As technology evolves and improves, so do the tools that we use. Think about how long you’ve used a tool or application and how well it suited your workflow when you were first using it compared to now.
Project management is no different!
Regardless of the team size, all remote teams use one project and task management software to boost team collaboration and enable communication among teams with ease, mainly because more and more companies have gone either remote or hybrid.
Trello is one of the most popular options for many people, from freelancers and software companies to project managers and agile development teams, thanks to its famous Kanban-style boards that allow you to easily collaborate with team members in your workspace, track project tasks, and use color-coded labels on any task template.
However, despite Trello’s popularity among big companies, it might not be the best option for handling large volumes of projects and teams.
There comes a moment in every growing organization where they feel they need to begin to search for Trello alternatives. In fact, you are probably here because you are feeling the same way!
That’s why we’ve put together this list of 12 Trello alternatives for you to check out and help you take your project management to the next level in 2023.
What is Trello?
Owned by Trello Enterprise, Trello is a flexible and collaborative task management tool with an intuitive interface, helping you keep track of your projects and organize them into detailed dashboards.
It works well as a simple project management solution for teams that work in earlier-stage startups, but it’s also a good match for some established teams looking to keep projects organized in a fun and flexible way—perhaps, a Kanban view would help 🤪
With Trello’s well-known drag-and-drop style task management interface—reminding a Kanban tool, your team can visualize task progress throughout the pipeline in real time and stay on track.
Although it is simple to use and has an excellent free plan, it lacks more advanced features and functions, making it difficult to use for larger projects. Therefore, we have compiled a list of popular tools that are quite good alternatives to Trello that you can use to weigh your options.
Trello Pricing
- Free plan: With unlimited cards and up to 10 boards per workspace
- Standard plan: $5 USD (per user per month billed annually)
- Premium plan: $10 USD (per user per month billed annually)
- Enterprise plan: $17.50 USD starting cost for 25 users (per user per month billed annually)
Trello Reviews
👍 Pros
👎 Cons
“There are many outstanding features of Trello. My favorite would be the ease of use because of the whole drag and drop controls. You can also assign tasks to team members and create checklists for steps.”
“I often have a difficult time building out a project in a way that makes sense to me. We use this much less for a large project and much more for smaller individual tasks. I also wish there was an easier way of styling the cards. I have attempted to use the Trello code in the cards but unless you use them frequently, you have to relearn them all over each time.”
⭐Rating on G2: 4.4 out of 5 stars
Why Do You Need an Alternative to Trello?
Many people start using Trello as a personal task manager for their little personal projects. Some even extend its functionality to work on small team projects with add-ons (called power-ups).
However, if you need a tool to manage multiple projects across teams or complex tasks, we’re here to tell you that you can do better than Trello.
Here are a few reasons you should consider an alternative to Trello for your project planning—doesn’t matter if you’re a hybrid or remote team.
1- Lack of Reporting Features 🗒️
Trello doesn’t include reporting and analytics by default, making it evident that it has limited features within its general offerings. Therefore, you can’t get actionable insights about your project performance.
Although Trello Power-ups (which are additional features that you pay extra for) can add reporting tools, it’s not quite the same as having a project management tool with built-in reports.
2- Hard to Track Complex Projects 🔎
You can’t link tasks to subtasks on your project timeline and see a holistic view of how one delayed task will impact others in the queue—which is a quite important element to deliver projects on time. If you’re looking for something more advanced, like agile project management software, Trello probably isn’t the best choice.
3- Limited Project Views ❌
Apart from Kanban, Trello has fewer project views compared with other project management tools on our list.
In the free and standard plans, Kanban is the only view available. When you upgrade to the Premium Plan ($10 per month per user) or Enterprise, you will have access to view dashboards, timelines, workspace tables, calendars, and maps for each project, board, and user experience.
4- It’s Too Simple! 💭
One of Trello’s biggest selling points is its simple interface with Kanban boards, especially since it is excellent for agile teams.
