Choose the wrong project tool and nobody will tell you. They will simply drift back to WhatsApp, a shared spreadsheet and a photo of a whiteboard. Notion, Trello and Asana all set out to prevent that, but they suit different kinds of small team: a five-person design studio in Bristol, two founders building software in Leeds, a ten-person marketing agency in Manchester. Here is what each is genuinely good at, where each gets awkward, and how to run a trial that does not eat a month.

What each tool is actually built around

All three offer a free entry-level plan, paid tiers billed per user per month, and mobile apps that are good enough to check a task on the train. The real differences show up in structure and in how much setup they demand.

• Notion is a blank canvas: pages, wikis and databases in one workspace. It suits teams whose work is mostly written — briefs, meeting notes, processes, content plans.
• Trello is a board of lists and cards. It is the fastest of the three to understand and the least fussy to maintain.
• Asana is built around tasks with owners, due dates and dependencies. It suits teams where work passes between people and deadlines are firm.

Notion: best for teams who think in documents

If your onboarding notes live in one app, client briefs in another and meeting minutes in a third, Notion pulls them together and lets you link them to the tasks that follow. A project page can hold the brief, the checklist and the notes from the kick-off call on one screen.

The catch is that Notion organises nothing for you. Teams that struggle with it usually build too much: a new database per client, three competing status systems, a page nobody can find. Keep it small instead.

A Notion setup that holds up

• One Projects database with an owner, status and due date.
• One Tasks database, linked to Projects, with a single status field.
• A page template for each client, used every time.
• One weekly review page where the team updates statuses together.

Agree one rule early: anything with a deadline lives in the Tasks database, not in a comment or a chat thread.

Trello: best when you need momentum this week

Trello's strength is that a new colleague can use it in ten minutes without training. An agency might run client work through columns such as Enquiry, Scoping, In progress, Review and Delivered, moving cards as the work moves. It is visual, forgiving, and quick to reshape when your process changes.

It strains once work gets tangled. There are no true dependencies, so nothing stops a card reaching Review before the design is finished, and reporting is thin if you need to show a client how a project is tracking. Board sprawl is the other risk: six boards quietly become twenty and nobody knows which one is current.

A few habits keep it tidy: cap lists at five or six, use checklists inside cards rather than sub-boards, archive cards weekly, and set up the built-in automation to move cards or assign due dates on routine steps. Power-Ups can add calendars and custom fields if you need them.

Asana: best when handovers and deadlines pile up

Asana earns its keep when three or four people touch the same piece of work in sequence. You can set a task to depend on another so the next person is not chasing something unfinished, use a timeline view to spot clashes, and open a form so requests arrive in a consistent format rather than by email.

That structure needs a keeper. Someone has to own the naming conventions, tidy stale projects and decide what belongs in Asana and what does not. For a team of four with simple workflows it can feel like more admin than the work itself, and per-seat pricing turns every new contractor into a decision.

Collaboration fit for small UK teams

Features matter less than whether your team will open the thing on a Tuesday morning without being nagged. Before committing, check:

• Guest access. Can you invite a freelancer or client without buying another paid seat?
• Where updates land. Does it connect to Slack or Microsoft Teams, so notifications appear where people already are?
• Mobile quality. Test it on a phone if your team works on site or moves between offices.
• Client sharing. Read-only links or public status boards save a lot of email chasing.
• Data protection. Ask where data is stored and whether a data processing agreement is available. If you handle personal or sensitive client data, take advice on your UK GDPR obligations before moving everything across.

Pricing: compare like for like

List prices change often, so compare the shape of each plan rather than memorising numbers.

1. Who counts as a billable user. Guests, viewers and clients are sometimes free and sometimes not.
2. Free plan limits. Number of boards or projects, upload sizes, and how far back your history goes.
3. What sits behind the paywall. Timelines, automations, forms, workload views and admin controls are common gates.
4. Annual versus monthly. Annual usually costs less, but start monthly for the first two or three months while you are still deciding.
5. VAT. Quoted prices often exclude it, so add 20% when budgeting unless your business can reclaim it.
6. Extras. Additional storage, add-ons or per-guest charges can shift the total.

A fortnight trial that settles it

Do not let three people test a different tool each and compare notes in a month's time. Pick one real project, something with a deadline and more than one person involved, and run it in each tool for a few days.

As a starting point, the

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