Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Asana VS Obsidian.md

Compare Asana VS Obsidian.md and see what are their differences

Note: These products don't have any matching categories. If you think this is a mistake, please edit the details of one of the products and suggest appropriate categories.

Asana logo Asana

Asana project management is an effort to re-imagine how we work together, through modern productivity software. Fast and versatile, Asana helps individuals and groups get more done.

Obsidian.md logo Obsidian.md

A second brain, for you, forever. Obsidian is a powerful knowledge base that works on top of a local folder of plain text Markdown files.
  • Asana Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-10
  • Obsidian.md Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-01

Asana features and specs

  • User-friendly Interface
    Asana offers a clean and intuitive interface that makes it easy for users to navigate and manage their tasks without a steep learning curve.
  • Collaboration Features
    Asana provides robust collaboration tools, including task assignments, comments, and file attachments, which facilitate seamless teamwork.
  • Integration Options
    Asana integrates with a wide range of other tools and services, such as Slack, Google Drive, and Dropbox, allowing for a more cohesive workflow.
  • Customizable Workflows
    Users can tailor Asana to fit their specific needs with customizable templates, task boards, and automation rules, enhancing productivity.
  • Mobile Accessibility
    Asana has well-rated mobile apps for iOS and Android, enabling users to manage their tasks and projects on the go.
  • Timeline
    Visualize your project plan so you can hit your deadlines.
  • Kanban Boards
    A simple, visual way to track your team’s work.

Possible disadvantages of Asana

  • Pricing
    Though Asana offers a free tier, advanced features and larger team sizes require a subscription, which can be expensive for small businesses.
  • Complexity for Small Projects
    For smaller projects or teams, Asana might feel overly complex and include features that aren't necessarily needed, potentially leading to a cluttered experience.
  • Limited Offline Capabilities
    Asana relies heavily on internet connectivity, and its offline features are limited, which can be a drawback for users who need access in low-connectivity environments.
  • Notification Overload
    Users may find themselves overwhelmed by frequent notifications and updates, making it difficult to filter out the essential information.
  • Steep Learning Curve for Some Features
    While the basic features of Asana are user-friendly, some of the more advanced functionalities have a steeper learning curve, requiring time to master.

Obsidian.md features and specs

  • Local-first
    Obsidian stores your notes locally on your device, giving you full control over your data and enhancing privacy.
  • Markdown Support
    Obsidian uses Markdown, making it easy to format text and compatible with many other text editors and tools.
  • Bidirectional Linking
    You can create bidirectional links between notes, which helps in building a knowledge graph and navigating related information more easily.
  • Customizability
    Obsidian is highly customizable with community plugins, themes, and various settings to fit different workflows.
  • Graph View
    Provides a visual graph view of your notes and their connections, aiding in understanding relationships and discovering insights.
  • Offline Access
    Since the notes are stored locally, you can access and edit them without an internet connection.

Possible disadvantages of Obsidian.md

  • Learning Curve
    Obsidian can be complex and overwhelming for beginners due to its extensive features and customizable nature.
  • Sync Limitations
    While local-first is great for privacy, it requires additional steps or third-party solutions for syncing across devices.
  • No True Real-time Collaboration
    Obsidian lacks native real-time collaboration features, making it less suitable for collaborative work compared to cloud-based solutions.
  • Limited Mobile Features
    The mobile version of Obsidian, while functional, is not as robust as the desktop application, potentially hindering productivity on the go.
  • Dependence on Plugins
    Many advanced features require the use of third-party plugins, which could lead to compatibility issues and reliance on community support.
  • Performance on Large Vaults
    Performance might degrade with a very large number of notes or complex graphs, impacting usability.

Asana videos

Asana Review + Demo: Top 5 Reasons Asana Is The Best Project and Team Management Tool

More videos:

  • Review - Exploring the new Asana Timeline
  • Review - Asana: Full Review (2019) (with timestamps)
  • Review - Asana Warning! Top 5 Reasons To Avoid Asana Project Manager (Before You Buy Asana Review)

Obsidian.md videos

OBSIDIAN: Getting Started, Facts & Pricing

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Asana and Obsidian.md)
Project Management
100 100%
0% 0
Note Taking
0 0%
100% 100
Task Management
100 100%
0% 0
Knowledge Management
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Asana and Obsidian.md

Asana Reviews

  1. Convenient

    Convenient. It helps to stay organized and track task progress.

