Etapo
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Comparison

Asana or Etapo: set up anything, or start straight away

Asana is a work management platform: tasks and subtasks in projects and portfolios, with goals, forms, automations, over a hundred integrations and five views of the same work. Etapo is a project board with one fixed shape: a project has a client, a deadline, a status and an owner, and sits in a section. Asana scales up to an organisation of a thousand people; Etapo is built for the agency that never wants to go there, and hosted in Europe.

What Asana and Etapo have in common

  • Work in columns you name yourself: sections in Asana, sections in Etapo.
  • Assign someone, set a deadline, tick off subtasks, leave a comment.
  • Working together in the browser, with a colleague’s changes showing up straight away.
  • Dutch: Asana is available in Dutch, Etapo is written in it.
  • Both export to CSV; an Asana export goes straight into Etapo (name, section, assignee, due date, notes).

The differences

What it is

Etapo: A project board with fixed fields: client, description, deadline, status, owner and section.

Asana: A work management platform: tasks and subtasks in projects and portfolios, with goals, forms, automations and reporting.

Who it is for

Etapo: Agencies and freelancers doing client work.

Asana: Teams of any size; the free plan is for up to two users.

Setting up

Etapo: Nothing. You put a project in a section and the board is there.

Asana: You build your own structure: fields, views, rules and templates.

Clients

Etapo: Built in: a client list, and each client’s projects.

Asana: Not built in. A client is a project, a portfolio or a custom field, however you set it up.

Invoicing

Etapo: An invoice status per finished project (To invoice, Pro forma, Sent, Paid, N/A), as a hand-over to your accounting software. No amounts.

Asana: Not built in; time tracking through integrations.

Views

Etapo: One board per workspace, plus Today (Overdue, This week, Waiting on client), Completed, and Invoicing if you track invoice status.

Asana: List, board and calendar on every plan; timeline and Gantt, dashboards and portfolios on the paid plans.

Automation and integrations

Etapo: Deliberately not: no automations, no integrations, no API.

Asana: Rules, forms and over a hundred integrations; unlimited automations from the entry plan up.

Where your data lives

Etapo: In Frankfurt (EU), walled off per workspace, with a Dutch company.

Asana: With Asana, a US company. EU storage (Frankfurt) is available to Enterprise customers.

Price

Etapo: €12.00 per month for one workspace, plus €4.00 per extra user. No minimum, 30-day free trial.

Asana: Free for up to two users; paid plans charge per user per month, in US dollars, with a discount for annual billing.

When you are better off staying with Asana

  • Your work is not client work: product development, campaigns, internal projects with many people.
  • You need a timeline or Gantt, or reporting across several projects.
  • You rely on automations, forms or integrations with other tools.
  • You want to decide which fields and views exist; in Etapo they are fixed.
  • You want an app on your phone. Etapo works in the browser, on your phone too, but there is no app.

Moving from Asana to Etapo

Export your project in Asana as CSV and import that file under Settings: Etapo recognises Asana’s columns (name, section, assignee, due date, notes) and shows beforehand what lands on the board. Subtasks, custom fields and attachments stay behind; leave out what is not client work.

The other way always works: everything in Etapo exports to CSV, with or without a subscription.

Hosted in Frankfurt, made in the Netherlands

Etapo runs on servers in Frankfurt (EU), is made by a Dutch company in Leeuwarden, and support is in Dutch via support@etapo.io. A European alternative is not an extra option here, it is how it is built.

Frequently asked questions

Can I import my Asana projects?

Yes, through Asana’s CSV export, per project. You map the columns to the fields on the board and see a preview. Subtasks, custom fields and attachments do not come along.

Does Etapo have a timeline or Gantt?

No. Deadlines are on the board and under Today (overdue, this week, waiting on client). That is what an agency needs to see the week; hour-by-hour planning belongs in a different kind of tool.

Is Etapo free?

You try it for free, then it is a subscription. There is no free plan: that always pays for itself somewhere else, and not here.

Where is my data?

In Frankfurt, with Supabase and Vercel in the EU, walled off per workspace at the database level. The details are in the privacy policy.

Sources

Written by Etapo. The facts about Asana come from Asana’s own website. Spotted a mistake? Email support@etapo.io.

See for yourself?

Put your first projects on the board and see whether it fits.

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