Microsoft Lists vs Asana for a small team

Use Asana for project and task work, free for up to 2 people. Use Microsoft Lists for a register of records (assets, requests, orders) if you already pay for Microsoft 365.

Disclosure: Microsoft 365 is what I build on at 250 High Street, so my bias points to Lists. Asana gets its own section below, and the cases where it is the better buy are stated without hedging. Teams of three or more pay Asana separately. Lists arrives with the Microsoft 365 business plans you may hold.

Tasks versus records

Asana is a work management service. A team opens a project, adds tasks, assigns each task to a person with a due date, and reads the plan as a list, a board or a calendar. Paid plans add Timeline and Gantt views plus further planning features.

Microsoft Lists is a Microsoft 365 app for keeping rows of data. Per Microsoft, a list can be started from SharePoint, from the Lists app, or from inside Teams. One row is one item, and each column is typed as a date, a person, a choice and so on.

The two tools start from different ideas. Asana centers on a task that someone completes. A Microsoft list centers on a record that someone keeps, such as Asset 12, Request 31 or Incident 7. Your team may do both, so ask which one fills more of your week.

What Asana does well

Asana earns these points on its own merits.

1. Built for task work. Projects, tasks, owners and due dates are the core of the product, not something you assemble from columns.
2. Free entry. The Personal plan on Asana's pricing page is free for up to 2 users, with unlimited tasks and projects and list, board and calendar views.
3. No Microsoft dependency. A company without Microsoft 365 cannot use Lists at all. Asana does not care what else you run.
4. Planning views. Asana's pricing page lists Timeline and Gantt views and reporting dashboards on Starter, and goals and resource management on Advanced.
5. Forms and outside guests. Starter adds forms and unlimited free guests per the pricing page, and Advanced adds branching logic in forms.
6. Approvals. Asana's pricing page lists approvals and proofing on Advanced.

What Lists brings

1. License you may already hold. On its SharePoint limits page, Microsoft shows SharePoint as part of Microsoft 365 Business Basic, Standard and Premium, and notes that Microsoft Lists and SharePoint lists run on one lists platform. Ask your admin what your own plan allows before you count on it.
2. Room for volume. Microsoft puts the ceiling at 30 million items for one list. A register running from Order 1 to Order 40,000 fits that better than a project board does.
3. Heavier files. A file attached to a list item can reach 250 MB under Microsoft's limits. Asana's pricing page caps a file at 100MB on the free plan.
4. Columns that carry meaning. Date, Person, Choice and Number columns each behave differently, so a report can filter on status 2 In progress and sort by cost.
5. Access rules per record. One row can carry its own permissions. Microsoft documents a supported limit of 50,000 such items and a recommended limit of 5,000 per list or library. Microsoft also says that when a list contains more than 100,000 items, you can't break permissions inheritance on the list. Microsoft's introduction to lists adds that you choose whether people edit only their own items or every item. A view does not protect data, so set permissions when rows must stay private.
6. One sign-in. Staff already in Microsoft 365 open Lists from Teams or SharePoint with the account they have, and Power Automate connects to it.

Plan by plan

Asana, from Asana's own pricing page:

• Personal: free, up to 2 users, unlimited tasks and projects, 100MB per file, list, board and calendar views.
• Starter: no user seat limits, Timeline and Gantt views, reporting dashboards, unlimited automations, forms, custom templates and custom fields, unlimited free guests.
• Advanced: adds portfolios, goals, resource management, approvals and proofing, forms with branching logic.
• Enterprise: adds SAML authentication, SCIM user provisioning, service accounts and more admin controls.

Microsoft's limits page gives these numbers for Lists: 30 million items in one list, 250 MB for each attached file, and 2,000 lists and libraries combined in a site collection.

A very large list needs filtered views to stay usable. My guide "SharePoint list over 5,000 items: what breaks and the fix" covers this.

Paying for each

Asana bills by seat on paid plans. The free Personal plan stops at 2 users, so the third person you add moves the workspace onto a paid tier. Read the current Asana prices on its pricing page: https://asana.com/pricing

Microsoft Lists: I print no Microsoft prices here. A team on a Microsoft 365 business plan that includes SharePoint gets Lists with it. Check Microsoft's current pricing page for plan prices. To compare fairly, count the people who must edit, then price that group on each side.

Automations and flows

Asana's pricing page lists unlimited automations on Starter and above, and does not list them on the free plan.

Lists connects to Power Automate, which Microsoft calls a service for automated workflows between apps and services: syncing files, sending notifications, collecting data and more. Microsoft's introduction to lists adds that a list can email an alert when an item changes. Your menu labels may differ. An extra license for a given flow depends on the flow and your plan, so ask your admin.