  2. Good, but not the best.

    While Asana is a robust task management and project planning tool, in my experience, it falls slightly short when compared to Trello, particularly in terms of user-friendliness and simplicity. Asana offers a variety of features such as multiple project views (list, board, timeline, calendar), custom fields, and reporting tools, which can be highly beneficial for complex project management. However, I found that the learning curve can be steep, especially for team members not familiar with this type of software. The interface, while feature-rich, can feel a bit cluttered and overwhelming for new users. On the other hand, Trello shines in its simplicity and straightforward design. The visual card and board system is intuitive and easy to grasp, making it a more accessible tool for team members of varying tech proficiency levels. Additionally, Trello's user interface is cleaner and more streamlined, which contributes to an overall more enjoyable user experience.

    In terms of collaboration, both tools provide good collaborative features like commenting, tagging, and task assignment. However, I appreciate Trello's flexibility with its Power-Ups, allowing integration with a wide array of apps which enhances its functionality. In conclusion, while Asana is a powerful tool with extensive features, I prefer Trello for its ease of use, simplicity, and intuitive design. However, I do see the value of Asana for larger teams or more complex projects.

    🏁 Competitors: Trello
  3. Simon
    · Working at IT Professional ·
    A Solid Project Management Tool, but Not the Best on the Market

    Asana is a popular project management tool that has a lot to offer. It is fast and versatile, making it easy for individuals and teams to collaborate and get things done. The interface is clean and user-friendly, and there are plenty of features to help you organise and track your projects.

    However, while Asana is a good tool, it is not the best on the market. One of its main weaknesses is its lack of advanced reporting and analysis capabilities. It can be challenging to get a comprehensive view of your projects and how they are progressing, especially if you have a large number of them.

    Another issue is the cost. Asana can be expensive for teams with a lot of members, especially when compared to other project management tools that offer similar features at a lower price point.

    🏁 Competitors: Trello
    👍 Pros:    Fast|Clean ui|Excellent features
    👎 Cons:    No reporting|Expensive

Top 10 Notion Alternatives for 2025 and Why Teams Are Choosing Ledger
Asana shines when it comes to visual task management and timelines. But for teams that need deeper documentation, chat, or creative collaboration, it often gets paired with other tools—adding complexity.
The Top 7 ClickUp Alternatives You Need to Know in 2025
OverviewAsana is known for its user-friendly interface and comprehensive task management capabilities. It helps teams organize work efficiently while enhancing collaboration.
How Tight-Knit Teams Get More Done with Innovative Project Management Tools
A small business might suddenly land a new client or product line. With a flexible approach, you can handle sudden expansions. For instance, if your Trello board becomes crowded, you can create additional boards or switch to something like Asana that manages more detailed sub-tasks. Meanwhile, short video demos via ScreenRec can ensure your new hires (or existing staff)...
Source: medium.com
25 Best Asana Alternatives & Competitors for Project Management in 2024
Build short-form project briefs to robust resource wikis with ClickUp Docs. Docs are integrated with your projects and tasks, making it convenient to manage everything in one place! Top it off with a suite of customizations, and Docs can easily replace your other tools to organize any type of data. Asana doesn’t have native docs making ClickUp one of the more popular Asana...
Source: clickup.com
The 10 best Asana alternatives in 2024
Project management looks different for every person and every team—so it makes sense that the tool you choose will be for similarly unique reasons. The best way to choose an Asana alternative is to decide what isn't working for you with Asana, and then test out a few of these tools to see which of them fits your needs best.
Source: zapier.com

Obsidian.md Reviews

  1. The kind of software that may change your life

    Perhaps you know someone who swears by Obsidian, it may seem like a cult of overly devoted people for how passionate they are, but it's not without reason

    I've been using Obsidian for over 3 years, at a point in my life when I felt I had to handle too much information and I felt like grasping water not being able to remember everything I wanted, language learning, programming, accounting, university, daily tasks. A friend recommended it to me next to Notion (of which he is a passionate cultist priest) and I reluctantly picked it and fell in love almost immediately.

