Best Project Management Tools — Monday.com vs Asana vs Trello vs Jira and more!
As far as Project Management, Reminder Lists and Time Tracking goes, there’s a lot of software out there.
Getting started
In this article, we’ll be reviewing the following project management tools.
...and many more
Yes, I’ve tried them all
Early in my career (2010, 2011, 2012) I became an expert all the enterprise products Microsoft Project (noooo), Sharepoint (nooooo #2).
Then I tried Mac Apps (2013) Bloop Projects which I loved for its pure simplicity and beautiful design. But they took it away from me #sadface.
I often found myself getting my best work done when I was in transit — walking to the train station, going for a run, on my lunch break.
My legs were moving and so was my brain.
And then whenever I produced a really great project plan, I wanted it to look fabulous when I converted it to PDF to share with senior executives at the insurance brand I used to work for. But nothing came close.
Then in 2015, I was so frustrated with the lack of easy to use mobile-ready project tracking apps for the iPhone that would automatically export a nice PDF, that I spent six months making my own: Project Express.
While I’m absolutely not here to promote my own app (I rarely use it anymore), I do want to talk about my journey to find the best team and task tracking tool. Essentially I want to tell you, don’t buy my app.
Things have come a long way, and while I still love my little app and make updates regularly, there’s a whole lot of great software out there to help individuals and teams get stuff done. And now it’s fun.
Getting the right features
In 2018 things changed, I discovered something that made me love projects.
Monday.com is now my favourite.
I spent a bit of time trying different software, because I do a lot of things professionally and personally, working both alone and managing teams.
When exploring SaaS, I’ve tried a lot, and been disappointed a lot.
Recently a friend told me how they were using and loving Click Up, so I tried it out, and although it has some really nice features, it made me take the time to think about why I’m so in love with Monday.
Right from the outset, I compared Monday with Asana and Trello. The reason I wanted to try out Asana and Trello, is because these are the apps that all my friends were boasting about. But I was disappointed.
I’ve spent a bit of time looking through all the features, and become familiar with the tools. Monday by far is still my favourite. Back when Monday was called “DaPulse” I definitely wasn’t. But something changed.
They invested a lot in their platform, and they made work fun.
One of the things I love most about Monday is the fact you can tell instantly when you use it, that they’ve designed it to be scalable. All the features you’d expect out of the box are there, built-in. And it has automations too.
For a long time, I continued to wonder if I was missing something — Asana has such a vast amount of integrations I was blown away, thinking they must be the best. Trello has such a big fan base I can’t even convince anyone using Trello to switch — but it’s too bulky and restrictive.
But why were my friends still so in love with other tools like ClickUp or even worse Jira (arghhhh~).
Then it dawned on me, different niches have different needs:
- Monday.com is the best tool for teams to collaborate on anything that needs to get done, and occasionally share with externals, executives. Anyone in any business can use it and instantly feel familiar with it. As they say, they’ve built “Work OS”. It’s the right balance between basic list tracking, collaboration and project management. It’s for EVERYONE.
- Asana is great for agencies or software developers who want all the flexibility to integrate with all the different connectors. It’s for people or teams who already have deep and complex project management, who need all the customisation and integrations they can get. In my opinion, it’s for those types of people who would rather get a Samsung Android or a Microsoft Windows and customise everything.
- Trello and Jira are great too, but in my observation it’s for teams who want to be incredibly verbose and document every. single. thing. so they spend so much time documenting the process rather than getting results. I incredibly dislike Jira and Atlassian products so much that the User Interface has made me scream. I can NEVER find what I need in Jira.
- Hive is a great tool also, which I haven’t evaluated for this review. However, an excellent alternative for collaboration and team projects.
- Teamwork is another easy-to-use project management software, trusted by 20,000 businesses and 6,000 agencies.
Why Monday wins
Monday.com has a lot of flexibility, some of my favourite features include the following.
Kanban by Monday
Turn any board into a Kanban cards using the status column, then drag-and-drop the cards through stages.
Forms by Monday
Easily create Forms so that your customers can submit requests which automatically populate the board.
- Support tickets
- Feature requests
- Schedule appointments
It’s easy to create a Form from any board.
You can then customise the form to suit the audience.
Automations by Monday
Monday.com has an Automations feature, which helps you save time and helps teams do things consistently.
- When a task is completed, move it to a different group
- When a new task is created, email someone to notify them
In fact Monday’s implementation of the Automations feature probably has to be the easiest I’ve ever seen.
And for advanced users, you can customise Automations to suit your workflows.
Design
Monday.com in my opinion also has the best design.
Design in looks, simplicity, scalability, security.
You know Human Centred Design, where they test the products with actual users and get it right before launch? That’s how they designed it.
It’s not perfect, it took me a short while to comprehend how private boards work vs shareable boards.
But with the right amount of colour splashed throughout, consistent User Interface design, everyday language and customisable fields, I fell instantly in love with Monday. So did my team. Zero training, zero convincing.
What I love about Monday.com is the unified Search Everything feature.
I can find anything, instantly. Just like using Mac OS X Spotlight.
Hive is an excellent alternative for design and marketing agencies.
Verdict
- If you use an iPhone and Mac because it’s intuitive and works, then you’ll love Monday.com. You don’t need to learn how to use it. And you can connect all your friends and they can use it, and it’s just easy. Tadaa~!
- If you use Microsoft Windows so you can install all the custom software onto it and you want to change things and sometimes it does a Windows Update when you don’t want, you might find Asana is the best.
- If you’re into software development, you might want to stick with Trello or Jira because you’ve invested so much time learning how to perfect those tools, you shouldn’t dare switch away to another tool.
My assessment
Here’s a list of all the things I could find to compare Monday vs Asana.
It’s not a complete list and there might be some small corrections.
It’s clear that although Asana has lots and lots of integrations and plugins and connectors, to me — that means that maybe it’s not the best out-of-the-box solution. You’re saying I have to pay more for other solutions too?
With Monday, you pay the monthly rate and you get the features you expect, and the most popular integrations will already be likely using today — Google, Microsoft, Shopify, Campaign Monitor. STRIPE (WOW).
Check out a full comparison of the Best Online Project Management tools.
Originally published at https://goodbusinesskit.com on October 12, 2020.
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