Best Trello alternatives in 2024
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BLUEPRINT
Updated 4:36 a.m. UTC July 15, 2024
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While Trello offers a project management toolset that is intuitive to use, some alternatives offer more features and cater to different use cases. This list provides a total of five Trello alternatives based and compares their features and use cases to help you determine the best fit for your business needs.
Featured project management software offers
Monday.com
Monthly fee
$10 per user, with a minimum of three users
Free version
Yes, for two users
24/7 customer support
Yes, with paid plans
HubSpot
Free demo
Available
Free version available
Yes
24/7 customer support
Yes
ClickUp
Monthly fee
$10 per user
Free version
Yes, for unlimited members
24/7 customer support
Yes
5 best Trello alternatives
- ClickUp: Best for agile project management.
- Teamwork: Best for client-facing agencies.
- Notion: Best for customizable workflows and databases.
- Asana: Best for remote team management.
- Todoist: Best for freelancers and solopreneurs.
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Teamwork
Notion
Asana
Todoist
What is Trello?
Trello is a visually oriented project-management system that makes it easy to determine both the status and progress of various tasks. With powerups, Trello integrates with many other applications, allowing you to customize it to best suit your business needs.
Featured project management software offers
Monday.com
Monthly fee
$10 per user, with a minimum of three users
Free version
Yes, for two users
24/7 customer support
Yes, with paid plans
HubSpot
Free demo
Available
Free version available
Yes
24/7 customer support
Yes
ClickUp
Monthly fee
$10 per user
Free version
Yes, for unlimited members
24/7 customer support
Yes
Pros and cons of Trello
| PROS | CONS |
|---|---|
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Methodology
We extensively research the key competitors within an industry to determine the best products and services for your business. Our experts identify the factors that matter most to business owners, including pricing, features and customer support, to ensure that our recommendations offer well-rounded products that will meet the needs of various small businesses.
We collect extensive data to narrow our best list to reputable, easy-to-use products with stand-out features at a reasonable price point. And we look at user reviews to ensure that business owners like you are satisfied with our top picks’ services. We use the same rubric to assess companies within a particular space so you can confidently follow our blueprint to the best project management platform.
Trello’s board-based system works well for someone who thinks visually, as it’s easy to follow the status of every task over time. For instance, tasks may start out as a “to do” item, then move to the “in progress” list and finally the “completed” stage. A simple glance at the board shows all the active tasks and where they stand.
One major Trello perk is that it has a completely free plan, which is ideal if you have a small business or want to learn how to use a project management tool. On the other hand, if you find it easier to track and manage your business progress with something other than Kanban boards or you need more features. Trello’s board system may not be ideal for you.
Choosing the best project management system
Choosing the best project management system requires thinking about the features your business needs the most, as well as a price point that fits into your budget. For instance, a system with native time-tracking capabilities is ideal when you need to keep track of hours for most tasks, while one with multiple view options may work best if you work with different teams that have different preferences for handling tasks and projects.
Another key consideration is whether your project management system integrates with tools you already use regularly, such as Google Drive, Slack or Dropbox. The “integrations” page for any project-management tool lists which applications the tool connects with. Some, such as Trello, allow you to build your own tools to integrate the software with another app.
Other features and capabilities to consider include:
- The number of people who can use the system at an affordable rate.
- Whether it has collaboration features, such as native chat and coworker tagging tools.
- Whether you can assign tasks to more than one person.
- Whether you can control permissions related to tasks and project access.
- If your employees can track time spent on tasks or projects within the platform.
- The types of views you can use to assess project progress, such as timelines, calendars and board views.
- Whether you can implement automations to streamline your processes.
- The types of reporting you can derive from the platform.
- Whether you can indicate task priorities or dependencies on other tasks.
Testing the free plan of any project management system is a good way to determine whether you like the system, it has features your business needs or if the entire program feels too unwieldy or has a difficult learning curve. It’s also possible to test more than one at the same time to see which best fits your needs, as one may have some features you didn’t know you wanted until you’ve tried them.
Why you may choose Trello
Trello is a good choice if you enjoy a visual style of tracking workflow or if you’re looking for a system that makes it easy to follow projects along their path of progress. It’s also a good tool if you want to test different templates for various projects, as quite a few templates are available. The same holds true for powerups, which allow Trello to integrate with other applications.
Here are a few more reasons to try Trello:
- You can try it for free: Trello has an always-free version, which could be enough for you if you have a relatively small business or want to use it to track progress on a side hustle. Its unlimited file storage in the free plan is a nice perk, provided your files are a relatively small 10 MB in size or less.
- You work visually: Trello uses kanban boards, a system in which blocks or “cards” represent various tasks in a project. The cards, which may be color-coded for better differentiation, move through a series of columns or stages as they near project completion. This system for tracking tasks can be quite simple, such as listing tasks or project components as coming soon, in progress and complete.
