Comparison
Zuuna vs Microsoft Planner: when task lists are not enough
Planner is already in Microsoft 365 — but has no sprints, no git integration and no German hosting. An honest comparison, Zuuna's limits included.
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Microsoft Planner is the most convenient answer to task management there is: included in practically every commercial Microsoft 365 licence, embedded straight into Teams, not a cent extra. Which is why comparing it to Zuuna only becomes interesting once one of two questions comes up: “why can't our board do sprints?” — or “how dependent do we want our project work to be on a US provider?” This page answers both honestly — including the places where Planner remains the better choice.
Honest first: when you should stay with Planner
Planner Basic wins in three situations, and clearly so:
- You are all-in on Microsoft 365. Planner is already paid for, already rolled out, already secured through Entra ID. No new vendor, no new contract, no new login — tasks live right inside Teams, Outlook and To Do.
- Buckets and tasks are enough. If you need checklists with assignees and due dates and nothing more, Planner gives you exactly that, where the team already works.
- You need Gantt, dependencies or portfolios. Then the answer is Planner Plan 1 or “Planner and Project Plan 3” — not Zuuna. Zuuna has no Gantt view and no portfolio level, and this page deliberately does not position itself against Microsoft Project.
What Planner Basic cannot do
Planner Basic's limits are no secret — they are the business model. Much of what a kanban or developer team needs daily is either missing or sits behind the premium tiers:
- No WIP limits, no swimlanes, no flow metrics like cycle time — the board stays a task list in columns.
- Barely any automation: beyond notifications, every path leads through Power Automate — a separate product with its own learning curve.
- Custom fields, dependencies and timeline only from Planner Plan 1 — basic Planner does not have them.
- No sprints, no backlog, no story points — sprints and backlogs only arrive with Planner Plan 1, and story points not at all.
- No time tracking, no git integration, no releases.
Zuuna starts exactly there: sprints with a backlog, planning poker, story points and burndown, git commits and pull requests right on the card, releases with a code graph — all in the Developer plan, no marketplace app. Board automations (when → then) start at Private Plus, time tracking and reports at Business Pro. What that means day to day: project management for developers.
The sovereignty angle: project data in Germany
Planner is on Microsoft's own list of services with no specific data-residency commitment: storage follows a fixed mapping from the tenant's default geography — for German and EU tenants that means the “Europe macro-region”, not a specific country. The premium plans additionally store data in Dataverse (Power Platform), and tasks surfaced in To Do or Outlook live in the user's Exchange mailbox. Even the paid Advanced Data Residency add-on does not list Planner as a covered workload. (Source: Microsoft documentation, accessed 3 August 2026.)
Zuuna is deliberately the counter-model: hosted in Germany, with a DPA you sign online. Plus a security stack labelled honestly by tier: enforced two-factor authentication (TOTP + recovery codes) on all plans, including Free — an enterprise feature at most vendors. SSO (SAML 2.0 / OpenID Connect), Require-SSO, SCIM provisioning and an IP allowlist from Business Pro. An audit log exists on all plans, with an honest limit: the last 100 events at workspace level, no export.
Feature comparison
| Criterion | Zuuna | Microsoft Planner (Basic) |
|---|---|---|
| Hosting location | Germany | Europe macro-region, no specific residency commitment (as of 2026-08-03) |
| DPA | Yes, signed online | Yes (Microsoft DPA within M365) |
| Kanban board | Yes, all plans | Yes (buckets) |
| Table view | Yes, from Private Plus | Yes (grid) |
| Calendar view | Yes, from Business Standard | Yes (schedule) |
| Gantt / timeline | No | No — Planner Plan 1 only |
| Sprints & backlog | Developer | No — Planner Plan 1 only |
| Story points & velocity | Developer | No |
| Planning poker | Developer | No |
| Git commits & PRs on the card | Developer | No |
| Releases & code graph | Developer | No |
| Time tracking | Business Pro | No |
| Automations | From Private Plus | Only via Power Automate |
| API & webhooks | Developer | Microsoft Graph API |
| Enforced 2FA | All plans, including Free | Via Entra ID (up to the tenant) |
| SSO / SCIM | Business Pro | Entra ID included |
| Price | €0–24 per person/month incl. VAT | Included in M365; premium from $10 (yearly, as of 2026-08-03) |
What Zuuna does not have
So you do not learn it from a footnote:
- No Gantt or timeline view. The views are kanban, table and calendar.
