Good Alternative to Asana

One of the biggest issues that teams face is dealing with task volume. When team growth is paced up, each person must take on a lot more load than before. Not only do individual employees have many tasks to handle, but the number of group and collaborative tasks also increases.

Handling these tasks can get very complicated, especially when employees and teams are juggling more than one thing at a time. That is why project management software can prove so useful. One of the most popular task management software options is Asana – given the number of businesses and entrepreneurs that use it.

However, the popularity of Asana does not mean it is the best product out there. Many other Team Collaboration Software programs offer similar or better features and at a better price point. One of those programs is Wrike. It is viewed by many as an impressive alternative in 2022 to Asana as well as a good alternative to Trello, Jira, Basecamp and other market leaders.

Wrike – Alternative to Asana

Wrike offers teams the ability to collaborate on tasks, and manage the individual assignments sent to team and company members. Whether someone is working from the head office, or they are a remote employee, they can easily be a part of every task that is going on throughout the company.

Task Management

Real-time task management is very easy with Wrike. The straightforward design and features of the program ensure that someone can start using it within minutes, even if they have little to no experience with task management programs.

Team and Project Management

With folder hierarchies, everyone has a much easier time keeping appraised of what needs to get done. Creating and moving folders is simple. Tasks can be scheduled, edited and deleted, while they can also be color coordinated.

By having a hierarchy and color coordination, team members know what tasks are the most pressing priorities. It is also easy for them to see how much progress they have made on a task – and how much progress the group is making as a whole.

A recent example at my own workplace occurred where staff were using the Publisher Rocket free download for ebook collaboration and needed to keep everyone on the same page re:progress.

Real-Time Editing

One of the best features of Wrike is how everyone in the team can edit documents and tasks in real-time. There is no need to wait for someone to send you a new copy of a document or file. You can see while they are working on it, and you can see their edits in real time.

Such a feature ensures that group collaboration is easier than ever. It is also possible to see what changes were made to the previous version of a document – whether it is the editing of a single word, or the addition of a whole paragraph or page.

Customized Workflows

Every team has different workflows. One team may function completely differently from another, even if they are in similar industries.

That is why Wrike offers custom workflows. It allows for better structuring of the work, and boosts the pace of getting tasks done. Workflows include an approval process, product development and marketing.

Wrike offers written and visual tutorials on how to use workflows effectively.

Analytics

Some of the analytics featured in Wrike include a performance chart, baseline chart, work progress, and the Gantt chart. The performance chart makes it easy to see how a team is performing on planned and completed tasks. The baseline chart is useful for project managers, as it allows them to assess how different projects are coming along.

With the work progress, analytics, managers can see how individual members of a team are performing. All their completed, active and overdue tasks are visible, allowing for easy comparison of team members. The Gantt chart is billed as an advanced project timeline tracker. It allows for splitting timelines into days, months or years. Task dependency and task durations are featured.

How much does Wrike cost?

Wrike offers five pricing tiers for its users. An individual or company may select from the free, professional, business, marketers and enterprise plans.

The free plan is ideal for small teams of five or less people. The professional plan is useful for up to 15 users, and comes in at less than $10 per user for each month. The Business plan has a higher price point, but allows for up to 200 users.

The marketers plan is specifically geared towards that industry while the enterprise plan features advanced security and control options. Potential customers must contact Wrike directly to learn about the cost of the Wrike Enterprise plan.

A free trial is available in all the Wrike plans, which is a very nice feature. It gives individuals and businesses the chance to test drive the software to see whether it fits their needs. If a company is not happy with Wrike, they can cancel before the free trial is over and there is no obligation to pay for the product.

Each of the Wrike plans includes the option for the “Proofing and Approval” add-on. Proofing makes it easy to add comments to an image or document and circulate it to the team for feedback, while the Approval piece organizes and makes it clear which parts of the project are ready to go and which are not.

Why Choose Wrike Over Asana?

1. Collaboration is easier with Wrike, given the way that everyone can look at the real-time edits and uploads made by group members and team leaders.

2. Connecting the program with email and tagging other team members in comments or tasks means that integration is seamless with Wrike.

3. If a task is relevant to the goals of more than one project, it is possible to relate it to multiple projects without having to create duplicates of the task. Team members know this task must get done to progress on multiple projects, but there is only one iteration of the task itself.

4. The Gantt chart is a massive boost for users who want deep analytics on assignments. With Asana, it is necessary to use Instagantt to integrate the same Gantt charts into the program.

5. Tracking budgets is possible with Wrike. Companies and enterprises can track budgets to see whether the team is over, under or on the allocated budget for a project.