- Tasks can have attachments: Emailing may be one way to send attachments to a coworker, but Trello allows attachments to be added to specific task cards. This makes it really handy for finding exactly what’s needed at any step of a project, rather than fishing through streams of emails.
- You can create custom fields: Each Trello card has up to 50 fields that allow you to add information to clarify or facilitate a workflow. For example, you might add a checklist to a card to indicate all the substeps needed to complete a more comprehensive project task. You can also add labels, due dates, the names of responsible parties, locations and price. From there, you can filter by these field keywords to track project progress and key information.
- Trello integrates with other applications: Trello’s powerup system allows the program to connect with other applications, or to give it powers it wouldn’t have on its own, such as the ability to track total time on a project. Even the free plan has unlimited power-ups, allowing you to connect to Slack or Google Drive, for example. Some power-ups are not free, however. You can also build your own power-ups to use privately or to share.
Why you may want an alternative
You may want an alternative to Trello if Kanban boards aren’t your favorite way of viewing tasks or if you don’t want to use power-ups to make Trello work the way you want it to for your specific needs.
Here are other reasons you may want to try something other than Trello:
No native chat feature
Trello integrates with various chat applications, such as Slack and Google Chat. However, if you need a simple online chat feature without switching to other applications, there’s no way to do that with Trello natively.
“Trello has been an excellent tool for visual project management, but one area where it could improve is communication,” said Marshal Davis, President and Founder of Ascendly marketing. “The platform lacks a proprietary chat feature, which means we often have to switch to other communication tools for quick discussions. This absence can slow down the workflow and make real-time collaboration less efficient.”
Plan limitations on native view options
While some project management systems have various view options such as boards, charts and timelines, Trello natively has only a board view unless you subscribe to the premium view or higher. “Trello is on the lower side of the totem pole for high-level projects,” said Candice D’Angelo, Founder at The Agency East. “It only has one view (board view) which makes it less nimble when searching for items and topics needed for tasks.”
No native time tracking
Time-tracking is only available as a power-up in Trello. While there are quite a few time-tracking power-ups, the choices could be overwhelming. Picking one is not as efficient as having one already built in.
Other missing features
While Trello’s paid plans offer extras such as the ability to assign people and due dates to tasks, there are fewer features than are offered by some competitors, such as tools for budgeting, invoicing and tracking billable hours and expenses. Such features come in handy for businesses that frequently work by the hour with clients.
Featured project management software offers
Monday.com
Monthly fee
$10 per user, with a minimum of three users
Free version
Yes, for two users
24/7 customer support
Yes, with paid plans
HubSpot
Free demo
Available
Free version available
Yes
24/7 customer support
Yes
ClickUp
Monthly fee
$10 per user
Free version
Yes, for unlimited members
24/7 customer support
Yes
Frequently asked questions (FAQs)
While Google Workspace has an assortment of tools to help businesses and individuals, there isn’t anything quite like Trello. Google Keep is perhaps the closest Trello alternative in the Google universe, but they’re really not the same. Keep is a free and robust note-taking app that allows you to add audio, text or images to any note and to share lists with others on the go.
It’s not a full-fledged project management solution like Trello, but the app’s information can be accessed from a computer, tablet or phone as long as you have a Google account. If you’re an avid user of Google’s various tools, there are integrations to bring Google apps into Trello or to add Trello to Gmail or to Google Calendar.
Better is a subjective term with project-management apps, as it really comes down to which app is best at handling the tasks specific to your business. While Trello is excellent for kanban boards and automation, it may not be the best tool for every business.
For instance, a business that requires maps or expense tracking may choose something other than Trello that has these features inherent. Tools that have more features, such as ClickUp, may be better for you if you work on multiple projects or need multiple view types.
Microsoft has a Trello alternative called Microsoft Planner, but it’s not exactly the same. Microsoft Planner is part of the Microsoft 365 suite, a subscription-based package perhaps best known for Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint. There isn’t a standalone version of Microsoft Planner nor is there a free version of it. Planner is a kanban-style system, like Trello. Like in Trello, you can add project tasks to “buckets” and include additional information for each task, such as files, links, photos and subtasks.
Trello is a Kanban style of project management that can be used for Scrum, as well. Some alternatives, such as Clickup, however, offer more explicit tools for managing this style of project management.
Kanban is a visually based system with the goal of continually improving workflow. Scrum is a project management concept based on working in sprints to meet goals, bringing tasks from the ready-to-work-on phase to finished.
In Trello’s Kanban board system, various cards can be labeled to cover “definition of ready,” which covers what steps need to be taken for a task to be ready to work on and “definition of done,” which defines what has to happen for tasks to be marked complete. Once those definitions are set up, sprints, which are chunks of specified amounts of time, such as a week, turn projects into a Scrum-style workflow.
Scrum is for projects with clearly defined steps and end goals. Projects are broken down incrementally into small components to make the project steps and milestones clear and understandable for the team. Continual feedback or review is a big part of Scrum, so it’s good for teams that collaborate in this way.
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