We used Asana for 7 years before switching to Motion.
Asana used to be the leader in the small/medium business project management space, but they are now focused on enterprise businesses. With that, we recommend them for teams of 500–1000+ people.
But if you are a small business (team size of 1–200), Motion is your best bet. Motion is innovating in the project management space with their AI auto-scheduling, helping teams reduce the need for project managers which allows teams to focus on "getting work done" rather than "organizing tasks".
We believe there are better options available in this category, read below to learn what this software does well, and what they could do better. ⤵
With both Motion and Asana, you're going to get core project management features like kanban boards and team project/task collaboration (unlike that of Motion vs Reclaim).
You also get an API (and even Zapier for your Asana integration and Motion integration needs). Asana will give you more native out-of-the box integrations with other tools though.
When using both Motion and Asana on-the-go, you're all set with fully featured mobile apps for both (iOS & Android).
So when looking at the key features of both tools, the foundation is there.
The differences between Asana and Motion lie within the teams the tools were created for. Asana is very much for large teams to care about features like project management reporting, dashboards, timeline views, progress reports and more similar features. If these are the features you're interested in, Asana would definitely be a better choice for you.
Motion is better suited for small teams (<50 employees). If you're reading this and thinking "I don't *really* care about reporting dashboards, I just want my team to better manage their projects, be more productive, organized and get work done on time" then Motion would definitely be a better pick for you.
To put things into perspective, after using Asana for 7 years, we switched off to Motion as we found a drastic time-saving component.
Winner: Motion
If you're looking for something new and innovative in the project management space that takes into account more than just the tasks you have in your project manager (e.g. team meetings, workload, team dependencies, time blocking, and more), Motion delivers.
We believe that Motion is actually redefining the entire project management space as a whole, which has otherwise been trending toward the all-in-one category (a vicious trap which brings with it a myriad of problems for which we are overall quite skeptical of).
This is made especially clear when comparing Motion vs Notion, Motion vs ClickUp, and Motion vs Monday. As instead of focusing purely on project management (similar to that of Asana), the rest are getting sidetracked in other categories like team knowledge base and even CRM. 🤦
The task/project management space is due for some innovation, especially with the rise of AI, and only thing we know for sure is that it's not going to happen from the software we just mentioned as they think they've already "won" project management...
That said, we can't help but think that Motion has a genuine shot at actually evolving the space as a whole, as they've been quietly building in the background and have the right team and foundation to completely disrupt what we currently think of when we hear the term "Project Management". If you use Motion, I think you might see the glimpse into the future like we have.
Start your 7 day free trial of Motion here.
Winner: Asana
If you don't care as much about AI or being on the cutting edge, and you value core traditional project management system functionality (e.g. reporting, gantt charts, and a well-refined and stable API), Asana is likely the option as this is where they excel.
It ultimately comes down to what key features you're looking for though. If time blocking or deep calendar integration is important, you're not going to get that with Asana. What you will get though is a deeply integrated and scaleable project management system.
Motion still has a bit more to go on some core functionality (e.g. super robust searching functionality), but that's definitely coming in time but these types of features are readily available in Asana.
In-fact, we personally used Asana in our business for 7 years. It was stable, had a great API (you can even see some of the cool things we've built by integrating Asana using their API), and worked well. While we ultimately made the move to Motion in recent years, that doesn't mean we no longer recommend Asana.
If you're a larger team that highly value stability and traditional project management core features over all else, the truth of the matter is that you can't wrong with Asana. Even when comparing Asana vs ClickUp, Asana vs Monday, Asana vs Notion, you're definitely getting the best project management software when going with Asana as compared to those all-in-one tools.
Start your free trial of Asana here.
Winner: Motion
Your team will enjoy using Motion over Asana as it's so deeply tied to their calendar, and is essentially a daily planner in addition to a project manager, right there within their calendar.
If you're truly looking at it from the individual's standpoint, they can simply live in Motion for their calendar + event scheduling, which in turn will help with adoption, versus jumping between multiple tools (Calendar/Calendly/Asana).
If you're a small to medium team and you can use Motion, we'd recommend it over Asana purely from the enjoyment and ease of use side of things.
