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Asana vs Microsoft Azure DevOps comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Asana
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
45
Ranking in other categories
Project Management Software (3rd)
Microsoft Azure DevOps
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
130
Ranking in other categories
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites (2nd), Release Automation (1st), Enterprise Agile Planning Tools (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

Asana and Microsoft Azure DevOps aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Asana is designed for Project Management Software and holds a mindshare of 7.9%, down 11.8% compared to last year.
Microsoft Azure DevOps, on the other hand, focuses on Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites, holds 21.8% mindshare, down 26.5% since last year.
Project Management Software
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
 

Featured Reviews

Ian Herzing - PeerSpot reviewer
Stands out with portfolios, easy setup, and real-time information, but needs big improvement when it comes to workflows, automation, and dashboards
Their workflows and automation could use a big improvement. I don't even know if they have anything in that regard right now. I would really love to see a way where you can send custom alerts based on a task's completion or status change or an approval coming through. I would love to see a way to get some low-code functionality into Asana because right now, that is a big miss. On top of that, their dashboards are incredibly lacking. The way the widgets connect to the projects, they don't pull the data in the way that I really want them to. When I build a dashboard in Asana versus Smartsheet, I can't pull in data via a custom text field in Asana, but in Smartsheet, I can. That's a huge advantage because sometimes, you just want to report on really niche tasks or a launch date in a specific project or a collection of projects, and Smartsheet's dashboard features will let you do that, but Asana won't. So, their dashboards are lacking, and the workflows are pretty below where the market is right now. I would love to see a complete revamp of how they do dashboards right now. Dashboards are really poor. They don't display information well, and they don't look good. They don't pull in data in an advanced search kind of way. They are very simplistic. If you're a traditional project manager and you're PMP certified and you understand project management, you're going to be very frustrated with Asana's dashboards because they do not speak the language of project management. That's because of the way they are set up. So, I would like to see that completely revamped. It's just not an industry standard.
Akshat Prakash - PeerSpot reviewer
Allows us to deploy code to production without releasing certain features immediately and agile project management capabilities offer resource-leveling
My company has experienced benefits from using it or from recent updates in Azure Pipelines. For instance, we can manage different code versions from the same repository across different environments. We also use feature flags; the code is deployed, but the feature can be made visible to the end user at a later time. Additionally, as part of the deployment, we integrate automated and regression testing, which stops the deployment if testing fails, thus preventing regression bugs. This saves time and increases productivity by reducing the need for manual testing. Lastly, it integrates with the project management aspects, allowing us to link code deployments with project milestones. Azure DevOps supported our shift towards DevOps culture or practices. We shifted to the cloud environment and started migrating from our data centers about eight or nine years back. It has been a long journey. However, we have used Azure DevOps for almost five to six years in every project. We also use automation testing in Azure, so we have an integrated test suite that allows us to perform functional and regression testing effectively via the Azure DevOps system.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Asana has helped me (as an individual contributor) organize my daily work and given me a way to plan for longer term objectives."
"My task box displays all of our tasks, organized by day, helping us to focus on what needs to be done each day."
"Asana has significantly reduced the number of emails we exchange because we can access the project directly. It organizes all the tasks related to each project, assigns them to staff with due dates, and tracks progress."
"Asana, despite its compact size, proves to be incredibly valuable. When initiating a project, it offers the ability to generate a personalized form for clients. In this particular context, my clients include the customer success team and solution architects. This feature allows me to provide them with a convenient means to submit their requests, resembling a ticketing system geared towards internal operations. Moreover, it enables efficient allocation within my team. For instance, if a question pertains to customer success, I can assign it to the CSOps manager and the team. Similarly, if it relates to a specific channel, it can be allocated accordingly."
"I really enjoy the portfolios in Asana. One of the ways Asana stands out to me is with portfolios. You can have all your different projects, and you can have those assigned to different teams. If you want to customize a grouping of projects, you can use portfolios. For instance, one of the things that we do is we can assign a portfolio to a specific strategic objective we have, and we can put all those projects that are related to that strategic objective in that portfolio. We then know exactly what people are working on to help us achieve our goals. So, I really like portfolios."
"The solution's user interface is very good."
"The most valuable feature of Asana is the tracking of comments and documents in one place."
"It is stable and easy to set up."
"You can have test cases in DevOps but not in JIRA. And, DevOps has advantages in terms of executing those test cases."
"The most valuable feature is that it's fully integrated, where we have a single place to do everything that we need."
"All features are good. Pipelines feature is great, and Boards and Artifacts features are also really good. It is really good at what it does. It is very comprehensive, and it has some really great aspects to it. It is very easy. It is probably one of the easiest to use DevOps tools in the industry, and it is well integrated."
"I really like the Microsoft DevOps survey."
"The solution's most valuable features are backlog management, build release pipeline, and testing."
"The automated bill feature is most valuable. As with most software developers, I can build code on my machine, but if one of my coworkers can't build the same code on theirs, there are always issues in trying to track it down. The automated bill process makes it a lot easier to track down where the issues are and find out what bugs aren't being included for whatever reason."
"Microsoft Azure DevOps integrates well with other components, such as Synapse, which is a data warehouse tool of Azure. It is a framework platform for BI and integrated with other tools, such as Power BI."
"Microsoft has good integration with its other products, such as Office, Teams, et cetera."
 

