Asana vs monday.com for an architecture firm: should you switch?

The short answer

Asana and monday.com are the same kind of product: a work platform with projects, tasks, automations and dashboards. So the question "Asana vs monday.com" comes from a principal who has a tool, doubts it and wants to avoid moving 80 projects for nothing.

The answer turns on two things, and the first is whether you want fees in the system. monday.com Pro has private boards, the only way we know to keep fee data from staff on a shared platform. Asana's pricing cards name no private projects on either paid tier. The second is whether your Asana has structure worth keeping: if it does and fees live in QuickBooks and a spreadsheet, stay. If not, the move is as much about building structure as changing tools, and that's the part worth paying for.

What Asana is for an architecture studio

Asana is a task manager built from projects and sections, and its My Tasks view is the best personal list in this category. Starter is $10.99 per user per month billed annually ($13.49 monthly) and Advanced is $24.99 ($30.49 monthly), with Enterprise on a quote (asana.com/pricing, October 7, 2026). The Starter card lists timeline and Gantt views, reporting dashboards, unlimited automations, forms, custom templates, custom fields, unlimited free guests and no user seat limits. The Advanced card adds unlimited portfolios, goals, resource management, approvals and proofing, forms branching, time tracking and "Scaled security" that "controls access to sensitive work".

For an architecture studio, that means a project per job, sections for phases if someone sets them up and a template if someone applies it. Custom fields carry stage and jurisdiction, forms handle intake and Advanced adds time tracking and portfolios for a view across projects. Neither card names private projects, so if you want fees inside Asana, ask Asana what "scaled security" means for a fee column first. What Asana does well it does cheaply: a clean list, a good mobile app and a personal view that staff like.

What monday.com is for an architecture studio

monday.com is built from boards, columns, groups, automations, dashboards, forms and an app platform. Work Management plans are Basic at $9, Standard at $12 and Pro at $19 per seat per month billed annually, Enterprise on a quote (monday.com/pricing, October 7, 2026). Standard has timeline and Gantt views, guests and 250 automation actions a month. Pro adds private boards and docs, time tracking, 25,000 automation actions a month and dashboards that combine 20 boards. The studio or a consultant builds the phases, fees, CA log, consultant records and proposal pipeline, and we sell that build as Full System, from $7,000.

For an architecture studio, that means an overview board with a row per project and a board per project from a template. The template's groups are the phases and the jurisdiction's submittal path. Private Contracts and Payments boards hold fees by phase, and a Submissions board tracks RFIs, submittals and clearances with a seven-day follow-up task. Consultants are linked contacts, and one dashboard with money on it opens only for the principal. Our guide for architecture firms has the whole structure.

Side by side

The Asana column is Asana as its pricing page describes it. The monday.com column is what gets built on Pro for a studio.

When to stay on Asana

Your Asana has structure and staff use it. That means every project has the phases as sections, the template gets applied and custom fields carry stage and jurisdiction. If your Monday meeting also runs off a portfolio, you have the system this site describes, in a different tool. If fees live happily in QuickBooks and a spreadsheet, private boards and money dashboards are a poor trade for 80 projects of migration.

Fees are elsewhere and nobody minds. The strongest reason to move is fees by phase on private boards. If the bookkeeper and the principal are happy with QuickBooks and a sheet for the invoice schedule, that reason is gone.

Coordination still fits in a Monday-morning conversation. In that case, $10.99 a seat beats $19 a seat plus a build that starts at $3,000. The page on when not to hire a consultant covers this case.

The pain is personal task management. If staff love My Tasks and the principal wants them to keep using it, Asana is doing its job. Its personal view is a real strength, and switching to fix personal task management would give it up.

You're mid-deadline. A system built the week before a plan-check submittal is built around the panic. Finish the submittal, then decide.

You're staying, but the setup has grown messy. Then fix your Asana account where it is. Our Overhaul, from $5,000, audits the account, rebuilds the templates and rules nobody trusts and clears out the duplicates. Your data stays in Asana.

When to move to monday.com

You want fees by phase inside the system. That means private Contracts and Payments boards on Pro, an invoice schedule generated from the contract and overview totals that show blank to staff. A private dashboard shows what's contracted, invoiced and collected. The billing by phase page has the structure, and nothing on Asana's pricing cards promises the equivalent.

Your projects need a jurisdiction-specific template and a board each. City of Los Angeles, LA County and the rest of California have three submittal paths. On monday.com those are groups on a template, pruned when each board is created: 54, 64 and 49 tasks from a 99-task template. A board per project also frees subitems for corrections and clearance lines under each task.

You want the CA log to chase people. A Submissions board holds one row per RFI, submittal or clearance. After seven days of silence, a rule puts a real task on the owner's list. The CA log page has the columns.

You want one dashboard with the money on it. A private dashboard combines the overview and the two money boards: projects by stage and phase, and totals contracted, invoiced and collected.

You want your own documents and integrations. Custom apps on monday.com's app platform generate contract and proposal PDFs from the project record in the studio's own clauses. They also send invoices to QuickBooks and import the city's clearance worksheet. We price each one into the build's fixed quote.

What a real studio's Asana looked like

Studio Yona, a seven-person residential studio in Los Angeles, asked us to move it off Asana in 2026. At migration its Asana held 88 active projects and 2,487 tasks. Every one of the 88 projects had exactly one section, named "Untitled section". Its three templates held 40 tasks for City of Los Angeles work, 21 for the rest of California and 42 for Ventura and LA County. None had been applied to any of its 70 projects.

Of the tasks, 91 percent were already complete and 95 percent carried a due date. The whole workspace held one email address and no client, fee or invoice data. Two different jobs were both numbered 2634.

Asana held exactly what it was given, so the tool wasn't the problem. The studio needed structure: phases, numbering that blocks duplicates, fees out of staff's sight and a submittals log. It also needed a tool that holds fees privately, and the move bought both. Move to monday.com without building that structure and you arrive with 88 boards of one untitled group each. The case study has the full record.

The migration

The Asana to monday.com migration page publishes the method in full, in nine steps. Read everything through Asana's API first, and save an export with a task count per project. Studio Yona's first read silently cut every project over 100 tasks down to 100, hiding 626 tasks. Decide what moves (every task on an active project, completed ones included) and what stays (archives, templates, test projects). Map the structure honestly, so a flat list arrives as a flat list with the template's columns, views and Gantt, not invented sections.

Clean up the new account and point the template's automations at the right people first, then pilot 5 to 10 projects for the principal's approval. Run a script that tracks each project by its Asana id, so a half-finished run restarts without duplicating anything. Reconcile counts in both directions, verify against the live account with a script and never delete anything in Asana. Studio Yona's run moved 77 projects and 2,109 tasks with zero mismatches, plus 103 office tasks and a 162-task rendering board, in a week. We price the move into the fixed quote after a free review, based on the number of projects and any structure worth mapping.

What a 10-person studio pays in year one

The seat prices are close; the difference is the build. Full System, from $7,000, buys the private fee boards, the per-project template and the CA log, and it includes the move off Asana. After a build, the optional care plan covers changes and new automations, at $600 a month for 4 hours or $1,100 for 8. The studio owns the account and can run it alone. Full inclusions are on the pricing page.

Limitations of this comparison

Questions principals ask