| Functionality | 9 <p>Asana offers almost all the functionality most companies need to manage tasks and projects effectively. It has rich functionality such as customisable forms, automation, time-tracking and anlalytics. For larger teams with multiple teams and projects, it also offers excellent portfolio management functionality.</p><p>However, it's missing the advanced customizability that the largest teams require to manage complex task and project relationships e.g. assigning multiple team members to a task or sophisticated automation workflows with branches.</p> | 8 <p>Smartsheet has all the functionality that companies will need - including some more sophisticated functions required only my large companies. Smartsheet offers: excellent portfolio management features, cell history, strong automation and some nifty team capacity reporting features.</p> |
| Ease of Use | 7 <p>Asana balances functionality with a relatively intuitive interface, but it's not the simplest tool to use. There's a moderate learning curve due to the wide array of features, and compared to some of the tools we've tested and there are at times less templates available (e.g. for building automation). However, it generally does a good job guiding users throughout the platform e.g. linking projects to goals, navigating different customisation options on project views.</p> | 5 <p>Smartsheet is designed to function in a similar way to a spreadsheet. If you are comfortable using these or have used them before, learning your way around Smartsheet will be easier. However, even if this is the case, processes can be a bit fiddley compared to other project management tools. We estimate that average start-up employee and would require a few days and some guidance before being able to use the product fluently.</p><p><br></p><p>Key information and processes are generally easy to find but not always easy to perform.</p> |
| Look and feel | 8 <p>Asana features a clean, modern design with a visually appealing interface. Pages loads are acceptable (1-3 seconds) and Asana also sprinkles moments of delight in the user experience e.g. rainbow unicorns fly across your screen when tasks/ projects are marked complete!</p> | 6 <p>Smartsheet lacks colour and is generally a bit plain to look at. That being said, the software is visually acceptable and for the most part has fast loading times (~1 second). When first creating a new project or workspace, loading times can be slower (upwards of 6 seconds) - but this is a one off occurrence.</p> |
| Customisability | 6 <p>Asana provides a good level of customizability, allowing users to create custom fields, templates, and workflows to suit their team's needs. However, there are some limitations e.g. you're unable to link related tasks (that aren't dependent on one another), add multiple team members to a task etc. Unlike more flexible all-in-one tools, Asana is strictly a project management tool - each item must be a "task", which means you're can't use it for other use cases (e.g. HR - tracking employees, sales - tracking deals).</p> | 8 <p>Smartsheet has some very strong customisation features. The most impressive being their forms which are customisable in almost every way - from question type to, condition logic, to cosmetics etc. Automation is also nicely customisable with a vast array of action and trigger functions, as well as conditional logic available. Smartsheet could benefit from a few more task views - other similar project management tools offer far more!</p> |
| Ease of Setup | 8 <p>Offers a self-serve free trial and allows purchase without needing to talk to sales. Getting started and setting up a few tasks and subtasks should take 20-30 minutes, because it has a good library of templates for projects. Full setup should take less than a day.</p> | 8 <p>Offers a self-serve free trial and allows purchase without needing to talk to sales. Getting started and setting up a few tasks and subtasks should take 20-30 minutes, because it has a very rich library of templates. Full setup should take a day or two at most.</p> |
| Customer Support | 5 <p>For Asana users on lower tiers, you can contact support by submitting a ticket through its AI chatbot (which was unhelpful and frustrating to get through). However, Asana does have high quality help centre and community support.</p> | 6 <p>Personalised support is available via email and and in-app chat. The in-app chat feature is not something to rely on too much as responses are not always fast. Email agents are very accommodating, useful and fast (relies in less than 6 hours). </p><p><br></p><p>Self-serve materials are strong but not exceptional. They do not have 'how to's' for every feature. This is likely to drive traffic to their paid 'Smartsheet University' where they charge to teach you basic, intermediate and advanced functions in Smartsheet. </p> |
| Integratability | 8 <p>Asana has integrations with most relevant third party apps (e.g. CRM, time-tracking, invoicing marketing, developer tools etc). It also has an API for custom integrations.</p> | 7 <p>Smartsheet offers integrations with most third-parties that companies will need. However, some notable exceptions are Notion, Github and Zendesk.</p><p><br></p><p>Smartsheet also offers can API that allows teams to build custom integrations where necessary.</p> |
| Ease of Migration | 8 <p>Exporting key data out of Trello is relatively straightforward. You can simply export entire projects, with all your tasks, in JSON or CSV formats. However, note that not all data - such as comments, activity logs and attachments will transfer seamlessly. However, you can export other data via its API.</p> | 8 <p>Key data and custom reports are available self-serve to export to a CSV file.</p> |
