If you’re looking to scale, it’s time to upgrade your task management systems.
But, how do you work out which type of task management software works best for you and your team?
Notion and Asana both come with their benefits, but they appeal to different style teams.
Let’s explore the merits and drawbacks of each tool to understand which would be more effective at streamlining your schedule.
Notion vs. Asana at a glance: Side-by-side comparison
Here’s a quick overview of how the two tools compare.
Notion: Highly customizable and collaborative task management
Notion isn't necessarily a dedicated project management tool. It’s an all-in-one workspace designed to be a central hub for all your team’s work.
While Notion offers a range of customizable templates that can serve as task management systems, its true value lies in its ability to be a blank canvas for whatever projects you’re trying to tackle.
Its pages offer drag-and-drop functionality so you can organize blocks to serve whatever project you’re working on, whether that be brainstorming, knowledge-sharing, content creation, task management, etc. Since Notion supports rich text and multimedia, it provides ultimate flexibility in completing tasks as well as organizing them.
There’s advanced features for in-doc collaboration, so teams and guest collaborators can collaborate on tasks within documents — a real plus for remote teams.
With Notion’s databases at the heart of its functionality, teams can create flexible pages and organize these effectively in project databases so all information is easily accessible and editable in one place.
Who it’s best for
Notion’s flexibility and multimedia capabilities make it ideal for creative teams that require a customizable platform to manage diverse projects.
The document storage and in-app collaboration features also make it a great fit for content-heavy teams who need to handle extensive documentation and multimedia files.
For tech-savvy teams, Notion’s customizable nature and variety of integrations offer a pathway to tailor your project tracking to suit you.
Key features
1. Customizable templates for flexible workspaces
Notion’s flexibility allows you to ditch the one-size-fits-all approach. There’s customizable templates, and you can create your own custom templates to manage tasks and set up different project types. Many of these pre-defined structures include to-do lists, deadlines, team member assignments, and relevant database connections.
2. Drag-and-drop functionality to build workflows easily
Notion’s pages offer drag-and-drop blocks to build your workflows exactly how you envision them. For task managers, you can drag-and-drop task blocks, Kanban boards, timelines, calendar views, subtasks, to-do lists, and more. This intuitive functionality allows you to visually represent project flows and prioritize tasks, linking them to databases and organizing information effortlessly.
3. Connectible databases to organize information logically
Notion's database capabilities allow you to move beyond simple task lists to create structured databases where you can manage anything from project work to meeting notes to contact information. Notion enables you to connect these databases to the relevant tasks to link all project details in a readily-accessible and logical way within a central workspace. For example, imagine linking each piece of content to a content calendar, providing instant access to all project content in one place.
4. Collaborative tools for in-app task completion
Real-time collaboration is Notion’s bread and butter. You can assign tasks to team members, share docs and notes within project pages, and discuss details directly in context. The ability for seamless communication in one app keeps everyone on the same page and cuts out the need for separate messaging platforms.
5. Basic automations to reduce manual work
Notion doesn't include complex automation features, but it does provide basic ways to streamline repetitive tasks. For example, you can set up automatic reminders for deadlines or create pre-populating templates to save time and effort.
Pros
- Highly flexible and customizable to all kinds of project workflows
- All-in-one workspace to connect and access tasks and project work in one place
- Powerful collaboration features to enable teams to work together and communicate from anywhere
- Deep integrations that enable teams to join together tools within Notion so they don’t have to leave the app
- Offline accessibility allows teams to work on projects without an internet connection
- A very generous free tier that suits most small teams
Cons
- It’s user-friendly once you get the hang of it, but there’s a steep learning curve
- Notion lacks a native time-tracking feature, so you need to integrate other tools if you need this
- Some users complain that the interface becomes cluttered with large, complex projects
- There can be some performance lack with extensive content and heavy database usage
- If you choose to change platforms later, it’s tough to migrate information from Notion
Overall, Notion appeals to task managers for its customizability and connectivity, but it takes time to learn and lacks sophisticated automations to build streamlined task management workflows.
