Process Street
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Comparison · PM
Asana vs SmartSuite
A side-by-side editorial comparison of Asana and SmartSuite — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Shared themes:work-management
Asana vs SmartSuite: at a glance
| Feature | Asana | SmartSuite |
|---|---|---|
| Sector | PM, Collab | PM |
| Velocity score | 7.5 | 5.0 |
| Sparks · 30d | 2 | 0 |
| Top themes | ai-teammates, slack, collaborative-docs, rich-text | work-management, mobile-parity, ai-agents, forms |
| Last editorial update | 1d ago | 3d ago |
| Website | Visit → | — |
What is Asana?
Asana's agent left the app — it now answers work questions inside Slack threads.
Two arcs run in parallel. A text and editor surface has been built out steadily — Pages, rich text in custom fields, highlighting, threaded comments, and now syntax highlighting — and an agent layer has grown alongside it through AI Teammates, Teammate Skills, and AI Studio. Nearly every release cites a named Community forum request as its origin. The editor work carries a recurring caveat: features land on web first and mobile trails, sometimes losing formatting outright.
What is SmartSuite?
SmartSuite is closing the gap between its mobile app and its desktop product, screen by screen.
SmartSuite is a work management platform combining databases, forms, automation and dashboards. Two systematic campaigns dominate recent releases. Mobile is being brought to parity — shared forms, internal forms and the chart widget all now run natively in the iOS and Android apps rather than falling back to a browser. Separately, AI Field Agents are being extended one target field type at a time, adding Address and Date to the existing Text and Single Select outputs.
Asana vs SmartSuite: editorial side-by-side
Asana
7.5PMCOLLAB
Asana's agent left the app — it now answers work questions inside Slack threads.
◆ Current state
Two arcs run in parallel. A text and editor surface has been built out steadily — Pages, rich text in custom fields, highlighting, threaded comments, and now syntax highlighting — and an agent layer has grown alongside it through AI Teammates, Teammate Skills, and AI Studio. Nearly every release cites a named Community forum request as its origin. The editor work carries a recurring caveat: features land on web first and mobile trails, sometimes losing formatting outright.
◆ Where it's heading
The editor arc is now mostly closing out a backlog of formatting asks, and each release is narrower than the last. The agent arc is the one changing shape: it has moved from configuring automations inside Asana to answering questions about the work graph from inside another vendor's application, on every tier including Personal. Building it permission-inheriting and private-by-default suggests Asana is treating the agent as a distribution surface rather than a feature to upsell.
◆ Prediction
Expect the same agent to appear on more surfaces — Teams and email are the obvious next ones — and expect mobile parity work on the editor features that shipped web-only. The language-tier expansion Asana flagged for syntax highlighting is the low-risk near-term item.
SmartSuite is closing the gap between its mobile app and its desktop product, screen by screen.
◆ Current state
SmartSuite is a work management platform combining databases, forms, automation and dashboards. Two systematic campaigns dominate recent releases. Mobile is being brought to parity — shared forms, internal forms and the chart widget all now run natively in the iOS and Android apps rather than falling back to a browser. Separately, AI Field Agents are being extended one target field type at a time, adding Address and Date to the existing Text and Single Select outputs.
◆ Where it's heading
Both campaigns are additive rather than exploratory, and both look close to complete. The mobile releases explicitly describe features as previously desktop-only, which reads as a checklist being worked through. The AI Field Agent releases are near-identical in structure, each reusing the same governance, manual and automatic run controls, and audit logging — the agent framework is settled and only its output types are being enumerated. The Teams work follows the same instinct, extending existing Teams Field infrastructure into comments and checklists rather than building something new.
◆ Prediction
Expect the remaining desktop-only surfaces to land on mobile and further field types to be added as AI Field Agent outputs, since both series have shipped in near-identical batches. Number and Link fields are the obvious unclaimed agent targets.
Alternatives to Asana and SmartSuite
Other PM products tracked by Sparkpulse, ranked by recent ship velocity. Each card links to a full editorial trajectory and lets you pivot into a head-to-head comparison with either Asana or SmartSuite.
NocoBase
NocoBase runs two release lines at once while the v3 client rewrite absorbs the AI work
Hive
Hive ships in batches, and this one is all planning accuracy and admin control.
Plane
Plane ships a fortnightly digest, and the AI layer is where the real work is going.
Ever Teams
Ever Teams shipped ten tags in twelve hours and one of them touched the product
Apploye
Apploye's feed is an SEO blog, and its running theme is defending monitoring on privacy grounds.
See all Asana alternatives → · See all SmartSuite alternatives →
Recent activity from Asana and SmartSuite
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 1d agoAsana⌨️ Syntax highlighting in text editors is now live!
- 1d agoAsana🎉 @mention Asana in Slack to create tasks and get answers ⚡
- 4d agoSmartSuiteAssign and @-Mention Teams in Comments and Checklists
- 4d agoSmartSuiteMobile: Internal Forms Support
- 4d agoSmartSuiteMobile: Shared Forms Support
- 12d agoSmartSuiteAI Field Agent: Address Field Support
- 12d agoSmartSuiteAI Field Agent: Date Field Support
- 12d agoSmartSuiteMobile: Chart Widget Support
- 12d agoAsanaMake key details pop with text ✨ highlighting ✨
- 13d agoAsana📝 Rich text in custom fields is now live!
- 15d agoAsanaThreaded Comments are LIVE! 🧵
- 26d agoAsana✨📄 Introducing Pages! (formerly known as Notes) ⚡
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between Asana and SmartSuite?
Both compete on the same themes — work-management — within PM. Asana is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 7.5 vs 5.0), with 2 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.
Is Asana better than SmartSuite?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. Asana is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 7.5 vs 5.0), with 2 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other PM products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to Asana?
Top Asana alternatives in PM are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Asana alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/asana for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to SmartSuite?
Top SmartSuite alternatives in PM are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "SmartSuite alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/smartsuite for the full list with editorial commentary on each.