Speaker 1: In today's video, I want to cover the controversial question of Trello versus Asana. Which of these project management tools is going to be best for you? And I'm going to be giving you a side-by-side comparison of me using both tools so that you can see which one you actually like the look of best as well. So hi, if you're new here, my name is Anna. I am a designer and online educator at bioreasana.co.uk. And here on YouTube, I share videos about marketing, business, productivity, all that good stuff. So if you like that kind of content, don't forget to hit the subscribe button and give this video a thumbs up while you're there. So a project management software is basically a tool that you can use to organize your business, collaborate with team members or clients if you need to, manage what tasks you need to do, manage how projects are going, and basically organize. It's pretty much everything in your life as well. There are loads of these different tools on the market, ranging in price and complexity. And if you're interested in going a little bit in more depth into how to actually choose from any of those, then I have a podcast episode that I will link below in the video description, which talks through those in a bit more detail and how to pick. But today I wanted to focus on two of the most popular ones, which are Trello and Asana. These tend to get spoken about most for small business owners, because they are very quick and easy to get set up in comparison to some of the more complex ones, like ClickUp, Airtable, that kind of thing. They seem to be the most accessible and a lot of people see them as being very similar. So I wanted to give a direct comparison from my own experience in today's video. First thing I would suggest doing before you even get started thinking about getting set up on one of these is figuring out what your priorities are and how you actually plan to be using this tool. So if you've got a growing team in your business and you need lots of collaboration, features, and stuff like that, then Trello is the perfect tool for you. But if you're just getting started and you're going to be a bit of a solopreneur for a while and it's just going to be you running your business, then maybe you just want something that is quick and easy to set up and that's so simple that you're actually going to keep up with keeping it up to date. Now Trello and Asana do have their differences and they do have their similarities, but hopefully as I walk you through creating a project or creating a board in both of these tools, you can get a feel for how they work and how they look. And then I'll do a recap at the end of the kind of... pros and cons between both platforms. Okay, so let's get started with this comparison. I'm going to be using the free plan on both Trello and Asana, just to give you an idea in case you haven't got set up on either of them yet and you're planning to just use the free plan to start with, which I definitely recommend doing just to get used to it and make sure you like the way it's laid out. So I've got a few different actual workspaces in Trello because this is the tool that I use. This is just a personal... blog that I have and I've got a few different boards for that kind of team or workspace, if you like. And this is on the free plan. So the actual workspace that I use for my business is by Rosanna and that's on the paid plan, but I'm not going to go into that too much now. But let's just go ahead and create a board within this existing workspace. On the free plan in Trello, you get up to 10 boards in the free plan. So if we go ahead... and create a new board, let's just call it content calendar. And one thing that I do like about Trello is you can actually customize the board background. So you can choose a color or you can actually choose a stock photo from Unsplash as well. And this can be different for every single board that you have. So they can all have different backgrounds. Meanwhile, Asana, you can have a background image, but it would have to be behind your whole kind of Asana system, rather than per board, it would just apply to everything. So it's just a small note, if you like to kind of customize the way things look. And then the way Trello works is it automatically sets you up with what's called a Kanban board style view. And this is what other people will refer to as just a board view, but technically the technical term for it is Kanban board, where you have multiple lists and then you have cards within the lists that you, or tasks that you basically drag between them. So if we just... create a few lists here. What I'm doing is just typing and pressing enter to create a new list in here. You'll see that I can then add cards to those lists. So then what we would be doing is adding an idea here. Let's say, this is a card that I'm adding, and this is basically just another word for a task. So you can set these boards up however you want to. You could obviously create like a CRM, a CRM system or a lead management system where maybe you have a list being kind of inquiry and then call scheduled for example, and then you'd have the name of the person as the task. And then the idea behind a Kanban board style view is that you just drag tasks or cards, whatever you want to call them, between the different lists to indicate that they are now part of a different status. So you can see that I've created a new list. So you can see that I've created a new list. So you can see that I've created a new list. Or however you wish to organize it. So I'm just going to delete these a minute. So I'm not going to be doing like a full tutorial of how everything works. I just want to compare how it all looks and how it all works in both platforms. So let's now go across to Asana and here I've got a few different teams. The way I've set it up is slightly differently in Trello than in Trello, but let's just go to create a project, which is Asana's way of saying board. So Trello, you've got lots of different boards. Like this content calendar one is a board and then in Asana, they call it projects. So you can use a template. You can also import a spreadsheet. So one thing to note is that you can actually export your Trello boards and import them into Asana if you did want to switch over at any point as well. So I'm going to click blank project. I'm just going to give it the name content calendar. And then what you can do is assign it to your team and set the privacy of it, which you can also do, um, within Trello as well. So you can select whether you want it