But at some point, it gets tiring. Though Trello’s Kanban boards might seem appealing at first, you may want more as you grow your team and find them limiting after a while.
So, when you need to switch to another powerful tool with both customizable features and advanced features, check the massive list below.
Top 12 Trello Alternatives
Listed below are the top 12 alternatives to Trello you can use starting today:
The following is a brief overview of each tool, how they compare to Trello, their pricing options, and what use cases they serve.
1- monday.com
monday.com is one of the best Trello alternatives you can use for your team. This task management software offers an online Work Operating System (Work OS) where you can create any tool to manage and organize your work activities–from project management to workload management.
This intuitive but user-friendly planning solution helps teams of all sizes create custom workflows, adjust to shifting needs, create transparency, get insight into workloads, collaborate without hassle, and stop repetitive tasks and time-consuming manual work by allowing automations.
Moreover, monday.com offers native integrations and not-so-native app integrations with a wide range of tools like Slack, Dropbox, Outlook, and many more to take team conversations to the next level—all without any coding needed.
Keep in mind that monday.com offers a free plan for personal use, making it a free alternative to Trello for students to use when managing their tasks.
With monday.com as your agile project management tool, you can:
- plan, strategize, and deliver the project of your choice in a flash via the pre-built project templates—which can be customized as well
- visualize your project with colorful Gantt charts to track, manage, and deliver projects on time with ease
- reshape and monitor your task dependencies, task lists, task milestones, and many more throughout the project lifecycle
- make use of all kinds of dashboard views by turning insights into data that will serve as your guide for your future business plans
- automate the mundane work and repetitive tasks in seconds and save yourself a lot of time and effort.
- easily create summaries and reports, and get a high-level view to make more data-driven decisions
- oversee your team’s workload to assign resources accordingly, thanks to real-time data
- centralize all your team communication in one place and prevent unnecessary meetings and calls
- use popular integrations to take your project to the next level
- and make use of the key features of monday.com while adding custom items to your project
The project management software that will actually work for your team
Manage simple to complex projects and everything in between with monday.com
monday.com Pricing
Individual plan: $0 Free Forever (up to 2 seats)
Basic plan: $6 per seat / per month (total $18 /month billed annually)
Standard plan: $10 per seat / per month (total $30 / month billed annually)
Pro plan: $22 per seat / per month (total $66 / month billed annually)
Enterprise plan: To get the detailed price for all enterprise-level features, get in touch with sales.
monday.com Reviews
👍 Pros
👎 Cons
“Monday.com is like a customizable spreadsheet in the cloud. It’s easy to build any project management sheet you need. Projects to work on, time tracking, internal training, you name it. Just add the column (like status, text, numbers, formulas, assigned people, etc.) and create groups that make sense to you. Automations save a lot of time doing repetitive project management tasks.”
“I sometimes forget to enter my comment and it goes unnoticed until the next time I enter the program. But boxes with reminders would be irritating, so it is more my problem than the system.”
⭐Rating on G2: 4.7 out of 5 stars
2- Wrike
Wrike is like Trello but simpler.
This is not just me saying, many users who use Wrike daily believe that Wrike’s elements are easier to reach; thus, you can achieve your goals more effectively.
Also, they have the same features but somehow Wrike promises to deliver more to your workflow by putting out new features every now and then – bringing their innovative side out, especially with features like AI Work Creation and External Requester Collaboration.
That’s not all, of course. Another upside of having Wrike as your new project management tool is definitely the fact that the tool itself listens to its customers and improves the features that the customers believe could use a bit of retouch. For example, both board and table views are updated so that the users can get the best of them!
Make sure to try Wrike for free if you’re looking for a Trello alternative!
Wrike Pricing
Free: Free to use. Up to 5 users can use it.
Pro plan: $7 per user/per month
Business plan: $25 per user/per month
Enterprise plan: Offers a plan that can be used by unlimited users. Contact sales for pricing details.
