Notion VS Asana

As a Notion expert and experienced coder, I recently dove deep into Asana, another popular CRM on the market.

Here are the 4 key differences that should become deciding factors in your choice between these platforms:

Databases

There’s three types of data you can keep strictly within Asana - Tasks, Projects & messages. Ah, and time tracking. That’s it.

Asana decided “Why complicate things?” and figured you should be able to find your workflow within these three and a half buckets.

Which frankly, you might, granted you don’t need anything custom.

Plus, one minor annoyance of mine: Mention a task in a message, and it won’t automatically cross-reference back at the task’s page.

Wasted potential, considering these messages is as close as you get to native documents.

Notion, on the other hand, hands you a blank canvas and says, “Build whatever you want!”!

Want to create a database for deliverables or finance tracking besides your task database? Done.

Need them to relate to each other? Easy.

But… the freedom here comes with the risk of turning your setup into a chaotic mess if not handled properly.

Setting up accesses

Asana does a great job at access-restricting.

I would go as far as to say that it’s its strongest suit in general.

It’s transparent whether the task is visible to you, the team of the project it’s in, or to everyone in the workspace. That part I really love about it.

In Notion permissions are somewhat in the background of things, unless you know what you’re doing.

There’s also a big limitation, wherein everyone who has access to the database, is able to see all of its records, period. You can still customize their read/comment/edit permissions though.

Tasks

Asana keeps it black-and-white: either your task is “complete” or it’s not. It can become “blocked” by another task, which is a hidden 3rd status, and can be set to 'require approval of <person> which is a hidden 4th status.

Tracking anything more nuanced, like “in progress”, "Paused" or "Dropped" will have to sit as random text in page body…

Some try to hack it by using sections, but it’s a messy solution that leads to data duplication. A checked-off task can live in an “Incomplete” section and vice versa. Recipe for confusion.

Notion, lets you define custom task statuses; whatever fits your flow. It’s more upfront effort, but it pays off in proper categorization and transparency down the line.

Project Templates

Asana’s templates are great if you want something out-of-the-box and are fine with a rigid structure.

But dislike how a default project view behaves (I did)? Too bad! You’ll have to re-edit it every single time you create a new one.

In Notion, building a solid project template requires more upfront work. But the reward is total flexibility: custom views, two-way related relevant databases, and ultimately, again, a workflow that suits your unique needs.

Afterword

Which CRM suits your team best? It depends on how much flexibility you need and how much effort you’re willing to invest into building your perfect system.Need help choosing & want expert help while settling in? Shoot me a DM, and let’s jump on it together!