Start your 7 day free trial of Motion here.
Winner: Asana
Motion is nowhere near that of Asana when you get outside of the "getting work done" category and move into "upper-management reporting".
If you're a team that's big into goal setting and milestones, while there's ways to visualize it by filtering down views in Motion and leveraging projects for different chunks of a project, you're not going to get the more traditional reporting functionality that upper-management might want.
We'll note that this is nearly irrelevant for the actual teams that are living in the tool on the day-to-day to get work done, so you'd have to ask yourself, is reporting more important for your team than your team actually using a tool and benefiting from it, to help them get work done?
That said if features like project management reporting, dashboards, timeline views, progress reports are core for upper management to see, then Asana would be better suited.
Start your free trial of Asana here.
Winner: Both
While there is a "free" tier to Asana, it's incredibly restrictive feature-wise (just about everything you try to do prompts you to upgrade), and if you have 15+ seats, you'll be forced to the Premium or Business tier. Since this site is more focused on B2B, we're going to discuss the pricing options in a realistic scenario where your company is looking to evaluate Motion vs Asana.
For small teams, Motion and Asana are nearly identical per seat as compared to Asana (paid annual). Not to mention, if you're using Asana long enough, you're going to be pulled to the Business tier—as they gate-keep many features behind it.
So for an actual team, you're going to be paying nearly the same annual price for Motion and Asana.
You also need to keep in mind the fact that Motion also includes a full calendar (a more powerful layer atop your Google Calendar/Outlook Calendar to view tasks and manage your schedule, and meeting scheduler. So this also replaces the need for most people using Calendly as well, which should free up some budget.
With either tool we recommend starting on the monthly tier for evaluation and within 2–3 months of implementing the tool (whether Motion OR Asana), you should switch to annual for the discount.
It's also a statement you're making to your team that you're committed to making the tool work. We find that larger teams that use a tool month-to-month have a difficult mindset around embracing the tool, as they feel like the company might just switch tools again the following month. Commit to the software and your team will also do the same (plus you get to save nearly 40% on the price by doing so).
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Throughout our article below, we'll use the words overwhelming and overly complex a lot.
Many of the most popular project management tools are designed for large teams and organizations, and they can be overwhelming and complex to set up and use for smaller teams. Here's what to keep in mind:
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Use AI to plan your work, automatically. Be 137% more productive. Use the AI assistant for busy people and work teams.
Motion (also often referred to as Use Motion and Motion App) is in a category of it's own that we've been referring to as time management…
Let me explain:
Motion's main goal is to take care of all of your team's needs revolving around time. If you're someone that wakes up in the morning and looks at their calendar app to see what you have on for the day, Motion App will fit in like a glove.
It connects in deeply with your Google Calendar, Microsoft Calendar, and even Apple Calendar, allowing you to build out project management and task management for yourself and team members. The best part is that all of these tasks automatically organize themselves based on priority right onto your calendar (and your team's) to ensure the most important (and blocking) tasks get done.
If you've heard of the productivity app terminology of "time blocking", well Motion does that automatically using AI, no manual time blocking needed.
It even goes to the degree of allowing you to share meeting scheduler links with others, all while respecting your existing events across all of your calendars (and even your team's calendars), along with automatically inviting team members into the appointment once booked.
With your entire team using Motion, it's like you have a full-time personal assistant shared across the company, ensuring that everyone is getting deep work done all while focusing on what is most important (at the most ideal time), all while making sure that no one is ever double-booked.
All of this makes for an incredibly powerful tool for individuals, but exponentially more valuable with every additional team member you add. No other project management or daily planner tool on the market seems to go to this degree.
As compared to some of the best project management software on the market often mentioned like Asana, Monday, ClickUp, Motion has taken their sights on slightly smaller teams of between 1–50 people.
This team size target is based on their current feature-set, from what we've seen. For example, the larger teams that we work with who have many layers of management often require reporting capabilities over everything else. And with Motion, that's not something you're going to get, because they are currently focused on giving the only AI project management tool on the market focused on helping the individual and teams, over the needs of upper-management.