Pinnacle: Offers a plan that can be used by unlimited users. Contact sales for pricing details.
Wrike Reviews
👍 Pros
👎 Cons
“For me, the greatest value of Wrike is having an organized and unified system for managing workflows. With tasks, files, notes, and conversations all appearing on one platform, it is a breeze for our team to keep in touch and stay up to date on task progress or issues that need attention.”
“You do need the right people managing not only Wrike (the product) but the processes and the people too. It can be overwhelming at first, but start with the basics and expand from there.”
⭐Rating on G2: 4.2 out of 5 stars
3- Smartsheet
Smartsheet is another option for project management as an alternative to Trello on our list. It is a powerful and easy-to-use web-based task management tool that allows organizations of all sizes to create project plans and project tasks, perform project tracking, add several project elements, categorize project fields, and choose project types.
In addition to helping you manage your projects, it offers task management, crowdsourcing, reporting, and much more. The following is what we mean by much more:
- resource management,
- budget management,
- analytics and reporting,
- workflow automation,
- daily task manager,
- project schedule management,
- Gantt charts, and
- content management.
While making use of the features above, you’ll notice how this program is similar to a spreadsheet, besides task management functions like assigning tasks, subtasks, and activities. So, if you’ve used MS Excel at any point in your life, you might recognize this one!
However, note that while Smartsheet is easy to use and implement; it might have an even higher learning curve compared to Trello.
SmartSheet Pricing
Free: Free for small teams.
Pro plan: $7 per user/per month
Business plan: $25 per user/per month
Enterprise plan: Custom quote is applied.
Smartsheet Reviews
👍 Pros
👎 Cons
“Smartsheet is very flexible and can be used for a variety of needs. It is what it says – a spreadsheet on steroids with several additional capabilities you won’t find in Excel or Google Sheets. The Gantt chart for scheduling is great for visualizing and sharing milestones with teams.”
“No file renaming option. Limited sheet summary report functionality. Limited batch update tools to revise and align current project sheets. Lack of permission settings without additional purchased feature packages.”
⭐Rating on G2: 4.4 out of 5 stars
4- Hive
Hive offers everything Trello lacks while walking a fine line between customization and usability, thanks to the rich features it offers: time tracking, task dependencies, native integrations, a user-friendly interface, and project tasks that can be used in even larger projects to boost team collaboration.
Additionally, Hive has an in-built chat which is perfect for small teams that value team communication and collaboration, and larger teams will appreciate how easy it has become to assign specific tasks, keep team communication clear, and create a board for task management—all via the team conversations flow live.
With Hive as your remote tool for project and process management, you can:
- create agile workflow processes that work for you and your team’s goals for each sprint by labeling and grouping your tasks to make project tracking as easy as possible
- manage your projects by tracking individual tasks and sub-tasks with unlimited access
- make use of flexible project views when generating a visual representation of data, such as Gantt, Kanban, table, calendar, and portfolio
- construct forms to collect information from both internal and external participants
- create personal to-do lists to keep track of the due dates of your own work while managing side projects to deliver projects on time
- break down your team’s workload and use the time tracker function for each task
- integrate your Google Calendar to get a better view of events
- customize recurring tasks and prioritize your tasks to save time while allowing automations to take care of repeated processes
- send emails by using the in-app email function and add tasks to them with ease
- choose one of the pre-made notes templates and perform real-time collaboration within them
Furthermore, Trello allows only Kanban layouts.
Hive lets you view tasks in Kanban boards or in five additional project views so that you can set priorities for team tasks according to your workflow.
Hive Pricing
Solo plan: $0 – free forever for individuals and small teams
Team plan: $12 for teams that run multiple projects
Enterprise plan: Custom quote
*The Team plan above includes a 14-day free trial, making it possible to try it out before committing to an annual purchase.
Hive Reviews
👍 Pros
👎 Cons
“The analysis and graphical presentation available is very useful to the Higher and Mid-level management.”
