Notion vs Asana: 5 Critical Differences

Planning in an organizational setup can be cumbersome if you do not have the right tools to work with. Recent advancement in technology has also brought about an increase in the use of software for Project Management making them essential ingredients for companies that want to improve productivity. Asana and Notion are two extensively used Project Management software available in the market and choosing the best for your team can be a little confusing at times as deciding which to go for becomes a big deal.

Notion is a note-taking software that helps to organize your workspace by providing the information needed by your team, helps in building a subscription tracker, a book tracking page, and a lot of other possibilities while Asana, on the other hand, helps you create projects, assign tasks to team members, and keep track of the work progress to manage a project efficiently.

This blog will give you a comprehensive guide to help you answer the Notion vs Asana decision. You will explore the key features of Notion and Asana. You will also get to know about the key factors that differentiate both these Project Management platforms. In the end, you will be in the position to choose the best platform based on your business requirements. Let’s get started.

Factors that Drive the Notion vs Asana Decision

Both Notion and Asana are popular Project Management platforms in the market. There is no one-size-fits-all answer here, instead, you must choose based on your company’s needs, budget, and other factors to make Notion vs Asana decision. The primary factors that influence the Notion vs Asana comparison are as follows:

• Notion vs Asana: Appearance & Layout
• Notion vs Asana: Ease of Use
• Notion vs Asana: Supported Platforms
• Notion vs Asana: Apps & Integration
• Notion vs Asana: Pricing

1) Notion vs Asana: Appearance & Layout

Notion and Asana have similar layouts and appearance with a bar for navigation found on the left-hand side of the screen and an area on the main screen to customize your views. Notion has templates that you can use to create appealing designs and workflows.

In Asana, the main screen shows projects and tasks that can easily be customized. You can use the available workflow templates to create an outlook to meet your specific needs and can change the background of your workspace by choosing a theme of your choice.

2) Notion vs Asana: Ease of Use

Notion is an easy-to-use platform for note-taking in which pages are built using blocks to cover all your tasks and displays the way you want by using templates or organizing from scratch by simply dragging and dropping options to form your dashboard, website, system, etc. 

Asana is mainly suitable for professional users who can use the app to manage projects and may require more time to discover all its rich functionalities but with a very simple-to-use interface. When logging into Asana, you will need to enter all the relevant data for each project as it is a cloud application.

3) Notion vs Asana: Supported Platforms

Notion is available on all major platforms like Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android. It can be accessed through its web version through browsers. Notion uses the same UI across mobile, PC, and web.

Asana can also be found on all major platforms such as Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS. Asana can be used on web browsers also.

4) Notion vs Asana: Apps & Integration

Notion supports the automate.io app with which you can connect over 200+ integrations that include Slack, Gmail, Mailchimp, Salesforce, Google Calendar, Microsoft Outlook, etc. You can also add tweets, videos, prototypes, and cloud storage files in the form of blocks to pages. Notion’s API also allows you to code and connect with other apps.

Asana helps users to bring emails, storage, files, support tickets, and other apps into the application to enable the team members to complete tasks easily. It supports more than 100+ integrations such as Zapier, Dropbox, Microsoft Office 365, Jira, GitHub, etc.

5) Notion vs Asana: Pricing

Notion has different pricing models that include a Free plan for individual use to Enterprise, for large companies. Its pricing models include:

• Personal: It is a free model meant for individual use with unlimited pages and blocks, shared with 5 guests.
• Personal Pro: It is billed at $4/month per annum or $5/month contains everything in Personal with unlimited file uploads, unlimited guests, and a thirty-day history.
• Team: This pricing model is billed at $8/month per annum or $10/month. It has everything found in Pro plus unlimited team members, collaborative workspace, etc.
• Enterprise: It is the last pricing model offered by Notion and it includes features found in the other models with additional features like SAML SSO, advanced security, and controls. To use Enterprise you will have to contact Notion’s sales team.

Asana also has a variety of pricing models which start from Basic to Enterprise depending on your business size.

