Slack vs Asana

Slack vs Asana Comparison (which to choose and why?)

Are you a business decision-maker trying to choose between Slack and Asana for your company’s project management and collaboration app? If so, you need a full comparison of Slack vs Asana to clarify the value of each platform’s most important features, differences in pricing, security, ease-of-use, and so on.

That is exactly what you will find here.

In this article, I will walk you through the relevant features you need to know about, providing an unbiased comparison that illuminates the differences between Slack vs Asana, so that you can make an informed decision.

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A Quick Look

While Slack is focused on connection and collaboration, Asana is more specifically a productivity and project management tool. However, many businesses find themselves choosing between these two options.

Will Slack or Asana Work Better for My Business?

Both tools are the choice of a wide range of high profile companies, and it’s likely that you’ll find either application to be an effective and powerful tool for your business.

  • Asana users include organizations such as Uber, Deloitte, Vodafone, Paypal, and Santander.
  • Slack is the choice of Ticketmaster, Oracle, Target, Los Angeles Times, Capital One, Airbnb, and Venture.

Many organizations actually decide to use both Asana and Slack, and they integrate these tools accordingly. This option offers corporate teams the best of both tools, allowing departments to leverage Slack’s focus on communication and Asana’s focus on productivity.

However, if using two such systems isn’t what you had in mind and you just want to focus on one, that is certainly possible.

So let’s compare Slack vs Asana point-by-point. In this article I’ll cover:

  • How Each Enhances Communication
  • File Sharing Performance Comparison
  • Integrations & Strength as a Project Management Tool
  • Design and Layout of Each App
  • How Easy to Use are Slack and Asana?
  • Search Performance
  • Cost Comparison
  • Sign-Up Process

Communication with Slack and Asana

One significant difference between Slack and Asana that you should keep in mind is the fact that Asana lacks any kind of messaging feature. However, you can still communicate through it.

Asana vs Slack Comparison - How Communication Works with Each App

This is through their Conversations feature. This is found within Tasks, Projects, and Teams. There is space provided where you can type in and exchange communication using the @mentions tool.

As Slack focuses on communication, it has advanced chat features. You can exchange messages through Threads, Direct Messages, and Channels.

When it comes to video and voice calls, if you use Slack, you will only be able to make one-to-one calls if you are on the free plan. If you are a paid plan, then you can do video and voice calls with a greater numbers of people. Many business owners find Slack’s video conferencing tool extremely useful.

If you go with Asana, you won’t be able to make direct calls. If you want to do video conferencing, you will need to integrate another tool into Asana. Examples might be Zoom via Zapier or GoToMeeting.

File Sharing with Slack and Asana

If you use Asana, you will have a relatively small upload limit. It’s 100MB per file for an attachment from your desktop. This is why Asana users will often use Google Drive or Dropbox, as well.

If you go with Slack instead, you will be able to upload a file as large as 1GB with all pricing plans. Even with Slack, many business owners decide to also integrate Google Drive or Dropbox.

Integrations and Project Management

Slack is far superior to Asana when it comes to integrations. It has more than 800, while Asana lags its competitor and has only 100.

There are some instances in which it integrates into tools you currently use (rather than vice versa).

Difference Between Slack and Asana

An example of this might be if you would like Asana to work together with Microsoft Teams. In this case, you will add the Asana plugin to the Microsoft Teams app.

While Slack does lag behind Asana when it comes to project management, it does have a variety of tools you can use in the process of managing a project. Examples include pin or star messages to set up to-do items, setting up #to-do list channels, creating posts with checklists, and integrating third-party apps.

With Asana, there are more feature for making sure you can effectively coordinate collaboration within your team. You will be able to create Projects and Tasks inside your Workspace/Organization. You can assign a team member for each, as well as a due date. Also, you may attach any files that are relevant to the project.

Asana also allows you to keep track of every task through each and every stage until they are complete. This is facilitated with the use of Projects, Dashboards, and Calendars.

If you use a paid tier plan, you will also have access to the Timeline feature. This is useful for planning projects with a big picture perspective. If you like having a visual project plan, Timeline is for you.

