Wrike vs Asana: Which is better?

Meeting deadlines, staying within budget, keeping teams aligned. If you manage projects, you know how difficult it can be to keep track of all the moving parts. Having the right project management tool can mean the difference between project failure and success. 

But which one is right for you? Wrike and Asana, both well-reviewed (see G2 reviews of Wrike and Asana), offer robust project management features that boost productivity, but they are designed for different types of teams and use cases. Wrike is known for its scalability, complex features, and deep customization options, making it ideal for large teams and enterprises. Asana is highly intuitive, making it a favorite of busy individuals and small teams.

In this article, we’ll compare Wrike and Asana, looking at key features, customer support, pricing, and more. Plus, we’ll introduce you to another alternative: Jotform Boards.

Wrike vs Asana: Their ideal users

Wrike and Asana are both effective project management tools in their own right. However, neither tool is necessarily a good fit for every organization. 

When choosing a project management tool, consider who and what the tool is designed for: small, medium, or large teams, for example, or simple vs complex projects. Some products are tailored to specific industries, such as financial services or manufacturing. Take a look at your specific needs to find the right fit.

Who should use Wrike?

Wrike is versatile and helps organizations build, connect, automate, and scale their workflows. 

Its comprehensive features include kanban boards, dashboards, forms, approvals, and AI automations, and many features can be customized. It identifies and eliminates or automates redundant tasks, unifies teams and departments in a single workspace, and increases organizational efficiency. 

These robust capabilities make Wrike ideal for medium to large teams that work on complex, multiphase projects (though it also offers plans for smaller businesses). Wrike serves a number of industries, including professional services, technology, manufacturing, healthcare, and education. It’s also great for departments (such as marketing, HR, operations, and client services) and business workflows (such as campaign management, client services delivery, event management, resource management, and project management). 

However, Wrike’s robust features make it a complex tool to learn. It takes time for users to figure out how all the features work, so organizations have to invest a lot of resources in training. 

Who should use Asana?

Asana is a straightforward work management platform with several project management features. 

It helps organizations create strategic plans, set goals, and complete tasks to achieve those goals. Asana’s features include project hubs, time tracking, task management, status updates, and rules-based automation, with accompanying customizations. It helps teams stay in sync during every step of a project, so they can work confidently toward their objectives.

Compared to Wrike, Asana’s features are simpler, which makes it more intuitive to grasp. While organizations may still invest in training, most users can get the hang of Asana quickly on their own.

Asana caters to specific industries (such as healthcare, retail, financial services, manufacturing, and education), but it is also used widely outside of those industries. Common use cases include marketing, operations, IT, and leadership projects. Asana is best for organizations that have small to medium-sized teams working on simple projects, but it has enterprise plans too.

Wrike vs Asana: Feature comparison overview

So how do the specific features of Write and Asana compare? For project management, these features matter most:

• Task and workflow management
• Reporting and analytics
• Automation and integrations
• Collaboration and accessibility
• Customer support 

Let’s dive into these five categories for an in-depth comparison of Asana vs Wrike. 

Task and workflow management

Asana and Wrike offer the basic task and workflow management features: setting up projects, breaking down tasks, adding dates, and assigning responsibilities. You can also create dependencies in both tools. 

Wrike stands out by offering the ability to assign more than one person to a task. Asana allows only one person to be assigned to a task. (A common workaround for this is to create subtasks and assign each to a different person.) 

Wrike also offers several project management templates, so you don’t have to set up your project from scratch. Just select a template and customize the fields based on your needs. 

You can also see your project in different Wrike views, including table, board, Gantt chart, list, files, chart, calendar, resources, time log, and stream. (Wondering how Wrike stacks up to Trello views? Wrike has more!) Wrike also enables you to save, name, control access to, and customize views.

Asana’s template library offers more templates than Wrike, and it’s organized by business function. As in Wrike, you can customize templates based on your needs. In Asana, you can also see your project in multiple views, including list, board, Gantt, timeline, workflow, dashboard, messages, files, and calendar. 

Reporting and analytics

Wrike offers advanced decision-making, reporting, and business intelligence tools that turn your raw project data into actionable insights. You can customize reports (for Business plan users and above), use feature-enhancing widgets, use advanced formulas and filters, and even forecast future trends. 

Asana lets you build and customize a reporting dashboard too, and its dashboard is arguably simpler than Wrike’s. (We also help with using Asana for tasks like reporting.) Asana offers straightforward reporting templates (for paid Starter plans and above), different chart styles, and field filters ideal for simpler projects. You can export Asana’s reports into PDFs and PowerPoints for easier sharing. 

Automation and integrations

Wrike’s no-code automation builder uses AI to suggest relevant automations based on your usage. As a result, its automations are deeply aligned with your processes and eliminate repetitive tasks. 

For example, you can automate task reminders, work structures, custom fields, and more. Automations are only available for paid plans and start at 50 automations per month. 

If integrations are a priority for your business, Wrike connects with over 400 apps and solutions. Integrations to cloud storage platforms and Open RESTful API are free, but all others require a paid plan to access. Some integrations, such as Salesforce and QuickBooks, accompany only the higher-priced tiers. 