Cons

"More features can be added."
"There could be some improvements in terms of how projects or day-to-day work is organized. One of the challenges when it comes to rolling out to an enterprise is the way the projects are organized. It has a kind of setup where you have different projects and tasks, but it is not as organized as Smartsheet when it comes to organizing projects or different teams. It can get really cluttered really fast. JIRA has another suite to submit the support tickets. It would be good if Asana could branch out to incorporate some kind of workflow. It is great for collaboration and recording work, but there isn't any workflow. It would be useful if they can map out a workflow of who approves what. This is kind of a big ask, and it is not geared towards that."
"The stability of Asana is good. However, there are some issues with maintenance, when the solution is down. For example, there might be maintained for a few hours where we cannot use the solution."
"We have not used Asana on our private server. We have been using the cloud solution. We need an on premise solution for government agencies."
"The documentation for integration could be improved. We require more information to facilitate the integrations."
"It's difficult to have short-term collaborations with external users because the operations team owns the final licenses, and I work for marketing."
"I rate the support from Asana a four out of five."
"We don't get enough notifications."
"The optimization feature in Microsoft Azure DevOps needs improvement. Control over multiple projects could also be improved."
"There are certain areas in Azure DevOps that are better in other products."
"They could provide clearer guidance on deployment practices for the product."
"I would like to see improvement in the metrics and the dependencies."
"They should expand it from just a PC, software, or server development platform to other kinds of software or engineering systems so that it is not necessarily built around a normal PC with a server. I would like to see the ability to write my own scripts in my own compiled program or online. Right now, there are things that you can do in the user interface, but you can't do them programmatically and vice versa. I want to see them both. If I can do it in a script, I should be able to do it from the user interface, and if I can do it in the user interface, I should be able to do it in a script."
"Not all companies use the same methodology which could limit the use of this solution."
"If they could build up requirement traceability metrics, then it would be great."
"There are certain features, and reporting that can only be used in PowerBI, but not directly in DevOps."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This solution is reasonably priced."
"The solution's free version can be used for basic functions."
"We paid a monthly licensing fee for the product."
"We're on the business tier, which is $25 a month if you're on an annual contract. It's $31 if you're on a month-to-month contract. In my experience, there are no hidden costs with Asana. I know Smartsheet has these add-ons that you can buy, which is an additional cost, but Asana doesn't have any add-ons that I know of. When you're trying to scale the product and want to add users, you have to do it in buckets of five. This is also something to consider."
"The price of the solution is reasonable."
"Asana has two different types of structures: company vs workspace. Company is really best if all the users you plan to assign work to are all internal (have the same corporate domain in their user ID email address). Once one person signs up (even for a free account) with a corporate email address, Asana will automatically relate that person to that company, if it already exists. If you plan to use it for external collaboration as well as internal, then creating a workspace is a better approach."
"The cost is $25 US per unit per month."
"For what it brings to the table, I think Asana is fairly affordable. I would like to see the portfolio feature in our pricing plan, but other than that, it's definitely pretty good."
"The solution costs $5 or $10 per user, per month."
"I don't have a problem with the pricing."
"The licensing structure is good."
"Microsoft Azure DevOps is an expensive solution."
"As the cost structure is per user, I would recommend paying the cost structure based on the amount of data you use rather than the number of users."
"The solution's deployment and licensing costs are very cheap compared to those of its competitors."
"We pay a monthly license for Microsoft Azure DevOps."
"We have an MPN subscription for Microsoft Azure DevOps, and it's all included."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
57%
Computer Software Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
4%
Manufacturing Company
4%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Asana?
The solution's user interface is very good.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Asana?
The pricing is reasonable. We paid and received equal functionality.
What needs improvement with Asana?
The solution could have a bigger pop-up when someone assigns a task or have a notification similar to Facebook, where you see a number indicating the notifications you receive. This way, you can se...
Which is better - Jira or Microsoft Azure DevOps?
Jira is a great centralized tool for just about everything, from local team management to keeping track of products and work logs. It is easy to implement and navigate, and it is stable and scalabl...
Which is better - TFS or Azure DevOps?
TFS and Azure DevOps are different in many ways. TFS was designed for admins, and only offers incremental improvements. In addition, TFS seems complicated to use and I don’t think it has a very fri...
What do you like most about Microsoft Azure DevOps?
Valuable features for project management and tracking in Azure DevOps include a portal displaying test results, check-in/check-out activity, and developer/tester productivity.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Azure DevOps, VSTS, Visual Studio Team Services, MS Azure DevOps
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Uber, Vodaphone, NASA, Spotify, Lyft, Baggu, Udacity, Patreon, Flipboard, Dropbox, Intel, Samsung, Airbnb, SFMoma, Hubspot, Trivago
Alaska Airlines, Iberia Airlines, Columbia, Skype
Find out what your peers are saying about monday.com, Microsoft, Asana and others in Project Management Software. Updated: November 2024.
816,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.