    Obsidian seems very simple, like a notepad with folder interface, similar to Sublime Text, but the ability to link files together in a Wiki style allows you to organize ideas in any way you want, one file may lead to a dozen or more ideas that are related

    If you want to do something specific, Obsidian has a plethora of community created plugins that expand the functionality, in my case, I use obsidian to organize my classes both as a teacher and as a student, using local databases, calendars, dictionaries, slides, vector graphic drawings, excel-like tables, Anki connection, podcasts, and more

    🏁 Competitors: Notion, Evernote
    👍 Pros:    Awesome community|Custom plugins|Local hosting|Beautiful themes|Highly customizable|Cloud storage|Becomes more useful over time|Markdown support
    👎 Cons:    Seems complicated/complex at first|Takes time to set up your personal workspace|Overwhelming for first time user
  2. Stan
    · Founder at SaaSHub ·
    My personal knowledge-base of choice

    I've been using Obsidian for more than a year. It's been great. I think it offer a great balance of control, flexibility and extensibility. What is more, you own your own data, that's been a must-have feature for me. I just can't imagine putting all my knowledge into something that I don't have control over.

    I think two of the most popular alternatives that people consider are Logseq and Roam Research. Although Logseq is a bit different, it's considered compatible with Obsidian. Supposedly, you can use them with a shared database (files. Both use simple text files for storage). I tried that once, a few months ago. It worked, yet it messed up a bit my Obsidian files ¯_(ツ)_/¯.

    🏁 Competitors: Logseq, Roam Research

The 6 best note-taking apps in 2024
One thing to note: Notion bills itself as an Evernote competitor for personal users. It can be—but it's too much for most people, and its offline functionality isn't the best. If you love the idea of Notion, go right ahead and try the free Personal Plan, but for me, it's really best as a team notes app or an AI-powered notes app. Something like Obsidian (which we'll look at...
Source: zapier.com
The best note-taking apps for collecting your thoughts and data
This app is the kind of thing that, if you’re into it, will have you exploring its various ins, outs, and add-ons for days and weeks on end. Obsidian uses the Markdown format for its notes (which means they can be used on a variety of other apps). Your notes and other media are kept locally in a Vault (in other words, a main folder). There are ways to sync between devices...
The 5 Best Open Source Miro Alternatives in 2024
However, it's important to note that Obsidian's whiteboard functionality is not as robust as dedicated collaboration tools. While it lacks real-time basic collaboration features, Obsidian compensates with its vibrant plugin ecosystem, empowering users to customize their experience.
Source: affine.pro
The best encrypted note taking apps
For a consumer coming from Evernote, Notion, OneNote, or a similar product, we would advise trying Obsidian along another product on this list as it has the largest learning curve. However, if you are an expert with markdown, experts, linking, and graph views, Obsidian could be an excellent choice. Like many other configuration options, Obsidian leaves end-to-end encryption...
Source: www.skiff.com
Supercharge Your Productivity: Three Recommended Tools for Thought
One of my AP Productivity: Cohort mentors has a powerful system pairing Obsidian with OmniFocus. In OmniFocus, he builds his project and task structures, and in Obsidian he develops and organizes the project support materials as well as other relevant information. Because it’s easy to link to an Obsidian note or an OmniFocus project, he can seamlessly navigate back and forth...
Source: medium.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Obsidian.md seems to be a lot more popular than Asana. While we know about 1486 links to Obsidian.md, we've tracked only 94 mentions of Asana. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Asana mentions (94)

