If you're reading this, you probably have two tabs open right now: a chat app and a project management app. Maybe it's Slack and Asana specifically. Maybe it's Teams and Monday.com, or Discord and Trello, or some other combination of "where we talk" and "where we track work."
Either way, you're experiencing the same fundamental friction: the conversation about the work and the work itself live in different places. Someone discusses a feature in Slack, then creates a task in Asana, then links back to the Slack thread in the task description, then updates the task when the Slack thread produces a new decision -- and nobody maintains those cross-references after the first week.
This split is so common that most teams accept it as normal. It's not. It's a design problem, and the one app to replace all work tools approach is finally viable enough to solve it.
The real cost of running two core tools
Before getting into solutions, let's quantify what the Slack + Asana split actually costs your team:
Context fragmentation. The discussion about a task is in Slack. The task details are in Asana. The related document is in Google Docs. When someone needs the full picture, they have to reconstruct it from three sources. Harvard Business Review research found that workers toggle between applications roughly 1,200 times per day. That's not productivity -- that's a scavenger hunt.
Duplicate information. Teams that run chat and project management separately inevitably duplicate things. The standup happens in Slack and the same information gets entered into Asana. Decisions get made in chat and then someone has to remember to update the task. This duplication isn't just time-consuming -- it creates version conflicts.
Notification overload. Two tools means two notification streams. Slack pings you about a message in a channel. Asana pings you about a task update. Sometimes they're about the same thing. Your brain can't tell until you check both. The cognitive overhead of monitoring two notification systems is real and measurable.
Cost. Slack Pro is $8.75/user/month. Asana Premium is $13.49/user/month. For a team of 20, that's $445/month or $5,340/year just for chat and task management. And that's before you add the Google Workspace subscription for docs, Zoom for calls, or whatever else is in your stack.
What "one tool" actually needs to do
Replacing Slack and Asana with one tool only works if that one tool handles both jobs well. "Well" doesn't mean "perfectly" -- no tool is perfect at everything. But it needs to clear a minimum bar on both sides.
The chat side must have:
- Real-time messaging with threads (non-negotiable)
- Channels or spaces for organizing conversations by team/project
- Search that actually works across message history
- File sharing and media previews
- Mobile app that doesn't feel like an afterthought
The project management side must have:
- Task creation with assignees, due dates, and priority levels
- Multiple views (at minimum: list and board/kanban)
- Project-level organization (separate spaces for different initiatives)
- Filtering and sorting that scales past 50 tasks
- Subtasks or checklists for breaking work down
The integration between them must feel native:
- You can create a task directly from a chat message
- Task discussions happen in context (on the task itself, not in a separate channel)
- When a task is updated, relevant people are notified through the same system
- Search crosses both conversations and tasks
That last part is the make-or-break factor. Plenty of tools have chat and plenty have task management. The ones that genuinely unify them are rarer.
Options that actually work
Let's look at what's out there. This isn't an exhaustive list -- it's the tools that genuinely attempt to replace both Slack and a standalone project manager.
ClickUp ClickUp has been trying to be "one app to replace them all" for years. It has chat, tasks, docs, whiteboards, and more. The good: it's extremely feature-rich and the task management is strong. The concern: complexity. Teams often find the learning curve steep, and the chat experience isn't as polished as Slack. If your team is technically comfortable and willing to invest in setup, it's worth evaluating.
Notion Notion added basic team communication features and has excellent docs and project management. However, its real-time chat isn't a true Slack replacement -- it's more like threaded comments on pages. If your team communicates primarily through written updates and async collaboration, it can work. If you need the back-and-forth rhythm of real-time chat, you'll miss Slack.
Microsoft Teams + Planner If you're already in the Microsoft ecosystem, Teams handles chat and Planner handles tasks, and they're integrated. The integration is decent but still feels like two separate products stitched together. The upside is that many companies already pay for this through their Microsoft 365 subscription.
Trilo Trilo was built from the ground up as a unified team collaboration platform -- chat with task management, docs, and AI coworkers all in one platform. The conversation about a task happens on the task. The AI has context across everything. It's designed specifically for the use case of replacing separate chat and project management tools, and the integration between messaging and tasks is the tightest of the options listed here.
Basecamp The original "everything in one place" tool. Simpler than most alternatives, which is either a feature or a limitation depending on your needs. Good for straightforward project management with built-in messaging. Less suited for teams that need advanced task views or automation.
How to actually make the switch
Deciding to consolidate is the easy part. Migrating without chaos is where most teams struggle. Here's a practical migration playbook:
Phase 1: Parallel run (Weeks 1-2)
Don't kill Slack and Asana on day one. Instead:
- Set up your new tool with your team's projects and channels mirrored
- Move one project (and its team) fully to the new tool
- Keep everything else in the old tools for now
- Collect feedback daily from the pilot group
The pilot should include at least one person who loved Slack and one who loved Asana. If both can live with the new tool, you're in good shape.
Phase 2: Expand (Weeks 3-4)
- Move 2-3 more projects to the new tool
- Start directing new conversations to the new platform ("let's discuss this in [new tool] instead")
- Import task history that people reference regularly
- Don't import everything -- old, completed tasks from 2023 don't need to migrate
Phase 3: Cut over (Week 5)
- Set a firm date to archive the old tools
- Send a clear "after Friday, all communication and task management happens in [new tool]"
- Keep Slack and Asana accessible in read-only mode for 30 days (for reference)
- After 30 days, cancel the subscriptions
Phase 4: Optimize (Weeks 6-8)
- Customize workflows in the new tool now that the team has real usage patterns
- Set up automations, templates, and integrations
- Run a retro: what's better? What do you miss? What needs adjustment?
What you'll miss (and what to do about it)
Let's be honest: consolidating tools means giving something up. Here's what teams commonly miss and how to handle it:
Slack's app ecosystem. Slack has thousands of integrations. Your new tool probably has fewer. Check which integrations your team actually uses (not just has installed) and verify they're available before switching. Most teams use 5-10 Slack integrations regularly, not the hundreds that are available.
Asana's advanced project views. If your team relies heavily on Asana's timeline, portfolio, or workload views, make sure the replacement handles those use cases. Not every tool has feature parity with Asana's project management depth.
Muscle memory. People know the keyboard shortcuts. They know where to find things. They have years of Slack and Asana habits. This goes away with time, but expect a productivity dip in weeks 2-3 as people build new habits.
The archive. Years of Slack messages and Asana task history. Export what you can before canceling. Most tools allow data export. Set up a shared folder with the exports for reference during the transition.
When NOT to consolidate
This isn't the right move for every team. Keep Slack and Asana separate if:
- Your team is larger than 200 people and has deeply customized Asana workflows that would take months to recreate
- You're in a regulated industry where specific compliance certifications are tied to your current tools
- Your team just finished a major tool migration and needs stability
- The majority of your team is genuinely happy with the current setup (rare, but it happens)
If none of those apply, and your team regularly complains about switching between apps, losing context, or notification overload -- it's time to consolidate.
The bottom line
Running chat and project management as separate tools made sense when no single platform could do both well. That's no longer the case. The current generation of workspace tools can handle messaging, task management, and docs in one place, with native integration that no amount of Zapier workflows between Slack and Asana can replicate.
The switch takes effort. The payoff is a team that spends less time managing tools and more time doing work that matters.
Still toggling between your chat app and your task tracker a dozen times an hour? Trilo combines chat, tasks, docs, and AI coworkers in one workspace. Run the 5-week migration playbook above and see how it feels to work from a single tab.