“Also, I have noticed that when people send images on chats or groups they never load, so I have to close the software down and reload it to be able to see them, which is a pain.”
⭐Rating on G2: 4.6 out of 5 stars
5- ClickUp
Whether it’s helping you create a custom workflow for a project or offering you comprehensive project dashboard views, ClickUp is a task management solution worth considering.
ClickUp is another popular tool you can use instead of Trello that eliminates the need to use multiple apps like Google Docs, Smartsheet, Jira, and others. If your team depends on four or five 3rd party apps, ClickUp might be a better choice than other free project management software.ps like Google Docs, Smartsheet, Jira, and others. If your team depends on four or five third-party apps, ClickUp might be a better choice than other free project management software.
Although ClickUp is an attractive all-in-one design, it may be challenging and complex for some users to use.
ClickUp Pricing
Free plan: With 100MB storage and unlimited tasks
Unlimited plan: $5 per member/per month
Business plan: $12 per member/per month
Business Plus: $19 per member/per month
Enterprise: Custom quote
ClickUp Reviews
👍 Pros
👎 Cons
“The flexibility and features are great, especially the ability to customize views and manage custom fields.”
“The mobile apps are dreadful and should not even be considered “beta” due to regular crashes and half-baked features. The web app experience is inconsistent and has been trending downward over the past 2 months with more frequent crashes and incorrect data shown in dashboards.”
⭐Rating on G2: 4.7 out of 5 stars
6- Asana
Asana is another leading project management tool on our list that has comparable features to Trello in its Kanban board approach to task management.
Asana task lists let you create large, scalable tasks and break them into sections and sub-items, which can then be arranged into boards and lists.
It also offers more extensive workflow automation and customization than Trello, including custom fields, charts, and reporting, which could increase transparency when it comes to tracking team tasks.
However, it isn’t easy to state any superiority between Trello and Asana in terms of features since both tools have their ups and downs. Just make sure to give Asana a chance if Trello isn’t up to your par.
Asana Pricing
Basic plan: $0 (free forever)
Premium plan: $10.99
Business plan: $24.99
Asana Reviews
👍 Pros
👎 Cons
“I switched from Trello to Asana and I truly enjoy using Asana almost because I feel there is a gamification feeling in getting my daily wins accomplished.”
“There are 3 main caveats with Asana: – Price per seat can be a challenge depending on the type of organization. – Although they continue to add integrations with other solutions, the list is still not comprehensive – A good amount of key features are only found in their most Premium (expensive) version.”
⭐Rating on G2: 4.3 out of 5 stars
7- Airtable
If you are looking for an alternative to Trello that provides project and task-based views, Airtable is a solid spreadsheet that offers flexible features, such as file storage, file sharing, and project and team tasks tracking.
Data or tasks can often be challenging to map out over time with Kanban, so Airtable’s main spreadsheet format helps you a lot in that case and can be of greater assistance when it comes to creating visual roadmaps that will lead the internal and external business processes.
You can attach various items within the Airtable spreadsheet, such as images, links to other tasks, and assignees.
If you’re used to working in Excel or Google Sheets, this is one of our list’s best project management solutions.
Airtable Pricing
Free plan: $0 (up to 5 creators or editors)
Plus plan: $10 per seat /month (billed annually)
Pro plan: $20 per seat /month (billed annually)
Enterprise plan: Custom quote
Airtable Reviews
👍 Pros
👎 Cons
“Airtable, once learned, is simple to use for data collection, data management, and reporting. We like being able to build custom forms, quickly, to add data to records and it makes our employee’s jobs easier. The mobile features are strong and allow us to get work done on the road by phone, and we feel like our data is safe and accessible.”
“Airtable has a learning curve for admin and users. Not to say this is Airtable’s fault, but to say Airtble is “plug and play” would be false. This learning curve has proven time-consuming and creates delays when onboarding new employees whose strength is not data management platforms.”
