Sep 21, 2021

Is Asana or Airtable Best for an Editorial Calendar?

I’m going to show you how we decided between Asana or Airtable for an Editorial Calendar use case. 

Ultimately, Airtable is a more powerful software that will grow with your business. Plus, it can be taken really far with the free plan alone!

Asana might be a better option for someone looking to also utilize the company’s strength as a task and project management platform. 

However, we typically recommend Airtable as the go-to editorial and content calendar app. 

How did we come to that conclusion? It came after trying out both pieces of software and I’ll give you our decision criteria below. 

Asana or Airtable for an Editorial Calendar?

You’re wondering what the difference is between Asana and Airtable. Is one better than the other? Which should I use for my editorial calendar?

Airtable is a cloud-based, collaborative tool that offers work management, document storage, and more for businesses. Airtable helps you organize your business from its early stages to growth.

It’s the perfect software for any business, big or small. The fact that Airtable is not only easy to use and very accessible but can also grow with your business makes it a future-proof solution.

Asana is one of the best project management tools out there. And while it can be a bit pricey, a lot of content creators think it's worth every penny.

This online tool allows you to manage projects effectively. With Asana, the only thing you need to focus on is your work and how it can improve.

Asana vs Airtable Infographic

You're in charge of your content and you know what's best for your business.

We know how hard it can be to create a consistent stream of quality content. That’s why we’re helping you explore these options as tools that help you plan and publish on time.

You want to grow traffic and build relationships with readers who love your work. A good editorial calendar will help! 

Keep reading to learn more, but here are links to both tools:

Airtable

Asana

Ease of Use

Asana and Airtable are easy to navigate with a clear user interface. Both of these tools help you manage your team's tasks, projects, and deadlines in an efficient manner.

I mean, just look at the homepages for both applications. There are a lot of similarities and the UI is one of them.

Airtable vs Asana Workspaces

But ease of use is more than just what software looks like. 

It comes down to which software is the most intuitive and provides the best features in the most simple way possible. 

Winner: Asana comes out on top in this round simply because it is purposefully built with fewer features and less flexibility making it easy to use. Simply clicking into the ready-made Calendar or Board views along the top of your project allows you to see your data in different ways in Asana. Even though Airtable has all the same capabilities (and more), you have to take the extra step in creating them as views like Calendar or Kanban. 

Features

Views

Each Asana project comes prebuilt with six views:

  • List
  • Board
  • Timeline
  • Calendar
  • Progress
  • Forms

Airtable comes with the following fully customizable views:

  • Grid
  • Kanban
  • Gantt
  • Calendar
  • Forms
  • Gallery

You’ll notice that they are very similar with subtle name differences. However, Airtable does have the additional gallery view which is great for visually displaying your content with the featured image or creative displayed nicely.

On top of that extra view option, Airtable views are SUPER flexible. You can slice and dice your editorial calendar tasks in any way that fits you best. Asana is a bit more rigid in how you have to use the software. 

Collaboration

Asana and Airtable have powerful collaboration features. Creating teams, assigning tasks to other people in your company, and commenting are all so easy.

Because, both Asana and Airtable are great tools for team collaboration we aren’t going to dive too deep here. Plus, not everyone using editorial calendars may need team functionality.  

Winner: We are going with a tie on this one. 

Kanban Boards

We mentioned this feature briefly before, but I think it's worth exploring further for editorial calendars. 

Kanban boards are simple, accessible tools that help you organize your calendars into an efficient pipeline. In fact we highly recommend using Kanban boards for travel blog content as well.

It’s a useful way to visualize and organize what needs to be done at any given time. You can use it for editorial deadlines or even organizing home projects like painting or gardening. 

The aim of this organizational system is not just about tracking progress but also staying focused on the task at hand. It’s common for us all these days to have lots of different responsibilities instead of just one or two, which often leads to procrastination and miscommunication within our teams throughout the day (especially when working from home). 

Kanban boards help everyone stay on top of their work without missing anything. 

If you ask me, Kanban boards are crucial to a strong editorial process. 

Winner: Airable, barely. Luckily both Asana and Airtable have this view option as we mentioned earlier. 

Airtable calls it a Kanban while Asana just calls it a Board. They’re the same thing, with one exception! You only get one board per project in Asana and this is a huge limitation. There may be a workaround, but Airtable makes it easy to create as many Kanban views as your heart desires. 

In Airtable, if you want to have a Kanban pipeline for both your infographic creation process as well as the writing process you can easily create one for each set of steps. 

That's why Airtable won this round. 

Automation

It's likely that you've thought about or attempted to add automation to an editorial calendar. You may have even read articles on how leveraging automation in your business is one of the highest value things you can do. But how do you apply that to an editorial calendar? With Airtable and Asana, you can automate things like article templating and publishing promotional social posts on an automated schedule! 

