Tasks were getting lost in email and Slack. Someone would say they would handle something, and three weeks later nobody could find the thread. There was no single place where the team could see what was on, who was doing it, and what was done.
Someone recommended Asana. The team signed up, set up a project, and started adding tasks. It worked. Things stopped falling through the gaps.
Now the bill arrives each month for a platform that does far more than your team will ever open. The task list is used. Everything else sits untouched.
What Your Team Actually Opens Each Day
The My Tasks view. The project list. Assignees and due dates on each task. A status column to mark things in progress or done.
That is the job most small teams hired Asana to do. And Asana does it.
It also does Goals and OKR tracking, Portfolio views across multiple projects, Workload management, Timeline and dependency mapping, Rules and automation triggers, Advanced reporting dashboards, and Custom fields at workspace level. You pay for all of it. Most small businesses open four things.
- Goals and OKR tracking
- Portfolio views across projects
- Workload management across team members
- Timeline and dependency mapping
- Rules and automation triggers
- Advanced reporting dashboards
- Custom fields at workspace level
- Admin controls and permission sets
- Task list with assignees
- Due dates
- Status or progress on each task
- Project or team view
Who Asana Is Actually Built For
Asana is a serious tool for operations and programme management teams running cross-functional projects. Marketing departments coordinating campaigns with dependencies and milestones. Businesses where someone actively manages and updates the workspace structure. Teams with a project management function, not just a task list.
If your business is a small team that needs to know who is doing what and by when, Asana is built for a different customer. You are using a fraction of the platform and paying for the rest every month.
The Cost of Paying for Features You Never Open
Asana Premium runs around A$15 to A$18 per user per month. That is per seat. Every person who needs to see the task list adds to the bill. A team of five pays A$75 to A$90 a month just to access a task list and some due dates.
Picture a small business that has been on Asana for three years. They use the task list, assignees, and due dates. They have never opened the Timeline. They have never touched Workload. Goals has sat empty since day one. They paid over A$3,000 to access four features of a platform built for a programme management team.
What a Merebase task tracker Includes
A Merebase task tracker is built for the job your team actually has. You describe the status options that match your workflow, the fields that matter, the way tasks move from open to done. The app is built to do exactly that.
What a Merebase task tracker includes:
Task list with custom status options. Assignee tracking. Due dates. Notes per task. Priority levels. Search and filter. Data export. Unlimited users. A$499 once. You bring your own hosting. A basic plan runs A$5 to A$20 a month.
There is no Workload view you will never open. No Timeline. No Goals panel. The app does the job. Nothing else clutters the screen.
Your Data Is Already in Asana
This is the most common reason teams stay. Their task history is in Asana and moving it feels like a project in itself.
Asana lets you export projects as a CSV file. The data is yours and always has been. A custom Merebase app can import that file and continue from where Asana left off. Your task history comes with you.
Once it is in your own app, the data stays there. No platform can reprice it, restrict access to it, or hold it if you decide to leave.