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When comparing Asana vs Simplenote, the Slant community recommends Asana for most people. In the question“What are the best cross-platform task apps?” Asana is ranked 17th while Simplenote is ranked 38th. The most important reason people chose Asana is:
Asana has fantastic mechanisms for dealing with team collaboration. Not only can tasks be assigned to team members, but Asana lets users follow tasks and use hyperlinks to refer to team members within a task.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Powerful team collaboration features
Asana has fantastic mechanisms for dealing with team collaboration. Not only can tasks be assigned to team members, but Asana lets users follow tasks and use hyperlinks to refer to team members within a task.
Pro Free for up to 15 users
Pro Simple workflow
The Asana task workflow within a project is broken down into "Today," "Upcoming," and "Later." The tasks themselves have the status of either done or not done. There is also a subtask feature to group tasks together. Tasks can be assigned to other team members and are stored in the "Inbox" view for processing. This replaces email for some team communication.
Pro CSV export and print
Pro Very polished interface
Teams can have private (only visible to project members) and public (visible to anyone in the team) projects. Each member can also have their own personal projects.
Tasks can be viewed in list and calendar views. It's possible to display only the tasks assigned to the user or tasks organized by project or team. Single tasks can exist in multiple projects. Lists of tasks can be divided into sections and organized in many different ways – tasks that still have to be done, tasks that have been completed, by due date, by assignee, by popularity, etc.
Expanding a task will allow adding things like subtasks, tags, and attachments, as well as comments. Users can also subscribe to a task via RSS from this view. There's a separate view specifically for attachments.
Search lets you find what you’re looking for quickly.
Pro Tagging system allows easily filtering tasks
The tagging system enables project managers to easily filter tasks.
Pro Provides lots of help for getting started
There are many videos, tutorials, and reference documents to help you get up and running.
Pro Supports Kanban and list views
Asana provides a list view and a Kanban view which can be selected if a new project is created.
Pro Well thought out keyboard shortcuts
Keyboard shortcuts all involve the Tab key, so it is unlikely that they will interfere with shortcuts that have already been established.
Pro Integrates with Slack
It's possible to have tasks appear in a Slack channel.
Pro Very simple and clean interface
Simplenote takes a minimalist approach to its interface. There are no toolbars full of formatting options or extra features like notebooks to group notes. The entire desktop interface consists solely of a sidebar with your tags and trash filters, the list of existing notes with search, a button to add a new note and a simple view for looking an existing note or writing a new one.
Pro Geared towards fast usage
Unlike alternatives (such as Evernote) that are laden with features, Simplenote is fast to use and sync. Reviews from the Verge, Lifehacker, and a variety of other sources all describe using the Simplenote apps as very fast. While it may not be as feature-rich as other apps, the responsiveness of the app and simple interface keep it easy to use while never slowing down the user when they need to quickly take a note.
Pro Works offline
Users can edit and create documents offline, can then sync their content the next time they are online. This way a user can work even when there's no data connection without the worry of losing work.
Pro Desktop app is open source
The desktop version of Simplenote is hosted on the GitHub and since it is open source, it can allow developers to fork the code in order to improve the app.
Pro Can export your data
The program enables exporting of notes as text documents.
Pro Collaborative features
Notes can be shared with others or worked on collaboratively.
Pro Open Source
All of the Simplenote apps are open source and ready for your contributions! You can find the source on GitHub:
iOS: https://github.com/automattic/simplenote-ios
Android: https://github.com/automattic/simplenote-android
macOS: https://github.com/automattic/simplenote-macos
Electron (Windows and Linux): https://github.com/automattic/simplenote-electron
Pro "Time machine" style revision control on the notes
Each edit of a note is saved in order to allow the user to go back to a previous version of a document. This way, if mistakes are made or something is deleted, you can go back to the previous version without any hassle.
Pro Wide range of great clients with great sync
Official native apps are available on popular platforms such as Android, iPhone, iPad, Kindle, OS X, Windows and Linux. Open-source clients extend this support even more widely to various other platforms, such as webOS and the BlackBerry PlayBook. These apps embody the core philosophy of Simplenote: minimalism and focus on the note taking.
There are multiple unofficial clients (including the excellent Notational Velocity and NValt, a fork of the app with markdown support and other goodies.)
Pro Markdown support via web interface
There is support for Markdown when using the web app. This can be convenient for those who want to use Markdown in a particular note.
Pro Linux client available
Pro Excellent iOS app
Pro Excellent desktop client in the form of nvAlt
Cons
Con Mobile version lacks calendar
Asana's calendar is present in the web version but is conspicuously missing in the mobile app.
Con Unable to manage multiple workspaces
Each "workspace" or "team" in Asana is strictly isolated. You cannot see your personal tasks versus work tasks or collaborations together, you need to log in to a different profile.
Con No task dependencies in free version
Dependencies is only available only to Teams and Organizations on Asana Premium.
Con Can not use list view and board view for a same project
Asana can only choose one, either a list view or a board view.
Con Strange UX with strange workflow
Similar to task the manager in Todoist or Wunderlist, but not too complex for under four members.
Con UX Design is overly opinionated
The workflow is not very customizable, which forces you to use a flow that may not be your preferred or best option.
Con Limited ways to reorder notes
You are able to sort your notes alphabetically, date modified, or by last created. There is no way to drag and drop the notes to create a custom order.
Con No support for file attachments
Simplenote doesn't provide support for embedded attachments. This can limit the use for some as many other note-taking apps do support this type of feature.
Con No reminders
You cannot set reminders to revisit a specific note or complete a task.
Con Search is limited to one tag
There seems to be no way to find notes that have both tag X and tag Y. This isn't a big deal until you have a large library of notes, and want to cross-search for two things at the same time to vastly narrow down your search.
Con No note encryption at rest
Notes are encrypted in transit, but remain unencrypted on Simplenote's servers.
Con No way to import notes from anywhere
Con Web access only for updated browsers
They recently removed support for older browsers, and it's not working on the latest version of Waterfox. You need an updated version of a well-known browser.
Con No 32-bit version
Con The search function doesn't see tags
If you search for 'foo' you won't find notes with tag foo. In that regard, tags are completely isolated from the search.
Con No way to bulk-apply a tag
This is a typical workflow action in other apps: Do a search, multi-select notes among the matches, then apply or de-apply one or more tags to all these notes at once.
There's no way to do this in Simplenote. The only bulk operations are Delete and Pin-to-top.
Con No notification when changes made on a shared note
Currently, there is no way to be alerted when a change is made by another contributor on a shared note.
Con Save-to-disk feature is poor
The only way to download your data off Simplenote is via a "download zip" feature that unfortunately loses all the semantic structure of your data (tags, for instance).
Con No integrated social media sharing
The only way you can share notes with others is with a link you're given when you publish your note. There is no integrated social media sharing if you directly want to post your note to Twitter, Facebook, etc.
Con Lack of color impacts usability
There are two themes available, the default theme and a dark theme.
Both use only the single solid color (either white or black) for the background, so there is a lack of visual cues to separate what you're looking at.