6. With Wrike, decision makers can see all the tasks they have assigned to different team members through a “Workflow view”. Why is the workflow view so special? Because it gives a visual representation of how much work each person is assigned. If someone is overloaded with tasks, it becomes apparent and some rescheduling can happen.

7. Wrike offers phone support as part of its customer service operation. Those who pay for the premium service can get even more support when they are facing issues with the software.

Problems with Wrike

Those who use the program often complain about how it takes too long to update projects. There are also some complaints about the program having too many features, which can make it overwhelming for someone who is not used to managing tasks in such a way.

The in-depth nature of the program is great for team leaders that know how to use every single feature, but it can result in everything feeling a bit cluttered. Tasks are also a bit difficult to break up. A single task may have so many files and comments inside it – with no easy way to split those up into mini-tasks.

Asana

Asana comes with only three price points: free, premium and enterprise.

The free plan delivers basic features for small businesses or startups. It allows for unlimited tasks, projects, conversations, and includes the dashboard and search features. However, there is a limit of 15 team members.

With the premium version, which is less than $10 a month per team member, there are no team limits, unlimited dashboards, advanced search features, task dependencies, private teams and projects and much more.

Project Management Software

For managing projects, Asana offers easy individual task creation, ability for project managers to note project progress, roadmap creation, and launch planning when the project is near completion.

Manager Features

Managers will be happy with most of the features in Asana. It allows for setting up one-to-one meetings, creating high-end strategies, setting goals and outlining strategy, creating custom reports to track how teams are performing, and the ability to track each person’s development within the team.

Asana offers an impressive set of features to users who are new to the task management software world. Some of the more popular features of Asana include:

• Ability to create, assign and review the progress on individual and group tasks.
• An inbox that lists daily updates regarding assigned tasks, pending tasks and any updates to the program that may interest the user.
• Checkmarks that show the user when a project is completed.
• Workflow customization options
• Thumbs up to indicate a “like” or good job, along with hearts to favorite tasks or messages within the interface.
  Ability to comment on tasks and @ individuals so they can see the comments.
• Calendars to indicate when work was completed, or is due.
• Gallery view that allows for easy viewing of all attached documents.

Those who choose to pay a higher price for premium access to Asana receive the following additional features:

• No limit on team members
• Admin controls in the program
• Private projects
• Task dependencies and unlimited dashboards
• Start dates, priority support, advanced search and reporting.
• Ability to expert data, SSO and SAML.
• One to fifteen members on a single team – unlimited guests on any team

Here are some of the added features available to Enterprise users.

• Advanced admin controls that allow for easy management of team members.
• A customer success team that offers personalized support. Special same day support on other Asana-related issues.
• Strict data controls, data deletion options and cross-regional backups.
• The ability to add a logo and change other aspects of the software’s branding.

Problems with Asana

Some users have complained that the software can get stuck loading at times and there can be errors when trying to reconnect. The safari extension has also proved problematic for some at times.

Many employees and companies that use Asana complain about certain limitations within the software, which they hope to see improved over time.

Asana does not have any options for tracking how long it may take a team to complete a project. It is possible to see whether a task is completed, or when it is due, but an estimated time frame for completion is not visible.

Asana also does not feature the option of tracking budgets for projects. Such a feature is very useful for enterprises that may want to know how much money they are spending on certain areas.

While it is possible to create, assign and edit tasks, there is no way of seeing how many tasks are assigned to each person.

Online support is available with Asana, but there is no option for phone support.

Conclusion

Both Asana and Wrike offer very impressive options for teams that are hoping to use the programs to manage tasks and coordinate with each other. The big difference between the two programs lies in how Wrike embraces the ability to integrate email with the program, along with offering better and more in-depth options for analytics.

Users who want to keep things simple may be happy with Asana. There are only three pricing tiers, and the features are fairly easy to understand. Wrike adds so much more depth with its features, but that can become overwhelming to some users. There are also five pricing points, which means a team must decide very carefully what plan will work best for their needs.

All versions of Wrike offer a free trial. Asana does not have free trials. While the free version of Asana does include a lot of features, those who want to try out the premium or enterprise features will have to pay for at least a month of service – as they cannot test those features for free.

The goal is to find a program that makes it easier for a team to work together on different tasks, and to complete projects efficiently with better quality. Both Asana and Wrike make that possible.

The beauty of Wrike is that it goes far beyond, by offering so many features at a competitive price point. Whether project managers want detailed options on how to assign, reassign, edit and schedule tasks, or team managers want to analyze every micro-detail of the project and each team member’s performance, Wrike offers these possibilities and much more.