to be private or public or visible in a workspace. Um, let's go back here. But the key difference with Asana is it's got multiple different views that you can choose. So in the free plan, which is what I'm using, you get the list view option, the board view option, which means Kanban board, which is supposed to be the equivalent to Trello's board view. And then also a calendar view as well. You can also get timeline, timeline view. But as you can see by this little badge that's just telling you that that is for premium users rather than the free plan. So I'm going to choose Kanban board view so that you can see now if we click continue to actually create this, let's just go by starting to add tasks and let me hide this so you can see it's automatically created some lists for me to do in progress complete, but you can add them and in Asana it calls them sections. Instead of lists, but it's exactly the same thing. Let's just rename this so that it's exactly the same as my other Trello one. So what you will notice in Asana is there's some other settings up at the top here, like you can add information and statuses to your boards. Um, you can see an overview by clicking overview where you can add more members and add resources like a brief and links explaining to people what's on the board. So you can already see that Asana is set up very much for collaboration purposes and for teams. And then if we just go back to board view, this is what is set as your kind of default view for the data that is in this board or project. However, what you can do is click on list and it will show you all that data in list format as well. It's just that you've selected board to be the default view so you can actually switch between views really easily. If you, if you're using the premium version, you'll be able to see a timeline kind of Gantt chart type of thing and you've also got calendar view as well. Now let's just add in a task just like I've done with this. So let's say Trello versus Asana is the task and you'll see we now have some options for that task. So if I click on the task in Trello as well, you can see we've also got some options again. It's just laid out differently. The design is slightly different, but you can add a description and notes to the task. You can add members which is the equivalent to adding an assignee in Trello in Asana. Sorry, you've also got checklists which are the equivalent of adding subtasks in Asana and that has all of the same functionality. So due dates, you can add an assignee to a subtask as well, which you can actually do in Trello as well. Lots of people don't realize you can do that and you can add comments to it down here and a chat. Attachments, you can add tags, so colored labeling. Let's just call this productivity as a tag and then you can set the color, which again you can do in Trello as well. So we've got attachments, you can add comments and then labels are here. So this has all been fairly similar up till now. But one thing that you can do in Asana that you can't do in Trello, is actually add a task like this to multiple projects. So currently we're viewing the content calendar project. But if say I wanted to also add this exact same task, this exact same the way it's set up and everything, not a copy of it, but the exact same one to another project that I have. I don't know why I want to do it in this case, but I could do that. So here's another project that I have. I could actually add it to that as well. So then if I went to that, project over here you can see it is now in there as well. And it's exactly the same task with the same tag and everything. And you cannot actually do that in Trello. So we're here in Asana and again, you can kind of just move these around and it will do the same function as this. And if we click on the task and actually add a date to it, so a due date, let's just say tomorrow and then go over to the calendar view, we can now view this in a calendar view as well. In fact, that's probably not a good example because I had to click open the weekend there, but you can see it now and you can actually click and drag to change the date. So if you were having a content calendar, for example, this would be a great reason to use the calendar view because you can easily see all of the tasks here. And obviously the more tasks you've got in there, the more populated it gets. You can do it on different dates. You can see the color tag that it's got. So you can see a lot in calendar view. Now, what a lot of comparison articles, when people are talking about the difference between Trello and Asana fail to mention is that yes, in the free version of Trello, you technically cannot see your content in different views. That is mainly for the premium version of Trello where you can see table views, calendar views, dashboards, all that kind of stuff and timelines as well. But actually, there is a way you can turn this into a calendar. In the free version of Trello, and that is with a power up. So a lot of Trello's functionality is obviously it looks very basic when you're getting started on the free plan. It looks like it's more limited in terms of features than Asana. But actually, a lot of those features are just hidden behind something called power ups, which you can add as many as you want to, to free boards. They changed that recently in 2021. So now on your free plan in Trello, you can actually add as many power ups as you want to your boards, not just one as it was before. So now if we add a power up, we can now search to add different functionality to this board. So I'm going to type in to search calendar and I'm going to add the calendar power up. Now what you'll see at the top of the screen here is I've got the calendar power up button, which if I click it, I can then see a calendar view it in week or month view and then I can click that again to get rid of it. So this is in the free version of Trello. So literally the same as Asana. You can add your tasks to the calendar, click and drag to move them around. And if we add the tag or the label here as well, you can see that just as you can in Asana as well. And I personally actually prefer the calendar view and the way it looks than the way it looks in Asana. Same with the board view. I just don't like it as much. I think it's personal preference, but this is why I'm showing you this so that you can see which one you might prefer because it really does come down a lot to personal preference once you start adding these power ups in. Another thing that you can do with Trello power ups is add things