Equipping yourself with a project management tool can go a long way in helping you stay on task and increase your productivity. Your research of the various tools in the market has brought you to Asana. And now you need to know if the asana free version can help you get by.
Can you and your team get the most out of Asana free plan without needing any upgrade soon? Well, the free version offers lots of features, and the answer to that question all depends on what you’re after.
Whether the free version will suit your business depends on the project types you work on and the features you need to manage those projects. We’ll compare the free vs. paid versions and highlight the significant differences that might interest you.
Suppose you’re already using Asana for free and are happy with it. That could be because your projects aren’t as complex. You could also be working with a small team, among other factors. The truth is that most organizations find the free version too limited for their projects, especially medium to large enterprises.
Overview of Asana Free Version Features
Asana project management tool offers a free version to help those individuals or teams with a fresh beginning into project management tools. The good about it is that if you’re already comfortable with it, you don’t have to worry about charges or time limits soon because Asana says it’s free forever.
If you’re a freelancer or run simple projects, you’ll enjoy the following features from Asana free version:
- Collaborate with a maximum of 15 members.
- Create unlimited projects and tasks.
- Create two types of accounts; organizational and workspace.
- Assign different team members different tasks.
- Access different types of project templates.
- View projects in various styles, including calendar, list, and board view.
- Integrate with over 100 apps such as Harvest time.
- Access unlimited storage space, with a 100MB size limit for each file.
- Access apps via Android and iOS mobile while on the move.
What Can You Do With Asana Free Version?
From the listed features of Asana free, you can do a lot for your personal and small projects. It offers all sorts of stuff you can ever need for your freelance projects or small teams of up to 15 members.
Asana allows you to subdivide your projects into simple, manageable tasks, work with a small team, assign tasks to members, and track the deadlines for every ongoing task. After setting a task deadline, you’ll get an email notification as it intensifies to prepare yourself to be busy.
The Calendar view is particularly excellent. It helps you balance your schedule, so you don’t over-commit on certain dates. It lets you see the overloaded days and flexible days so you can balance out the timetable.
The Asana free version allows you to achieve the following:
Plan Your Week
With the board view of Asana, you can make arrange each day of the week into a column then add in the chores to accomplish under every column. If working with a team, you can even assign each team member a task on different days.
Additionally, the calendar view lets you see where deadlines overlap, which is an excellent way to keep the team on track.
Create a stock list
If you run an outlet store, you can create a list of items you need to restock. Then use the mobile app while on the move to cross out any item you purchase.
Create and track your goals
If struggling with keeping your goals in check, whether business-wise or personal, Asana free can help you with it. You can categorize your targets into projects, break them down into tasks, and set a deadline for each.
Asana can track your progress on each project and help you remain accountable for every minute that elapses. You can further add sub-tasks and include additional information for each of the tasks.
Track your expenditures
If you tend to have so many expenditures, whether in business or personal, you can create a task for every expense and add receipts as files. Doing this will be invaluable when it comes to filing your tax returns. Plus, you can set dates for any recurring expenditures to ensure you never forget to settle them when they become due.
How Does Asana Free Basic Plan Perform When Working With Teams?
Whether working as a solopreneur or with a team, the number of things you can achieve with Asana free basic plan is incredible. However, it will limit you on the size of your team. Plus creating private projects isn’t allowed either. That means every team member will view any project you create, which may not be good, especially if projects bear any confidential data.
Generally, Asana free is worthwhile if working with small teams and when you have simple needs. For instance, it’s a great fit if running a business with few team members or you want a more efficient way to manage your personal tasks.
However, if you deal with complex projects that’ll require advanced features like task dependencies, timelines, priority levels, and more, you’re better off with a paid version.
Asana Free Version Limitations
Let’s make one thing clear – if you’re mainly doing basic task management, the free plan of Asana will suit you just fine. But if your projects are complex, working with larger teams, a free version is lacking. Below are the limitations of the free plan:
- It’s limited to 15 team members only.
- No advanced search.
- No timeline view.
- Missing task dependencies.
- Fewer admin controls – managing permissions is complicated.
- Inability to set access permissions for limited access members.
Asana free isn’t ideal if you need to add limited access members to your teams because you won’t be limit their permissions. And therefore, they can view anything they want to, including your confidential in-house information.
Therefore, an upgrade is the only thing left to do to ensure that those team members who don’t belong to your organization have limited access.
Asana Terms You should Know Before Upgrade
Are you thinking about an upgrade already? Hold on; you need to understand a couple of essential terms to grasp how Asana pricing works.
Organizations
Asana refers to an organization as a business domain or your company. For instance, if you sign up with your work email with an @xyz.com domain, you’ll automatically become a team member of the XYZ organization. In a single organization, there can be multiple different teams.
Workspace
A workspace helps individuals to manage their personal tasks. If you don’t belong to an organization domain but want to use Asana, a workspace makes it possible. Workspaces are also excellent for flexible projects.
The free version of Asana allows you to add a maximum of 15 members to either an organization or a workspace. Additionally, you can give members in workspaces and organizations limited access. Typically, these are team members you don’t need to be around every time, for instance, clients who are part of a project you’re handling for them.
Before adding a limited access team member, know that they add up to the total number of users that Asana for free allows you.
What Happens If You Upgrade An Asana Free Plan?
If you were already on a free plan and are considering upgrading to Asana paid plan, you’ll face different scenarios. If you do an entire organization upgrade, you’ll pay for every member, including those in teams.
Alternatively, you can upgrade only a single team within the organization as the others remain on the free plan. This approach can work perfectly, especially if you have a team that needs the features of the paid plans. It’s also an excellent way of slashing down the costs, so you don’t end up paying for teams that don’t need the paid features.
What Does Asana Upgrade Give You?
Sampling your needs against what the free version offers can help you decide if you need an upgrade. Asana offers its plans on a tiered basis, so you can choose only what would work best for you.
The paid plans charge a fixed rate every month for every team member. But if you opt for their annual payment offer, you’ll get to save more.
The following is a list of the Asana premium, Business and Enterprise plans and the features you stand to get when you upgrade:
| Premium Plan | Business Plan | Enterprise Plan |
| Task Dependencies | All Premium plan features | All Business plan features |
| Progress View | Portfolios | Service Accounts |
| Custom Templates | Proofing | Custom Branding |
| Custom Fields | Lock Custom Fields | User Provisioning |
| Timelines | Cross Regional Backups | |
| Milestones | Data Deletion | |
| Google SSO | Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) | |
| Priority Support |
What’s impressive with Asana paid plans is that you’ll get a 30-day free trial to test the features and see how suitable they are to your needs. However, only the Premium plan has this offer. Once you’re satisfied and need an upgrade, you can choose any of the three paid programs.
Should I Upgrade to Asana Paid Plan?
Asana’s free plan is great if your needs aren’t as complex and you don’t have a large team to work with. Plus, if you need to organize your personal tasks better, the free plan should do just fine.
To decide if you need an upgrade, consider the size of your team; if you have more than 15 persons, you should upgrade. Consider going for an upgrade for projects with task dependencies and data sensitivity or need prioritized support. Asana upgrade version offers portfolio feature that can benefit more than team feature. You can learn Asana portfolio vs team, the differences between two features.
And the 30-day free trial of the Premium plan is good enough to point you in the right direction of the package that’ll suit your needs.