Asana has a no-code automation builder as well, and this one comes with 80 easily customizable templates. 

Asana’s Bundles, a combination of rules, fields, task templates, and sections, can be applied across projects to automate and save time. Asana offers unlimited automations with its first paid plan tier and above.

When it comes to integrations, Asana has over 200, and 100 of these are available in the free plan. However, some integrations, such as the Salesforce integration, are available only with its highest-tier plan.

Collaboration and accessibility

Wrike offers several features for team collaboration. 

For example, you can proof different file types within Wrike and offer suggestions and changes in real time. You can also see older versions of files within the platform. Wrike’s proofing software also lets you compare versions side by side and invite external collaborators.

Asana also has great collaboration features. You can share files and keep assets in one place, collaborate on schedules, and communicate project updates to necessary partners. Unlike Wrike, Asana has a chat messaging tool, so you don’t need to use an external communication software to talk to your teammates. Like Wrike, Asana has a proofing tool, but it accepts only five file types.

Customer support

Wrike offers several customer support options, but they’re not available on all plans. 

You can take advantage of Wrike’s Help Center and community resources, as well as its chatbot, for free. With its paid plans, Wrike offers live agent, phone, and web support, and more. This support may come in handy, as Wrike is a complex platform with a steep learning curve.

Asana has a Help Center, the Asana Academy, and a community forum, in addition to webinars and guides. All are free. You can also use its web chatbot for free. Paid support includes 24-7 access and customer success options. As noted previously, Asana is a fairly straightforward tool, which is why it provides so many self-serve learning resources.

Asana vs Wrike: Plans and pricing

Wrike

Wrike offers a free plan as well as four paid plans: 

• Team (for small teams) for $10 per user per month 
• Business (for all teams across an organization) for $25 per user per month 
• Enterprise (for large teams) for a custom price 
• Pinnacle (for teams with complex needs) for a custom price 

Wrike’s free plan is designed for teams getting started and supports unlimited users. It provides some project and task management features, board and table views, and limited active tasks. Your business would have to sign up for a paid plan to get advanced features and views, automations, and integrations. 

With trial runs, you can try all the paid plans for free, which is a good way to see whether the features included will meet your needs. 

Wrike’s Team and Business plans offer a lot of value and work well for larger organizations, while its free plan has limited features. 

Asana

Asana has a free plan and two paid plans: 

• Starter (for growing teams) for $10.99 per month 
• Advanced (for multiple departments across the business) for $24.99 per month 

Asana’s free plan allows up to 10 collaborators and includes a generous number of features, such as unlimited tasks and projects, three types of views, basic search filters, status updates, time tracking, and 100 integrations. If you want automations, reporting, AI tools, and advanced project management features, you’ll have to sign up for a paid plan. 

Asana’s free plan can work well for smaller teams, and its paid plans are competitively priced for small and medium-sized teams.

Jotform Boards: An excellent alternative to Wrike and Asana 

Wrike and Asana are leaders in project management software for good reason. However, their features and pricing may not meet your exact needs.

An excellent alternative to Wrike and Asana is Jotform Boards, a task management solution for teams of all sizes to stay organized, enhance collaboration, and streamline workflows. It has an intuitive kanban-style interface with drag-and-drop functionality, so you can easily customize your projects and tasks.

Organizations in many industries choose Jotform Boards as their project management tool. Here’s why:

• Task management: It’s easy to create tasks manually with Jotform’s intuitive user interface. You can customize task fields to better suit your internal processes and organize tasks so nothing falls through the cracks.
• Automated task creation with forms: But you don’t have to create tasks manually. With Jotform Boards, you can convert each form submission to a task. You can connect a single form or multiple forms to multiple boards at the same time. Form responses are processed without altering any original data.
• AI agent integration: You can also seamlessly connect Jotform Boards to Jotform AI Agents. Whenever a customer submits an order, makes an inquiry, or requests something during an AI agent conversation, we can automatically create a task for your team to complete.
• Workflow automation: You can ensure smooth execution by connecting simple or complex workflows to boards. Create tasks automatically for each step. 
• Team collaboration: Jotform has all the essential features of collaborative project management software. You can share boards with team members, assign tasks, and add comments. You can also track all changes to tasks in the Activity Log and monitor updates in real time.
• Board customization: Have fun and tailor your board layout. Adjust task fields based on your processes, modify board teams to match working groups, and align the look and feel of the board with your brand.
• Mobile accessibility and flexibility: Don’t want to be tied to your desk? You can access and manage Jotform Boards tasks from anywhere. It offers full mobile responsiveness, so you’ll never fall behind on task management.
• Integrations with Wrike and Asana: If you want to use Wrike or Asana along with Jotform Boards, you can! Jotform offers a native integration with Asana and integration with Wrike via Zapier.

Whether you’re processing project-related form submissions, automating workflows, or managing projects, Jotform Boards is a highly customizable solution that can support all your needs. Use it with Wrike or Asana, or on its own. Plus, Jotform Boards has a free plan with unlimited boards, so there’s no financial barrier to giving it a shot.