With a wealth of features like project planning, feedback sharing, and progress tracking, project management tools like Wrike and Asana make life much easier for teams. Say goodbye to endless counter-productive meetings or a myriad of spreadsheets- you can now collaborate seamlessly with your teammates, in one platform.
Choosing the right tools for your projects, however, is no walk in the park. While most project management tools aim to provide the same solutions, they often take different approaches. Some focus more on software project management while others are more suitable for projects of all types, including non-engineering.
Wrike and Asana are two of the most popular tools, but which one is best for your team?
In this review, we’ll go through what each tool has to offer and give you a head-to-head comparison, including their features, prices, and customer support. Let’s start with the basics!
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What is Wrike?
Wrike is a project management platform that helps enterprise and SMB teams collaborate and manage project activities.
Founded in 2006 by Andrew Filev, the company’s mission is to help teams work “smarter and faster.” They focus on improving the platform and integrating tools that help project teams work together without the complexities of spreadsheets and other traditional project management methods.
What is Asana?
With its name and logo derived from a yoga pose, Asana aims to help teams plan, organize and manage work from start to finish. The cloud-based platform cuts across a web, mobile, and desktop application designed to eliminate project management distractions for teams.
Asana allows teams to work without having to shuffle through emails, spreadsheets, and other external tools. It brings most project management functions into a single platform for optimal efficiency and easy management. Asana is comparable to ClickUp in the regard.
Asana was created by former team leads at Facebook; Dustin Moskovits and Justin Rosenstein. The founders wanted to develop a project management platform that lived up to its Yoga derivative, representing the “form and flow” they want teams to experience.
Wrike vs Asana: How they stack up
While Wrike and Asana both aim to help teams achieve more productivity, they come with unique features. Let’s take a look.
Wrike Features
Wrike has a variety of features available for small to large teams. Some of these features are limited to their paid plans. Here are some interesting Wrike features to note:
Accessibility and ease of use – Wrike is accessible on Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS Apps. The platform provides easy-to-use templates that help you create and manage specific projects. It also supports dark mode for various devices.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)– Wrike uses artificial intelligence to recommend tasks and assignees based on your configurations. You can also see your team schedules to know who’s available for new project tasks.
Real-time project updates and conversations – With Wrike, you can see and filter project updates in real time. You can also easily join conversations because the platform has an interface like social networks. Wrike also has an analytics widget that shows your project overview and team workload within a specific period.
Collaborations and Interactive boards – Wrike is an effective collaboration tool for virtual teams. Team projects can also be shared externally (only by invitation), so you can easily involve contractors or clients if your project demands it. You can also switch between the various project views like list, table, Gantt, and Kanban that the platform provides.
Pre-built Integrations and Storage Capabilities – With Wrike, you can access basic integrations with storage tools like Google Drive, Dropbox, MS office 365, and One Drive. Other tools like Slack, Github, Tenovos, and Okta can also be integrated into Wrike. Wrike offers 2GB storage space for user accounts with a free plan and up to 10GB storage per user with an enterprise plan.
Wrike’s premium features allow teams to have shareable dashboards and interactive Gantt charts. They can also create and automate custom workflows and create project templates, branded workspaces, and user groups.
Asana Features
Similar to tools like Jira (read our Asana Vs. Jira article for more), Asana offers various features that are accessible based on different pricing plans. Here’s an overview of some Asana features you should note:
Accessibility and Ease of Use – Asana takes pride in making its platform accessible to everyone. The software is also accessible through web, mobile, and desktop applications. It offers pre-made templates that you can adopt for your projects. Asana has a more intuitive and friendly user interface than Wrike.
Artificial intelligence – Asana allows you to automate repetitive activities like updating tasks, assigning tasks to teammates, and regulating due dates through configured rules. In addition, with Asana, if you have iOS 11.0.0 you’ll be able to create tasks with Siri.
Real-time project updates and conversations – Asana provides a data-driven approach to progress tracking. With the “project overview,” you can see status updates on a particular project.
Asana’s dashboard gives you a set of charts based on your project data and current status, delivering instant insights into how your project is going.
Collaborations and Interactive boards – Like Wrike, Asana’s collaboration features allow you to communicate with teammates, contractors, and clients involved in a particular project. With Asana, you can view your project through boards, lists, timelines, or calendars.
Pre-built integrations and Storage Capability – Asana allows integrations with storage tools like Google Drive, Box, and Dropbox. Including other helpful tools like Slack, GitHub, Harvest, and Instagantt. Asana offers unlimited file storage to users.
With Asana’s premium features, teams can have unlimited dashboards, assess team bandwidth, and access more advanced integrations like Tableau, Power Bi, and Adobe Creative Cloud.
