Asana felt slow and overloaded for simple checklists → Workflowy
“I didn't like Asana because it was too slow and had too many team features I didn't need”
Asana alternatives: where its users went, and why they left
Asana (asana.com) has 16 sourced reports on Friction, drawn from 92 public source threads (as of 2026-10-15), 16 of them describing a move away. This page reads them for one question: if you are leaving Asana, what do its users say they moved to, and what pushed them out?
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Where Asana users say they went
Switching reports that name a destination. A count is the number of reports naming it, not a market share: Friction only holds what people say in public.
| Named alternative | Reports naming it | Newest report |
|---|---|---|
| Workflowy | 2 | 2022 |
| Clubhouse | 2 | 2018 (over 5 years old) |
| Microsoft To Do | 1 | 2024 |
| GitHub Issues | 1 | 2022 |
| Phabricator | 1 | 2020 (over 5 years old) |
| Linear | 1 | 2020 (over 5 years old) |
| Quire | 1 | 2019 (over 5 years old) |
| Trello, then ClubHouse | 1 | 2018 (over 5 years old) |
In their words
Code snippets and references are awkward in Asana → GitHub Issues
“it was extremely painful not being able to format snippets of code or cross-reference code or commits”
Asana feels too complicated for personal task management → Quire
“I used Asana for a while before and I agree it's a little bit complicated for personal use”
Left Asana after growing frustrated with project tools → Trello, then ClubHouse
“We quickly grew to hate Asana, and eventually switched to Trello, then ClubHouse”
What pushes people away from Asana
The most-reported open problems, worst severity first. Each links to the item with its source.
Text fields lagged several seconds behind typing · Performance · Causes churn
“textareas that would take a full three seconds to display each key press”
Asana is unusably slow on older hardware · Performance · Annoyance · 3 people
“Monday, Asana, and all the others I can't remember. Just absolutely dog slow”
Missing Markdown and usable GitHub integration · Integrations · Annoyance · 2 people
“Of course for developers Asana isn't great because it has no markdown support and no usable github integration”
Asana feels too opinionated and inflexible · Customization · Annoyance
“Most of the other tools I have tried (Jira, Asana, Trello, Github/Gitlab issues, Azure DevOps, company internal project management tooling etc.) are too opinionated, not”
Sorting options and columns are paywalled · Pricing & plans · Annoyance
“They also put columns and some sorting options behind a paywall”
Other project and issue tracking tools on Friction, and what their users struggle with
Switching trades one set of problems for another. The same evidence, for each tool Friction covers in this category:
Jira
72 reports · 154 source threads · most-discussed area: UI & usability
ClickUp
24 reports · 30 source threads · most-discussed area: Performance
Plane
19 reports · 62 source threads · most-discussed area: Customization
Counts and reports reflect people who post in public (developers and technical buyers are over-represented). A tool with fewer reports is not a better tool; it may only be discussed less. How the data is built.