Top 7 Trello Alternatives Worth Your Attention in 2020

Andriy Zapisotskyi — April 3, 2020

Trello is a universally loved task manager among teams of all sizes. However, if for some reason, you are not fond of the platform, there are plenty of other options on the market. In this post, we are going to review the top 7 Trello alternatives among project management and chat apps, comparing their respective features, advantages, and disadvantages.

What is Trello?

Trello is a task manager built as a stack of cards with tasks inside. To change the status of the project, the team switches tasks between boards. The platform has a ton of convenient features:

• Easy file upload (you can attach documents straight from Google Drive or Dropbox)
• Checklists – remind your employees to double-check their work before submitting it for review
• Gmail integrations – you can reply to Trello texts from the email client.
• Notifications that keep you updated on new assignments and the feedback on pending tasks. It’s worth noting that Trello notifications have high email deliverability score – they don’t end up in spam folders.
• Color-coded labeling
• Customizable theme
• Friendly mobile interface

For smaller teams working from home, there’s hardly a better project management tool than Trello. However, large companies aren’t as happy with the platform – they remark loading issues, belated notifications, and other little frustrations that can get in the way of completing projects in time.

Top 7 Trello Alternatives

If Trello is too messy for you, doesn’t have the features you are looking for (such as built-in time tracker), or you want to shake the routine and try a new tool, here’s the review of 7 project management platforms project managers from all over the world swear by.

1. Jira

Pros:

• Fully customizable
• Easy to use
• Cross-platform
• Designed to fit the agile framework

Cons:

• No features for testing and pass/fail tracking
• No robust reporting
• Maximum file upload size – 2GB

Jira is a project management tool designed to assist software development teams. If you work in marketing or design, programming-faced features might feel redundant – however, Jira offers a lot of universally useful features as well.

For instance, PMs can add third-party integrations from the official marketplace, switch between Scrum, Kanban, and other types of boards depending on the methodology they use, and track each employee’s individual productivity.

Main features:

• Custom workflows
• REST APIs integration
• Bug management and reporting tools
• Data import from other systems
• Issue and source integrations

Pricing: for teams with up to 10 members, Jira offers a free cloud version. You will be able to access an Agile task board, build reports and custom workflows for free. However, the file storage at your disposal is limited to 2 GB.

Larger teams should choose among paid Jira plans:

• Standard: $ 7/m/user (up to 5,000 users)
• Premium: $ 14/m/user (up to 5,000 users)
• Self-managed (a server-based platform): starting from $ 10 as a one-time payment
• Self-managed (a data center): starting from $ 20,400/year.

2. Asana

Pros:

• Hundreds of third-party integrations
• State-of-art storage security
• Customizable dashboards
• Clear task prioritization system

Cons:

• Can get overwhelming for inexperienced teams
• One task can only be assigned to one person
• Limited report exporting (as JSON and CSV)

When PMs are discussing Trello alternatives, Asana comes up immediately. It is a favorite task manager for teams of all sizes – it’s responsive, intuitive, with every tool you need to assign and track the completion of tasks.

Although Asana has a couple of evident drawbacks – a 100MB file size limit for one, robust sharing possibilities, advanced reporting, and dozens of integrations fully make up for these.

Main features:

• Fully customizable interface
• Robust project permission settings
• Email client integrations
• Tracking tools
• Third-party plugin support
• Simultaneous support for multiple workplaces

Pricing: Asana is available as a limited free version that supports up to 15 users. Larger teams will have to pay $ 21/m for 5 users.

3. Good Day

Pros:

• Intuitive, with drag-and-drop navigation
• A wide range of project management tools
• Proactive customer service

Cons:

• Low mobile-friendliness
• Few third-party integrations
• Limited collaboration tools (you can’t assign a task to several users or create subtasks)

If you haven’t heard of Good Day before, it’s time to give this Trello alternative a try. You can use the platform for project planning, budget and deadline estimates, researching business opportunities, data visualization (Gantt charts are supported) and other routine tasks.

Good Day offers feature packages for marketers, programmers, CEOs, and executives. The platform is an excellent tool for resource and project management, with proactive customer service.

Main features:

• Kanban board
• Gantt charts
• Customizable report templates
• Resource management tools
• Custom workflows

Pricing: there’s a free version and a free premium trial. To make the most out of Good Day, you will have to pay $ 5/user/month.