  • Mastering the Money Matters of Open Source: Navigating the Financial Landscape
    Budgeting and Planning: Setting a realistic budget that aligns with the project’s goals is an essential first step. Tools such as Trello and Asana can help project teams organize tasks and track financial planning efforts. Detailed budget management strategies are also discussed within the open source project budget management guides. - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • Asana Salesforce Integration Guide
    Asana is a popular platform for organizing and tracking work, helping teams manage tasks and projects. Salesforce, on the other hand, is a leading customer relationship management (CRM) tool that helps companies track customer interactions, manage sales, and organize support activities. - Source: dev.to / 6 months ago
  • 🚀 Introducing Claude 3.5 Sonnet & Haiku: The AI Revolution is Here! 💻✨
    Now, here’s where things get really exciting—Claude can now use computers like we do! 🎉 Imagine an AI that can move a cursor, click buttons, type text, and interact with software on its own. This feature, available in Claude 3.5 Sonnet (currently in public beta), is a game-changer. Companies like Asana, Canva, and Replit are already leveraging it to automate complex workflows and handle multi-step tasks in real... - Source: dev.to / 6 months ago
  • 100+ Must-Have Web Development Resources
    Asana: Helps track and record team members' work. - Source: dev.to / 7 months ago
  • 5 Best AI Tools for Productive Development in 2024
    Managing development projects and tasks can be time-consuming, but Asana’s AI-powered features make it easier to stay on top of deliverables. Asana uses AI to offer smart suggestions for project goals, detect potential risks, and provide insights into team productivity. - Source: dev.to / 7 months ago
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Obsidian.md mentions (1486)

  • Why I switched from obsidian: A real developer’s story and what I’m using now
    Obsidian Official Website Still an incredible tool for the right type of workflow. - Source: dev.to / 3 days ago
  • Show HN: An AI agent in Obsidian that can (sort of) write plugins
    This is a plugin for Obsidian [1] that can extend Obsidian with custom functionality. There's a demo video in the readme. Why? Obsidian is a note taking app with tons of extensions. Even so, there must be hyper-niche use cases that aren't being served by any existing extension. LLMs are decent at coding though, so maybe an LLM can write custom functionality on demand. That's the experiment, to see if you can... - Source: Hacker News / 9 days ago
  • Journey to GNOME Circle: Community, App Ideas, and Getting Started
    These are useful and beneficial for your reputation and branding. I use my email alias for GNOME-related work at AlirezaSh@gnome.org, have my blog at alirezash.gnome.org, and sync my Obsidian notes with Nextcloud on GNOME infrastructure. Unfortunately, I couldn't get my travel sponsorship as a speaker at events because I'm from Iran, and due to OFAC regulations which is so unfair. - Source: dev.to / 20 days ago
  • Ask HN: Where are the good Markdown to PDF tools (that meet these requirements)?
    It's not marketed as a markdown-to-pdf tool, but I've found that Obsidian (https://obsidian.md) does an excellent job. Just create a new "vault", paste your markdown into a new note, and export to PDF. - Source: Hacker News / 2 months ago
  • Build personal blog easy with 11ty.js
    Limited Scope: Eleventy is primarily suited for blogs and simple static sites. It lacks advanced interactivity and business logic capabilities. ## Start with a Starter Projects — Eleventy When starting an 11ty project, there are many templates available to help you get started quickly. These templates provide pre-configured setups for various use cases, such as blogs, portfolios, and more. I chose the Official... - Source: dev.to / 2 months ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Asana and Obsidian.md, you can also consider the following products

Basecamp - A simple and elegant project management system.

Notion - All-in-one workspace. One tool for your whole team. Write, plan, and get organized.

Trello - Infinitely flexible. Incredibly easy to use. Great mobile apps. It's free. Trello keeps track of everything, from the big picture to the minute details.

Joplin - Joplin is a free, open source note taking and to-do application, which can handle a large number of notes organised into notebooks. The notes are searchable, tagged and modified either from the applications directly or from your own text editor.

Wrike - Wrike is a flexible, scalable, and easy-to-use collaborative work management software that helps high-performance teams organize and accomplish their work. Try it now.

Logseq - Logseq is a local-first, non-linear, outliner notebook for organizing and sharing your personal knowledge base.