A good first flow is a reminder. See my guide "Send a reminder before a due date in a SharePoint list".

Ten points of difference

Swipe sideways to see all columns.

Lists, Planner, To Do or Asana

• Lists: records with typed columns, such as Asset 12 or Order 31.
• Planner: task boards inside Microsoft 365. Microsoft says the Planner app "brings together the simplicity of Microsoft To Do, the collaboration of Microsoft Planner, and the power of Project for the web into a single experience."
• To Do: personal task lists, shown inside the Planner app.
• Asana: projects, tasks and handoffs outside Microsoft 365.

Choose Asana when

• Your company does not use Microsoft 365.
• Your work is tasks that move between people, with plans and timelines.
• You want to start today, and only one or two people will use it.
• You want Timeline or Gantt views and can budget a per-user price.
• You work with outside guests and want a tool made for that.

Choose Lists when

• Your staff already hold Microsoft 365 business licenses.
• Your reports need sortable fields such as owner, due date, status and cost.
• You would rather reuse existing groups, Teams and sign-ins than add an account system.
• You will store thousands of rows and want no new per-seat bill.
• Requests should trigger approvals or reminders through Power Automate.

A five-step check

1. Count who will use it. Two people or fewer fit Asana's free Personal plan. At three, price Starter per seat.
2. Check your Microsoft 365 license with your admin. If there is none, Lists is out.
3. Decide whether you need Timeline or Gantt. Asana's pricing page puts them on Starter, not on the free plan.
4. Look at your work in plain terms. If it is "Draft the brochure", try Asana. If it is "Vendor 12 invoice", try Lists.
5. Run 20 sample rows or tasks through each tool for a week, then keep the one your team opens on its own.

If you are leaving a spreadsheet, see my guide "Replace a spreadsheet tracker with a SharePoint list". Also see "Microsoft Lists vs Trello for a small team", "Microsoft Lists vs Airtable for a small team" and "Microsoft Planner vs SharePoint list for tracking team work".

What to avoid

• Letting a project drift to three users on the free plan without checking the bill. Asana's seat charge starts at that point.
• Paying for Starter only to get Timeline or Gantt when a due date column would do.
• Mirroring every Asana field in a list. Keep the few columns you will filter on.
• Running one job in both tools at once, since nobody can tell which copy is current.
• Using a view to hide rows in Lists. Permissions keep an item private.

When to get help

You can build all of this yourself in Microsoft 365. If you would rather have it built and tested for your team, I do that. A tracker like this is a fixed price: $5,000 for one, built in 2 weeks. See "What a SharePoint tracker costs to build". Bring one example of the problem to a free call.

Tell me what's still manual

I am Al Davies. I run 250 High Street LLC and build SharePoint trackers and Power Automate flows for operations teams. I work remotely. The first call is free, and I will not try to sell you anything.

See trackers I built: Tools I built

FAQ

Will Lists add a seat bill the way Asana does?

Not if your Microsoft 365 business plan includes SharePoint; Lists comes with it. Asana is free for 2 users and per seat after that. I print no prices here, so price your editors on each vendor's page.

Is Asana free for more than 2 people?

No. Asana's pricing page shows the free Personal plan for 2 users, and the Starter plan is the next tier up.

How many items can each tool hold?

Microsoft says a list can have up to 30 million items. Asana's pricing page lists unlimited tasks and projects on the free plan.

Can Asana replace Microsoft Lists for a register?

Asana's Starter plan lists custom fields, but Asana is built around tasks in projects, while a list holds records in typed columns.

Can I share work with people who should not edit?

Asana's pricing page lists unlimited free guests on Starter. In Lists, you set permissions on the list or on items. Views alone are not security.

Can I move from Asana to Lists later?

One way to start: write down your task fields, build a list with matching columns, and copy over a small batch by hand or by paste. Test a copy first and check column types. The project layout will not carry over, so plan to rebuild your statuses as a Choice column.

Which Microsoft tool is for tasks: Lists, Planner or To Do?

Microsoft says the Planner app in Teams brings together Microsoft To Do, Microsoft Planner and Project for the web, so use Planner for task boards and Lists for records.

Sources

• Asana pricing
• Microsoft Learn, SharePoint Online limits
• Microsoft Support, Introduction to lists
• Microsoft Learn, Get started with Power Automate
• Microsoft Learn, Manage the Planner app in Teams

Related guides

• Microsoft Lists vs Trello for a small team
• Microsoft Lists vs Airtable for a small team
• Microsoft Planner vs Trello for a small team