists teams of all sizes in Planning, Organizing, Tracking, and managing their daily activities in relation to projects.

Todoist, on the other hand, is a toned version of Asana that is more suited to personal usage. Todoist has some collaboration capabilities, but it’s more of a to-do list software for tiny unique requirements or small teams.

2) Asana vs Todoist: Collaboration via Document Sharing

The primary usage of project management tools is to enforce smoother collaboration among various teams working on the same project. This also implies that sharing documents and adding comments on individual projects tasks can facilitate better collaboration.

While Asana allows commenting on individual tasks, comments on Todoist are open to the whole project rather than a single task. Though comments can be a great place for employees to exchange and collaborate on documents – notes, links, files, audio recordings, and more – within their own teams, objectives, and so on, in Todoist, it can be difficult to manage on an individual task.

3) Asana vs Todoist: Project Visualization

Asana offers 6 distinct ways to see your projects: List, Board, Calendar, Progress, Forms, and Timeline, which you can switch to obtain a better overview of the project.

In comparison, Todoist only allows you to view your projects as a list or Kanban board. While Todoist doesn’t have a built-in calendar view, you can directly see tasks with due dates by integrating apps like Google Calendar and Outlook Calendar.

4) Asana vs Todoist: Pricing

While both Todoist and Asana provide a free plan, Asana’s is more inclusive, allowing you to work on an infinite number of tasks, projects, and messages while collaborating with up to 15 team members. Todoist’s free plan allows for up to 5 active projects and 5 collaborators per project.

Asana’s Premium subscription costs $10.99 per user per month and includes Timeline, Advanced Search, Custom fields, Forms, Rules, and more features. In comparison, the Business plan ($24.99 per user per month) caters to businesses and includes more complex features such as Workload, Forms customization, and advanced integrations with Salesforce, Adobe Creative Cloud, Tableau, and Power BI.

Todoist’s Pro plan, which costs $3 a month, is ideal for power users who want a little more from their to-do list. This plan includes 300 active projects, 25 contributors, 150 filters, and unlimited reminders and activity history. The Business plan ($5 per user per month) includes a team inbox, admin and member roles, and team billing, in addition to almost all of the Premium features. It further allows you to accommodate 500 active projects per member and 50 collaborators for each project.

Conclusion

The article introduced you to Asana and Todoist. It also elaborated on their key features. Furthermore, it also provides you with the key differences that help in making Asana vs Todoist decisions. Asana vs Todoist is one of the most debatable topics. This article has made it easier for you to make the decision of Asana vs Todoist for your business.

Both Asana and Todoist have a lot of features, are simple to use, and work well for personal and professional activities, but they serve significantly different purposes. While Todoist is great for managing personal productivity, day-to-day chores that don’t need considerable cooperation, Asana is best for high-level, long-term projects, whether personal or collaborative. However, Asana may have the edge over Todoist when it comes to integrations and APIs – a feature that can come in handy for large-scale external collaborations.

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