Pricing
There’s a generous free tier for up to 10 guests. You get a collaborative workspace, a 7-day history, and basic integrations.
For custom automations, longer history, and more storage, you need a paid-for plan. The Plus plan costs $10 a month per user.
If you need private team workspaces, advanced analytics, and even longer history, you need to upgrade to the Business plan at $15 per person per month, or discuss custom pricing for enterprises.
Asana: User-friendly, project-driven task management
Asana is a popular project management tool known for its ease of use. Its user-friendly interface makes it a common choice for teams seeking task management functionality without a steep learning curve.
Its task management features work best with project-based businesses that need to visualize workflows in multiple ways.
Its drag-and-drop functionality makes setting up and assigning Asana tasks with deadlines easy. Basic labeling enables you to highlight priority, while tagging makes drawing attention to real-time notifications easy.
There’s in-card commenting and users can link to external documentation, enabling you to collaborate on project details in one place.
The platform offers a workflow builder with automations to streamline workflows and speed up routine tasks.
Who it’s best for
Asana is a great choice for traditional project-based teams that need structured project management processes, like marketing or engineering teams. If your team has clearly defined roles, Asana easily aligns each member’s responsibilities with specific tasks and milestones.
Most importantly, Asana is ideal for teams with little technical knowledge. It’s easy to learn, making onboarding smoother so your team sees value quicker.
Key features
1. Multiple project views for 360 visibility
Asana enables you to tailor your workflow visibility to your needs. You can choose Kanban boards to visualize project stages, List views to prioritize tasks, Calendar views to manage deadlines, and Timeline views to track project progress over time.
2. Comprehensive task management features to manage workflows
Asana provides advanced task management tools that let you assign tasks and break them into subtasks, set priorities, add tags, and attach relevant documentation to tasks. This helps you organize and prioritize, while setting accountability and enabling easy access to relevant resources in a logical way.
3. In-card communication to discuss tasks in one place
Teams can collaborate on task management within each task card. These cards act as a communication hubs where teams can discuss work, share files, tag team members, and update each other in real time. It’s not possible to collaborate on work directly in Asana, though, and there’s no in-app chat functionality either.
4. Powerful workflow builder to automate repetitive tasks
Asana’s workflow builder helps you automate repetitive tasks to boost efficiency. Choose from a range of pre-built rules or create custom automations that automatically trigger when certain actions are taken. For example, you can automatically assign tasks when a project stage changes, or change task priorities as work is completed.
5. Asana AI to upgrade and accelerate task workflows
Asana AI enables you to streamline workflows and boost team productivity. It offers personalized recommendations that suggest projects and tasks to prioritize as well as smart summaries to grasp the key points of tasks, projects, and portfolios without having to read all the discussions. There’s also intelligent assistance that offers smart features like to help improve communications, goal-setting, and problem solving. Asana AI also allows you to create smart automated workflows by defining rules based on natural language instructions.
Pros
- Asana's user interface is easy to understand so new users can gain value quickly
- Varied view options make it straightforward to organize and view projects in a structured way
- Pre-built automations make it simple to streamline repetitive tasks without technical knowledge
- Asana’s reporting and analytics give you insights into project performance to help with decision-making around resource allocation and task organization
- Asana AI speeds up project tasks and improves the quality of communication and issue identification
- Asana scales well, offering more advanced functionality to bigger teams with more complex projects
Cons
- While there’s multiple project views, Asana’s interface customization options are limited compared to Notion
- Focusing on task management, Asana doesn’t offer options to collaborate on work in the app
- There’s a mobile app, but its functionality is far less feature-rich than the web platform
- Asana needs integration to support wikis and databases — there’s no in-built options for this kind of organization
- Valuable functionalities, like advanced automations and in-depth reporting, only exist in the higher-priced tiers
Pricing
There’s a free tier for up to 10 users that includes all the essential project management features and three project views.