⭐Rating on G2: 4.6 out of 5 stars
8- Basecamp
Basecamp is another cloud-based project management tool with a user-friendly interface that provides a centralized view of all the tasks, projects, and progress for maximum transparency and efficiency.
The six key features of BaseCamp include a to-do list, a message board for keeping track of conversations and updates, a chat room for casual team chats, a schedule for posting deadlines, the ability to share files, and automatic check-ins for progress reports.
While some may suggest that Basecamp’s design can still be improved, it doesn’t negate its excellent project management capabilities and ability to compete with Trello.
Additionally, running perfectly on the web, it offers desktop apps for Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS.
Basecamp Pricing
Basecamp Personal: $0 (limited free plan)
Basecamp Business: $99 per month flat rate (unlimited users)
Basecamp Reviews
👍 Pros
👎 Cons
“Basecamp is the perfect tool for my team to track each other and each other’s work. Most things are customizable and the ability to separate departments into their own basecamp is so appreciated.”
“No sub sub tasks – Not the best tool to handle different projects at the same time with different structures – Not the best tool for certain industries, like Agencies or the ones that handle multiple clients.”
⭐Rating on G2: 4.1 out of 5 stars
9- Teamwork
Teamwork is a cloud-based project management tool that enables users to simultaneously manage multiple projects, chat with colleagues, and handle customer service requests.
Moreover, the software provides the feature to track time spent on projects by teams and team members and generate custom time reports. Long live time management!
You can also invoice all expenses and time logged on tracked projects, allowing expense tracking via invoicing features.
App integrations are also no biggie for Teamwork as it integrates seamlessly with numerous apps, including Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, SalesForce, etc.
Teamwork Pricing
Free Forever plan: $0 with basic project & task management features
Deliver plan: $10 per user/month, billed annually (minimum 3 users)
Grow plan: $18 per user/month, billed annually (minimum 5 users)
Scale plan: Custom quote
Teamwork Reviews
👍 Pros
👎 Cons
“The UI is very intuitive and clear. Actions around tasks have short paths to complete and work well. The features for tasking are useful and easy to work with. The knowledge base covers almost every topic and support is responsive, friendly and helpful.”
“ It takes a very long time to get everything set up. There is so much to learn about the setup of the product and the free trial is not long enough to set up everything correctly from start to finish.”
⭐Rating on G2: 4.4 out of 5 stars
10- Jira
Jira is another project management tool for teams with an intuitive interface, especially cross-functional teams.
Because this valuable project management tool eliminates many items that make team management difficult by offering several elements that will take teamwork between teams to another level, such as special board views, including Scrum and Kanban templates.
Moreover, Jira is an excellent tool when it comes to risk management due to the bug-tracking template it includes. Using this template, you can capture bugs and add them in detail, assign them to your teammates, and prioritize them throughout your workflow processes.
Just when you’re about to say no more, Jira still has something up on its sleeve: DevOps. With DevOps, you can manage various external tools in a single place, whether it’s for coding, checking schedules, or automating your repetitive tasks.
Jira Pricing
Standard Plan: $7.75 per user/per month (up to 10 users)
Premium Plan: $15.25 per user/per month
Enterprise Plan: You can contact Jira’s sales team to learn more about this plan.
Jira Reviews
👍 Pros
👎 Cons
“Jira is a project management tool that helps organizations plan, track, and keep track of project cycle. It is most helpful for its ability to help us manage complex projects and track progress over time. Additionally, It also allows us to collaborate on projects, plan sprints, and track bugs and issues. Features such as its flexibility, scalability, and its robust feature set is a absolute life saver at times.“
“ It’s a little complex for first-time users, but it’s beneficial once they get familiar. I only suggest a user guide or a pop-up explaining all the features; this will help them understand the tool independently without bothering another user.”
⭐Rating on G2: 4.2 out of 5 stars
11- Microsoft Planner
A part of the Microsoft 365 family, Microsoft Planner is a popular tool that is used by many, especially its iOs and Android versions as well as its desktop app.
