Since the dawn of agile project management methods, developers have continued to give us new tools to organize information and communicate with our teams better. Two popular tools, Notion and Asana, represent the rapid innovation happening in this space and the plethora of options we have to work together as teams of all sizes. In this comparison of Notion vs. Asana, we’ll cover the basics you need to know about each project management tool, including price, features and pros and cons.
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Notion vs. Asana: At a Glance
Notion and Asana are both modern project management software designed to work for and grow with small, agile teams.
Notion, launched in 2016 and popular among tech startups and solopreneurs, simplifies the agile approach even further by adding intuitive information management and creative collaboration to the project management environment.
Asana has been around twice as long as Notion, and the platform is built around a more traditional approach to agile project management—Kanban boards, calendars, timelines and databases.
Notion
Starting price
Free; $8 per user per month (billed annually)
Storage
Unlimited uploads and 5MB per file on free plan
Collaboration
Tagging and commenting on tasks and real-time editing and presence on pages
Free; $8 per user per month (billed annually)
Unlimited uploads and 5MB per file on free plan
Tagging and commenting on tasks and real-time editing and presence on pages
Notion is a powerful tool that can cover your personal or team needs for data and project management, docs, spreadsheets, calendars, creative collaboration and small file storage. It lets you get away from navigating among multiple platforms to find and communicate what you need and get your work done all in one place.
Notion lets you create dynamic pages to organize information, work on projects or manage data. Pages can be simple text documents, blocks that include images and other media; or embedded databases you can view as tables, Kanban boards, calendars, galleries or timelines. A page linked within another can be treated as a subpage, so you can easily see the hierarchy of information and projects in your organization.
- Docs and databases in one tool
- Dynamic data views, including table, Kanban, calendar, gallery and timeline
- Clean, customizable interface
- No team members on free or Pro plans, only guests
Asana
Starting price
Free; $10.99 per user per month (billed annually)
Storage
Unlimited uploads and 100MB per file
Collaboration
Tagging and commenting on tasks
Free; $10.99 per user per month (billed annually)
Unlimited uploads and 100MB per file
Tagging and commenting on tasks
Asana is a highly customizable project management tool. You can organize tasks in classic views, including lists, Kanban boards, calendars and timelines. The platform lets you set up forms to collect project information, create templates to recreate projects easily with repeatable processes and set rules to automate common steps.
You can organize tasks by projects and teams and collaborate with team members through tags and comments on tasks. Integrate with Google Drive and other popular platforms to keep your creative collaboration connected with your project management.
- Up to 15 team members on free plan
- Dynamic data views, including table, Kanban, calendar and timeline
- Templates for repeatable processes
- No on-platform creative collaboration
- Poor user reviews
How the Platforms Stack Up
| Notion | Asana | |
|---|---|---|
| Project Management | Create and assign tasks and organize as tables, Kanban boards, calendars, galleries or timelines | Create and assign tasks and organize as tables, Kanban boards, calendars or timelines |
| Data Management | Create databases with unlimited properties | Create databases with unlimited properties |
| Information Infrastructure | Create tiered and categorized pages for internal documentation; search and link from page to page easily | Integrate with creative suites and customer relationship management (CRM) platforms to link to external documentation within databases |
| Creative Collaboration | Real-time editing and presence in pages, commenting on content | Integrate with Google Workspace or Microsoft Office 365 to link to external docs |
| File Storage | Unlimited uploads with all plans. 5MB per-file limit on free plan; recommended 2GB to 3GB limit with paid plans | Unlimited file storage with all plans, limit 100MB per file |
| Automation | Connect with hundreds of apps via Zapier, IFTTT and Automate.io | Create "if this, then that" rules to automate routine project management steps and connect hundreds of apps via Zapier or IFTTT |
Project Management
Both Notion and Asana offer what most teams are looking for in a modern project management tool. You can set up projects in the form of a database and define as many properties as you need for tasks like assignees, reviewers, external links, dates and other pertinent information.
View projects as tables, Kanban boards, calendars or timelines to get the information you need about a project’s progress. Notion also includes a gallery view, which lets you see each row of a database as a card, like a bulletin board.
Both apps integrate directly with dozens of other workspace apps, as well as indirectly with hundreds more through Zapier and IFTTT, so you can link all the work your team is doing in one place and automate common steps.
