Asana VS Jira VS Monday. Who wins the software showdown?  

When it comes to project management software, there are a lot of options out there. These tools let you track projects, monitor progress, log time, collaborate on files, schedule reminders, and more. But not all tools perform the same functions, because every tool wasn’t designed for every team or project type.

So, how do you pick the best tool for your team and your workflows? Let’s take a look.

The Contenders for Comparison  

While there are countless project management tools out there, we’re going to review three of tech’s biggest platforms: Asana, Jira, and Monday.

To help you make the decision on which platform is best for your team, we’ll explore platform features, use cases, and pricing. So, to kick us off, let’s explore what each platform is known for. This list is in alphabetical order, so don’t choose a winner just yet. 

Asana is known for being simple and easy to navigate and use. At its core, Asana is a task management tool designed to help teams organize, manage, and track their work. With these core functions, Asana can offset many internal communications tools, like email, allowing you to natively share notes, send and receive notifications, upload attachments, and assign and track towards due dates.

Jira is largely known as an issue and bug tracking tool. With Jira, teams can easily document and organize bugs issues, prioritize actions, fixes, and tasks, and collaborate alongside fellow project peers. Workers are largely assigned tasks, and they collaborate in one place to summarize, comment, provide attachments, attach priorities, and update the status of the task at hand.

Monday is a highly visual project management and collaboration software built to work for teams of all types and sizes. Monday is perfect for task management and planning, for internal and external team collaboration, and more. Monday’s biggest benefit is its visual structure, allowing nearly all actions and tasks to be viewed, edited, dragged, and dropped in a colorful, visual way vs a purely text-based manner.

Primary Features, Functions, and User Benefits   

Now that we’ve briefly covered the basics of each platform, let’s explore a few core features and functions of each software alongside key benefits they can provide your team.

Asana offers great out-of-the-box features and expansive functions, which makes it a robust option for just about any team or project.

Just need a simple project management software? You’ve got it. Need to add integrations (think customizations or syncing apps together) like Google Drive or Slack? No problem. And unique, easy to use features? They’ve got real time task and project updates, personalized profiles, custom management levels, and more.

Jira is the least visual of the options and the most technical. Jira is great for developing and documenting a process of how to do something, how to debug something, and how to replicate something.

With features like Kanban boards, you can leverage a visual drag-and-drop like experience or task management in addition to more technical tools like Scrum Boards for development, Roadmaps, and custom integrations—including custom code.

Monday is the most visual, and in terms of usability, is the easiest to navigate out-of-the-box when compared to the other platforms. Another core strength? This tool is highly and easily customizable for various teams, workflows, work types, and work streams.

The biggest perk of all, however, is Monday’s unique ability to serve as more than a project management tool for tasks and timelines. Monday can also act as a communication and collaboration platform allowing you and your team to do things like tweak designs, store data and information, and more.

That’s What They Do. Who are They For? 

Because of their core features and functions, each platform is suited towards different types of users. While each platform can be customized, there are core use cases for each.

Asana is great for small teams, and especially for small, specialized teams—think agencies, certain creative and professional firms, and technical businesses. Thanks to the easy-to-use interface, it’s a great choice, all while providing plenty of app integrations.

Jira is the ultimate tool for development and technical teams. In fact, Jira even integrates with other project management software—including both Monday and Asana. If you’re not in the tech space, we’d recommend taking a closer look at the other options.

Monday is applicable to teams large and small, perfect for a wide variety of uses, from marketing to sales and HR to operations. Described as “the Work OS,” Monday is perfect for centralizing all your departments, all your communications, and all your tasks in one easy, place.

As for their popularity? It’s easy to determine when you combine software user reviews with Twitter followers (Twitter tends to be a customer resource, leveraged for troubleshooting).

• Asana tops our list as the most popular with 11,000+ reviews and over 129,000 followers.
• Jira comes in second with 12,000+ reviews and over 41,000 followers
• Monday rounds out our list with 2,700+ reviews and just over 17,000 followers.

Keep in mind, each platform has different uses, uses cases, and price points, which can all affect popularity.

Show Me the Money

We know what Asana, Jira, and Monday do and who they’re for, but now we need to know—how much do they cost? The long answer is, “it depends.” It depends on how many users you need, how many integrations you want, and how many customizations you desire. To provide a price point, we’ll display the levels most applicable to the widest range of businesses. Prices based on an annual renewal rate.

Asana has two core levels: Premium, which is intended for teams and projects, and Business, which is intended for teams and departments to cross collaborate. Premium bills at $10.99 per user per month, while Business costs $24.99 per user per month.

Jira also has two core levels, Standard and Premium. However, Jira assumes a minimum of ten users. Standard will run you $7.50 per user per month for up to ten users and is a minimum investment of $75 per month. Premium equates to $14.50 per month for up to ten users with a minimum monthly investment of $145 per month.

Monday, like the rest, also has two core levels. Standard (their most popular), and Pro. Standard is $10 per user per month, while Pro is $16 per user per month. Like the other offerings, the variance in price level is determined by the amount of features each level supports.

So, Who’s the Winner?

This might be anticlimactic, but… the winner isn’t clear cut—it’s up to you. That’s why these platforms (and so many more) allow trial runs, demos, walk throughs, and single user profiles for free. This way, you can make your own choice for what works for you, your team, and your business.

Are you using Asana, Jira, Monday, or another platform to manage projects? Share what works best for your business in the comments! Do you have a burning project or task management question? Post it below to get advice from the LenovoPRO Community.