The life of a project manager for a small or midsize team has arguably never been more chaotic. As if it weren’t enough to manage different projects, tasks, teams, and departments, much of that work is now being coordinated remotely.
The life of a project manager for a small or midsize team has arguably never been more chaotic. As if it weren’t enough to manage different projects, tasks, teams, and departments, much of that work is now being coordinated remotely.

If you need to level up the productivity for you and your team, it may be time to invest in a project management app. Two to consider are Asana and Jira.
It’s almost intimidating how many management apps are available today. Asana and Jira are both great options. Asana is designed for all types of teams and is one of the most popular options currently available. Jira is designed for software development teams. Both apps have a user-friendly UX design and are easily navigable for anyone to learn.
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Asana vs Jira at a glance
Whether you choose Asana or Jira, both will help you and your team to get work done. It really just depends on what type of work you mostly do, and whether there is any software development work involved.
Asana vs Jira at a glance
Whether you choose Asana or Jira, both will help you and your team to get work done. It really just depends on what type of work you mostly do, and whether there is any software development work involved.

In terms of project management, Asana has a more traditional approach than Jira, which is designed more specifically for software development (or “DevOps”) teams. So it just depends on the needs of your teams and projects to determine which is a better fit for you.
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Asana has really helpful automation features that help eliminate inefficiencies in workflows. Jira also has predefined workflows to help you get started quickly, or you can customize your own.
Jira boasts that it has more comprehensive reporting than Asana, so that may be something to consider.
Both apps offer a free trial so you can get a feel for them, and Asana even has a “free forever” option. Read on for a deeper comparison of Asana vs Jira.
Asana vs Jira: Task management functions
If you find yourself drowning in a desk full of sticky notes and to-do lists, or you just can’t keep up with the action items flying into your inbox, Asana and Jira can both simplify things to make your work more efficient.
Asana uses the favored project/task system, where you create projects and then list tasks for each project. Jira focuses on scrum and kanban boards to match your development framework.
Both apps afford you the ability to assign tasks to team members, set deadlines, and attach files and comments to them.
To manage workflows and task processing, Asana lets you customize how you and your team work with each other. It enables you to collaborate together by creating a plan, identifying needed steps, and eliminating threats or risks to your projects.
Asana also allows different teams (ie. sales and marketing) to work together on a product launch or upcoming campaign. Asana categorizes its workflows as “views,” so you can toggle back and forth to see your progress in different ways.
On the other hand, Jira mainly uses its “roadmaps” feature, along with kanban and scrum boards to manage workflows. The roadmaps help you see the big picture, and then the kanban and scrum boards identify a step-by-step process of what needs to happen to deliver results to your clients.
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Integration options for Asana vs Jira
As far as integration capabilities are concerned, Jira wins. It has more than 3,000 integrations, so you will be more than covered on this front; everything from Adobe and Gliffy to Scriptrunner, Slack, and Trello, can all be added into the Jira interface, so everything is in one workspace.
Asana, on the other hand, offers more than 100 integrations as well as its own API, including everything from Dropbox, Adobe, and Slack to Mailchimp and Zapier. For project managers who manage non-DevOps work and just need “the basics,” Asana will likely be a great fit.
Pricing tiers for Asana vs Jira
Asana is a little bit more expensive per user, but both Asana and Jira have free trials that you can sign up for. They also both offer an always-free plan, but it will have limited capabilities compared to paid subscriptions. Like most other subscription models for management apps, their pricing tiers are scalable based on users per month. Asana’s free version works for teams of 15 people or less; Jira’s free version allows teams of under 10 people.
You won’t get access to all the features, but it at least gives you the basics if you’re on a small budget or just have simple projects. Both apps offer discounts for yearly subscriptions.