Automation is key when blogging because it saves bloggers precious time so they can focus on content instead of repetitive operations and administrative tasks. If this sounds like something that would make life easier for you, then Airtable or Asana are good options. There is a clear winner though. 

Winner: Airtable wins this section for its flexibility and three other reasons: 

  • Airtable has a ton of native automation options from sending emails to scheduling Twitter posts. 
  • While there are Asana Zapier Integrations, we think that the Airtable Zapier Integrations are more straightforward and easy to use.
  • If you can’t find a solution with the above two points, Airtable has some of the best API documentation around. This opens up an endless amount of options for those willing to get a bit technical. 

Pricing

Now that we’ve looked at some of the key features of Asana and Airtable, it’s time to get serious and look at pricing. 

The pricing for these apps is a little bit confusing because there are different plans and features to choose from. To help you, I've created this guide which will break down the main differences between the plans and show you the best plan for your needs.

User-Based Pricing

First, it's important to note that both apps charge by the user. So while they are great for teams, it will start to get expensive if you have a lot of people working for you. However, we would expect that a company with a large team might be able to afford the extra costs and could easily justify it with the benefits of easy collaboration. 

Free Plan Limitations

The next thing to consider is FREE plan limitations. Here are the key limitations for each app:

  • Airtable limits you to 1200 records on the free plan which should be enough for an early stage editorial calendar. 
  • Asana has no limits on the number of projects and tasks in their free plan, so that’s a plus. 
  • Gantt and timeline views are not accessible in the free plans of either app. 
  • Airtable allows you to create forms in their free plan while Asana does not. Forms are nice for quick capture of on-the-go content ideas. So that is a plus for Airtable. 
  • Both apps allow you to use their free mobile apps. 
  • Asana doesn’t allow you to create private projects in their free plan, which means if you have collaborators and want to keep some personal tasks private, you’ll have to upgrade. 

Current Pricing Tiers 

Asana has the following pricing options:

  • Asana Basic: FREE
  • Asana Premium: $10.99 per month billed annually 
  • Asana Business: $24.99 per month billed annually

Airtable has the following pricing options:

  • Airtable FREE
  • Airtable Plus: $10 per month billed annually
  • Airtable Pro: $20 per month billed annually

Winner: We are going to call it a tie for pricing. As you can see the pricing options look very similar although Airtable is a bit cheaper. However, it will be highly dependent on your individual needs so we encourage you to take a close look at both options for yourself. 

Airtable’s Flexibility!

I’m going to keep this section short because there is such a clear winner: Airtable. 

Honestly, this is the reason we recommend Airtable to everyone we meet. 

Learning Airtable isn’t just a step that will solve your current editorial calendar needs, but is a skill that will stand the test of time when your business has grown to extraordinary heights!

Everything from invoice automation to a personalized CRM can easily be accomplished in Airtable. 

Winner: Airtable easily wins on the flexibility front. We tried Asana as an editorial calendar solution and it definitely has its benefits. However, it was ultimately the vast array of Airtable use cases that help us easily decide to make the switch. 

Final Verdict 

It can be hard to manage all of your editorial tasks in various apps but Airtable and Asana are two tools that offer some of the best solutions.

Choosing between the two isn’t easy. The best way to start is by grabbing a free account and playing around to see which one you like.

Do I need a project management tool or do I just want a better editorial calendar? 

Which one will work well with my workflow? Which one can be personalized for MY needs?!

If you’re looking for something more than just organizing tasks, then you should use Airtable. It helps bloggers and content managers get organized by giving them a personalized solution with powerful features. On the other hand, if you just want a simple list of your tasks without any extra features we’d recommend Asana. 

While it feels nice and fuzzy to say both apps are great, we want to give you a clear winner. 

Final Winner: Out of the six sections we chose to cover, Airtable comes out on top with three victories (3/6) with two being ties and Asana only winning one section (1/6). Again, both apps are great but after trying both we can’t recommend Airtable enough. 

How to Create a Content Calendar in Airtable

Have we convinced you that Airtable is awesome? 

You’re probably wondering how to get more traffic and grow your business with whichever editorial calendar you choose. If you’re leaning towards Airtable then we have just the thing for you! Our Airtable template will help you plan out your content so that it reaches the right people at the perfect time. But best of all, the setup guide will teach you foundational Airtable skills along the way. 

We know how hard it is to keep up with all these different tasks when running a blog or website, but our templates can make things easier for you. Spend less time worrying about what needs to be done and more time creating great content that gets results!

Click the link below and download our editorial calendar template today!

Base Simply Airtable Templates 

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