Compare Asana and Trello - Feb 2023

Shlomi Lavi / Feb 28, 2023

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Bottom Line: Which is Better - Asana or Trello?

Asana vs. Trello

About the Providers

Asana is a mobile and web app which helps people to keep track of their work. Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskowitz and another engineer Justin Rosenstein, together built this unique app in 2008, to improve productivity of employees at Facebook.

Trello came into picture in 2011 and is the brainchild of Joel Spolsky, founder of Fog Creek Software. It now has integration capabilities across all cloud platforms and is considered as one of the most efficient productivity softwares available.

Ease of Use

When it comes to ease of use and that too, on cloud, it should be a breeze to fill in and get reports in any software. At Asana, there are tons of keyboard shortcuts, so no more clickety clicks on the mousepad. There are lesser clicks too, since it is way too easy to add new tasks without filling in too many fields.

Trello has a unique UI with a Kanban structure which lets team members view overall status at a glance. Team members corroborate their tasks in a single shot and get to know what the status of each task at hand is. At Trello, team members can lend a helping hand to other team members whilst doing their own tasks.

Reliability

Asana caters to all kinds of business; it even has an enterprise solution, which is missing in Trello. Asana has an ever-evolving support policies, it provides online support which is still missing in Trello. Both have a video tutorial as well as a knowledge hub which allows faster resolution of queries. There is no Windows app available in Asana.

Even with a smaller customer base, Trello needs to have a chat support system. It feels good that you have someone on the other side to help you out. Businesses tend to thrive with Asana.

Speed

Asana’s easy and fast UI results in clumsy fields in the application. The free flow design makes it too cloggy at some times.

Trello has a Kanban approach, which displays dashboards and tiles in a neat and clean manner. Nothing hazy here, just plain and simple labelling and story based approach. This renders Trello easier and faster compared to Asana, you could pursue all the activities at the drop of a hat. Users are also rendered faster access to their tasks and stories and can also update the progress with a blink of an eye. And moreover, they are updated real-time whenever a task or story or discussion is modified. Thus Trello gets the buck on Speed.

Features

Asana is known for its task list management system. It is one of a kind approach where you can tag multiple things to a single item. This means many projects can have one single task or story to discuss upon. Now these tasks need to be followed up pretty well until completion or closure. Asana sticks out its neck in finding out open tasks and throws up a reminder. User gets reminded every then and now and that too, in a single glance, about their open tasks and follow-up tasks. It integrates smoothly with your mailbox; hence, all your communications and correspondences are placed in one platform, allowing the user to respond to customers and colleagues almost instantaneously. At Asana, you can also create a personal workspace, wherein tasks can be viewed without giving access to others. Even personal tasks can be created which could be kept safe from colleagues which adds to the security feature. However, you cannot invite outsiders in this workspace. There is a sub-task facility where child task can easily lose its link with parent task, once they are moved around a bit. The sub-tasks can be assigned a date too.

Trello’s main USP is the Kanban approach, where people have the ability to view tasks at a single shot. It also has a workspace wherein people from outside the organisation can be invited to discuss topics on the same platform as the people within the organisation. It enables collaboration with user’s partners around the globe. It has a grouping system like Facebook, where public, private, closed groups can be created on the basis of level of access needed on each group. There is an added functionality of checklists in the tasks. It comes with an exceptional feature of sub-tasking, wherein the parent-child relationship between tasks is not changed, even when they are moved here and there. But you cannot add dates to these sub tasks, which makes it difficult to follow-up. Multiple people can be assigned or made part of the same task across the organisation. There can be various task lists within each Kanban board, allowing everyone to contribute to each task list, with their individual advice. The Kanban task lists also gives boost to brainstorming sessions. People can contribute their ideas and discuss about ideas thoroughly, with everyone on the same page, resulting in product development and pilot plans deployment. There is another drag and drop feature which makes it immensely easy to create, edit, assign the tasks, and it’s very easy to pick up.

Security

Asana saves all data in secured SSAE 16 data centers from the Amazon Web Servers. Web connections to Asana service is via TLS 1.0 and more. They have a myriad of firewalls, DNS servers and routers to save the data from imminent threats and leakage. They also use industry standard One Time Password system to secure access to corporate employees, so there is no chance of leakage within the organisation.

Trello also runs on TLS, but has an added advantage of HTTPS and SSL encryption, making it even more secure to pass through. Data backup takes place every hour and stored off-site in a disaster recovery location. It has data portability, which allows your data to be downloaded by you, anytime.

Summary

Asana is too young in the market now. But it has come out with all guns blazing and has evolved like anything. Asana has been the pure favourite of business owners as Trello is more inclined towards team members and players. With ever-evolving attitude of Asana, it strikes a balance when it comes to managing projects and tasks.