- No cross-project resource planning and no portfolio level. If you need those, Microsoft's premium tiers are the right place.
- No Teams or Outlook integration at Microsoft's depth. What exists: a personal iCal feed (from Business Standard) that Outlook, Google Calendar and Apple Calendar can subscribe to — read-only.
- No one-click import from Planner. The path goes through Excel/CSV — see below.
Pricing (as of 3 August 2026)
All Zuuna prices per person per month, incl. VAT:
- Zuuna: Private Free €0 · Private Plus €4 · Business Standard €8 · Business Pro €16 · Developer €24.
- Microsoft: Planner Basic is included in the commercial Microsoft 365 plans. Per Microsoft's pricing page, Planner Plan 1 costs $10 per user/month and “Planner and Project Plan 3” $30 — each paid yearly (accessed 3 August 2026). Worth knowing: the premium tiers are not in any M365 suite, not even E5 — they are always an extra licence.
Counted honestly: as long as buckets are enough, Planner is unbeatable — it is already paid for. If all you want is the sprint feature set from Plan 1, that is also cheaper than Zuuna's Developer plan. But if you want git on the card, releases, built-in poker and German hosting, Microsoft does not sell that at any price. You can try Zuuna free for 14 days — no credit card; all details on the pricing page.
Moving from Planner to Zuuna
Planner can export a plan to Excel — and that is exactly the format Zuuna imports: .xlsx or CSV, up to 15 MB, 10,000 rows and 50 columns, with delimiters including semicolons detected automatically. Buckets become columns, tasks become cards. The step-by-step guide: import an Excel spreadsheet as a kanban board.
Next steps
- GDPR-compliant project management — the foundational article on hosting, DPA and data-subject rights.
- Zuuna vs Jira — the comparison for teams coming from the other side: too much tool rather than too little.
- Zuuna vs Monday — work-OS construction kit versus focused kanban.
Where the data sits, who processes it and what we explicitly do not claim is set out on the security and privacy page — subprocessor table included.
Other options
Looking beyond Planner, several tools are compared in Microsoft Planner alternatives.
FAQ
Is Zuuna a replacement for Microsoft Project?
No. Zuuna has no Gantt view, no resource planning and no portfolio level. If you need those, Planner Plan 1, “Planner and Project Plan 3” or Project is the right place. Zuuna replaces Planner Basic — for teams that want kanban, sprints and git integration.
Does Zuuna have a Gantt view?
No. The views are kanban board, table and calendar. For personal week planning there is time-blocking in the calendar (from Business Standard) — dragging tasks onto your week — but no Gantt chart with dependencies.
Can we keep signing in with our Microsoft account?
Yes — from Business Pro via single sign-on with SAML 2.0 or OpenID Connect. You register Zuuna as an application in your Entra ID, and from then on login runs through the existing Microsoft account. With “Require SSO” you can switch off password login entirely, with per-person exemptions so you can never lock yourselves out.
Where is our data stored?
Zuuna is hosted in Germany, and you sign a DPA online. Every board can be exported as .xlsx or CSV at any time, and account deletion is self-service with a 30-day grace window. Planner, by contrast, makes no country-specific commitment for its storage location — German tenants land in the Europe macro-region.
How do we get our tasks out of Planner?
Via Planner's Excel export: export the plan as a file and import it into Zuuna (.xlsx or CSV, up to 15 MB and 10,000 rows). Buckets become columns, tasks become cards — a one-click import from Planner does not exist.