Visor Vs. Asana

Visor and Asana are both popular, flexible apps that you can use to manage and visualize tasks and projects.

Visor can either be an alternative to Asana, or a complimentary app that gives you additional capabilities which either don’t exist in Asana or are only available as part of their higher-cost plans.

Use this page to compare Visor and Asana to see which is best for you, or to learn if a combined approach gives you the best that both apps have to offer at a greatly reduced cost.

Can Asana and Visor Work Together?

You can visualize, update, and share your real-time Asana data in Visor, while maintaining a synchronized, single source of truth across both apps.

Combining Visor with your existing Asana instance unlocks a wide range of additional features and capabilities, including many that are either unavailable in Asana or restricted to higher cost Asana plans.

Visor’s Free Plan vs. Asana’s Free/Starter Plans

The table below compares the two main plans Asana offers (Personal and Starter) against Visor’s Free Plan.

You can use all of Visor’s functionality on your live Asana data, via a two-way integration. You can also enter or upload data directly into Visor and use it as a standalone system to manage and visualize projects.

To see how Visor compares to Asana’s Advanced Plan ($61 per user per month), check out the table at the bottom of this page.

*Guest users in Asana can only be “external;” specifically they cannot access Asana using their company email address. More information below. 

How Much Does An Asana Upgrade Cost?

Visor’s Free Plan includes a two-way Asana integration and much of the extra views and functionality that you get with the Asana Starter or Advanced Plans. 

If you don’t want to use Visor, but want the same functionality as Visor’s Free Plan, you’ll need to upgrade to Asana Starter or Advanced. 

The table below gives illustrates how much upgrading your Asana plan could cost you: 

Please feel free to confirm these costs using Asana’s full pricing information.

Visor can be used standalone, or as a complimentary enhancement to your existing Asana instance. Visor is free to use and includes a two-way Asana integration as standard.

Your Asana Subscription Cost Can Increase Rapidly

Asana licenses can only be purchased in bundles. You cannot purchase individual Asana licenses. The minimum size of these bundles also increases as your total user count increases.

Here’s how Asana describes their model:

“Our subscription offerings increase in increments of 5 users when total users are less than or equal to 30; increments of 10 when total users are between 30 and 100; increments of 25 when total users are between 100 and 500; and increments of 50 when total users are more than 500”

This pricing model, combined with the inability to add internal view only users for free, could cause your Asana subscription costs to rise disproportionately to the number of actual users.

Visor Makes Sharing Easier

Asana has key limitations that make it more difficult to share projects and views with internal and external collaborators:

• The Asana Personal (free) Plan doesn’t include any Guest users
• Internal view-only users consume paid Asana licenses (at all plan levels)
• Lockable custom fields are only available on the Advanced Plan
• Private projects are only available on the Starter or above plan

Visor has no such limitations and makes the experience of sharing your projects and plans easy, secure, and flexible to different scenarios. See the table below for a full comparison.

More Ways To Visualize Work, Without Extra Costs

Visor’s Free Plan gives you all the view and reporting options offered by Asana’s Advanced Plan, for free, as the table below shows:

Visor can be also be used to visualize and update your Asana data. Visor views stay in sync with your Asana projects and portfolios using a robust two-way integration. This preserves your single source of truth and prevents any extra importing, updating, or other admin. 

Asana’s Visualizations Are Good, But Visor’s are Better 

Asana and Visor both make it possible to visualize your projects in a wide range of formats, but PMs agree: Visor’s views (or visualizations) are more appealing and flexible.

Visor also gives you many more custom formatting options, enabling you to tailor views to the specific needs of different projects or audiences that you’re sharing custom views with. 

As the table above shows, certain views (including Gantt chart, Timeline, and Dashboard) are only available with higher-cost Asana plans. The Visor Free Plan includes all these views as standard.

Some of Asana’s view types are missing functionality that you will find in Visor, for example swimlanes in Visor’s board view. Other functionality is only available in Asana’s higher-cost plans, such as Gantt chart Milestones, which are included in Visor’s Free Plan.

Below are visual comparisons of the same view type in Asana and Visor.

Gantt Charts

Example of a Gantt Chart in Visor

Example of a Gantt Chart in Asana

Kanban Boards

Example of a Kanban Board in Visor

Example of a Kanban Board in Asana

The Best Deal For You

Ideally you now understand whether using Visor, Asana, or a combination of the two is best for you, your team, and organization.

Visor’s Free Plan gives you the functionality that Asana paywalls. Asana does have some functionality that Visor lacks, but if you need a tool to manage, visualize, and share your projects, Visor is the superior option.

If you’re still feeling unsure, the good news is you can try Visor for free and test it out yourself. If you’re already using Asana and are unable to change, you can use Visor with Asana, to improve your ability to visualize and share live Asana project data, without the expense of upgrading your Asana plan.