• Basic: It is its freemium package as no money is needed and can be used by individuals or teams just starting with project management, it has unlimited tasks and projects, unlimited file storage (100MB per file), collaboration with up to 15 teammates, etc.
• Premium: This pricing plan is suitable for organizations that need to create and manage projects with timelines, unlimited dashboards, advanced search, unlimited free guests, etc. It is priced at $13.49/month and $10.99/month annually.
• Business: It is ideal for teams and businesses that need to manage projects across multiple initiatives, is billed at $30.49/month and  $24.99/month annually with all the features found in Premium and more.
• Enterprise: It gives you more control, security, and support, with additional features like SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language), data export and deletion, attachment controls, you will need to reach out to Asana’s sales team. 

Introduction to Notion

Notion can be described as note-taking software that can be used for Project and Task Management by using databases and markdown pages. It is a collaborative platform that works with modified markdown support, allowing the integration of kanban boards, tasks, wikis, and databases for individual and collective work.

It can further be seen as a File Management tool that offers a unified workspace thereby allowing users to make comments on ongoing projects, join discussion groups, and receive feedback on aspects where changes could be made.

Compared to simple note-taking apps, Notion does much more than simply take notes as it uses blocks. Blocks are the foundation on which Notion pages are built, they add additional information to pages and up to 50 blocks can be added to each row. These blocks include headings, text, embeds, tables, calendars, lists, checklists, files, etc. to help you organize your notes to meet your team’s needs. Notion can be accessed through a web browser in addition to cross-platform apps.

Key Features of Notion

Notion is one of the widely used Project Management platforms. Let’s explore some of its key features:

• Complex Notes: This is used in the creation of complex notes with several block types.
• SubNotes: You can add blocks in some blocks to manage the complex notes to make them simplified and understandable by team members.
• Comments: This is used to make comments on blocks for other teammates’ comprehension.
• Tasklist: This is used to add tasks into various sections to manage your workflow.
• Export Notes: This helps you to export notes in other file formats like PDF and HTML.

Introduction to Asana

Asana is a cloud-based Project Management platform that helps businesses to organize projects, assign and monitor tasks, collaborate in real-time, and streamline communication among teams members and others. It is suitable for a wide range of companies seeking to improve their organizational structure as they handle multiple projects. Asana is highly customizable and designed to improve team collaborations. 

Asana helps the team members to assign work to teammates, specify scheduled deadlines, communicate and analyze the progress of tasks, address issues about problems faced in a simplified manner, and many others. Therefore, Asana eliminates the need for meetings, updating emails, and sharing memos. 

Asana has viable features and tools for reporting to help monitor the progress of projects, file attachments, calendar views for projects and tasks, and lots more. It can also be integrated with hundreds of other apps such as Google Drive, Dropbox, Zoom, Salesforce, Outlook, Tableau, and many others.

Key Features of Asana

Asana is gaining a significant market share because of its distinguishing features that set it apart from its competitors. Some of the key features of Asana include:

• Communication: Asana allows teams to communicate by monitoring projects and commenting directly on tasks to state exactly what needs to be done, giving feedback by leaving comments on images or PDFs, discussing a project’s progress, mention teammates in projects so everyone is connected in real-time.
• Views: Asana can be used to plan your day with a prioritized to-do list, receive and filter notifications on projects, tasks, and conversations you are in.
• Reporting: Asana’s reporting feature helps you to set, track, and manage goals. You can set milestones to identify progress and portfolios to organize and monitor strategic initiatives.
• Team Management: Create teams to organize and manage projects and connect the members with a shared calendar of conversations, add followers, guests, and give permissions to control the team’s privacy settings. Teams can be based on departments, project involvement, or job function.

Conclusion

Determining which app between Notion and Asana is better for Project Management is largely based on what you want to achieve as both apps are efficient and can serve different purposes. Both help in the management of projects and tasks but, if you are looking to use a simple Task Management tool with some note-taking then, Notion will be your most preferred option. Whereas, if an efficient Project Management tool is needed to execute a project where teams are given tasks to aid the overall completion of the project, then Asana should be your point of call.

This article gave a comprehensive guide to Notion vs Asana. You got a deeper understanding of Notion vs Asana and its key features. Now, you are in the position to choose the best among the two based on your business goals and requirements. To conclude, Notion vs Asana decision is entirely based on the company’s goals, resources, and also a matter of personal preference.

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