The Starter package costs $10.99 a month for up to 500 users. This includes everything from the free tier, plus more workload views, Asana AI, automated workflows, and scalable security.
The Advanced package costs $24.99 a month for up to 500 users. It offers all of the above, and advanced workflows, better reporting, and resource management features.
For even more in-depth security and workflow automation, Asana offers enterprise packages with custom pricing.
The limitations of Notion and Asana
Most notably, neither platform has AI-powered scheduling capabilities. Instead, project managers must manually schedule tasks, relying on their judgment to organize them efficiently.
What’s more, both platforms make integrating existing calendars like Google Calendar or Outlook difficult. As a result, project managers can’t get a side-by-side calendar view of their team’s availability, making it tough to assign tasks appropriately.
In this sense, you’re not just relying on your judgment to create schedules but also missing the visibility that would aid this task.
Another issue is that changes need to be made manually. Neither platform can automatically reschedule tasks when priorities shift or unforeseen events occur.
This makes both tools far less dynamic and responsive than Motion, which uses AI-powered intelligent scheduling to optimize your team’s workload.
Motion: A better alternative to Notion and Asana
Motion revolutionizes project management, managing your time by intelligently optimizing scheduling with advanced AI.
Here’s how this transforms your workflows.
Intelligently optimizes scheduling
Motion's intelligent AI automatically optimizes your and your team’s schedules. Integrating meetings, work activities, personal tasks, and to-do lists, Motion finds the ideal time slot based on priority levels and availability.
This automated process means you no longer have to manually schedule your tasks every day. Instead, you just create tasks, and Motion works out the time and order to complete them.
As one user puts it: “Motion keeps my tasks in front of me and helps arrange them around my schedule according to priority and projected time length. Really helpful for anyone who deals with lots of tasks and needs assistance with deciding what to do next!”
Reschedules automatically
Motion adapts to changes dynamically. Motion will automatically adjust surrounding tasks if a meeting is rescheduled at the last minute.
This capability minimizes the domino effect of schedule adjustments so that unexpected changes don’t disrupt your entire day.
As another Motion user explains, “I love how Motion re-arranges my schedule automatically when something unexpected comes up and I cannot work on the task that was planned. I also love how it keeps my goals on track and my projects moving along. I have found that with Motion, I am dropping that ball less and staying much more focused on what needs to be done, rather than TRYING TO FIGURE OUT what needs to be done.”
Combines calendars
Motion makes it easier to visualize and compare team calendars. By synchronizing multiple calendar platforms, Motion can merge Gmail, Outlook, and iCloud for a single overview.
This integration allows you to overlap your personal and work schedules on one calendar. This way, you can plan your time and avoid conflicts across all aspects of your life.
Since it does this for everyone on your team, this calendar integration functionality gives you a better overview of your team’s availability for improved project and task planning.
Keep teams on track
Motion keeps teams on track by organizing projects and individual tasks directly into each team member's calendar.
Projects are no longer isolated on separate platforms. This centralized visibility helps everyone stay on track.
Plus, Motion's schedule optimization capabilities give every team member a clear pathway to achieving their goals before the deadlines.
This automatic planning and intelligent rescheduling enables teams to manage their time more efficiently and focus on strategic decisions rather than day-to-day scheduling admin.
Notion vs Asana: Which is right for your team?
If you want full visibility on what your team should be doing, you need to centralize your tasks and manage them with software that keeps everyone accountable.
Tools like Notion and Asana provide structured ways to assign tasks and communicate on these activities. But they’re limited when it comes to optimizing your schedule. Yes, they can help you organize, but no, they can’t help you work out the most effective way to manage your and your team’s time.
Motion can.
Motion uses AI-powered intelligent scheduling and combined calendars to optimize tasks so that everything gets done and nobody burns out.
Try it for free now to see how it can supercharge productivity in your small team.