Wrike vs Asana: Pricing
Both platforms have well-structured price plans for businesses and project managers, but here’s how they differ:
- Free Plan – With the free plan, you can only access to basic functionalities like interactive board views, project activity streams, and cloud storage. Meanwhile, Asana’s free plan comes with more features like time tracking integrations, unlimited messaging, and zero task limitations.
- Professional plan – Wrike has a professional plan at $9.80 monthly per user. Asana has a premium plan at $10.99 annually per user and $13.49 monthly per user.
- Business Plan – With Wrike, teams will pay $24.80 monthly per user. Asana users pay $24.99 annually per user and $30.49 monthly per user.
Both Asana and Wrike have an enterprise plan with undisclosed prices.
Before you decide on which platform and plan to choose, make sure that you have a thorough assessment of your project so you can make the best choice for your team.
Wrike vs Asana: Customer service
We cannot discuss Wrike vs Asana without looking at their customer service. Who is more more responsive when you need support? And who has more resources to guide you?
Wrike and Asana have a body content created to help you navigate the platforms. Wrike’s product guide is comprehensive enough to help you get accustomed to its functionalities. Wrike also has demos to show users how the software works.
Asana has an FAQ section and Help pages that explain its features with graphical illustrations and images. There’s also the Asana Academy, a knowledge base, that teaches users how to use the platform and educates them about the basics of project management.
For customer support, Wrike staff is reachable via email, social media, mobile, and a functional live chat. Asana’s customer service is accessible through support forms, their forum, and the live chat. Both are relatively responsive with customer requests.
Still haven’t found the right project management tool? Check out Tara!
Tara is a product delivery software designed to help teams plan and track product updates in one place. It has an intuitive, zero-config interface, making it easy for teams of all sizes to get started. It is a great choice for teams of all sizes looking for rapid and efficient product development.
Tara Features
Tara makes project management activities like sprint planning, task prioritization, project monitoring, and cross-team collaborations straightforward, as they should be. They provide a comprehensive product guide with actionable tips to help you get started.
Here are some of Tara’s top features that will help you and your team move faster.
Simple and intuitive interface – Tara eliminates the complexities of project management. With a user interface that supports speed and simplicity, it’s easy to create and prioritize tasks in your sprint.
Effortless documentation – With Tara, you can save client specifications and documents for easy collaboration on your tasks. You can also group your tasks and user stories into epics and requirements with more details, so assignees have access to the details needed for a particular project task.
Real-time tracking – Tara gives you real-time insights into your project’s status with details on commits, blockers, and merges. You can also compare performance predictions with actual efforts. Enabling you to set informed priorities in your project sprints.
Powerful integrations – With Tara’s GitHub integration, you can access pull requests from previous and existing tasks. You can also use Tara’s Slack App to get relevant notifications on your team’s performance and easily convert messages into tasks.
Automation – Focus on the creative aspects of your project and let Tara help you handle repetitive tasks like status updates, sprint planning, and activity predictions. You can easily set up automation on Tara even without coding knowledge.
Why choose Tara?
Tara is an intuitive tool that helps modern and cross-functional teams get started in seconds, unlike any other platforms. New users are not left in the dark because Tara’s UI helps them create tasks and sprints in a few simple clicks – something that most tools don’t offer.
Unlike Wrike and Asana, communicating with your team is easier with Tara. You can use @mentions and comments to quickly discuss and assess project needs. Your team members also get prompt notifications when issues arise with tasks assigned to them.
Tara offers a powerful free plan that allows unlimited tasks and requirements under a single team. You can have up to 5 users in your workspace under the free plan.
Meanwhile, the premium plan starts at just $5 monthly per user per month, making Tara one of the most affordable project management tools on the market. You can also access the Co-pilot plan for even more functionalities at $10 per user per month. Additionally, Tara has an enterprise package that can be customized for your project needs.
Wrike vs Asana: Bottom Line
With a more intuitive interface, Asana is best for teams of all types and sizes looking for a simplified project management solution. It is not as powerful as other full-scale project management platforms, but Asana is more user friendly than Wrike. The platform is preferable for projects that need to be broken into sub-tasks to be handled by different team members.
Wrike, on the other hand, is suitable for larger teams in need of an advanced tool that offers customizations. It gives you more freedom to customize your project management workflow and templates, or to create a branded workspace for your team. If you need a tool with complex in-built features like time tracking and advanced file-proofing, then Wrike is the better option for your team.
If you are still on the fence about both, consider Tara as an alternative. The platform supports teams of all sizes in handling complex projects. It takes away a lot of the manual work in project management with automation and powerful integrations.
Now that you know the big secret for rapid and effective development, it’s time to join the over 4,000 teams using Tara to Git Ship Done! Get started today!