What is Asana?
Asana is tried and true. We used it for seven years before switching to Motion, and the reason it stuck around that long wasn't because it's just really well built. Things don't break, the system holds up as your team grows, and you can trust it to do what it's supposed to do day in and day out.
They've also done a better job layering in AI without it feeling like an afterthought than ClickUp or monday.com When we looked at monday.com's AI features, they felt bolted on and not that useful. Asana's feel like they actually belong in the product more so.
That said, Asana is going through a hard time right now despite executing on AI better than most legacy tools that have been around for a long time. And honestly, part of why we left after seven years captures the core limitation well: Asana is great at organizing work, but Motion was better at helping us actually focus on doing it.
If your team spends more time maintaining the system than benefiting from it, that's a sign it might not be the right fit. It really needs someone who knows what they're doing to set it up properly, and for smaller teams or anyone who wants AI to handle more of the day-to-day heavy lifting, that overhead just isn't worth it.
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Great for large teams with lots of moving parts (300+ employees)
- Clear ownership and project visibility
- Useful workflow automation once it is set up
- AI features are integrated more smoothly than most PM tools
- Good fit for enterprise teams
Cons
- Needs real setup and upkeep (you need a consultant to set it up right)
- Too customizable for smaller teams
- Feels more useful for managers than individual contributors
- AI and automation push you toward more expensive paid plans
Key Features
Project Management
If you have complex projects that require multiple custom fields, team collaboration, multiple views including kanban boards, lists, timelines, gantt charts and perhaps even workload management features. Workload management features, for example, allow you to manage your teams capacity, see how much work is on their plate (whether they are overwhelmed or underworked) and rebalance work as required.
Workflow Automation
Asana’s automation mostly runs on Rules. You can assign work automatically, move tasks between stages, and build repeatable flows for things like approvals or requests.
This saves a lot of repetitive admin work but it really only works well when there's someone who is super on top of building the systems, teaching them to the team, and then keeping an eye on it all. If you don't have that person, you end up with multiple/conflicting systems or things start to fall apart. The newer AI tools can help with that a little bit, but you still need someone "managing" the team's Asana.
AI Features
Asana’s AI is better than I expected. The chatbot in particular is actually useful and didn't feel like a waste of time. You can ask it to move deadlines, summarize updates, and surface blockers, and it usually gets the job done without wasting your time.
A lot of the value here is for managers. The status updates and reporting are helpful if you are presenting upward. AI Studio and AI Agents are the more interesting long-term feature, but they're still early and sit on pricier plans.
Reporting
Reporting important to your team for things like monitoring spending for project costs, tracking project status and seeing total revenue across projects (note: this can at times be managed in your CRM so you'd want to make the decision as to where you're mainly tracking revenue so you have a single source of truth).
Pricing
- Free: Best for trying Asana with a very small team. Limited once you need automation or AI.
- Starter: $10.99/user/month billed annually
Best for teams that want timelines, rules, and basic AI features. - Advanced: $24.99/user/month billed annually
Best for larger teams that need reporting, goals, workload planning, and AI Studio. - Enterprise: Custom pricing. Best for large companies that need stronger security and admin controls.