like custom fields. So if we type in custom fields, let's just add the amazing field one. Then what this does is it allows you to actually add a field, let's call it title. Let's just leave it at that. So now if you click onto your task, we've got these extra fields that we can fill in. So Trello versus Asana project management, that can be the title of the blog post, for example. And so that adds new piece of data to any task that you create. So that meant to say new task, but yeah, it will add that same, field in so you can start adding those for each of your tasks and you can set it so that you can view it on the actual task card as well. You cannot do this on the free version of Asana. That is something adding custom kit fields is only something that you can do in the paid version. Another thing you can do in the free version of Trello is add automations as well. So creating rules that automate certain things in your cards. So maybe you want to, once I click and drag, this card into the done list, maybe you want to automatically then remove the date or tick the date as being done. You can set all of that up in the rules section of Trello as part of the free Trello plan. Whereas with Asana, if you want to start adding rules down here, this is a paid feature. So you would need to upgrade to do that. So those are really the benefits of Trello is you can add all of these amazing power-ups. There are literally so many. So it does give you, a lot of the functionality that a lot of people who are comparing Trello and Asana do miss out when they're talking about the features that are available and the different plans between these two. However, one of the key benefits of Asana is the fact that you can collaborate so well with other people because of the tasks being able to be shared between different projects. You also have direct messaging as a feature as well. And you have like your own inbox where you can literally email or message people, almost like an email address as well. And on the pay plan as well, you get better reporting and portfolios as well, so that it's much easier to track projects with bigger teams. There is also of course that list view, which a lot of people prefer to see their tasks all listed out in a list view. Now, I'm definitely someone who finds this overwhelming and I much prefer a nice visual board view, which of course you do get the option to do in Asana, but I just don't think it looks as nice. And as pretty as the one in Trello. And so therefore I'm just not as inclined to use it if I'm using Asana. The other thing that Asana does is it manages all of your tasks from across all of your projects into one big long task list, which again you can see in a list view. I haven't got any assigned to me, but this can get very, very long as you can imagine, or a board view and a calendar view as well, which brings in tasks from all of your projects, which can be quite useful or you might see it is a little bit overwhelming as well. So as you can see, both tools are very similar in terms of their core functionality. Once you take into account Trello's power up features, but just as a recap, let's talk through kind of the benefits of Trello again. So first of all, I do think it is the best option if you are a non-techie person or you rely on having to teach non-techie people how to use this platform. For example, I get my website, design clients set up on Trello and they tend to be people who are very technophobic. So it has to be something that's really easy for them to use and learn. I personally think that Trello's Kanban board view of tasks is much more visually appealing than the Asana one. For some reason, I just can't get my head around it, but I do think this comes down to personal preference. As you can see from me setting up, there is a lot more functionality on Trello's free plan than on Asana's free plan. Yes, you get more unlimited projects or boards in Asana, but there's actually way more you can do with them in Trello's free plan when you start adding in the power-ups. Trello also offers that mid-range option of that standard plan, which is really affordable for new solo business owners. However, in terms of the cons, there are not as many team collaboration features or options on Trello. There's no direct messaging. You can't go quite as in-depth into kind of task prioritization for certain team members and seeing tasks across multiple boards. And there's also, not that list view, which a lot of people do like. I personally really dislike it, but again, it comes down to personal preference. And then if we look at Asana, obviously it does have that list view option, which is a biggie for some people. You also do get to add more guests to your boards in the free plan and also have unlimited boards or projects, as Asana calls them, in the free plan as well. But there is a lot less functionality in that free plan. There are way better team collaboration options. So if you do have multiple, full-time people in your team, or people doing a lot of hours for you, and there's a lot of them, Asana is definitely the best bet for all of those options. It is a really useful feature as well, that you can have tasks that apply to multiple boards in Asana. You can set this up with duplicate or sync to cards within Trello as well, but it is kind of an extra clunky step using a power up to do that. So that is quite a cool feature. Obviously, as I said, there are less features available in the free plan, and they don't have that kind of mid-range plan option that Trello does. And also it is just slightly more complex to use. It's not super difficult compared to some of the other project management softwares out there. But in comparison to Trello, I do think there is a slightly more of a learning curve with it. So I hope you found this helpful. If you are looking to get started with Trello specifically, I have a brand new online course coming out. It's called the Organized Business Blueprint. And in that course, there is a whole module on how to use Trello to organize your business and organize your life. And there's going to be loads of board templates in there, showing you exactly how I use it for project management in every aspect of my business and how it keeps me organized and streamlined. So if you are interested on that, it is on pre-sale now. You can save over £120 by signing up before the 10th of December 2021. And I will leave a link to that in the description of this video. Thanks so much for watching, and I'll be back again next week with another video. Bye for now.