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4. Monday

Pros:

• Customizable dashboards and workflows
• Robust reporting features
• Time-saving workflow and reporting templates
• Color-coded labeling

Cons:

• Impossible to share tasks between boards
• Notifications can get annoying
• Slow loading
• Low user-friendliness of the mobile app

Monday is another feature-rich project management platform, with detailed reporting, task management, and collaboration features. The tool allows project managers to create tasks and workflows, track the amount of time team members spend on every task, and manage clients.

Having a talent management, task tracker, and a CRM solution in one platform is extremely convenient – that’s why a growing number of teams and ecommerce startups migrate to Monday.

Main features:

• Budget management
• Agile and traditional task boards
• Customizable interface
• Tracking transactional email campaigns
• Time tracking
• Real-time document editing

Pricing: Monday doesn’t have a free version although there’s a trial period that lets managers evaluate the platform. To use Monday, you will have to pay a $ 8/user/month subscription fee.

5. ClickUp

Pros:

• Built-in notes and calendar
• Different task board modes (list, Kanban, Gantt chart)
• Managers can create subtasks
• Cost-effective pricing

Cons:

• Cumbersome interface
• Poor mobile app functionality
• No Gmail integration

ClickUp is similar to Trello in that the platform uses a card-based interface. Similarly, you can start a conversation thread next to each assignment by tagging other users. There are other ways to view assignments – in the form of a list or a Kanban chart.

ClickUp boasts a wide range of integrations – from time trackers to file-sharing tools. It allows teams to integrate the tools they are using into the platform seamlessly. There’s built-in email tracking software as well.

Main features:

• Gamification
• Different task board views
• Subtasks support
• Progress tracker
• Built-in office suite
• Resource management tools

Pricing: a free trial and a subscription for $ 5/month/user

6. MeisterTask

Pros:

• Intuitive interface
• Convenient pricing model
• Third-party integrations

Cons:

• Task boards don’t have a hierarchy
• Attached files are downloaded slowly
• Too many redundant feature

A Kanban-style board like Trello, Meister Task is sleek, feature-rich, and reasonably priced. It’s an all-in-one team management suite, with a built-in calendar, a range of integrations, and features like custom workflow design.

TaskMeister is highly automation-friendly. You can create task or report templates, ready-to-deploy checklists, or send notifications as soon as the task is moved or completed.

Main features:

• Collaborative project management platform
• Time tracker
• Tagging and keywording
• Real-time reports
• Built-in completion notifications

Pricing: There’s a basic free version and two premium subscription plans

• Pro – $ 9/m/user
• Business – $ 20.75/m/user

7. Zoho Projects

Pros:

• Wide range of team communication tools
• Knowledge-sharing platform
• Project planning features
• Robust time management toolkit

Cons:

• Narrow range of task filters
• Steep learning curve
• Limited bug reporting
• Projects are placed on the dashboard randomly

At first glance, Zoho Projects is so similar to Trello you might confuse the two. However, once you start digging into the nitty-gritty of the platform, you learn that it brings some unique features to the table. For instance, Zoho Projects is one of few tools with a powerful suite of communication tools – there’s a team forum, a project wiki, a built-in chat, and a possibility to run live streams.

Zoho offers a variety of features targeting IT teams, such as bug reporting. There are talent management tools as well – time tracking, billing management, and others.

Main features:

• Document management
• Timesheets
• Team feeds
• Custom reporting
• Integrations
• A user-friendly mobile app

Pricing: there’s a highly limited free version – you can only manage one project and upload files with the size up to 10MB. As for premium subscriptions, the platform offers a few options to choose from:

• $ 25/m – managing up 20 projects, 10 GB of storage
• $ 50/m – managing up to 50 projects, 100 GB of storage
• $ 80/m – unlimited number of projects, 100 GB of storage

Conclusion

Whether you like Trello or not is a matter of personal preference and the type of projects you are managing. The good news is, if the platform doesn’t cut it for you, there are plenty of convenient task managers on the market. You can either switch to a different Kanban board or give a new management framework a try.

Set some time to test the Trello alternatives reviewed above – your next favorite project management platform is definitely on this list.

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