This application makes it easy for you to add, assign, and check team tasks thanks to its intuitive interface, but that’s not all. With it, you can create a plan, choose to make your projects public or private, add members that will help you, add tasks, set due dates, manage team conversations by commenting, and view the progress of your project planning.
Also, it’s good to keep in mind that it doesn’t have a very limited team capacity, as Planner lets you bring as many people as you can with almost-unlimited projects, making it a great option for large teams. So, forget about modest team management and bring your team over to deliver tasks on time.
Microsoft 365 Pricing
As Microsoft Planner is part of Microsoft 365, you can only use it by purchasing the main program first.
Microsoft 365 Business Basic: $6/user per month
Microsoft 365 Apps for Business: $8.25/ user per month
Microsoft 365 Business Standard: $12.50/user per month
Microsoft 365 Business Premium: $22/user per month
Microsoft Planner Reviews
👍 Pros
👎 Cons
“Planner is great for sharing tasks between team members. You can create so called “Buckets” and put in them topic related task cards. Then appoint the card to a team member(s), appoint bullet points of activities and set due dates, importance of the task. Once a bullet point is completed in can be stricken through and this adds to the completion % of the whole task Card. It is really helpful tool to plan regular, repeating activities that need to be shared with others. Helps with progress monitoring. Planner can also present task Cards due dates on a calendar and you can get insights on performance of tasks – how many were out of date v/s how many completed on time. It also sends notifications to outlook for outstanding items and due deadlines.”
“The lack of graphs and indicators to implement in weekly meetings, lacks attractive design in each of the dashboards and interfaces of the work center and it is difficult to transmit that information directly to an indicator.”
⭐Rating on G2: 4.2 out of 5 stars
12- Focalboard
Focalboard is the last application we have here, but by no means it implies that it’s the worst among them. Actually, it has a unique element that the others don’t: It’s a 100% open source and offline alternative that you can use instead of Trello as a product developer.
As you can customize Focalboard to your heart’s content, it’d be correct to assume that this application is a great option for software development teams. In detail, you can go to GitHub for the source code and contribute all you wish to make it suit your tasks, whether it’s for personal use or your team’s use.
Furthermore, it has a user guide that helps you understand what you can achieve by making use of this application, including creating project boards, changing statutes, checking your projects via dashboard, and changing places of bars between project lanes and pivots between lists.
Focalboard Pricing
As Focalboard is an open source alternative to Trello, it has no pricing plans; thus, it’s free! You can download it by getting to its own website or checking GitHub.
Focalboard Reviews
No reviews were found on this application.
⭐Rating on G2: It isn’t on G2.
Conclusion
With so many great options available, we can’t say that there is a single wrong choice here. However, your top choice would depend significantly on what you and your team need from a project management tool.
Thus, it will be best to assess each of the above-listed project management apps and see which one fits your needs the best.
In the end, it comes down to what you’re comfortable using. These are all great tools for managing your team’s tasks, so you should take your time and try them all out. And let us know how you like the solutions in the comment section below!
Frequently Asked Questions
Is there anything better than Trello?
Yes, here are some top alternatives to Trello you can use for your project management:
- monday.com
- Hive
- ClickUp
- Asana
- Smartsheet
- Airtable
- Basecamp
- Teamwork
Is there a Google alternative to Trello?
You can use Google Keep as an alternative to Trello for your task tracking and project management process. Google Keep features include: Adding items to your shopping list without even touching your phone. Google also displays reminders in Keep notes. Google Sheets is another essential Google project management tool you can use as a Trello alternative.
Is there a Microsoft equivalent to Trello?
As an alternative to Trello, Microsoft offers Microsoft Planner and Microsoft Project as separate project management tools. These collaboration tools center around kanban boards and help your hybrid team coordinate and manage tasks and projects efficiently.
What is a disadvantage of Trello?
1- Lack of Reporting Features
2- Hard to Track Complex Projects
3- Limited Project Views
4- Limited Integration
4- Too Much Simplicity