With Slack, you won’t get any built-in features specifically for task management. This is why it’s unable to be used in place of Asana if you don’t use any integrations. However, Asana is likewise unable to stand in Slack’s place. After all, it doesn’t have the necessary communication features.

Design and Layout

Slack and Asana have similar layouts and designs. They both have a main pane and left sidebar. The main pane is the large space that is used for tasks in Asana and conversations in Slack. You will also find a top bar that is located in the upper-right corner. This provides a search feature.

Both Slack and Asana provide customization options for your workspace. With Slack, you can change the left sidebar’s color in a multitude of different ways. With Asana, you will be able to change your workspace’s background. Go to “My Profile Settings” to find the theme you would like.

The desktop and mobile app user interfaces for Slack seem to be very similar. With the mobile app, you can still set your status and check up on your activity. You can also use Do Not Disturb status and

Ease-of-Use

Setting up projects and tracking them is an easy process with Asana. The system has a highly intuitive user interface with a clean design. It is easy to start exploring it from the very beginning.

Is Slack or Asana Better for Businesses?

You are able to set up to-dos and tasks, as well as add sections for organizing your tasks, create start dates and end dates for tasks, and add assignees for tasks.

When you check out the sidebar on the home page for the Asana application, you will see the Project and Team management features. You will also find reports, favorites, teams, team calendar, and projects here. While Slack isn’t quite as complex as Asana, many users find the user interface a little overwhelming.

Difference Between Search Features in Slack vs Asana

With Slack, you can search for channels, files, and messages. You can easily find files using the search filters. You will be able to filter out any messages that you want from files or messages, as well as current conversations and starred items.

Asana also has excellent search functionality. You can use filters for filtering out conversations, tasks, projects, teams, project managers, team members, and so on. You can also filter out specific attachments and statuses. Asana has a more expansive filtering ability than Slack.

Slack vs Asana Cost Comparison

Let’s take a look at a comparison of Asana and Slack’s pricing.

SlackAsana
Has a Freemium levelHas a Freemium level
Standard: $6.67 monthly per user. This is billed annually.Small Teams: $6.25 monthly per user. This is billed annually.
Plus: $12.50 monthly per active user, billed annuallyPremium: $9.99 monthly per member, billed annually.
Enterprise: Must request pricingEnterprise: Must request pricing

As we see here, Slack and Asana are quite similar in their price structures. They each have a free level as well as paid tiers. If you go with the free level of Asana, you get the chance to add as many as 15 members to your team.

Slack vs Asana Comparison

You also get access to unlimited Conversations, Projects, and Tasks. Slack has more limitations on its free version. You can only keep 10,000 of your team’s most recent communications, as well as 10 custom or third-party integrations.

If you go to the Standard paid tier of Asana, you will get access to an unlimited number of Dashboards, as well as Timeline and advanced search. Timeline gives you a visualized map describing your projects. My readers can also enjoy a free 30-day trial of Asana’s paid tiers by clicking right here.

If you go with the Standard tier with Slack, you will unlock a searchable message history, unlimited apps, and certain other added features.

Customer Support (is Asana or Slack more reliable?)

Slack offers outstanding help and support for users. It has a good reputation for how quickly it deals with customer problems. The customer support at Slack investigates how to resolve issues, knowledge sharing, automation, and collaboration. However, there doesn’t seem to be a Live Chat option for support at Slack.

Customer Service Comparison

If you choose Asana, you can check out the program’s help documentation. This found at Asana Guide. This extends from the Asana demo and goes through to the sign-up process orientation. Asana provides live chat customer support. If you are a premium user with Asana, you can access priority support.

Signing Up for Asana and Slack

Slack takes a little (but not much) more time to sign up for than Asana. However, both Slack and Asana have easy and intuitive set-up procedures, so most people experience no trouble with this process.

Now You’re Ready to Make Your Decision

You now have the information you need to decide whether Slack or Asana would be best for your organization.

If you are like many users, you might even decide to go with both and integrate them, getting the best of both worlds. If you’re still on the fence, check out my article on Slack competitors, or my article listing alternatives to Asana. You might find something there which works better for you.

Paul Minors has a nice video on the subject that might offer you and your organization some guidance about how each work for organizations as well:

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