TL;DR

Asana is a powerful, flexible work management platform that excels at task orchestration, portfolio reporting and generic process automation. It is not purpose-built for creative production workflows that require frame-accurate review, proxy playback, branded client review flows, and auditable delivery receipts.

Kreatli is a production management platform designed specifically to run brief-to-approval creative projects, and it pairs with tools like Asana when teams need both project orchestration and deep media workflows. If your current pain is lost context in reviews, long edit cycles, or billing disputes over who approved what, start with a short Kreatli pilot.

Why this comparison matters

Many creative teams reach for Asana because it is familiar and configurable. That works well when work is task centric. Creative production adds different requirements: timecode-accurate feedback, proxy-first review, branded guest review flows without forcing client accounts, and a single place to store delivery receipts and checksums. These are operational needs that generic PM tools do not solve out of the box, and they create friction every time an editor, producer, and client must align. We lay out the differences so teams can choose the right tool set rather than shoehorning production into a non-specialized workflow.

Quick product snapshot

Asana, in brief

Asana is a full-featured work management platform with tasks, multiple project views (list, timeline, board), custom fields, rules and automation, reporting and portfolio views. It now includes proofing features for image feedback, templates and AI-powered task assistance, and it offers a range of pricing plans to fit small teams up to large enterprises. For general ops, marketing project tracking, and cross-functional roadmaps Asana is a strong foundation. Features Breakdown

Kreatli, in brief

Kreatli is an end-to-end production management platform built for creative teams. It centers projects around briefs, proxy playback, timecode-pinned comments, guest reviewer flows and explicit approval receipts, while also providing integrations and automation for ingest, delivery and archive. Kreatli’s product and blog material emphasize templates and playbooks that shorten producer onboarding and reduce review rounds. If your core need is to run creative productions cleanly, Kreatli is designed for that job. Features Breakdown.

Side-by-side comparison

When Asana is the right choice

• Your work is mostly task and deliverable management with occasional creative assets.

• You need strong cross-department reporting, roadmap views and portfolio health dashboards.

• You already have a mature Asana setup and the overhead of adding another platform is a hard constraint.

• You want broad third-party integrations and robust automation around non-media workflows.

Asana is excellent when the work is primarily organizational rather than media-first.

When Kreatli is the right choice

• You need a reliable way to collect timecode-pinned feedback and reduce review rounds.

• Client reviewers must be able to leave precise comments without creating accounts, and you need an auditable approval action.

• Producers are spending time chasing approvals, searching for delivery receipts or reconciling who approved which version.

• You want project templates and playbooks that map to production workflows, not just generic task lists.

Kreatli reduces producer overhead and preserves the creative context that generic task tools often strip away.

Practical hybrid approach: use both without doubling work

Many teams get the best results by combining Asana and Kreatli, letting each platform own what it does best:

1. Use Asana for company-level intake, cross-team requests and long-term roadmaps. Automations create a task when a brief arrives.

2. Have that automation spawn a Kreatli project, pre-populated with the brief, proxy placeholders and milestone dates. This is the place for frame-accurate review and client approvals.

3. On final approval in Kreatli, trigger a webhook that marks the related Asana task complete and attaches delivery receipts and checksums back to Asana for finance and reporting.

This pattern preserves Asana for cross-functional visibility while giving producers a production-first surface for media work. We documented similar stack patterns and templates in our producer playbook and the post-production workflow guide, which teams often use when building hybrid stacks.

Integration and implementation tips

• Map fields in advance. Align naming conventions and required fields (project code, shoot date, approver) so metadata flows cleanly between systems. Use sidecar JSON/XMP for portability.

• Start with one pilot project, not a full migration. Validate the intake → proxy → review → approval → delivery loop end-to-end before rolling out.

• Automate notifications, but reduce noise. Only route essential review events into Asana channels or Slack so producers are not overwhelmed. Creativity suffers under notification overload.

• Keep masters out of review windows. Send streaming proxies for approvals and reserve master transfers for final delivery, attaching a checksum and transfer ID to the project's approval record in Kreatli. This reduces failed downloads for clients while preserving fidelity for final handoffs. See our post on post-production workflows and storage practices.

Cost, procurement and negotiation signals to watch

• Asana pricing tiers changed in recent years, with Starter and Advanced plans replacing legacy tiers. Model seat costs and the features you need (reporting, portfolios and SSO) before committing. Asana Pricing.

• Kreatli’s seat and feature tiers are designed to give fast pilots for production teams. For teams that need heavy archive storage or long-term media governance, budget cloud storage and transfer costs in addition to seat fees. We provide TCO templates in our minimal tech stack guide to help you model this. Kreatli Pricing.

30-day pilot plan to choose with confidence

Week 0 - Setup

• Configure an Asana intake form and map the key fields to a Kreatli project template.

Week 1 - Ingest & proxy

• Run a test shoot or reuse recent masters. Generate proxies and publish them into Kreatli. Invite internal reviewers. Measure time-to-first-comment.

Week 2 - Client review & revision

• Share the branded Kreatli review link with a client or stakeholder. Enforce a 48–72 hour review window and consolidate comments into a single edit pass.

Week 3 - Approval & delivery

• Finalize approval inside Kreatli, attach transfer job id and checksum, then trigger an update back to Asana to close the task.

Week 4 - Review KPIs & decide

• Compare review rounds, time-to-approve, producer time saved, and any friction points. Use that evidence to decide whether to operate both tools in production or expand one. Our design post-production workflow and minimal tech stack articles include KPI templates you can use.

Frequently asked questions

Q - Can Asana be customized to do everything?
A - With enough configuration, plugins and third-party tools, Asana can approximate many production workflows. That adds maintenance overhead and often requires trade-offs. Purpose-built production platforms reduce customization time and give producers a cleaner user experience out of the box.

Q - Will adding Kreatli mean duplicating work in Asana?
A - Not, a lot of teams cover all their need by using just Kreatli. Some, though, use both: Asana for intake and high-level tracking, Kreatli for review and approvals, and automation to sync status and receipts. That produces less manual duplication than trying to make Asana do both jobs.

Conclusion and next step

Asana is excellent for general work management and scaling cross-functional processes. Creative production adds media-specific requirements that generic PM tools do not solve by default.

For project-first production, a production management platform such as Kreatli brings the features producers need: proxy playback, timecode comments, guest-friendly review pages, and auditable approvals.