Asana is one of the better-known subscription tools in its space — and at $10.99/user/mo (Starter, annual; $13.49 monthly, 2-user min), one of the recurring line items people most often look to replace. If you're searching for a Asana alternative you pay for once and own forever, Boardly is the OneTimeSuite answer: $19, one time.
Why people go looking for an alternative
Asana runs $10.99/user/mo (Starter, annual; $13.49 monthly, 2-user min), and like most SaaS the bill never stops — cancel and you typically lose access to your own history. That's roughly $396 over three years. Boardly flips that model: Self-hosted kanban — drag & drop boards, checklists, labels, attachments, full JSON export.
What Boardly covers
- Multiple boards — Color themes, emoji icons, starred favorites — organize work, clients or your whole life.
- Drag & drop everything — Reorder lists, drag cards between lists — order persists exactly where you dropped it.
- Rich cards — Markdown descriptions, due dates with overdue highlighting, colored board-scoped labels.
- Checklists — With live progress bars right on the card front.
- Attachments — Upload files straight onto cards — stored on your disk, with your limits, not a 250 MB plan cap.
The honest trade-off
Asana will keep shipping features, integrations and managed infrastructure that a pay-once tool won't chase — if that ecosystem is genuinely load-bearing for your workflow, staying is a fair call. For the core job, the math favors owning the tool: $19 once against $10.99/user/mo (Starter, annual; $13.49 monthly, 2-user min) forever. Boardly costs less than four months of a single Trello seat — for a team it pays for itself the day you install it.
Also worth reading
Boardly's main head-to-head is with Trello — see the detailed comparison or the product page for the full feature list, FAQ and demo video.
Try Boardly — $19, once
Self-hosted kanban — drag & drop boards, checklists, labels, attachments, full JSON export.