Communicate with team members in both apps on tasks by tagging them with an @ mention in threaded comments. Team members can personalize their notification preferences to get an email when they’re mentioned or just follow updates within the platform.
Data Management
Both Notion and Asana use the same databases for data management that you use for project management. You can create as many separate projects or databases as you need to keep information organized, and you can set up unlimited customized and filtered views to visualize data and create dashboards.
Information Infrastructure
Notion uniquely merges document creation and management with project and data management through pages. You don’t have to link out to third-party documentation in your database. Use Notion to both create and organize documents associated with projects and databases.
You can organize pages in a hierarchy like web pages and search for one to link within another while you’re writing with only an @ mention.
Asana integrates with creative suites, including Google Drive and Microsoft Office 365, so you can link to external documents easily to keep information organized within your Asana databases. This is a simple solution if you’re already using the third-party apps and don’t want to migrate, but it’s much less seamless than Notion’s all-in-one experience.
Creative Collaboration
Both Asana and Notion facilitate some creative collaboration through their project management features—you can communicate with team members about projects through comments on tasks.
Only Notion’s pages let you keep even more collaboration right in the same tool. Use them like you would Google Docs or Microsoft Word to create written assets or documentation and invite team members to collaborate. You’ll see real-time edits and presence as team members work on pages, and you can add comments to suggest changes or ask questions by linking to anchor text within a page.
However, Notion’s word processing features are limited compared with the most popular third-party tools. It doesn’t offer an in-app spell checker, word counter or the ability to track changes, although you can see a version history and restore older versions of a page.
File Storage
Neither Notion nor Asana offers files storage as robust as options like Google Drive, OneDrive or Dropbox. But both offer unlimited file uploads, and the ability to organize files using their complex databases could be attractive for some teams.
Notion offers unlimited file uploads for all free and paid accounts. Individual file size is limited to 5MB for free accounts. Technically file size is unlimited for paid accounts, but users have experienced failed uploads with extremely large files. Notion reps have recommended limited file size to 2GB to 3GB.
Asana offers unlimited file uploads with all free and paid accounts, with an individual file size limit of 100MB across the board.
Automation
Asana offers superior native automation functionality, although Notion has native automation in the works with its 2021 acquisition of integration software Automate.io.
In Asana, you can set custom rules to automate common steps in your project management processes—like routing tasks to the correct projects, assigning steps to the right team members, adding or tagging team members at necessary steps in the process and notifying team members when work is ready for their input.
Both platforms integrate with Zapier and IFTTT to connect with hundreds of apps and automate common processes in your workflow—like moving files from one platform to another, sharing information with stakeholders and creating tasks based on events happening around the business.
Featured Partners
1
monday.com
Yes
From $8 monthly per user
Zoom, LinkedIn, Adobe, Salesforce and more
2
ClickUp
Yes, for unlimited members
$7 per month
Slack, Microsoft Outlook, HubSpot, Salesforce, Timely, Google Drive and more
3
Wrike
Yes
$10 per user per month
Salesforce, Adobe, Miro, Netsuite, QuickBooks, SAP
Bottom Line
Both Notion and Asana can fulfill basic project management needs for any team, but Notion can replace several additional tools and put more of your team’s work in a central place.
Notion is easier to take up if your company or team is fairly new, very nimble or completely overhauling your processes. Migrating existing processes entirely into the app would require significant work and buy-in from your team. But centralizing your projects, data and information and streamlining your team’s work could be worth it in the long run.
Asana is a more traditional project and data management tool that you could swap in for any other database tool. It’s a lower-cost option for teams of 15 or fewer people, who can enjoy many of the app’s features for free. It’ll cost more than Notion, however, to take advantage of the platform’s more robust project management features like workflows, forms and automation rules.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What are the three main types of project management software?
Individual project management software is set up by one person with one view, such as a spreadsheet view. Collaborative project management software offers one source of truth but also tools that allow people to work on their terms and within their individual roles, such as real-time editing and task-assignment capabilities. Finally, integrated project management software allows for the management and tracking of multiple projects.
What are the disadvantages of Notion?
Notion does not offer advanced project management features, and it has a bit of a learning curve. It doesn’t provide good security features, and its mobile app is limiting. Read our Notion review to learn more.
What’s better than Notion?
Depending on your company’s needs, there are a variety of project management systems other than Notion. In fact, we looked at the options on the market to create a list of the best Notion alternatives.
