When comparing Asana vs Joplin, the Slant community recommends Joplin for most people. In the question“What are the best cross-platform task apps?” Joplin is ranked 5th while Asana is ranked 12th.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion 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 Offline access
Pro Open source
Peace of mind that there is no malicious piece of software in the app.
Pro Encryption
Pro Cross-platform
Supports Windows, Mac, Linux, Android and iOS.
Pro Supports file attachments
Pro Supports markdown
Pro Supports tags for notes
Pro Web Clipper
Browser extension saves full pages, clean content, or screen selections to new notes.
Pro Optional CLI interface
Provides a CLI interface for terminal lovers.
Pro Supports multiple languages
English, French, and Spanish, Italian, German, Czech and many others.
Pro Active user forum with support from app creators
Support, troubleshooting, and new feature requests are easy to make at the user forum and you can contact the app creator directly.
Pro Dropbox support
Can sync using Dropbox.
Pro Nextcloud support
Pro Timed alarm reminder for to-do lists
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 Sync issues with Android
If update on Linux then sync on Android, sometimes the Android sync will duplicate or remove some journal notes. Seems to be a bug in the Android app. The Linux app alone without sync with Android seems to work well using Dropbox. But don't expect changes you make on Android to sync properly back to Linux.
Con Sync issue under Linux
The Linux client has a bug that requires the user to click the mouse frequently in order for sync to proceed. This bug has been open for a while.
Con Gargantuan memory footprint
1GB+ of memory for taking notes.
Con Old school interface
Con Bloated
This project is suffering from feature creep and uses a lot of memory for a note-taking app.
Con App Image launches very slowly
On Linux, you can only install via App Image, which take 5+ seconds to launch. I can launch LibreOffice in under two seconds.
Con Sync issues on Windows
No way to change account settings and sync easily corrupted.
Con Weak tag searching
Joplin can currently only search for a single tag at a time. None of the boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) are available for use in searches. This greatly diminishes the usefulness of tags in Joplin.