Choosing Asana or TeamworkPM?
Learning from people comparing our competitors
Playing catch-up with an incumbent is a fool’s errand. You end up with a shoddy lookalike which always runs 3 months behind.
On the other hand, learning from those who have gone before is to stand on the shoulders of giants. We think both Asana and TeamworkPM have achieved a lot in the task management space.
It’s particularly interesting to hear how other people compare them, and what they like from each. The team at GreenMellen are a great example. See this discussion of their switch:
So, what did we at Hive learn from their analysis? Here’s each point they raise, separated out with our thoughts back to them:
Let’s get started….
“WHAT AM I DOING TODAY?”
Both systems have a great “what do I need to work on today” screen, but Asana’s is far better and this is the main reason we switched back. Teamwork’s main screen performed as expected, but was cumbersome. A single task (inside of a task list, inside of a project, inside of a client) would take up quite a lot of space on the screen. Asana drops them into a simple list, while giving you the additional info you need inline. Even better, Asana allows you to drag items on your main screen around to help set your own agenda for the day, while Teamwork keeps them locked in place.
Obviously a home view depends a lot on individual taste. To the specific points you make, we have a simple compact action list, and you can quite significantly change the panels you choose to see.
ADDING TASKS
Going further on the previous item, it’s much easier to add tasks in Asana. You can literally hit [Tab][Q] (for “Quick” task) and have a new task in seconds. In Teamwork each task must be in a task list, which must be in a project, which must have a client. It’s logical and certainly makes sense, but it can be frustrating to create all of those things just to add a task.
As a consequence of the above items, a few of us were starting to keep “side lists” (myself in Google Keep, others in Wunderlist) so we’d have a quick view of our day. While there’s nothing wrong with doing that, per se, it was a serious indictment that Teamwork was simply too cumbersome when it came time to get to work.
It’s only one mouse click to create a new action, but we’ve been talking about keyboard shortcuts. [Tab][Q] will be live before the week is out!
PRICING
While both are affordable (within the context of an essential tool that you use every day), Asana is certainly cheaper. Teamwork was costing us $99/mo, while Asana is free (or up to $25/mo if we pay for premium features). This wasn’t a big factor for us, as we’ll happily pay $3/day for a great tool, but it’s certainly a nice bonus.
Hive comes with a 14-day free trial (no credit card info required), and after that costs $12/month/user.
TEAMWORK WINS THE REST
If you dig into the rest of our reasons, most of them lean toward Teamwork. However, Asana is now good enough for most of them, and the daily use of Asana is so much better that it was worth switching. Here are a few items in particular:
Start dates: This was the one that really caused us to pause before switching. Teamwork has a “start date” that can be assigned to tasks, while Asana doesn’t (and has no plans to add one). There are some decent workarounds in Asana, but it’s a shame they don’t add proper implementation.
Hive is a proud proponent of the start date:
Recurring tasks:
Teamwork is a bit better here (you can add a “stop after x date”), but they’re both about the same (and certainly better than Basecamp, which still doesn’t have them at all).
We have you covered.
Task templates:
Teamwork is stronger here as well, though again Asana is good enough.
We use Hive’s task templates all the time. Here’s a selection:
Desktop app:
Neither platform has a true desktop app, which is unfortunate.
See my desktop Hive below. We couldn’t live without it.
Mobile: The Teamwork mobile app does the job, but is cumbersome. Asana’s app is quick and lightweight, and is something I might actually use from time to time.
Here she is — Hive on mobile. It’s an area of focus for us — we can make it slicker, neater, easier to get to the main actions.
Teamwork Desk:
We’ve begun using Teamwork Desk with a lot of our clients (they can still simply email us, but we can deal with it in an organized fashion). Will things be more difficult now that we’re leaving Teamwork? Not really. Desk is an awesome solution, but didn’t integrate that closely with Teamwork Projects. In addition 99% of the requests we get via desk are dealt with immediately. For the few that aren’t, the Chrome extension for Asana will make it easy to add them to our task lists, so continuing to use Teamwork Desk won’t be a problem.
We’re in love with Intercom, so that’s how we do all our client support. We pipe all our Intercom notifications into Hive so we don’t have to check two different inboxes:
Blue dot / notifications:
When someone assigns you a task in Asana, it shows up on your home screen in a “new tasks” section with a blue dot next to you (which you can click to deal with the task). I forgot how much I missed this! With Teamwork you had to choose to email your coworkers when you assigned them a new task so they wouldn’t miss it. Teamwork made it easy to do, but it led to a lot of unnecessary emails. The blue dot is awesome.
Our dots are orange instead of blue (because Hive 🐝🐝🐝). They show up for new tasks as you say, but we also have a pretty powerful notifications system that doesn’t require you to navigate away from what you’re doing:
Comments and conversations:
Both platforms allow for easy comments and conversation, but the implementation in Asana is awesome. We still use Slack for much of our internal communication, but the integrated comments in Asana are very useful. The video below shows off how that works.
Here, we might be in a pretty strong position. We have comments as you’d expect:
… but we also have a fully fledged messaging system, with integrations built in. Take a look at our wall of love from this morning:
Hopefully that’s a useful rundown of our thoughts in each area. We have a long way to go (Hive is still a young company), but we are obsessive about listening to people’s pain, and responding quickly.
Best regards from the team!
John
CEO, Hive
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