So if you and your team are used to spending a lot of time planning deadlines, and rearranging your "My Task" view in the existing tools on the market, Motion flips this on it's head with the use of AI. Something to consider if you're fed up with the manual work involved with traditional project management tools.
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Compared to the best daily planner apps on the market like Sunsama and Akiflow, Motion is the only daily planner we've seen that actually leverages AI to plan your day for you. With all of the other apps in the category, you need to manually drag in tasks to time block and plan each day. This is an incredibly time consuming process, that some justify as being "more mindful", but once you actually have AI schedule your day for you, you realize how much time is actually wasted "mindfully planning your day".
Compared to the best calendar schedulers on the market like Calendly and Chili Piper, Motion bakes in the core functionality of these tools, with the added visibility of team tasks and urgent deadlines, actually booking off availability for you and your team if high priority work needs to get done by a quickly approaching deadline.
Large teams (100–500) with other enterprise software implemented will find integrating Motion more involved than other enterprise tools. When using an enterprise software stack like that of Salesforce, it's common for other project management tools to have native integrations.
With Motion, it will require a custom integration approach (something that we actually help teams do). But while it's possible, one might ask if it's worth making the large investment in a custom integration when you might be able to get something more native out of the box with the other tools focused on larger teams.
(This of course depends on the actual integration needs of your team, as native doesn't always do exactly what you'd like it to do).
Motion currently lacks advanced reporting and dashboard functionality. So while you can see at a top-level the status of projects and tasks in Kanban and Listviews, even a team workload view, that's about where reporting dashboards end, making it less suitable for large teams requiring extensive project analytics.
Note: If you need 2 seats, you're pretty much better off getting the discount by purchasing 3 seats, as you're effectively getting a 3rd seat for free.
If all of that connects with you and you think it might fit your needs, they have a 7 day free trial that you can use along with your team to see what it's like having a personalized AI assistant.
For medium + large teams looking for a task-based project management tool, where goals and reporting are important.
Asana is one of the most reliable and stable project management tools on the market. We used it for 7 years before switching to Motion. We didn't switch because Asana was bad... Asana is fantastic, as long as you take the time to set it up properly and actually need all the features it offers.
Asana is exactly what a comes to mind when you envision a traditional project manager tool. It has traditional lists view, tasks view, custom fields, kanban boards, calendar (which isn't even worthy of the name when you compare Asana vs Motion), files, and timeline views. It even has robust project management features like gantt charts, workload management and advanced reporting features. If your organization has complex projects and is looking for a tool with all the bells and whistles, including reporting for upper management, then Asana would be our top recommendation for you.
Asana is now a public traded company and it's focusing more on enterprise accounts (1000+ seats). With that, comes more enterprise features, which, we'll never need as a small team.
Our needs are much more simple—we simply wanted a tool to help us get more work done fast (hence why we made the switch to Motion - read our full Motion review to better understand it's features).
When comparing Asana vs Monday or Asana vs ClickUp, Asana wins across the board. Why? Because Monday and ClickUp are trying to be "all-in-one tools", meaning they are trying to do everything in a mediocre way, rather than doing one thing super well. Asana is a project management software, through and through. They aren't trying to be a CRM, or a documentation software, or whiteboard or whatever other tool under the sun.
This means that 100% of their focus is on delivering the best project management experience. And that's what we appreciate about them! 🙌
You will like Asana if you fit into one or all of the below categories:
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The main difficulty with Asana comes from from how much manual work is required to actually stay atop of the work you're trying to get done. Unlike a tool like Motion, where you just throw in your tasks and AI intelligently auto-schedules them, even if you don't get to them for the day, Asana requires that you continually push back due dates manually in order to not fall too far behind or get too overwhelmed with your work.
Asana is an incredibly well oiled product. The API has evolved a lot over the years and everything is quite stable. It just hasn't evolved to take advantage of the time management/calendar space, which feels like a big miss for any project manager.
That said, we've just finally finished migrating off Asana over to Motion (after 7 years of Asana), which should tell you something, specifically if you are a small team (less than 100–200 employees).
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