Coordinator vs Asana
Asana organizes the work. Coordinator organizes the work and what it earns — boards, stages and templates plus the invoices, hours and job costs attached to them. Free, for every teammate.
Free. No card. About two minutes to set up.
Asana, side by side
The best-known work management platform — polished, mature, and priced per user per month.
| What you're paying for | Coordinator | Asana |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $0 — everything | Free (2 users) or ~$11–$25/user/mo |
| Users | Unlimited, free | 2 free, then pay per user |
| Boards, lists & timelines | Board, list and pipeline views | Included — its strong suit |
| Templates & recurring work | Included — whole project trees | Included |
| Time tracking | Included — billed through to invoices | Advanced tier only |
| Client sign-off that gates completion & billing | Included — recorded, auditable, one click for the client | |
| Real invoicing & accounting attached | Included — full books, statements, payments | |
| Job costing & per-project profit | Included — revenue, bills, time and payroll per job | |
| Booking pages & staff shifts | Included | |
| Public storefront & marketplace | Included |
Asana pricing and plan limits are approximate, from their published plans as of August 2026 — check their site for current figures. Coordinator's column doesn't change: $0.
The Asana line on your P&L
Asana cut its free plan to 2 users in late 2025; it; real features start at ~$10.99 per user per month — a ten-person firm on Starter clears $1,300 a year, and time tracking only arrives on the ~$25/user Advanced tier.
Users: Per-user pricing; free tier capped at 2 users.
What you get that Asana doesn't give you
Asana can tell you a project shipped. Coordinator tells you it made 38% margin — because the invoice, the bills, the hours and the payroll cost live on the same job.
Per-user pricing quietly decides who 'deserves' a seat. Here the field crew, the bookkeeper and the client-facing PM all join free with the right permissions.
Share a project and your client follows it from their own workspace — live stages, one shared thread, one-click sign-off. No guest-seat licensing math.
'40 days on this job — 22 waiting on the client.' Coordinator separates active work from waiting, which is usually where delivery actually stalls.
What Asana users complain about — answered
Recurring themes from public reviews and forums (G2, Capterra, Reddit), paired with what changes here. We only list complaints Coordinator actually solves.
“The free plan got cut to 2 users with barely any warning”
There is no free-tier cap to cut. The free plan here is the only plan: unlimited users, every feature, with nothing to revoke later.
“Time tracking requires the $24.99/user Advanced tier”
Time tracking is included — and it does more than Asana's at any price: hours flow onto invoices and job costs automatically.
“Notification overload — duplicate emails for every little update”
Status here is computed, not broadcast. System events never bump threads, work waiting on someone else stays quiet, and 'Needs your attention' is one consolidated inbox.
“Auto-renew charged us, reducing seats was a fight, support went silent”
No bill to auto-renew, no seats to reduce, no renewal date to dread. That whole category of problem doesn't exist in a free product.
“Tasks without due dates silently fall through the cracks”
Undated work doesn't vanish — every item reads as Now, Waiting or Future per person, and your home page gathers due, overdue and waiting work in one place.
“Powerful, but the busy interface and learning curve wear you down”
Progressive disclosure is a founding rule: advanced machinery stays hidden until you use it. A solo user never pays attention-tax for 50-person features.
What they love about Asana — kept
Kept: board, list and pipeline views over the same work, with saved views per person.
Kept — and extended across companies: clients watch shared projects live instead of asking.
Kept: whole-tree templates with stages, owners and sign-offs — which can even fire themselves when an invoice is paid.
Where Asana may still fit
No tool wins everything, and we'd rather you pick with open eyes.
Asana's rules engine, forms-to-workflow routing and 200+ integrations are mature. Complex multi-team automation is its home turf.
Goals, portfolios and workload balancing across dozens of teams are built for larger companies than Coordinator's sweet spot.
Coordinator has a dedicated importer for Asana CSV exports — sections become stages and task nesting is preserved. Most teams move a live workspace in an afternoon.
Free. No card. About two minutes to set up.
The free Asana alternative, summarized
If you're searching for a Asana alternative, the short version: Coordinator is free for unlimited users — no tiers, no usage meters, no renewal-day surprises — and it covers what Asana does for project management alongside the rest of a small business's operations: real accounting, projects with job costing, booking pages and staff scheduling, client records and forms, team chat, and a cross-company network where your invoice lands in your client's books. Asana still fits some buyers — see the fair print above — but if the complaints on this page sound familiar, switching is usually an afternoon.
Explore the project management side of Coordinator on free-project-management-software, see everything it does, or read why it's free.
Keep the Asana money
Set up free in minutes, import what you have, and put the subscription line to better use.
Free. No card. About two minutes to set up.